Muscles shouldn't improve intimidate

[Psyren]

It's not changing the goal posts, it's putting it in context.

I'm of about average strength, thus in D&D terms probably 10-11. So someone who's as far below me as the Str 16 guy is from the Str 20 guy would be ... Str 6, which I think most people would consider scrawny.

"Scary to an average RL person" is not the same as "scary to a badass warrior who can punch bears into submission" much less "scary to a 20' tall demon".

I don't think D&D ability scores should be used quite this scientifically. A panther only has 14 Str (and 7 Cha), but most ordinary people would be pretty afraid running into one in a dark alley. Strength is one input among many at the end of the day.

[Vahnavoi]

All of these problems apply to charisma as well. A Charisma 10 thug vs a charisma 16 thug tries to intimidate a charisma 20 high level sorcerer who also dumped wisdom. Is the sorcerer just auto-magically scared of the thug who is less charismatic and weaker than the sorcerer?

I already pointed this out: defense against Intimidate relies on different aspect of the character than their own strength (level or HD is already accounted for, at least under 3rd edition rules). The sorcerer, if they lose in this context, gets scared because they lack the perceptiveness to accurately gauge the threat posed by the thug and because they lack mental fortitude to deal with it rationally.

A real equivalent would be a bodybuilder with crippling self-esteem issues being bullied by a 10-year-old. Yes, the bodybuilder could pick up and throw the kid around at will. No, this won't stop them from breaking down in tears when the kid is being mean to them. In the animal world, a lot of fairly small animals (such as badgers) manage to scare off much bigger and stronger animals (such as lions) just by being too nasty to be worth dealing with.

Same applies to the commoner versus empyrean example. Yes, it's possible for a much mightier being to have a lapse of judgement and just decide the other party is not worth dealing with. The empyrean might even intellectually know the commoner can't follow through with the threat, but on an emotional level giving them the gold is easier than fighting them off. I'm not sure why people are so worried of the 5% (?) probability of this happening in a game. If the problem is that 5% sounds too high of a frequency... just don't roll.

[Dr.Samurai]

I already pointed this out: defense against Intimidate relies on different aspect of the character than their own strength (level or HD is already accounted for, at least under 3rd edition rules). The sorcerer, if they lose in this context, gets scared because they lack the perceptiveness to accurately gauge the threat posed by the thug and because they lack mental fortitude to deal with it rationally.

See, this is codifying things too heavily. And this is the thread that runs through many of these arguments. The die roll doesn't matter. It's not that this time around the Sorcerer got intimidated, it's that the sorcerer lacks perceptiveness and mental fortitude.

No, the sorcerer doesn't. The sorcerer has some level of resistance to Intimidation that can sometimes be overcome by someone trying to intimidate them. Because it's a game and unless you have a feature that says "Immune to Intimidation", you can always be susceptible to it if the DM calls for the check.

Similarly, you and others have codified that Strength simply can't work, and there's no reason to say that in a game based on dice rolls.

A real equivalent would be a bodybuilder with crippling self-esteem issues being bullied by a 10-year-old. Yes, the bodybuilder could pick up and throw the kid around at will. No, this won't stop them from breaking down in tears when the kid is being mean to them. In the animal world, a lot of fairly small animals (such as badgers) manage to scare off much bigger and stronger animals (such as lions) just by being too nasty to be worth dealing with.

As I mentioned in a previous post, none of this is incompatible with Strength/size being intimidating.

Same applies to the commoner versus empyrean example. Yes, it's possible for a much mightier being to have a lapse of judgement and just decide the other party is not worth dealing with. The empyrean might even intellectually know the commoner can't follow through with the threat, but on an emotional level giving them the gold is easier than fighting them off. I'm not sure why people are so worried of the 5% (?) probability of this happening in a game. If the problem is that 5% sounds too high of a frequency... just don't roll.

The power that people give Charisma is astounding.

So the Empyrean knows that the commoner can't follow through on the threat, and the DM still allows for an Intimidation check, instead of Deception. The commoner is outright lying, but this is Charisma. It's just mind control mumbo jumbo man. You just like... say stuff, and whatever it is if you beat the DC the target is your puppet...

