I think I've seen something for Pathfinder, and I know a lot carried over from it into Starfinder, but I don't think it's the best practice to just assume everything not explicitly called out is the same. I recently had someone mention that Shaken is a Fear Effect and I can't find anything in the CRB to fully support that. I say fully because I did find Dispiriting Taunt which specifies for itself that it is an emotion and fear effect, but it feels weird for that kind of clarification to be squirreled away in a class's ability rather than in the Conditions section.
Effectively, my question is: Are the Intimidate check to Demoralize and the Shaken condition a Mind-Affecting and/or Fear effect in Starfinder?
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They are not. If it’s an error they haven’t corrected it yet.
Seems to be on purpose.
As far as I can tell, no Condition in Starfinder has any kind of descriptor attached to it. Frightened is not a fear effect, Confused is not a mind affecting one, etc.
I'm guessing it's a design choice, restricting the descriptors to the source of the condition rather than the condition itself. Likely for more versatility : if nothing else, chemistry can be the source of confusion and fear, bypassing a target's mind and will to just directly trigger a reaction.
Which makes it a bit odd that Intimidate is not a fear effect either.
I thought that descriptors such as Mind-Affecting, Fear and the like where reserved for spells, spell like abilities and supernatural abilities.
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It does have the consequence that you can make robots and undead shaken with a Demoralize... which... you know that's fine by me. They're already immune to a ton of stuff.
It does have the consequence that you can make robots and undead shaken with a Demoralize... which... you know that's fine by me. They're already immune to a ton of stuff.
I agree 100%.
I can visualize the undead going "Oh no, he means to destroy me." or the robot saying "Oh no, he means to deactivate me."
It does have the consequence that you can make robots and undead shaken with a Demoralize... which... you know that's fine by me. They're already immune to a ton of stuff.You can even demoralize a mindless ooze. Then follow up with a bluff or disguise to trick-attacking it.
Starfinder is much more restrictive on immunities.
Only if the ooze can sense you in a meaningful way. If it doesn't have sight or hearing, I would expect that it would be hard to demoralize it. The one stipulation that Demoralize has is that it's Sense-Dependent.
Better to just allow Mindless, and anything that isn't Mindless? Can be hit in the brain just fine, whether that brain is made of meat, dead meat, or a silicon substitute for meat.
Already my houserule.