Ok, the bard in my party has pursued the Dazzling Display route and intimidates just about everything the party faces. He then taps hard targets with scare and they run away. Does anyone have suggestions as to how one should deal with this method? The rules seem to leave this as a glaring exploit. Since he is a bard, he has pumped up charisma of course, and maxxed out intimidate skill. He doesn't have a hard time at all getting really high numbers on intimidate checks.
I am prepared to slap an undead template on each and every last thing (verisimilitude and logic be damned) if he persists in breaking things with a rules exploit like this.
Uh...dazzling display only makes them shaken.
You can use this skill to cause an opponent to become shaken for a number of rounds. This shaken condition doesn’t stack with other shaken conditions to make an affected creature frightened. The DC of this check is equal to 10 + the target’s Hit Dice + the target’s Wisdom modifier.
Success: If you are successful, the target is shaken for one round. This duration increases by 1 round for every 5 by which you beat the DC. You can only threaten an opponent this way if it is 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.
Fail: The opponent is not shaken.
Dazzling display is a full round action and has a range of 30 feet. This makes it rather easy to stop him. Also, he gets a -4 penalty for each size category his opponent is larger then him.
Anyway, scare only works on 6hd or less. And if he spends 2 rounds of action to send one enemy fleeing, let him do that. Most other classes would kill an enemy in two rounds worth of action.
Dazzling display is a full round action and has a range of 30 feet. This makes it rather easy to stop him. Also, he gets a -4 penalty for each size category his opponent is larger then him.
Anyway, scare only works on 6hd or less. And if he spends 2 rounds of action to send one enemy fleeing, let him do that. Most other classes would kill an enemy in two rounds worth of action.
Ahh, didn't see the max HD part of scare. I took his word for it on the spell. Thus he was cheating. Duly noted.
Give your baddies Bards too?
For some reason, the devs have also ruled that the Shaken condition does not stack with ANYTHING if it caused by the demoralize action.
Why they instituted "fear stacking" then decided (without errata) that the most common way of causing the Shaken condition doesn't count, I do not know. But as it stands, Dazzling Display + Cause Fear has the same effect as just Cause Fear.
Anyway, scare only works on 6hd or less.
More specifically it only works on creatures of 6 HD or less, but it can hit multiple creatures each of which have no more than 6 HD.
For some reason, the devs have also ruled that the Shaken condition does not stack with ANYTHING if it caused by the demoralize action.
Why they instituted "fear stacking" then decided (without errata) that the most common way of causing the Shaken condition doesn't count, I do not know. But as it stands, Dazzling Display + Cause Fear has the same effect as just Cause Fear.
Do you have a cite for that? I'd like to have it available to present to said player.
But I can explain why they did it. It's a get out of jail free card if it works otherwise. You can easily pump intimidate to auto-succeed if you devote enough resources to it. Then you use the right spell and with stacking you can make anything run.
Yes, as others have said, it is 2 rounds of action to do something, but if we're talking a BBEG who ends up running because a sissy bard talks mean to him, sorry that annoys me. Before I saw the HD limit on scare, I didn't see a way out of it. The intimidate checks were too high to be avoidable, and then the spell makes them run on a successful save. I don't particularly like exploitable edge cases like that. Things where I cannot even get a save to get out of it aren't quite right.
Hm. You're the GM. Show him this, call it valid and suppose to him to present you with an opposite official ruling.
Ruyan.
Hm. You're the GM. Show him this, call it valid and suppose to him to present you with an opposite official ruling.
Ruyan.
Actually I'm happy that I found that the rules already make such broken nonsense not work. If that had not been the case I would have stopped it by fiat. I don't tolerate nonsense at my table. I would have simply told him that if he wanted to exploit broken edge cases, play PFS where the GM has to follow the RAW.
Do you have a cite for that? I'd like to have it available to present to said player.For some reason, the devs have also ruled that the Shaken condition does not stack with ANYTHING if it caused by the demoralize action.
Why they instituted "fear stacking" then decided (without errata) that the most common way of causing the Shaken condition doesn't count, I do not know. But as it stands, Dazzling Display + Cause Fear has the same effect as just Cause Fear.
Citation: Intimidate (10/8/09)
The thing that bugs me is not really that they made this ruling, but that they buried it away in FAQ instead of just adding errata to the Intimidate skill.
If they had actually errata'ed it, we wouldn't still be having this same confusion 4 years later.
Thanks for the link. That does make it pretty clear, and you are right, it should be stuffed into errata.