Thugs, Frightening, and Rounds of Scary

[Spermy The Cat]

Happy (belated) new years, everyone.

So, I've made a Thug/Scout Rogue for an upcoming evil campaign. Mean guy, great ability to spook people. But I've noticed a way something is worded, and it concerns me.

Frightening
Whenever a thug successfully uses Intimidate to demoralize a creature, the duration of the shaken condition is increased by 1 round. In addition, if the target is shaken for 4 or more rounds, the thug can instead decide to make the target frightened for 1 round.

So, when you get someone shaken for four rounds, you can instead make them frightened for one round. But what happens when you get it high enough to make it more frightened? Like, say you fight a high-level thing, you spook it, bam, twenty rounds shaken. Can you make it frightened for five rounds, or only for one?

[TrinitysEnd]

Just one, but a GM might be kind to allow it to be 1 round per four rounds of shaken or more. But you'd have to speak to your GM about that.

[toastedamphibian]

Would need to be a VERY kind dm. Thats asking for trouble.

Equipment trick has this gem if your looking to increase shaken duration:

Quote:

Dazzling Trail (Dazzling Display) When you successfully use Intimidate to demoralize an opponent while wearing a cloak, you can increase the duration of the demoralize effect by 1d4 rounds.

Memorable trait adds 1 round if you use intimidate to cause a fear affect. In conjunction with the feat above, you get 1d4+2 rounds of shaken if you would otherwise be able to trigger thug's replacement. In the event that you can't, say you only roll well enough for 1 round of intimidate, you can make that 1+1d4+1+1 from thug, IE, guarantees frightened.

Enforcer makes 1 round of frightened per 4 of shaken utterly broken. If your dm wants to make such a house rule, I'd advise him to base it off how much you exceed the DC by, not the resulting duration.