[GloatingSwine]

The power that people give Charisma is astounding.

So the Empyrean knows that the commoner can't follow through on the threat, and the DM still allows for an Intimidation check, instead of Deception. The commoner is outright lying, but this is Charisma. It's just mind control mumbo jumbo man. You just like... say stuff, and whatever it is if you beat the DC the target is your puppet...

That's not people "giving power to Charisma", that's people saying that if the DM calls for a roll they need to live with the outcome.

[Dr.Samurai]

That's not people "giving power to Charisma", that's people saying that if the DM calls for a roll they need to live with the outcome.

This thread is a bunch of people saying "strength cannot be intimidating", and turning around and also saying "even if you can't actually pose a treat, you can still roll Charisma (Intimidation) and succeed".

It's bogus reasoning. It's saying charisma can do anything. People treat charisma as a jedi mind trick. The empyrean doesn't even have an opportunity to call the bluff. If the commoner succeeds, the empyrean just feels threatened for no other reason than "charisma" and capitulates.

That IS giving power to charisma, because presumably most DMs won't let a meek level 1 commoner roll Intimidation against an Empyrean and here we are explaining how if you squint at it so hard your eyes are closed it could actually work.

[Satinavian]

If the DM was silly enough to call for a roll, yes, the Empyrean has to pay up and may address their complaints to the DM.

Yes, of course he would. If the DM in your scenario agreed with you that that outcome is absurd, they wouldn't have allowed the roll in the first place.

If the problem is that 5% sounds too high of a frequency... just don't roll.

Nah, i am pretty certain, GloatingSwine has the right idea about it :

That's not people "giving power to Charisma", that's people saying that if the DM calls for a roll they need to live with the outcome.

No one wants to make Charisma a superpower.

[GloatingSwine]

This thread is a bunch of people saying "strength cannot be intimidating", and turning around and also saying "even if you can't actually pose a treat, you can still roll Charisma (Intimidation) and succeed".

It's bogus reasoning. It's saying charisma can do anything. People treat charisma as a jedi mind trick. The empyrean doesn't even have an opportunity to call the bluff. If the commoner succeeds, the empyrean just feels threatened for no other reason than "charisma" and capitulates.

That IS giving power to charisma, because presumably most DMs won't let a meek level 1 commoner roll Intimidation against an Empyrean and here we are explaining how if you squint at it so hard your eyes are closed it could actually work.

I don't think anyone has actually said that this is a sane and reasonable thing to have happen, just that if you decided to roll for it you have to roll with it.

The sane and reasonable outcome to that situation is no roll in the first place no matter what stat the commoner is trying to use.

[Anymage]

And you still haven't explained how someone inflicts physical violence with a charisma check. I know influencing someone with physical violence or a display of hostile action offends you, but how do you do inflict violence with charisma exactly?

Hexblade.

Either or. If you roll Charisma, it's not a guaranteed success. If the DM allows you to roll Strength, it's not a guaranteed failure.

Yes? A strong and well trained fighter can miss on an attack while a weaker and untrained person can land a hit. That doesn't mean that one doesn't have better odds than the other.

The doberman or rottweiler barking at you from the other side of the junkyard fence is not hitting you with magic charisma beams, it's performing a hostile action. Those aren't people skills. That's 130lbs of muscle, jaw strength, and teeth.

Or I might come with some "treats" that are drugged or poisoned. Or I might just shoot it if I really want to break into the junkyard. The doberman has little ability to influence my decisions beyond simply making me weigh the hassle involved in my various options.

In a more realistic system we'd have a better way to quantify threat (which could include but is in no way limited to big muscles), as well as people skills in order to make the fear express in a way you'd like. The 5e engine isn't even close to what I'd look for if I wanted a realistic system.

This same principle applies with humans. It's not auto-ANYTHING, so don't come at me with "but it might not work". Yes, it's not always appropriate to use Strength, but to argue, as people are doing here, that it can't possibly give you the desired results is just ignoring reality.

It might work, it might not work. Again, that doesn't mean that one person won't have a better chance of seeing the desired outcome than another.

