I'm working on a Half-Orc Samurai who will focus on Intimidate for a family game and was surprised to see that there are several different directions for making an intimidating character. Not looking for super optimization, but some fun options - and I'm curious how the feats work out in practice. Here are the character's stats at lvl 1:
STR 18
DEX 16
CON 15
INT 9
WIS 13
CHA 12
I plotted out a couple of different feat progressions:
1 Intimidating Prowess
3 Weapon Focus (katana)
5 Dazzling Display
6 Shatter Defenses (Samurai bonus feat)
7 Power Attack
9 Furious Focus
11 Dreadful Carnage
This gets me Shatter Defenses and Dreadful Carnage as soon as those become available. Shatter Defenses seems like the best way to make use of Intimidate, and Dreadful Carnage seems thematic and awesome.
But *is* Shatter Defenses that good? The wording seems to say that anyone I've successfully demoralized (or who is otherwise frightened or panicked) is flat-footed to my attacks until the end of my next turn after I hit them. But what if, after the end of my next turn, there are still enemies who are demoralized? Does Shatter Defenses still apply to them, and once I hit them they're flat-footed until the end of my *subsequent* turn as well?
The picture in my head is that, at lvl 6 with the above setup, I spend a full round on Dazzling Display at the start of combat, make a bunch of enemies shaken, and then go to town on them with Shatter Defenses, hoping that I exceeded the DC by enough to make the Shaken effect last.
One problem with the above is that Dreadful Carnage seems to supersede Dazzling Display. (Dazzling Display requires that I burn a full-round action to demoralize everyone in 30'; Dreadful Carnage only requires that I drop a foe. Granted, that's likely to happen later in the battle, but I don't see myself doing Dazzling Display once I can do Dreadful Carnage; they seem somewhat redundant.)
So is there a way to improve the action economy? *Kind* of, but I'm not sure if it is actually an improvement: Cornugon Smash.
Cornugon Smash only requires Power Attack and 6 ranks of Intimidate. At that point I'll have a second attack, so I could hit with the first, demoralize the foe, and hit with the second. Action economy works better than Dazzling Display - except that Cornugon Smash only works on a single target, and it requires that I hit (while power attacking).
Let's see how I would fit Cornugon Smash in here. I want to keep Dreadful Carnage roughly where it is:
1 Intimidating Prowess
3 Power Attack
5 Furious Focus
6 Cornugon Smash (Samurai bonus feat)
7 ?
9 ?
11 Dreadful Carnage
Furious Focus is a prereq for Dreadful Carnage, and I figure it's good to fit it in soon (so Cornugon Smash has a better chance of hitting).
At lvl 7 or 9, I was wondering about the feat Hurtful. It looks like the reverse of Cornugon Smash: instead of getting a free Intimidate on a successful hit, you get a free (swift) hit on a successful Intimidate.
However, the wording of the feat - "When you successfully demoralize an opponent within your melee reach with an Intimidate check" - has me wondering if you can just loop Hurtful and Cornugon Smash back to back. In other words, can you do the following:
-power attack, hit, use a free action to demoralize (Cornugon Smash)
-if demoralize is successful, make a single attack as a swift action (Hurtful)
within a single round? Or does Hurtful require that I make a standard-action Intimidate check?
Regardless of that, the Cornugon Smash route gives *more* chances to attempt Intimidate against individual targets doing stuff that I'd do anyway (i.e., hit them), but I don't benefit from the potential "AoE burst" Intimidate of Dazzling Display, and don't get the benefit of Shatter Defenses (unless I grab Weapon Focus/Dazzling Display/Shatter Defenses later on in the build).
After level 11, I figured I'd get into the critical feats, to make use of the katana's good crit range, something like the following:
12 Improved Critical (Samurai bonus feat)
13 Critical Focus
15 Bleeding Critical
17 Staggering Critical
18 Stunning Critical (Samurai bonus feat)
19 Critical Mastery
That said, if I really wanted to I could drop some of those crit feats to fit in Shatter Defenses as well as Cornugon Smash, Dreadful Carnage, and the rest of it...
But I'm most concerned with the play experience around levels 5-7. Is it better at that point to have Shatter Defenses, or Cornugon Smash? Which is more *fun*?
For a samurai cornugon smash is probably better. All making a foe flatfooted does is to deny them their DEX bonus to AC. To a rogue or other character with sneak attack that is valuable, but a samurai does not do any extra damage and unless your foe has a high DEX it really does not do much to improve your chance to hit. Overall, all it does is to give you a slight increase in your chance to hit.
