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Prepping for a big day tomorrow (large party of veteran players, and a GM who's been licking his chops and sending us evil messages about the massive encounter he's spent the last month building for us, so we're expecting the worst). Hoping to get an answer to a tactical question, since this is the first time our party will be up against a large number of foes with more than 2HD.
Our party includes three characters with significant Intimidate bonuses, an Inquisitor with a love of Blistering Invective, a Fighter/Bard with Dazzling Display and a half-orc Paladin. Ordinarily, encounters haven't lasted long enough or weren't filled with enough "stand and fight" melee threats for us to need much more than the Inquisitor's Blistering Invective.
Our Party's three-part rules question: it's well established that multiple uses of the Demoralize function of Intimidate can't/don't create a worse fear condition (Frightened, Panicked), and that if you want to try it against the same opponent multiple times, you take an interative +5 to the DC (unless an hour has passed), and this extends the length of the shaken effect. So...
1) If multiple players Intimidate (Demoralize) the same opponent, do the durations stack/extend in the same way as it does when done twice by the same player?
2) Do you add the rounds of Shaken resulting from the 2nd Intimidate roll to the end of the existing Shaken effect, does it replace the original duration, or does it exist independently? e.g. 1st round, Inquisitor does Blistering Invective and demoralizes a 30' radius of ogres for 4 rounds. 2nd round, Fighter/Bard performs Dazzling Display on the same group of ogres and demoralizes them for 4 rounds. Does that mean the Shaken effect will last through round 8, or does the Fighter/Bard's effect replace or not affect the first effect, meaning the Inquisitor's will expire after Round 4, and the Fighter/Bard's will expire after Round 5? If the latter, it make it pointless for a second Intimidator to try to demoralize the foes until the first effect had or was about to expire, or if they had a mostly new group of foes in their 30' radius.
3) Would the second player trying to Intimidate an already demoralized foe take a +5 to the DC like he/she would if it was the same player trying it twice? Or does the fact that you're making them scared of a new person nullify that? Suspect that all 3 of these questions can't resolve in the party's favor, but I'm hoping.
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3- My reading of "Try Again" has always, for all skills, been applicable to "if you fail the check, this is the penalty". I (personally) don't apply Try Again rules to effects that are intended to be iterative on success, such as demoralize.The wording in the PCR for "Try Again" never stipulates whether it applies to all attempts, or just to attempts following failure, but almost all of its conditions reference back to having previously failed.
EDIT:
3- And even if you feel that "Try Again" applies to skill checks following a successful check, the 2nd character attempting to demoralize the foe has not previously tried to demoralize them. As such, they are not "trying again".
Does it work that way? In the same way as you can't try to use Diplomacy on the same target more than once in a day once you succeed, I had read it as regardless of whether you succeed or fail, the DC to keep Intimidating the same foe increases as they become more familiar with you. If you try to get inside someone's head and fail, it's obviously harder to regain your composure and win the battle of wills if you try a second time. But at the same time shouldn't it also get progressively harder to keep getting in the same target's head over and over again in combat? Shouldn't they begin to catch on to the gambit? Don't get me wrong, I would love it if you're right, but it feels a little cheap.
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Yeah, found it, the way Try Again is written implies that the circumstances and rules therein should apply to successive attempts to use the same skill against the same target and/or in the same situation, it doesn't stipulate that the first attempt had to fail for the Try Again conditions to apply. In the case of Diplomacy, the Try Again section stipulates that you can't use Diplomacy to influence a creature's attitude more than once in a 24-hour period, succeed or fail. In the case of Intimidate, the +5 penalty lasts until an hour passes, though the issue of whether characters trying to Intimidate the same target would share the penalty is still up for debate.
From Using Skills in the Core Rulebook:
"Try Again: Any conditions that apply to successive attempts to use the skill successfully. If the skill doesn't allow you to attempt the same task more than once, or if failure carries an inherent penalty (such as with the Climb skill), you can't take 20. If this paragraph is omitted, the skill can be retried without any inherent penalty other than the additional time required."
From the Skill Description entry for Intimidate:
"Demoralize: You can use this skill to cause an opponent to become shaken for a number of rounds. The DC of this check is equal to 10 + the target's Hit Dice + the target's Wisdom modifier. If you are successful, the target is shaken for 1 round. This duration increases by 1 round for every 5 by which you beat the DC. You can only threaten an opponent in this way if they are within 30 feet and can clearly see and hear you. Using demoralize on the same creature only extends the duration; it does not create a stronger fear condition.
Try Again: You can attempt to Intimidate an opponent again, but each additional check increases the DC by +5. This increase resets after 1 hour has passed."
From the Skill Description for Diplomacy:
"Try Again: You cannot use Diplomacy to influence a given creature's attitude more than once in a 24-hour period. If a request is refused, the result does not change with additional checks, although other requests might be made. You can retry Diplomacy checks made to gather information."