We have a Barbarian who is putting max ranks in Intimidate and taking feats like Skill Focus and Intimidating Prowess to make sure people will be scared of him. Honestly he'll probably succeed on Demoralize checks against a lot of foes even if he rolls a natural 1. I could imagine him taking Dazzling Display, and this would give the party a pretty nice area debuff from a somewhat unexpected source. A Barbarian debuffer seems kind of cool. Honestly I've rarely seen Intimidate used before, much less used effectively...
The problem is that I wonder what happens if one of the other PCs learns the Fear spell. Since the Barbarian will be making everything that can be afraid shaken one could imagine that our Bard or Wizard might follow up with the Fear spell to make all of the shaken stuff run away without a saving throw. That seems like it could be a little extreme, especially since they could likely spam the combo a few times before the +5 to Intimidate DC for repeatedly demoralizing the same foe would stop it. Meanwhile the party's ranged attackers could cut loose with impunity.
Anyhow, while I have some game balance concerns about this tactic I'm mostly just trying to determine if it is legal per RAW and whether people think that's intentional or just an oversight. Honestly I wonder if removing fear stacking altogether wouldn't be a better solution than having a bunch of specific rules to stop the general rule from coming into effect (It seems to me like most fear based powers have some sort of non-stacking clause)
By RAW it is allowed but it was discuessed alot.
Intimidate -> Shaken -> Cause Fear -> Panicked
could be worse, he could be a bard and do it with no feats at level 8
Game-mechanically, it's actually rather an annoying ability. You don't want the enemy running away, possibly returning with bolstered ranks and morale; you want them dead!
could be worse, he could be a bard and do it with no feats at level 8
The "Dirge of Doom" ability specifically says that "This performance cannot cause a creature to become frightened or panicked, even if the targets are already shaken from another effect."
I can imagine lots of reasons you might want the enemy to run away for a round. Honestly, if running away for a round were to the enemy's advantage he could do it anyhow, and I'd rather not assume that the DM is playing all the monsters as dummies.
I think the problem here is that neither effect offers a saving throw and the Intimidate check basically has no chance of failing. It might seem fun to pick on the DM's monsters this way, but if it were turned around and used against the party I suspect that people would be pretty unhappy.
If there's nothing else in RAW to stop this combo I guess I can just hope that one day the devs will say that Demoralize doesn't stack with other fear conditions. James Jacobs said something kind of like that once. It was neither specific nor official though, and I don't recall if it covered this specific combo or just Demoralize + Demoralize (which is now called out as not stacking normally right in the rules)
Barring any official intervention I'll just discourage the casters from exploiting the combo and support the DM if he decides to ban it via house rule. He seems to be considering making a bunch of house rules to stop the Intimidate skill from working in combat, but I think that's really the wrong direction here and hope he'll let the Barbarian's unusual approach be useful.
Every now and then, have some things that are immune to fear-effects.
Make sure to realistically handle the frightened. If they're in a dungeon, doing this might just bring more enemies to the battle.
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I have a couple of characters doing this in my Rotrl game. It was powerful early on, but has weakened over time and levels. The most powerful aspect of it now is if they can panic the foe, they drop whatever they are holding and run so when they overcome the panic they don't have their favorite toy.
After mid-level this really is just about mob fights. The solos tend to be either immune or really tough to pull this on.
Every now and then, have some things that are immune to fear-effects.
Make sure to realistically handle the frightened. If they're in a dungeon, doing this might just bring more enemies to the battle.
I agree with Cheapy.
first, there are a lot of enemies who are immune to fear.
Second, there are a great many situations when having your enemies escape your grasp is a BAD THING!
- Fighting guards? One got away and rallied the whole castle.
- Just hunted down the baddie that's been ravaging the villagers? I guess he escaped to ravage some more.
- In a dungeon? Now the next three encounters are all going to be simultaneous.
- Roleplaying scenario? Useless.
could be worse, he could be a bard and do it with no feats at level 8The "Dirge of Doom" ability specifically says that "This performance cannot cause a creature to become frightened or panicked, even if the targets are already shaken from another effect."
The performance can't, but if the performance is used FIRST, there's no reason why you can't follow up with another effect that doesn't have that line. This wording seems to be to keep 2 bards from doing something stupid like automatically frighten every enemy within 30' for as long as they had performance rounds.
I'm playing a 13th level bard right now, and I regularly lead dirge of doom into fear. This combo only makes something automatically frightened for 1 round. Not terribly long, but useful to make some breathing room for someone who really needs to get healed up, or for the magus in my group to even the odds. It does occasionally backfire, but I try to be smart about when that's likely to happen and avoid using this combo in those situations. In short, my group has found this combo to be a neat trick, and sometimes useful, but far from overpowered.
As a side note, a small but sometimes important detail of panicking creatures that fail their saves vs fear is that they drop whatever they're holding. If someone in your group likes to use the spell a lot, this is something to be aware of.
I don't know, Danny Kessler, your opponent wouldn't run away if he weren't under the effects of Dirge of Doom, so I think that DoD would still be "causing" him to run away. If not then I guess you could stack Dazzling Display and Dirge of Doom to create a 30 foot fright zone around the PCs. This seems like it would be a convenient way for the party to camp at the entrance of a large room and pump the monsters full of ranged damage for several rounds (melee types could buff for the clean up phase).
Anyhow, while I appreciate people trying to give advice I should clarify that I'm not the DM in this game. We've got a first time DM, and he's running an AP, so it isn't likely that he can easily throw in a lot of monsters which are immune to fear. Maybe the AP already has them, but maybe it doesn't.
I think folks have proved sufficiently well that the Demoralize plus Fear combo should work per RAW (and RAI is tough to divine). I'm not sure about Dirge of Doom stacking with anything. Either way I'm pretty sure that the DM wouldn't appreciate such tactics either way, especially if it didn't even cost us a spell slot. He'll probably already get a little frustrated with our high AC, high damage output, etc.
Having an easy "its against the rules" answer would have been nice since the Intimidating Barbarian is being run by a new player who might not understand why the DM would want to make house rules which seem to unfairly target his PC. I think the shaken effect is a pretty cool debuff even without the stacking though, so he'll probably get over it.