Cornugon smash on the other hand allows you to intimidate anything you hit for free. Looking at it I don’t see why this would not work with hurtful which makes it even more advantageous for you. Getting extra attacks is incredibly useful. I would suggest taking power attack at first level instead of intimidating powers. At first level characters are pretty fragile and easy to take out. The extra damage at that level is going to have more impact on your survivability then the bonus to intimidate. If you have access to skill unlocks take signature skill intimidate to allow you to impose higher levels of fear than just shaken. What I suggest would be this
1 Power Attack
3 Intimidating Power
5 Hurtful
6 Cornugon Smash (Samurai bonus feat)
7 Signature Skill Intimidate
9 Furious Focus
11 Dreadful Carnage.
At 5th level you can start off by trying to intimidate your opponent. If you succeed you get a free attack as a swift action. At 6th level you can attack (or full attack) and try to intimidate your opponent if you succeed you get an extra attack as a swift action. At 7th level you can Impose the frightened condition if you make your intimidate by 10 or more. At 9th level your first attack has better chance to hit which increases the chance of getting to make an intimidate check. At 10th level you can now impose the panicked condition or the frightened condition can last up to 4 turns. At 11th level you can intimidate groups when you take down a target.
i recommend 1 level of rogue with the thug archetype
Frightening (Ex): 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. This ability replaces trapfinding.
also skill focus intimidate might not be a bad idea.
CountMRVHS wrote: But *is* Shatter Defenses that good? The wording seems to say that anyone I've successfully demoralized (or who is otherwise frightened or panicked) is flat-footed to my attacks until the end of my next turn after I hit them. But what if, after the end of my next turn, there are still enemies who are demoralized? Does Shatter Defenses still apply to them, and once I hit them they're flat-footed until the end of my *subsequent* turn as well? Shatter Defenses's effect is individual to a target - each time you hit a shaken, frightened, or panicked opponent with an attack, that opponent is FF until the end of your next turn. It doesn't matter how or by whom the fear effect was applied, nor how long the fear effect lasts (if the fear effect runs out say befor your next turn, the FF effect remains).
CountMRVHS wrote: does Hurtful require that I make a standard-action Intimidate check? Nope. As long as an ability calls for an "intimidate check", it triggers hurtful. In contrast, directly applying the effects of intimidate without a check would not trigger it.
The thing about Dazzling Display is that its a feat chain that is slow to start. But when the full thing is set up, the action economy and synergies are intense.
How does it work? Violent Display lets you use Dazzling Display as an immediate action when you confirm a crit (should be easy), Disheartening Display increases the fear by 1 stage (up to cower), Motivating Display buffs your allies (morale bonus), while Shatter Defense helps ensure you and allies hit (it shuts down dodge bonus until your next turn).
Now as far as what is more fun, that up to you to decide.
CountMRVHS wrote: I'm curious how the feats work out in practice. I GMd for a samurai with Cornugon Smash and after a while I simply declared the target permanently shaken once the samurai hit it. The Intimidate DC is quite low, especially for a dedicated PC. The creature was dead soon after anyway.
The player figured out some powerful synergy with the order of vengeance: Scaling AB boost, scaling Intimidate boost, scaling shaken penalty. We played until level 21 so he profited a lot from all this scaling.
IMO Cornugon Smash works better with standard action attacks: Walk up to your enemy, hit it, make it shaken - so it has a harder time to hit you in return (and is more vulnerable to your casting allies). Full-attacks on the other hand are quick to simply kill your target, rendering debuffs rather pointless, and shaken from multiple hits doesn't stack anyway.
Beyond that, basically being locked into Power Attack can become a problem. The AB penalty increases, new iterative attacks come at higher penalty and samurai has no AB booster by default. It worked out ok for the samurai in question, thanks to his order and me handing out strong items, but the issue was still noticeable at higher level. Either way, the samurai dominated most encounters.
Lots of great points here, thanks everyone.
Looking at Signature Skill, I'm hesitant about the Will save (DC 10 + ranks in Intimidate). I don't have much experience at anything above low-level play, so I'm not quite sure how this scales. If I take it at lvl 5, say, that's a DC 15 save, which doesn't seem too tough to beat. Of course it gets better at higher levels, but so do the enemies' saves.
Speaking of saves, I've been looking at the Sword Saint archetype as an alternate way to get at some of my goals, but I'd appreciate some feedback.
