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Death, Emotion, Fear, General, Incapacitation, Skill
Prerequisites legendary in Intimidation
You can frighten foes so much, they might die. Attempt an Intimidation check against the Will DC of a living creature within 30 feet of you that you sense or observe and who can sense or observe you. If the target can’t hear you or doesn’t understand the language you are speaking, you take a –4 circumstance penalty. The creature is temporarily immune for 1 minute.
Critical Success The target must succeed at a Fortitude save against your Intimidation DC or die. If the target succeeds at its save, it becomes frightened 2 and is fleeing for 1 round; it suffers no effect on a critical success.
Success The target becomes frightened 2.
Failure The target becomes frightened 1.
Critical Failure The target is unaffected.
It is worth noting the fact that this feat has the Incapacitation trait, so it literally can't kill creatures above your level (actually rolling a critical success would be downgraded to a mere success):
Core Rulebook pg. 633 An ability with this trait can take a character completely out of the fight or even kill them, and it’s harder to use on a more powerful character. If a spell has the incapacitation trait, any creature of more than twice the spell’s level treats the result of their check to prevent being incapacitated by the spell as one degree of success better, or the result of any check the spellcaster made to incapacitate them as one degree of success worse. If any other effect has the incapacitation trait, a creature of higher level than the item, creature, or hazard generating the effect gains the same benefits.Source
Also, the Death, Emotion, and Fear traits will probably make a fair number of creatures immune.
Beyond that, you seem to have the DC calculations correct if the user rolls a critical success.
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It treats the result of its check as one higher not yours, so you roll get a crit success and then when it rolls its save its treated as getting one better so if it critically fails then it counts as a fail which still kills it. Not likely on a fort save but fun when it happens.
Nope, incapacitate also impacts offensive checks you make:
Core Rulebook pg. 633 An ability with this trait can take a character completely out of the fight or even kill them, and it’s harder to use on a more powerful character. If a spell has the incapacitation trait, any creature of more than twice the spell’s level treats the result of their check to prevent being incapacitated by the spell as one degree of success better, or the result of any check the spellcaster made to incapacitate them as one degree of success worse. If any other effect has the incapacitation trait, a creature of higher level than the item, creature, or hazard generating the effect gains the same benefits.Source
A Critical Success roll is downgraded to a Success, which means the target is merely frightened 2 at worst.
Sadly the dev creating the Scare to Death feat made a way too crude mechanism.
The Scare to Death feat is entirely incompatible with the idea of a one-on-one gladiator duel.
1) the very notion of facing a monster alone pretty much eliminates the idea the monster is higher level than you
2) gladiators facing monsters is fair game, but when it comes to gladiator vs gladiator very few humanoids would be immune to fear, mental, or death effects.Since scare to death is one of the best effects in the game (you can easily eliminate 300 hp in a single action) the result is that pretty much every high-level player gladiator will just attempt to one-shot their humanoid foes.
And in my experience it would happen so often it kills the entire idea.
While you do need a critical success, this isn't as hard as you might think when you build for it. For one thing, there's no better use of a Fortune Point (or other reroll ability).
And the subsequent save-or-die is just a formality - I would say once the critical has been scored, the NPC is much more likely to die than not.
I'm not saying it will happen always, and in a duel, you are now forced to play out the combat as intended. I am saying that it negates the idea of one-on-one gladiator duels - unless you're perfectly happy with one or two heroes just insta-winning their respective duel.
Yep. Once I saw this in action, very anti-climactic. One of the few power gamer abilities that made it into the game. It's a minion destroyer. Makes fights against lower level minions a joke. Looks completely stupid in my mind's eye as well. The paladin just shouts some stuff at some lower level minion, they die a couple of kills a round. Looks completely stupid.
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Sadly the dev creating the Scare to Death feat made a way too crude mechanism.
The Scare to Death feat is entirely incompatible with the idea of a one-on-one gladiator duel.
