Should I use Intimidate on the players?

[Bromley20]

Some quick background on the campaign: I'm currently working on running a campaign, and in the next few sessions, the party will have their first encounter with the BBEG. The party will be level 5-7ish by this point, so their characters are somewhat experienced. The BBEG is leading a small group of around 150 soldiers around the country side looking for the macguffin. The party will first learn about some raids in remote villages that slowly progress closer toward the main town the PCs have been operating out of. They will eventually start to encounter people who managed to escape the raids who can provide more information. The BBEG has been capturing people and interrogating them (no torture or anything, more like police questioning) for information about the macguffin. I would like to drive home the threat that this leader poses to the party as a way to try to get more than the stereotypical "attack while he's distracted with his monologue" out of the first encounter. I understand it is unlikely, but I can dream, right?

I was thinking about using the intimidate skill and/or using the alternative fear effects in HoH like illness, despair, or shock. I'm planning to have the party first encounter him while he is questioning a group of prisoners from his latest raid. Using intimidate to demoralize the party out of combat for a minute instead of changing the party's attitude seems like a simple solution for the scene. Is it worth it to try to use mechanical effects to reinforce a point like this? Should I just ignore the mechanical side, and just rely on good descriptions, and storytelling instead? Any suggestions here?

[Rynjin]

Having a villain use fear-based debuffs seems very appropriate, not sure why there'd be any issue.

[rel]

This is something to be handled non-mechanically.
Foreshadowing always helps.

Sessions before the big bad shows up have the party meet another adventuring party about 5 levels higher than they are. Make them seem competent, experienced and so forth.

Then a few sessions later reintroduce the adventuring party. This time they are thoroughly disheveled and leaving the country in a hurry.

When questioned they explain that they met the big bad, thought he was a jerk and tried to gank him while he was taking a nap away from his army.
This party, several levels higher than the PC's, then go on to explain that despite their levels, outnumbering the big bad, being fully buffed, and attacking from ambush were absolutely destroyed by the big bad.

They're not sure how, but they woke up without any of their equipment, especially their magical items in a midden on the other side of the county.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Is the BBEG supposed to be completely above the party's league at this point, or do you expect a fight out of this situation?

If the BBEG is many levels above the party, then creating a sense of threat can be done as rel said, or by seeing the BBEG killing or finishing off a monster they encountered and know would be hard for them to fight. If they really try to attack him anyway, consider giving the BBEG a type of Frightening Presence, which makes PCs flee when they sense his "murderous intent" or get too close. That's what this ability was made for, for preventing inexperienced players to just charge the dragon and die stupidly.
If they are supposed to fight him, then I think using mechanical fear should be good, just to set the tone, and offset the action economy in the beginning of the fight.

[Quertus]

Does RAW support this chain of events? Or are you asking, “should I change the rules to railroad the outcome I want?”? If the latter, have you changed the rules to allow what the players want (chaotic monks proficient with their own unarmed strikes, for example)?

EDIT: also, I’m more a fan of players using Intimidate on the GM, and the GM sticking to having monsters use Intimidate on the characters, if they want.

[Bromley20]

Is the BBEG supposed to be completely above the party's league at this point, or do you expect a fight out of this situation?
He is supposed to be somewhat far above the party at this point. I am hoping to use this encounter to show the party who they are up against and his power, but have him get away to reappear later for a proper showdown once the party has caught up in level. However, my party is filled with murderhobos that may just try to start a fight on sight. If that happens, I plan to have the BBEG capture them and have a prison break style session.


Does RAW support this chain of events? Or are you asking, “should I change the rules to railroad the outcome I want?"
I guess my question was more along the lines of "is it bad form to use intimidate to convey to the party that an encounter is way above their level so they can make a somewhat informed decision on whether they want to start a fight". Based on most of the other replies, the answer seems to be "just rely on properly foreshadowing his power before they are ever in the same room" instead. I was planning on doing some foreshadowing but I'll try to add even more now.

[tyckspoon]

I guess my question was more along the lines of "is it bad form to use intimidate to convey to the party that an encounter is way above their level so they can make a somewhat informed decision on whether they want to start a fight". Based on most of the other replies, the answer seems to be "just rely on properly foreshadowing his power before they are ever in the same room" instead. I was planning on doing some foreshadowing but I'll try to add even more now.

The only thing using Intimidate on the party reliably conveys is "this guy has a high Intimidate skill check" (and possibly "we should make sure to get something that protects against Fear before we try to fight him.") Your players may or may not translate "our characters are shaken by him" into "we probably shouldn't try to fight him right now", but there is not a necessary correlation of "He was able to Intimidate us" to "He can out-fight us."

..So yeah don't count on that to clearly warn your players that they probably shouldn't commit suicide by making an open attack on the BBEG at this point.

[Quertus]

"is it bad form to use intimidate to convey to the party that an encounter is way above their level so they can make a somewhat informed decision on whether they want to start a fight".

By raw, Sense Motive has you covered. Sort of. If they bother actively taking the action. Sigh.

But, yeah, don’t be surprised when they attack him anyway, no matter how good your foreshadowing. And the TPK might be followed by, “but we thought that’s what you wanted us to do”. Sigh.