Level 5 Terrifying Iaijutsu can bestow an AoE "shaken" effect (on "all foes within 30 feet", which is slightly more generous than Dazzling Display or Dreadful Carnage's "foes who can see you"), and it doesn't require a separate action - but the downside is that it gives foes a Will save keyed off CHA rather than Intimidate (DC 10 + 1/2 level + CHA mod), and it requires that I hit with an iaijutsu strike, which is a bit finicky to pull off (full or standard action), I can only do so many times per day (challenge targets), and leaves me with -4 AC to boot (-2 at lvl 10). *If* it succeeds, it could be a good way to establish Shaken early, then use Disheartening Display to push those Shaken enemies to Frightened or worse.
The things you give up for Sword Saint (mount, banner) aren't essential to my character concept, but the things you *get* seem difficult to use well. One synergy I see is the lvl 3 Brutal Slash (if you threaten a crit with iaijutsu strike, add 1/2 lvl to confirm) - this could be paired with Violent Display (crit to make Dazzling Display as an immediate action), which, together with Disheartening Display (successful Dazzling Display on an already shaken foe pushes them into the next fear tier) could theoretically get a room full of enemies running ... but there are a lot of "ifs" in that sequence:
1. challenge enemy (katana sheathed), move up to them
2. iaijutsu strike
3. hit to trigger Terrifying Iaijutsu
4. hope a bunch of enemies fail the Will Save (at lvl 7 this would be a DC 14)
5. hope I threaten a crit
6. hope I confirm the crit (Brutal Slash helps)
7. make immediate action Dazzling Display (via Violent Display) on those shaken enemies
8. if the display succeeds, Disheartening Display kicks in and they become Frightened. [Alternatively, I take Signature Skill instead of Disheartening Display and hope that the check beats the DC by at least 10 - if so, it doesn't matter if targets passed their Will save in step 4; they are frightened for 1 round and shaken for at least 1 thereafter.]
Assuming I have this right, it seems like a cool (albeit risky) move, and I could start using it as early as lvl 7 (at which point I'll have 3 daily challenges, not too bad). I can imagine using a naginata (or just a secondary katana) early in a combat against lesser enemies, so my main weapon remains sheathed until I'm ready to iaijutsu strike a challenged foe.
And some of those "ifs" can be resolved with the aid of the Order of the Warrior abilities.
At lvl 7, I'll have DR 2/- vs my target's attacks (goes to 3/- at lvl 8), somewhat compensating for the AC penalty.
Honor in All Things (2nd lvl) grants a +4 morale bonus on a skill check (free action), in case I want to ensure the Dazzling Display kicks off in step 7 above.
At lvl 8, Way of the Samurai (standard action) lets me roll an attack at some point in the following minute 3 times, giving me a better chance to threaten a crit. This costs 1 use of the 4 resolve uses I'd have at 8th lvl.
Weapon Expertise (3rd lvl) also gives a +2 to confirm crits.
Getting a keen katana or a scabbard of keen edges will make all of this more likely as well.
And at lvl 7, the iaijutsu strike is doing 4d6 additional damage; seems like a nice bonus, and would go some way toward triggering Dreadful Carnage later on.
So, *if* all of that seems worth building around, I could do something like the following:
1 Intimidating Prowess
3 Weapon Focus (katana)
5 Dazzling Display
6 Violent Display (samurai bonus feat)
7 Disheartening Display
I could swap out Intimidating Prowess for something else (like Power Attack), but getting my STR mod to Intimidate seems like a necessity for ensuring not only that my demoralize/dazzles succeed, but that they extend for a decent duration.
After lvl 7, there's a few different options. I could keep climbing the Dazzling Display tree toward Deadly Stroke, or I could go for Dreadful Carnage.
9 Shatter Defenses
11 Greater Weapon Focus (katana)
12 Deadly Stroke (samurai bonus feat)
or
9 Power Attack
11 Furious Focus
12 Dreadful Carnage (samurai bonus feat)
Here I'm torn. Power Attack seems like a player favorite, and it would open me up to Cornugon Smash and Hurtful later on. On the other hand, lvl 9 seems a bit late to get Power Attack. It also feels like taking the build in a bit of a different direction (and it slightly bugs me that I'd be getting Dreadful Carnage one level later than I could). Dreadful Carnage seems awesome, but if I already have Violent Display I can be handing out AoE shaken statuses via crits - granted, crits are not a guarantee, but I'm just not sure if yet another way to achieve shaken status is the best option.