And for the record. If your argument were "the 5e skill system cares more about tropes and being easy for new players to pick up than it does about realism", I'd be down with letting strong guy builds play into strong guy tropes, and that includes "big, strong, and scary". Although I'd wonder what sort of game people were playing if they spent their time mugging commoners, and there'd be discussions if their go-to interrogation method involved torture. It's when the argument turns into how threat/fear/pain are good ways to ensure compliance in a real world sense. That argument is wrong and harmful. Unfortunately going into any more detail would quickly lead to contentious real world topics, so I'm going to have to drop this line of argument here.

[lesser_minion]

It tests whether the target believes the threat.

Most games already have some idea of what sort of checks are involved in convincing someone of something that you believe to be true (or something that you don't). And the Death Star example shows an intimidation failure against a target who is fully aware that the threat is real and needs no convincing.

A DM who isn't being a git should generally cause a success to be something close enough to what the players wanted that they can predict where and when to use their abilities to get results.

That's why you aren't rolling to see how scary you are. Things like "the target just completely breaks and gives you a false confession" are failures, and it should be clear that things like a high strength score don't contribute to avoiding them.

The power that people give Charisma is astounding.

So the Empyrean knows that the commoner can't follow through on the threat, and the DM still allows for an Intimidation check, instead of Deception. The commoner is outright lying, but this is Charisma. It's just mind control mumbo jumbo man. You just like... say stuff, and whatever it is if you beat the DC the target is your puppet...

If the DM rules that your goals are achievable and that your approach is sensible, then a successful roll will give you what you want. If the DM makes strange rulings, you can expect strange outcomes.

[Mastikator]

I don't think anyone has actually said that this is a sane and reasonable thing to have happen, just that if you decided to roll for it you have to roll with it.

The sane and reasonable outcome to that situation is no roll in the first place no matter what stat the commoner is trying to use.

And to follow that up, any kind of physical display of raw muscle power will always result in no dice roll because intimidation is always and forever charisma. Crushing a stone into dust with your hand, breaking an adamantine bar in two, bringing down a house with a single punch to a load bearing wall. Not intimidating unless you got high charisma. That's just a petulant child going on a tantrum.

[GloatingSwine]

And to follow that up, any kind of physical display of raw muscle power will always result in no dice roll because intimidation is always and forever charisma. Crushing a stone into dust with your hand, breaking an adamantine bar in two, bringing down a house with a single punch to a load bearing wall. Not intimidating unless you got high charisma. That's just a petulant child going on a tantrum.

A child that can bring down a house with a single punch is pretty ****ing intimidating when they throw a tantrum and people with a sense of self preservation will want to avoid that happening.

[icefractal]

Ok here's a scenario.

A commoner, not proficient in intimidation, charisma 10. Vs An Empyrean, CR 23, godlike power, not immune to frighten, no explicit bravery feature. (lets say that he's out of legendary resistance, but otherwise fully armed and operational)

The commoner demands: "Give me your gold or I will take it by force", he rolls a nat 20 on his intimidation. The empyrean rolls a nat 1 on his wisdom save (or contested intimidation, whatever you choose, I don't care). The commoner WINS.

Does the Empyrean give away his gold to the commoner?

The commoner rolled a total result higher than the Empyrean and the Empyrean has no free immunity, so the Empyrean must give away his gold?

It's almost like bounded accuracy has significant flaws, and this is an example of why.

In PF1, the difficulty for the commoner to intimidate an Elohim (also CR 23, seemed the closest fit) is DC 45. And skills don't have 'nat 20' / 'nat 1', so it's literally impossible. As it should be, unless there's something very special about that commoner or the circumstances (which would be represented by a modifier).

Bounded Accuracy creates weird results with Intimidate, but also with other skills - consider the case that a random villager (Int 10, no relevant skill) has a non-trivial chance to know more about a subject than an experienced sage who's an specialist on that subject.

[Dr.Samurai]

I don't think anyone has actually said that this is a sane and reasonable thing to have happen, just that if you decided to roll for it you have to roll with it.

The sane and reasonable outcome to that situation is no roll in the first place no matter what stat the commoner is trying to use.

