Gory Finish (Combat)
Prerequisite: Dazzling Display, Weapon Focus.
Benefit: When you use the attack action, you can use a weapon with which you have Weapon Focus to make a single attack at your highest base attack bonus. If you reduce your target to negative hit points, you can spend a swift action to make an Intimidate check to demoralize all foes within 30 feet who could see your attack.
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It doesn't seem to specify whether your target needs to be a creature, an equipment like sword and shield, a wall, or merely a candle.
Nor does the rules say anything about the target have to be on the enemy's side.
Can a character just gory finish an object he brought like an egg then intimidate enemies in the radius?
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Spending a standard action to destroy an egg and a swift action to demoralize feels only marginally better than just using a full-round action to demoralize. And you had to spend a feat to do it.
Gory Finish (Combat)
(...) If you reduce your target to negative hit points, you can spend a swift action to make an Intimidate check to demoralize all foes within 30 feet who could see your attack.
Hmm, is it actually possible to reduce an object to negative HP?
Hmm, is it actually possible to reduce an object to negative HP?Gory Finish (Combat)
(...) If you reduce your target to negative hit points, you can spend a swift action to make an Intimidate check to demoralize all foes within 30 feet who could see your attack.
Huh. That means you can't scare a necromancer by destroying her undead servants, or a wizard by destroying his homunculus.
Hmm, is it actually possible to reduce an object to negative HP?
A fertile hatching egg, maybe?
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It would become a philosophical question, whether to cast animate dead or animate object on the unhatched fledgling.
This issue has been commonly called the Bag of Rats problem (also with other names, but this seems to be the most common one). Since an ordinary rat does not act at all as a challenging encounter, you could easily kill it and then gain the benefits for reducing a creature to negative hit points or otherwise defeating it, such as this one.
But regardless of whether you're using eggs or rats, the core issue here is that you are spending a standard to attack the rat, and a swift to intimidate. In theory, you are also spending a move in order to draw the rat, AND you need a hand free to get the rat, so in every possible way, this 'trick' is spending a feat in order to be strictly worse than one of its prerequisites.
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Yolk everywhere! The horror! The horror!
By drawing upon wells of savagery, you can slay your foe in creative and horrifyingly gruesome manners, intimidating nearby foes.
Must be fun using the feat against an enemy with the die hard feat.
Barbarian: see how your companion ended!
Thug: scuse me pal but I'm still...
Barbarian: tremble before my might!
Thug: alright this guy is crazy I'm leaving, oh noooo I am so dead that it huuuurts....
Basically I should be afraid of a barbarian killing a rat (or a goblin, whatever) with his two handed sword but not against one that broke a sturdy iron door with brute strenght alone?
"Kill/Destroy your target" seems more appropiate imo. It still have the problem of what to consider a valid target for the feat though.
Not quite a door, but if you don't like carrying around a sack of rats, how 'bout a sack of holy symbols:
Iconoclast:
You know how to turn a holy symbol into a weapon against her followers.
Prerequisites: Divine Defiance, Improved Sunder, Power Attack, Intimidate 3 ranks.
Benefit: When you succeed at a sunder combat maneuver against a holy or unholy symbol, you can attempt an Intimidate check to demoralize as a free action. This demoralization affects all followers of the deity or philosophy whose symbol you sundered who saw you sunder it and are within 30 feet. If you destroyed the symbol, you gain a +5 bonus on your Intimidate check. You can use this feat when sundering any physical holy symbol—it doesn’t have to be the hand-held variety commonly used by clerics and other divine spellcasters.
Sunder can only be used against an item held or worn by an opponent. If you're carrying them around then I think you're just attacking an inanimate object (not sure about the "not the hand-held variety" allowance, maybe it's so you can do it if they have the symbol on their shield or similar, maybe the writer just missed that part of the sunder rules).
I mean, I'd let someone burst into a church and cut down the holy symbol to demoralize people, but if we're talking bag of crosses I think it technically doesn't work.
How 'bout this instead. Not quite the same effect, but still smashing stuff to make a point:
Destructive Persuasion (Combat)
Well I meant if you had Iconoclast you could use it to destroy unattended symbols for that effect under the condition that it was in some way dramatic, rather than by pulling one out of your holy symbol bag.
Without the ability to intimidate more than one person it's not worth much.
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It doesn't seem to specify whether your target needs to be a creature, an equipment like sword and shield, a wall, or merely a candle.Nor does the rules say anything about the target have to be on the enemy's side.
Can a character just gory finish an object he brought like an egg then intimidate enemies in the radius?
Personally, I wouldn't asign any HP to objects that are broken automatically when people try to break them. Eggs, candles, and so forth, would not have any HP. Maybe a break DC, but I don't really see the point of giving them HP. Sugar ants, too, probably have no HP (they're alive until someone tries to kill them...).
As for the feat, as GM I would asign a circumstance bonus/penalty to the intimidate check based on what you destroy. Breaking the Celery stick might allow you to attempt intimidation, but don't expect it to be easy to intimidate other creatures when your might is displayed by destroying weak objects or harmless creatures.