Shatter Defenses--Deadly Stroke gives some different and interesting options. Shatter Defenses is still unclear to me (I think I just need to check the Bestiary and get a sense of how much flat-footed AC is going to matter), but I know it doesn't help *everybody* in the party: the flat-footed benefit only applies to attacks made by me. The real prize seems to be Deadly Stroke, but for it to trigger I'm relying on crits (Violent Display) or taking a full-round action to Dazzling Display. Deadly Stroke seems best paired with ways to frequently get your targets shaken - via Cornugon Smash or Dreadful Carnage, say.
I could get all of those things by level 20, of course, but I'm not sure of the best order here - or if, say, Deadly Stroke is going to feel weak at lvl 18 or whatever.
Mysterious Stranger wrote: For a samurai cornugon smash is probably better. All making a foe flatfooted does is to deny them their DEX bonus to AC. To a rogue or other character with sneak attack that is valuable, but a samurai does not do any extra damage and unless your foe has a high DEX it really does not do much to improve your chance to hit. The Order of the Blossom gives sneak attack dice, which could be good synergy with flat-footedness.
So sword saint is a very flavorful archetype. A lot of people don't like it because they prefer full-attacks, but personally I like it.
You were comparing DC 10+ rank in intimidate saying its too low, but implied that DC 10+ 1/2 lv+ Cha is fine. But think about it, at level 10 you have 10 ranks in intimidate and say 18 in Cha, the skill unlock DC would be 20 while the lv based DC would be 19. By level 20 its DC 30 vs DC 24. DC based on rank is slower but more consistent without having to rely on you having 30 Charisma.
As for the two build paths. Honestly if you aren't starting at high level you could keep both options open and see how playing goes first. If you see that you need more damage you can choose to go the Power Attack build, else you could stay the course. You might even think of another path after talking with the other players and the story direction.
With Signature skill they are still shaken even if they make the save. It does not guarantee the higher form of fear, but it gives you a chance to impose it. Against a creature with a good will save it is going they are going to make it pretty easy, but don’t forget that a 1 always fails on a save. Since cornugon smash gives you a free check on every attack that increases the chance of them failing. If you are getting 3 attacks per round and hitting on all of them that means your target has about a 14% chance to fail one of the 3 saves no matter how high their bonus is. If they save on a 3 or better the target has about a 39% chance of being affected by the higher form of fear. At a 5 or better the chance of being affected is about 58%. In actually play you are probably not going to always hit with all your attacks, so the chances are going to be lower. But since it is a free action, it costs you nothing.
Temperans wrote: So sword saint is a very flavorful archetype. A lot of people don't like it because they prefer full-attacks, but personally I like it. Yeah, it's definitely interesting. I think it's easy to look at the signature ability and notice the limitations. But the question shouldn't be "can I do this thing *all the time* in combat?" - it should be "how does this thing measure up against the things I'm trading for it?"
For the Sword Saint, you trade away the mount, mounted archery, banner, and greater banner. Of those, I'd say Greater Banner is probably the most powerful, but the mount could also be used to great effect in the right hands and in the right campaign. In the end, those features are all situational - and so are the Sword Saint's abilities. You probably wouldn't build a character around Iaijutsu strike, just like you wouldn't build a character around the samurai's mount feature. But it's a thematic way to throw some more dice at the bad guy and impose some conditions on the battlefield.
Temperans wrote: You were comparing DC 10+ rank in intimidate saying its too low, but implied that DC 10+ 1/2 lv+ Cha is fine. But think about it, at level 10 you have 10 ranks in intimidate and say 18 in Cha, the skill unlock DC would be 20 while the lv based DC would be 19. By level 20 its DC 30 vs DC 24. DC based on rank is slower but more consistent without having to rely on you having 30 Charisma. Oh, I didn't mean to imply that I was happy with DC 10 + 1/2 lvl + Cha - especially with my character's low Charisma that's not a very high DC. I guess if I were going this route (Sword Saint / Violent Display / Disheartening Display) I'd want to bump up the CHA somehow to make Terrifying Iaijutsu more reliable.
With regard to Signature Skill, I think I'd be more inclined to take it if I wasn't investing in Dazzling Display / Violent Display / Disheartening Display. Both Signature Skill and Disheartening Display allow for an Intimidate-focused character to push enemies beyond shaken. Disheartening Display requires that you use Dazzling Display to do so. That'll eat a full-round action (a standard action if you're Order of the Cockatrice - but honestly, eating a standard seems pretty close to eating a full) or an immediate action via Violent Display, provided you crit. Because it's a dazzling display, it will target all within 30'. Beat the Intimidate DC, and they're pushed into frightened.