I agree that if a roll is called for, you should go with it. But... I don't think anyone is arguing that, and it seems to me to go without saying.

I disagree that no one is arguing this though. If we ignore the egregious example of the Empyrean, we DO see that people are treating Charisma as a special exception to the rules of the game. Something about the fact that Charisma is used to influence people makes others see it as an infalliable form of mind control. It's also vaguely broad in application. So that people are arguing that even if you can't actually threaten someone, you can bluff them, and it would still be Intimidation. So if you can't think of a credible lie to tell, you can just resort to lying via Intimidation. Further, all the arguments against Strength are (mostly) just examples of failures, suggesting that Charisma can't fail. Finally, Charisma is treated as more important than actual knowledge of Intimidation, so proficiency in Intimidation is meaningless with regards to knowing how to intimidate if charisma is not being used.

This all seems to me to be making a special case in Charisma.

Hexblade.

And for non-hexblades? The point is that Tanarii, and some others, hinge their arguments on "Strength does not govern influence". But the Intimidation skill literally says you can use physical violence. But Charisma doesn't govern physicality, Strength does. So how do you make the former argument consistent with this?

Yes? A strong and well trained fighter can miss on an attack while a weaker and untrained person can land a hit. That doesn't mean that one doesn't have better odds than the other.

That's not the argument. The argument being made is that strength CAN'T work, not that it has less of a chance to work.

Or I might come with some "treats" that are drugged or poisoned. Or I might just shoot it if I really want to break into the junkyard. The doberman has little ability to influence my decisions beyond simply making me weigh the hassle involved in my various options.

Not the point. A dog can't recognize a gun, or conceive of poisoned food. But it can certainly stop you from entering, and that's because it can hurt you. And it doesn't need to "convince" you of this threat. You can see muscles, teeth, and hostile actions plain as day.

Now, switch on over to a PC adventurer, which is a much more sophisticated creature, and if you're telling me a hulking barbarian adventurer with proficiency in Intimidate and a giant greataxe can't do what a guard dog can do, or even better, I'm very skeptical that you actually believe that.

It's when the argument turns into how threat/fear/pain are good ways to ensure compliance in a real world sense.

I don't know what you're loading into the word "good" here, but the argument is that threatening someone with physical violence and hostile actions is a legitimate use of Intimidation in the game, and can be handled through feats of Strength. And when people push back and say "strength isn't intimidating", we say yes it is, and this is the case all over the world and has been the case since organisms started competing against other organisms.

[lesser_minion]

And to follow that up, any kind of physical display of raw muscle power will always result in no dice roll because intimidation is always and forever charisma. Crushing a stone into dust with your hand, breaking an adamantine bar in two, bringing down a house with a single punch to a load bearing wall. Not intimidating unless you got high charisma. That's just a petulant child going on a tantrum.

Charisma doesn't stop mattering just because you found a use for your strength attribute. The correct answer is "roll normally with a modest bonus for incorporating your character's strengths into their approach". Not "roll with no consideration to the most likely cause of failure".

[Pex]

Intimidate with Strength isn't random flexing to demonstrate superior swoleness, it's a demonstration of the capacity to do harm to the person you're trying to intimidate.

Comparative strength doesn't matter, only how much the target wants to avoid harm and believes that the person making the check can and will inflict it, and that's what the DC and dice roll are for showing.

That's why I'd say that rolling strength to intimidate requires declaring an aggressive strength based action as part of the intimidate.

That's probably exactly how I'd roleplay it when you roll a nat 1.

As I wrote earlier I would count such flexing as valid to make a ST (Performance) check. It could also be valid as a ST (Persuasion) check if the intent is to seduce.

[Satinavian]

Not the point. A dog can't recognize a gun, or conceive of poisoned food. But it can certainly stop you from entering, and that's because it can hurt you. And it doesn't need to "convince" you of this threat. You can see muscles, teeth, and hostile actions plain as day.

Yes. But that dog would be threatening because of its teeth. Bite wounds are nasty and there are risks of infections. The dog would not be scary because of its strength. Dogs are not particularly strong anyway considering they tend to weight far less than humans.. And a strong dog would not be more scary than a weak dog. It is all about their natural weapon and how much harm it can do. This is also shown by far stronger animals with less dangerous natural weapons being far less threatening (e.g. donkeys).

