Faster Combat Resolution With Intimidate

In my experience, Intimidate is vastly overused in social/roleplay interactions and severely underused in combat. Many players choose to intimidate NPCs in situations where intimidate is close to an automatic fail. A look at published modules and their automatic fail situations can give us some examples: intimidating a noble while in his court and in the presence of his guards; intimidating a prisoner in front of his crew when they have lost all hope of leaving prison alive; intimidating someone who is willing to be a martyr for his cause. In essence, people that have too much to lose or, in the alternative, nothing left to lose, are very hard and in some instances impossible to intimidate. You could probably Bluff them out of their life and soul, but today's topic is Intimidate in combat so let's stick to it.

During combat, a player can use his standard action to Intimidate one or more opponents that are bloodied. It is an opposed check against the enemy's Will. However, it is by no means an easy check. If the target of your Intimidate is already bloodied – which is a requirement – it is safe to say it is hostile to you, and hostile targets gain a +10 to their Will in this situation.

Intimidate in combat can be a high risk gamble. Yet, its reward can be quite sweet:

Success: The adventurer forces a bloodied monster to surrender, gets a monster to reveal a secret, or cows a monster into taking some other action. This skill is not mind control, so a cowed monster is unlikely to take any action that would cause immediate harm to himself.

Rules Compendium, p. 148.

Attempting to Intimidate a monster means you exchange your attack for your Intimidate attempt. This is not a bad thing. A recently bloodied monster can take anywhere from 3 to 5 rounds to kill. If your Intimidate check is successful, combat ends right then and there, with the monster's surrender.

Intimidate is not limited to just one target, either. You can attempt to Intimidate all bloodied enemies that are able to see and hear you. You must roll against each individual monster's Will separately but this is not bad, either. It is like getting the opportunity to attack several monsters in the same round without even having to worry about your weapon's range, as long as the monsters can see and hear you.

Think about what this means. Your group of 5 adventurers is fighting 7 monsters. After a few rounds, four of them are bloodied, three are not. This fight still has a long way to go. On your turn, you decide to Intimidate the four monsters that are bloodied. Let's say you are only successful against two. The result is that those two monsters surrender to your party, right then and there. The odds have now changed drastically in your party's favor. The players that were focused on attacking those monsters that surrendered can now switch to the remaining mobs. Combat length has thus been shortened.

Intimidate does not work against all monsters. Monsters immune to fear cannot be intimidated. However, the important thing is to remember that when you are in combat, you have options that go beyond sword, spell and arrow. Use them wisely for quicker combat resolution.