Signature Skill requires that you not only make the Intimidate check, but that you beat the DC by 10 or more. On top of that higher bar, it also lets the targets make a Will save. You can target multiple foes with it, but to do so you'd need to use Dazzling Display anyway (at which point, why not go Disheartening Display, since it's easier to pull off and doesn't allow a save).
Or, if you feel like waiting a while for AoE stuff, you could go with Dreadful Carnage instead to pair it with Signature Skill.
Something like the following, maybe:
1 Intimidating Prowess
3 Power Attack
5 Signature Skill (Intimidate)
6 Cornugon Smash
7 Hurtful
9 Furious Focus
11 Dreadful Carnage
In this build, you don't get to try the schtick of making an entire room run away from you until lvl 11, but you're not relying on crits for the immediate-action Dazzling Display either.
A Sword Saint in this setup would have some incentive to fight a weak enemy first, rather than walking up to the biggest threat immediately. You'd want to drop one of the weaklings, get your free-action 30' Intimidate via Dreadful Carnage, and hope to beat the DC by 10 or more. Enemies get to try a DC 21 Will save to avoid fleeing, but even if they succeed they're still shaken. After dropping one foe and shaking the room, approach the toughest guy and use one of your 4 challenges for the day with Iaijutsu Strike.
Before that point, Cornugon Smash + Signature Skill means we can get individuals running one at a time as early as lvl 6. Hurtful gives an extra attack; the "within your reach" requirement gives us incentive to us the naginata for the beginning of the fight: once we get to lvl 11, the reach weapon will give us increased chances of being able to attack one of the enemies we've just demoralized with Dreadful Carnage.
Alternatively, Hurtful might just be icing, and if we wanted to build to take advantage of crits we could swap it with Weapon Focus for:
1 Intimidating Prowess
3 Power Attack
5 Signature Skill (Intimidate)
6 Cornugon Smash
7 Weapon Focus
9 Furious Focus
11 Dreadful Carnage
12 Dazzling Display
13 Violent Display
15 Critical Focus
17
18
19
So by lvl 13 we can get a chance to intimidate a room full of bad guys not only by dropping one enemy, but any time we crit.
I think I prefer this progression actually, since the earlier levels feel like they'll give some more solid bonuses in the form of Power Attack and Cornugon Smash, plus some utility via Signature Skill, and Dreadful Carnage seems just so fitting (especially for my half-orc concept). Getting Violent Display seems almost a requirement for an Intimidate build using the 18-20/x2 katanas, but it's probably going to be more useful later in a character's career, when you can get a keen weapon.
For the Sword Saint, it occurs to me also that there's nothing preventing you from using your challenge to Iaijutsu Strike and hopefully drop some low-level enemy early on, trigger Dreadful Carnage, and debuffing the whole room while also exposing yourself to less danger given the AC penalty you take.
The last 3 feats might be stuff like Hurtful, Iron Will, Staggering Critical.... I think(?) Critical Versatility could be had by this character, but not entirely sure.
One remaining question is Order. I was originally thinking Order of the Warrior. Taking Order of the Cockatrice is attractive mostly for the free Dazzling Display at lvl 2, giving me room for one more feat. The challenge gives a little boost to damage, which is always nice. The +2 attack bonus vs demoralized targets synergizes beautifully with everything else. Steal Glory seems quite good, and almost worth getting Combat Reflexes into the build, though the Order of the Warrior's 8th-level ability is more versatile and powerful (plus it gives you something else to do with your resolve). The Cockatrice's 15th-level order ability is pretty underwhelming for a character with a +1 Cha mod.
So it's tempting to "dip" Cockatrice for a while and then go Ronin, which has some nice abilities ... but I guess as soon as I switched to the Ronin order I'd lose Cockatrice's Dazzling Display? And if I no longer have Dazzling Display, does that mean I wouldn't be able to use other perks like Violent Display I had picked up afterward?
If not, I don't think it's worth it to go Cockatrice, given the lackluster high-level order abilities. Warrior or Ronin seem like the safer all-round bets, though they don't synergize as well as Cockatrice does for the first few levels...
Thoughts?
Temperans wrote: As for the two build paths. Honestly if you aren't starting at high level you could keep both options open and see how playing goes first. If you see that you need more damage you can choose to go the Power Attack build, else you could stay the course. You might even think of another path after talking with the other players and the story direction. Indeed! As you can tell I do really enjoy thinking about the possibilities, but it's good to remember to be flexible. :)
Yeah, those builds look good.
Order is honestly up to you, there are so many options, remember you don't have to hyper focus everything.
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