Now, switch on over to a PC adventurer, which is a much more sophisticated creature, and if you're telling me a hulking barbarian adventurer with proficiency in Intimidate and a giant greataxe can't do what a guard dog can do, or even better, I'm very skeptical that you actually believe that.

And here i would be scared by the greataxe. An average guy with a greataxe would be more threatening than the barbarian without it.

[Vahnavoi]

See, this is codifying things too heavily. And this is the thread that runs through many of these arguments. The die roll doesn't matter. It's not that this time around the Sorcerer got intimidated, it's that the sorcerer lacks perceptiveness and mental fortitude.

No, the sorcerer doesn't. The sorcerer has some level of resistance to Intimidation that can sometimes be overcome by someone trying to intimidate them. Because it's a game and unless you have a feature that says "Immune to Intimidation", you can always be susceptible to it if the DM calls for the check.

Similarly, you and others have codified that Strength simply can't work, and there's no reason to say that in a game based on dice rolls.

The underlined part here is what's relevant. Under d20 rules, that "some level of resistance" is their level or HD plus their wisdom modifier plus bonus against fear.

Neither Charisma nor Strength, by default, imply resistance to Intimidation, which is what I'm talking about. The chief ability here is Wisdom, which measures such things as intuition, perceptiveness and willpower. The corollary to this being that someone who is strong or charismatic doesn't necessarily have their wits about in every situation - sometimes their intuition, perceptiveness or willpower fails them and they get intimidated against the odds. That is what the random function of the die roll represents.

As I mentioned in a previous post, none of this is incompatible with Strength/size being intimidating.

So? I'm not arguing against using Strength for intimidation - size is silly to even talk about, because bonus and penalties for size are already acknowledged by the rules we're talking.

I'm arguing against people who think simply being strong or charismatic makes one resistant to Intimidation. They are already accounted for indirectly, because character level and hit dice are accounted.

The power that people give Charisma is astounding.

So the Empyrean knows that the commoner can't follow through on the threat, and the DM still allows for an Intimidation check, instead of Deception. The commoner is outright lying, but this is Charisma. It's just mind control mumbo jumbo man. You just like... say stuff, and whatever it is if you beat the DC the target is your puppet...

Whether the commoner is using Strength or Charisma is immaterial to my point. There is no deception. The Empyrean knows, intellectually, that the commoner cannot follow through. Emotionally or intuitively, they still don't want to deal with it.

Again, if the chance for the die roll to succeed seems too high... don't roll. Nowhere is it being proposed the commoner has superpowers. If 5% (?) chance to intimidate an overpowering foe strikes you as a superpower, don't give them that.

[Peelee]

Big guys aren't particularly intimidating. Unless they project it right with their body language and words.

The prop doesn't matter, it's the intent and approach.
Intent: manipulate them to doing what I want
Approach: use some kind of prop and project it properly

Mr. T famously wore copious amounts of jewelry pre-Katrina. He amassed most of these pieces during his time as a bouncer before his film career - people would lose their jewelery during fights, and would be banned from returning. As a kindness to such people, Mr. T would wear such lost pieces while doing door duty, so that the owners could quickly and easily reclaim them from him without needing to re-enter the premises.

He ended up keeping a great deal of the pieces since those who returned would see their necklaces on Mr. T and think "well, that's his now". Because he's Mr. T. He's built like a tank, and even when he was trying to be helpful to people, he was crazy intimidating. Hell, I love Mr. T, he's done a lot of good and continues to do so to this day, I actively use him as an example of what a role model should be any chance I get, and he's still crazy intimidating.

[deadman1204]

says someone who has no life experience?

Someone taller is more scary cause they can beat you up. The idea that a 3ft tall halfling can be more scary than a 7ft tall barbarian is pretty silly.

[Anymage]

says someone who has no life experience?

Someone taller is more scary cause they can beat you up. The idea that a 3ft tall halfling can be more scary than a 7ft tall barbarian is pretty silly.

