Good Cop - Bad Cop Intimidate and Diplomacy at the same time

[Dungeon Master S]

This came up in my game today. Looking to shake down an NPC for information, the fighter uses Intimidate (successfully) while the cleric uses Diplomacy (successfully) to move the NPC to friendly. It's a moot point, with the success, they get what they need.

But I was thinkign about other situations, could I use the Aid another action across the two skills? Do I let both roll and take the higher? What about after the 1d6x10 minutes?

Any thoughts?

[Turin the Mad]

Sounds reasonable, using one to Aid the other. Note that you usually want to lead off with Diplomacy due to the "side effects" of Intimidate - Good Cop begins the scene, Bad Cop completes...

[Michael Sayre]

You get 1d6 x 10 minutes of the target acting as friendly, so I don't think there's any danger of doing the wrong one first. Using Intimidate does mean that even with your successful Diplomacy check, that target is going to be unfriendly once the Intimidate check expires.

[meabolex]

A successful intimidate moves an NPC to friendly anyway (for 1d6x10 minutes). For the purposes of simply getting information one time, the diplomacy check is basically the same. . . unless you need that "helpful" level.

Now, if you're trying to get a character to do something at the "helpful" level, I could see an intimidate check followed by a diplomacy check. . . assuming both "good cop" and "bad cop" are working together.

[The Crusader]

I have often wondered:

NPC begins as Hostile.

Barbarian successfully intimidates, moving him temporarily to Friendly.

Bard then uses diplomacy to move him to Helpful.

After the effects of the intimidate wear off, what attitude does the NPC go to? Does he return to Hostile? Or, having been improved a step, does he improve to Unfriendly? Does he go naturally to Unfriendly? Or, having been improved a step previously, does he improve to Indifferent? What if he started as Unfriendly or Indifferent?

Can you use Intimidate, or something like Charm Person, to lower a targets resistance to your natural charm (i.e. Diplomacy) to permanently improve their attitude?

[Forlarren]

The rules are almost made for the good cop, bad cop routine, especially at lower levels.

At best any prisoner is going to have an indifferent attitude (like Grob the town drunk sleeping it off), but are more likely to be unfriendly if not outright hostile, making it a more difficult diplomacy check for any creature with less than 5HD. So you intimidate them first, then when their attitudes are temporarily increased you hit them with diplomacy permanently moving them up another step. So for a short while you have them up two steps then they come down one. I would also rule that if both interrogators are working together then they can also aid another.