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Spiraling off a different thread about Demoralizing opponents.
The discussion has come down to less about paladins being immune to fear, and more about what "morale effects" under immunities for constructs, undead, vermin, oozes, etc. are. and whether you can actually use Demoralize to make an Undead/Vermin shaken.
Shaken is a Fear effect. RAW all Fear effects are not Mind-Effecting.
Fear (su/sp) monster entries are Fear attacks, and all of those are Mind-Effecting Fear effects.
Demoralize produces the Shaken ( Fear ) effect, but does not classify it as a Mind-Effecting effect.
The next result is that though you wouldn't think it possible, RAW you can Shake a Construct, an Undead, or a Vermin creature type, among others. This use of Indimidate: Demoralize boggles my mind.
Devs is this right? I hate to plead to the gods of gaming, but without a definition on Morale effects ( I suppose those to be morale bonuses ) listed in the Immunities section on those creature types, it looks like Undead are not immune to extraordinary fear effects. =P
In 3.5, Fear effects ( shaken / panicked / frightened ) were listed as all being mind-effecting fear effects in the glossary. In Pathfinder that section of text in the glossary was removed. Though it still exists in the Fear section of the Universal Monster Rules.
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when the larger question boils down to what creatures are vulnerable to demoralize, i figured i'd rephrase it, to get a better response from the forums, or possibly a developer's notice. "can you shake an undead" seemed a more concise way to put it, that also emphasizes how ludicrous it should be. Since they're no longer asking whether its a fear effect or a mind-affecting effect to demoralize.
In My Opinion, Fear effects ( shaken / panicked / frightened ) should effect sentient undead based on the sucess or near sucess of a turn /control attempt.
The object of Indimidate is to provoke an emotional response to a threat.
No emotion = No response
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In page 310 of the Bestiary, it states, under the traits for undead creatures: "Immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, morale effects, patterns, and phantasms)."
The question then being, is using Intimidate to demoralize a morale effect or a fear effect? If it is the former, then even sentient undead would be immune to demoralize attempts. If it is the latter, however, I can see it being justified that intelligent undead would be subject to demoralize, seeing as they still can have emotional responses to others' actions.
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In a tricky, related question:
Dirge Bards can affect undead with mind-affecting spells, even if they are mindless. James Jacobs clarified this for me and said that it means all undead immunities are bypassed for the purposes of the spell.
So, I know that I could not simply make an Intimidate check to demoralize undead as that is not a spell effect. However, could I use Blistering Invective on them? It's a normal Intimidate roll to demoralize, but it's now part of a spell--does that mean it gets to bypass their immunities?
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The object of Indimidate is to provoke an emotional response to a threat.
No emotion = No response
Exactly!
But vermin do have emotions as do intelligent undead and certain exceptional constructs (one way for a wizard to achieve immortality is to transfer the soul into a special construct body for example).
Also any natural living thing has a an innate desire for survival of the species (which is ignored in games way too often as it is)
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It seems to me that currently as near as I can tell, that shaken/frightened/panicked are untyped and thus not morale effects, which seem to me more a factor in more intelligent creatures rather then fear which is a base instinct.
To me morale has a lot to do with one's command of one's own emotions to try and accomplish a thought out goal rather then pure emotion. Thus disheartening people can make them forget for moment what they were fighting for, etc
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No, but (all bugs are insects not all insects are bugs, kinda thing) their belief and faith is more important then self survival (just like individual ants in a colony) the values that they believe in are more important then living, in way that very few can understand, thus even if they believe they will die the thought of self preservation doesn't occur to them, only the survival of their beliefs/values.
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Not so, only that intelligent beings are the only ones to come up with a multitude of reasons to fight to the death. Natural creatures only fight to the in a select few occasions where one instinct overides another, or when the creature doesn't believe it has another open.
Fear is a basic emotion inherent in all natural and thinking beings. To say anything from that group, or has the mind from when it used to be in that group, is immune to fear is ridiculous, to say they are immune to spells and abilities designed to work on more advanced, complete, and complex minds is not so farfetched.
BTW, paladins only act for self preservation when they have no reason fight, otherwise their dedication and NLP makes their code and whatever they believe in more important then self preservation, which results in not only the fact that they don't think about self preservation as very important, but also protects them from someone trying to exploit the desire for self preservation (which in most people is something that they have to fight and control whenever they go into battle knowing they will likely die, a paladin has completely removed that desire from themselves, thus the immunity)
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Because those things don't fight to the death, not in reality which we use as a general reference and ruler.
Fear generally is the deciding factor for creatures to decide when to fight or flee. If they believe they can win they fight if they fear they will lose then they get the emotional fear and flee (unless defending there nest or young or if they can't flee), with notable exceptions like ant colonies, in which the general rules still apply but on the scale of the colony rather then individuals.
Vermin are not immune to this in reality because they are practically mindless not actually mindless. Even ants avoid being squashed.
Paladins are compelled to fight to the death just like ants (whose cause is the survival of the colony), which doesn't always mean standing there like an idiot but rather constantly moving toward the goal their oath demands of them regardless of the chance of success, aka fighting through a hundred orcs so they can warn town so they don't get taken by surprise by the orc invasion counts for that.
Generally, vermin don't get compelled to act such.