Tony Starr is not what I'd call "huge" or "built like a truck". Homelander is scary for a lot of reasons, with "being a bit taller than your average man" being very low down on the list. Superpowers change the threat calculation considerably, and fantasy has lots that would count as "superpowers". Plus charisma doing a lot of work.

Mr. T...

Ironically, being so scary that your intent is undermined sounds like a failure to me. There are plenty of ways to successfully instill fear that are still unsuccessful at your ultimate goal.

Plus, as mentioned above, superpowers are a thing in D&D. In the real world being big and being armed are the best ways to follow through on threats of violence. If an eight year old had their eyes start glowing and made the ground rumble, I'd be pretty spooked too despite my size advantage.

[Duff]

Perhaps the more useful way to put this is
"Can use of strength (either demonstrated, or implied by appearance) remove the effect of charisma in intimidation.?"

Because that's what using strength instead of charisma does.
And I'm a no on that.
Presentation matters. A big muscly fighter with a big sword is scary*. A big muscly fighter with a high charisma will hold my attention better while they scare me.
And the intimidate skill would make both of them more skilled in presenting their muscles, size and sword in such a way as to convey how willing and able they are to apply the sword to my innards

Intimidation should be boosted by things that make you seem dangerous.
We're in the system agnostic part of the playground, so I'll simply say "If your system can't deal with that, you want a GM who'll houserule, make rulings, wing it, or otherwise manage the limitations of your system

* Scary is of course a relative term.

[Lemmy]

Charisma should be the key attribute to getting a emotional / psychological reaction from someone... Because that's what charisma is: The ability to cause the desired emotional / psychological reaction on others.

However, circumstances matter. That's why circumstance bonuses exist. It's why we gift flowers to people we are courting, and why we puff our chests to people we are trying to intimidate.

So a high strength score should grant a proportional circumstance bonus in certain checks... For example, if you're threatening to beat someone up (not so much if you're threatening to sue them or something like that). That same bonus should apply for any other factor that makes the threat more convincing (being armed, having a reputation for violence, having a scary appearance, etc -- or, in the case of threatening to sue someone, having a good lawyer)...

But it should never replace Charisma, because a Charismatic person knows how to leverage those bonus more effectively (standing in a way that shows off their muscles, subtly touching their weapon's handle, etc).

All that said, the circumstance/penalty bonus might be so high as to effectively make the Cha modifier insignificant. A person wouldn't have to be very charismatic to scare me if they had a gun pointed at my head. Whatever Cha modifier they have is probably insignificant next to the +20 from pointing a gun at me (unless I have strong reason to believe they can't or won't use the gun - this belief would be reflected as a circumstance penalty to their check).

[Pex]

Perhaps the more useful way to put this is
"Can use of strength (either demonstrated, or implied by appearance) remove the effect of charisma in intimidation.?"

Because that's what using strength instead of charisma does.
And I'm a no on that.
Presentation matters. A big muscly fighter with a big sword is scary*. A big muscly fighter with a high charisma will hold my attention better while they scare me.
And the intimidate skill would make both of them more skilled in presenting their muscles, size and sword in such a way as to convey how willing and able they are to apply the sword to my innards

Intimidation should be boosted by things that make you seem dangerous.
We're in the system agnostic part of the playground, so I'll simply say "If your system can't deal with that, you want a GM who'll houserule, make rulings, wing it, or otherwise manage the limitations of your system

* Scary is of course a relative term.

Once again, it is not strength instead of charisma. It is strength in place of charisma for a particular check. For an instance of trying to intimidate by demonstration of a physical means, not every attempt of intimidation for all people everywhere in all circumstances.

[Satinavian]

So a high strength score should grant a proportional circumstance bonus in certain checks... For example, if you're threatening to beat someone up (not so much if you're threatening to sue them or something like that). That same bonus should apply for any other factor that makes the threat more convincing (being armed, having a reputation for violence, having a scary appearance, etc -- or, in the case of threatening to sue someone, having a good lawyer)...

That is what several people already mentioned. But D&D 5 doesn't do circumstance bonuses, so that is not applicable there.