Your best bets, IMO:
Alongside strongly foreshadowing “this guy wears Superman’s skull as a trophy”, also be foreshadowing alternative approaches / ways to deal with him “he seems to have gone out of his way to avoid Green Lantern village…”.
Be prepared to break to OOC - “we attack him!” “Guys, if you do that, he’ll kill you, and will do so so easily that he won’t even bother adding your skulls to his collection.”

[Bromley20]

By raw, Sense Motive has you covered. Sort of.
Yeah I was initially hoping that they would just use this. However, none of them have ranks in sense motive and only 1 party member has a positive Wis modifier, so I don't think they could make the DCs. They also don't have any knowledge skills that could possibly apply here to identify the group, the leader, their coat of arms, etc. The party does have a cleric, so they do have access to some nice spells that could provide information about this group. However, they mainly focus on preparing buffs and healing over out of combat utility.

[spectralphoenix]

Maybe have enough nearby soldiers that it's clear there isn't going to be a fight? If he has thirty soldiers with him, even if they aren't all that relatively powerful, the PCs will probably figure there isn't supposed to be a fight with thirty-something participants. And worst case, you can have a level appropriate group of them break off and dissuade the PCs before having the BBEG stomp them.

The big thing that concerns me about Intimidate is that it encourages players to think in terms of combat numbers. If you tell them they have a -2 to attack rolls, they're going to start thinking they need to be making some attack rolls.

[Duff]

I would say it's fine to use intimidate on the player characters.
Intimidating players may be harsh on friendships.

But this is not the time for either.
If you want the characters intimidated by the BBEG, they have to be so scared they cannot attack. Let them know that this is not a fight. They aren't looking for the right moment, they aren't trying to get into position for an ambush, there's not going to be a fight.

Or, you give the hints, set the scene and ake sure they have enough info to know this is above their paygrade.
Then they can accept the hint or not
Let the bodies hit the floor

A strong hint that they're overmatched is having one of the BBEG's minions cast a spell that's a few levels above what the PCs have. Nothing quite like watching the BBEG's lackey get casually bullied into casting polymorph to make sure they know where they stand!

[Drakevarg]

I find an effective tool in giving the players a healthy degree of fear is to give the BBEG a complete lack of it. If the players are so far below the villain that they have no hope against him, just express that by showing the BBEG as entirely disinterested in them. If they're of the metagaming sort, have him casually pull out some ability that's way above their level. If not, just have him treat the party as one might a group of small children. If they fight him, have him be more annoyed by the interruption than angry.

Alternatively, arrange a demonstration. Give the BBEG a Darth Vader hallway scene. Lights go out as he enters, tension as they wonder what's coming from them, a squad of redshirts dying helplessly as he wades through them with contemptuous ease. Make the redshirts near-ish the party's level just to make it clear that no, they're not built that different and they'd fare about as well.

Or if you want them to get the idea before ever encountering the guy, put the corpse of a random encounter along the side of a road he's been down. Something ludicrously overleveled for the party. If the party comes across the husk of a colossal scorpion and you make a point to note that they don't see any dead mooks around it (suggesting the BBEG solo'd the thing) hopefully they'll get the point.

[Duke of Urrel]

By raw, Sense Motive has you covered. Sort of. If they bother actively taking the action. Sigh.

But, yeah, don’t be surprised when they attack him anyway, no matter how good your foreshadowing. And the TPK might be followed by, “but we thought that’s what you wanted us to do”. Sigh.

Your best bets, IMO:
Alongside strongly foreshadowing “this guy wears Superman’s skull as a trophy”, also be foreshadowing alternative approaches / ways to deal with him “he seems to have gone out of his way to avoid Green Lantern village…”.
Be prepared to break to OOC - “we attack him!” “Guys, if you do that, he’ll kill you, and will do so so easily that he won’t even bother adding your skulls to his collection.”


I have a house rule for this problem. Well, two house rules.

1. Firstly, I modify the "Assess Opponent" use of Sense Motive skill, so that your opponent may make either a Bluff check or an Intimidate check, whichever would be more favorable, to oppose your Sense Motive check. I also allow your opponent either to act tough or to act harmless, so that if your Sense Motive check result is badly beaten by your opponent's opposed check, your false assessment is exactly what they want it to be: either too high or too low.

2. Secondly, I assume that the players' Sense Motive skill is always "on" and takes 10 by default. This enables me, the dungeon master, to give players either a true or false assessment of their opponent as soon as they have had the chance to observe them for one round. In other words, players don't have to take a standard action to use Sense Motive skill to assess an opponent – unless, of course, they want to roll their skill checks rather than take 10.

I apply this rule – that Sense Motive skill is always "on" and takes 10 by default – to other situations, too. For example, if players encounter a skilled liar who uses Bluff skill, I allow them to detect the lie if the most skilled player's Sense Motive check, which takes 10 by default, beats the liar's Bluff skill check, which also takes 10 by default. If players really want to work hard to detect lies, they have to tell me that they are using Sense Motive skill actively, so that they can roll their Sense Motive checks and possibly beat Bluff checks that they could not beat by taking 10.