Vermin could reasonably be said to be too simple to be magically manipulated by spells meant for more advanced minds, just like how a flashlight is a simple circut yet far less vulnerable to EM interference then a computer.
"Mindless" undead and most constructs are "programmed" by people who generally care less about the survival and more about the success of the things. Intelligent undead generally retain the minds and emotional ability of when they were living things as do some special constructs, though the magic that keeps them alive can certainly interfere with magical attempts to affect their mind there is no reason to expect that protection to exist against mundane ability (which the only way to do that would impede thinking and lock them into a single state of mind permanently)
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in game terms, I see reasons to make "mindless" creatures immune to fear (vermin, contructs, skeletons & Zombie)
on the other hand, I also see reasons to make intelligent undead affected by fear, as they can think, understand situations, and are willing to "survive".
So I'd not put demoralize as a morale effect, but keep it as "fear effect" (undefined yet) and add fear immunity to mindless only.
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True but not all mindless are lack a brain and more then that those that have emotion (which is really just the majority of vermin) are not able to rationalize and thus act purely on instinct, if they felt afraid they would not fight the fear the way a sentient being might.
Personally I see what immunities they have as being the result of their simple minds being too simple to be affected by the same spells designed for more complex creatures. Of course some like spiders and particularly scorpians are quite a bit more intelligent then most people believe and they are still classified as mindless.
Now something like oozes I can understand being immune to fear, they are not natural and almost certainly animated by some form of magic.
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vermin have emotions? in game terms you want vermin to have emotions?
you want them to be happy and sad? and be scolded when you yell at them?
GM's can't adjudicate that. Its much simpler to have vermin, and undead, lack an emotional response and be immune to fear. They can still act for self preservation if such a situation presents itself.
Undead and Vermin , even if capable of emotions as intelligent undead, still lack a gut human response to those emotions. Demoralizing someone isn't just yelling, its cowing them. Its making them so afraid of you that their attacks are less sure, but they're still willing to attack you. I think it should be language-dependent in some part, or at least offer a penalty to intimidate when a common language doesn't exist or against animals/magical beasts etc.
But I'll stick to my point: being undead, being vermin, they lack the ability to still hate you enough to attack you, and be cowed. ie. shaken.
If a vermin is going to run away when it reaches half hit points, thats a different subject. Thats morale conditions on the encounter from an adventure write up. Thats not dependent on the intimidate skill.
I'm very curious how most of your encounters with vermin go as a GM. One giant bug sees a party of adventurers, things about inviting them over for dinner for a few laughs, and then flees as it gets hit by the first sword or magic missile.
Hitomi you have a very curious and unique view of Vermin and their social lives, but in game terms, what you describe doesn't work/ doesn't matter.
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in game terms, I see reasons to make "mindless" creatures immune to fear (vermin, contructs, skeletons & Zombie)
on the other hand, I also see reasons to make intelligent undead affected by fear, as they can think, understand situations, and are willing to "survive".
So I'd not put demoralize as a morale effect, but keep it as "fear effect" (undefined yet) and add fear immunity to mindless only.
wanting to survive is separate from immunity to fear. Immune to fear does not mean a removal of the survival instinct. Immune to fear means when the human fighter yells an insult at your dead mother or claims that he's about to wipe the floor with you, your body does not have a visceral response to quake that you force yourself to keep fighting through. You're dead and emotionless. You (the undead) may feel threatened, insulted, and desire to see the fighter's entrails litter the floor, but your body is calm and unaffected by the fighter's insults.
the same with a construct, ooze, etc. you're better off yelling at a brick wall. but currently the rules don't seem to support the brick wall view.
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Intimidate has nothing to do with insults (which falls under goading)
Intimidate doesn't even require verbal componant, you seen the cronicles of riddick when he was taking down the guys on the ship hunting him? He took them down one at a time without being seen and that fact alone was intimidating to the remaining guys.
If you believe it's easier to ignore any emotional responses then go ahead and ignore them, but realize that you are simplifying things and not keeping with reality, which is an open option to you but you can't really argue it as the way things should be.
Also, me as a GM, I make much harder encounters then I usually have things run when almost dead if that's what it would actually do. I hand out XP for winning encounters not for killing things. I do this not just for a touch more realism, but also because it encourages out of the box thinking to strategy, if you can make the group of bandits run away because they thought an entire platoon of city guards was charging them, due to a few well crafted illusions, then you get the XP for winning.
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you bring up the most random things.
intimdate: demoralize => shaken.
its not a discussion on how you run routing a bunch of foes.
its a discussion to try and get to the heart of whether Fear effects like shaken can be used against undead/vermin/constructs, and get it answered in an FAQ as it does appear to work RAW and it shouldn't.
if your only argument is that every creature has emotions, please don't contribute, you're not assisting the discussion.
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Reality is my measuring stick for the unreal, if you don't like that method then you are free to ignore my measurments.
I always consider the world to run by a set of laws of physics (even if they change somewhat) and that magic is simply bypassing the mundane physics, bending the rules persay.
Therefore clarifying the mundane for using mundane methods is legitimate, the real question at this time is whether these things are immune to the magical influence or to the mundane itself, the former prevents spells and many supernatural abilities but wouldn't affect the mundane, the latter would affect the mundane, and using the intimidate skill is mundane.
My arguements were to clarify why I believe them to have the mundane aspect and why I think it should only prevent magical affects.