[icefractal]

Once again, it is not strength instead of charisma. It is strength in place of charisma for a particular check. For an instance of trying to intimidate by demonstration of a physical means, not every attempt of intimidation for all people everywhere in all circumstances.

But still - why? Why would Charisma be removed from the picture just because Strength is added? Is it that "Dumping Charisma to 6 should not impede me in this at all!" Because I don't really see that as a necessary or desirable thing.

And as for "5E doesn't allow bonuses that large" - doesn't 5E emphatically and repeatedly give the GM the authority to change/expand the rules? This is an opposed check, so if you're adding equal magnitudes on both sides, it doesn't actually need to be on the same numeric scale as other checks.

And also this is not a thread about 5E only.

[lesser_minion]

Once again, it is not strength instead of charisma. It is strength in place of charisma for a particular check. For an instance of trying to intimidate by demonstration of a physical means, not every attempt of intimidation for all people everywhere in all circumstances.

Many of the ways you can fail are very clearly charisma failures, not strength ones. It therefore cannot follow that charisma no longer matters to such a check. Which means that disapplying charisma in favour of strength does not model these situations appropriately.

Intimidate checks also need to produce sensible results -- including a risk of failure -- for any level of threat from "he looks a bit bigger than you" and "he might have a knife" right the way through to "he can destroy an entire planet with a word, and you have personally witnessed him do so when he stood to gain far less than what he is asking of you". Characters must be able to both intimidate and resist intimidation by adversaries that they have no apparent hope of defeating whatsoever. This means that you are measuring threat on a scale where differences in strength are tiny if not completely negligible.

[PhoenixPhyre]

But still - why? Why would Charisma be removed from the picture just because Strength is added? Is it that "Dumping Charisma to 6 should not impede me in this at all!" Because I don't really see that as a necessary or desirable thing.

In this one specific scenario, that comes up only sometimes? I'm fine with Strength being an alternative to Charisma. Because 90+% of the time it can't.

The big beefy thug with his meaty hand wrapped around your neck, effortlessly lifting you off the ground who grunts "wallet" isn't charismatic at all. But he's darn intimidating nonetheless. And I've known lots of big people who were intimidating even when they didn't intend to be. People gave them space and generally let them do whatever they wanted (within bounds, of course) just because they were walking mountains. Even though they were really nice guys once you got to know them and had no intention of causing fear. Or were total pushovers who couldn't scare anyone who couldn't see them if they tried.

[Mastikator]

But still - why? Why would Charisma be removed from the picture just because Strength is added? Is it that "Dumping Charisma to 6 should not impede me in this at all!" Because I don't really see that as a necessary or desirable thing.

And as for "5E doesn't allow bonuses that large" - doesn't 5E emphatically and repeatedly give the GM the authority to change/expand the rules? This is an opposed check, so if you're adding equal magnitudes on both sides, it doesn't actually need to be on the same numeric scale as other checks.

And also this is not a thread about 5E only.

In 5e I wouldn't want to use multiple ability modifiers for a single roll because of bounded accuracy.

For a system without bounded accuracy I would be tempted to add all kinds of modifiers on top of charisma, depending on the situation, for example: a wizard who has just exploded a building would get a big bonus and ignore the strength score. What matters is what is being displayed as the intimidating factor.

[Lemmy]

That is what several people already mentioned. But D&D 5 doesn't do circumstance bonuses, so that is not applicable there.

My apologies. The thread was too long to read completely, and I don't really play 5e.

I suppose, instead of circumstance bonus, a good Str check or anything related to the threat being made could be used as an argument for the DM to give the player advantage on the Intimidation check.

[Pex]

But still - why? Why would Charisma be removed from the picture just because Strength is added? Is it that "Dumping Charisma to 6 should not impede me in this at all!" Because I don't really see that as a necessary or desirable thing.

And as for "5E doesn't allow bonuses that large" - doesn't 5E emphatically and repeatedly give the GM the authority to change/expand the rules? This is an opposed check, so if you're adding equal magnitudes on both sides, it doesn't actually need to be on the same numeric scale as other checks.

And also this is not a thread about 5E only.

You were already given in this thread examples of how it could be done. Reread the thread and accept them.