1) the very notion of facing a monster alone pretty much eliminates the idea the monster is higher level than you
2) gladiators facing monsters is fair game, but when it comes to gladiator vs gladiator very few humanoids would be immune to fear, mental, or death effects.Since scare to death is one of the best effects in the game (you can easily eliminate 300 hp in a single action) the result is that pretty much every high-level player gladiator will just attempt to one-shot their humanoid foes.
And in my experience it would happen so often it kills the entire idea.
While you do need a critical success, this isn't as hard as you might think when you build for it. For one thing, there's no better use of a Fortune Point (or other reroll ability).
And the subsequent save-or-die is just a formality - I would say once the critical has been scored, the NPC is much more likely to die than not.
I'm not saying it will happen always, and in a duel, you are now forced to play out the combat as intended. I am saying that it negates the idea of one-on-one gladiator duels - unless you're perfectly happy with one or two heroes just insta-winning their respective duel.
Flagged as spam. Doesn't seem necessary to search the forums for every post on a topic to copy paste your criticism in an effort to try and drum up another hate thread. This was a rules discussion. Posting about the game design has nothing to do with the conversation that was resolved half a year ago.
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If two or more PCs have this ability, those fights become jokes.
You can't Scare to Death the same creature twice so there's no point in having more than one PC with Scare to Death.
If two or more PCs have this ability, those fights become jokes.You can't Scare to Death the same creature twice so there's no point in having more than one PC with Scare to Death.
No. It is good to have one more. Generally 2 is pretty ideal. Then you can open up with 4 to 6 actions to Scare to Death on equal or lower level mobs, which can be problematic when coupled with a boss. Over 2 though not super productive unless you're in some campaign with a lot of minions.
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No. It is good to have one more. Generally 2 is pretty ideal. Then you can open up with 4 to 6 actions to Scare to Death on equal or lower level mobs, which can be problematic when coupled with a boss. Over 2 though not super productive unless you're in some campaign with a lot of minions.If two or more PCs have this ability, those fights become jokes.You can't Scare to Death the same creature twice so there's no point in having more than one PC with Scare to Death.
Yeah, you can also go that way. But you have diminishing returns when you are fighting only a few creatures that can be Scared to Death.
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No. It is good to have one more. Generally 2 is pretty ideal. Then you can open up with 4 to 6 actions to Scare to Death on equal or lower level mobs, which can be problematic when coupled with a boss. Over 2 though not super productive unless you're in some campaign with a lot of minions.
This would mean that half a typical party had pumped up Charisma and invested their skill points into Intimidation. So not only are they doubling up on abilities that will not always benefit from being doubled, they will not have invested in other things, which makes the party weaker.
Certainly one can imagine times when 2 characters could be using STD at the same time. But maybe one of them would have have liked to have more hit points, better saves, and Athletics though all those other battles.
I guess the BBEG is not going to stand idle while the 2 Scarers spend all their time trying to kill minions.
Not much of a concern. You open up with one or two characters using Scare to Death to quickly clear a few minions, then go to town on the BBEG with fewer minions.
Scare to Death has great action economy, a great failure effect, a great critical effect, a great average effect. You really only fail a Scare to Death roll if you critically fail the check or fail against an overly powerful creature.
It's literally one of the best abilities in the game with very little downside to use. That's one of the reasons some of us think it's one o the few "too good" abilities in the game. Literally no cost to use it as almost any outcome is good with a 1 action per target cost.
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Note that many who support the Too good opinion also provide examples with lot of actions taken to maximize the chance of actual death. In those cases the cost is far beyond 1 action per target.
Not to mention that there is also a Build cost. Unless I want my PC to have Terrifying in their concept, I will not spend 1 of my 3 Legendary skills on Intimidate.
Athletics, Acrobatics, Society, Medicine, Stealth are all very good contenders for the Legendary skill spot (not to mention Casting skill for the casters). And their results can also greatly change how a combat encounter turns out, if sometimes indirectly.
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but that means that you spend two actions for heroism, 1 prepare action, 1 action for scare to death and a 9th level spell to have a solid chance to outright kill a level appropriate enemy.
... + one reaction and a level 17 item (my precious).