Why isn't the Intimidation skill part of the Influence Skill Group?
You can "influence" others with Etiquette, but making people do things using coercion is not influencing them!?
Anyone care to explain this, please?

It already has *four* skills in the group. I guess you could swap out Leadership, but the groups shouldn't be 'optimal'.

Because Influence is just a name, and it is the name for a group of skills that is used most commonly in social settings. You will always need to observe proper etiquette in a social situation. You will always need to negotiate. You will often need to con (lie), and you will often need to lead. You will only occasionally need to intimidate.

Basically a skill group can only have 4 skills in it, and the group has the four that would be most needed under a 'normal' negotiating situation. Like I said, Influence is just a name.

Edit: Kind of like Outdoors is just a name. The skills that fall under it work just as well indoors as out.

If it's that big a deal, you could probably ask a GM to houserule it and let you swap in Intimidation for something else (Leadership, maybe)? It's really pretty much just a game balance thing, as others have mentioned, to keep there from being a Skill Group with too many skills in it.

Remember, some Skill Groups only have three. Getting four in Influence is already a heck of a deal, especially considering the "must have" nature of a few of them (Etiquette in particular).

no offense, but I think this statement is based on playstyle. For many of my players, intimidation is their main form of interaction with NPCs.

Isn't Intimidation just a form of aggressive Negotiation? "Tell us / Do what we want, or else" ?

Nope, it is a charisma linked skill,

And as to why, because that would put 5 skills in the skill group, which would be a bit unbalanced, imo.

Flight is in the Athletics Group, making it 5 there, too.

Yeah, but flight is used by... what, two races? Two races that are very out there. Two races that when they have the option to fly, don't have the option to run? An absurdly circumstantial 5th skill isn't very good president for a 5th regular skill.

I'm not talking about playstyle, I'm talking about typical social encounters. Not for the PC in question, but for social encounters as a whole. If you look at all social encounters ever, you will see etiquette being a factor all the time, you will see lying being a factor nearly all the time, you will see negotiation nearly all the time, and you will see leadership (remember it includes persuasion) nearly all the time. You will see intimidation some, but it is not the social norm for social encounters as a whole. That's why I figure it isn't in the influence skill group when compared to the much better candidates.

Flight isn't included in the core rulebook. Intimidation is.

I dunno, we aren't really talking about social encounters as a whole so much as social encounters in Shadowrun as a whole, where the person playing the troll street punk prefers to grab someone by the throat and give him an up close look at his retractable spurs than to have a simple chat with them.

because 1 point in a skill group is equal to the cost of 2.5 skills worth of point.
That means that you're getting the 4th skill for free. If there were 5 skills in a skill group, you'd be a freaking idiot not to buy the skill group. Paying 1/2 price for every skill in a group? Sign me up.

Unless, of course, you're only going to use two skills from the group. In which case you'd be a freaking idiot to take the group and waste that .5 worth of points.

I have thought about renaming the RAW Influence group "Nice Influence" and make an alternate skill group, "Nasty Influence", that replaces Leadership with Intimidation.

People often seem to forget that leadership includes persuasion, since they're always so quick to drop it. If anything, it should drop negotiation, since someone who resorts to holding their gun to someone's head is still going to be persuasive but not so great at negotiations that don't include an open weapon.

Nasty Leader.

Violent Bloodthirsty Warlord.

Which would kind of fall under my theory of dropping negotiation to add intimidation instead of leadership.

The real question for me is why did they feel the need to break things down as far as they did. How about etiquette, negotiation, persuasion and that is it. Things like con could be specializations of one of those. Skills cost too much and cover to specific of a area IMO. I don't need 27 different ways to say I'm sneaky or good at talking to people.

I think five is reasonable. Maybe could have trimmed it down to 4 by combining negotiation and leadership.

And as for stealth? There is infiltration, palming, and shadowing? That hardly makes 27, and all are highly distinct.

Don't forget Disguise.

The stealth group has 4. It adds disguise, then in overall sneaky guy stuff escape artist and locksmith fit. Do I really need 6 skills to cover I am a sneaky guy?
As for distinct shadowing and infiltration are two different uses of the same idea they don't see me. Sure if you were shadowing someone correctly it would be a team thing and might play out differenlty, but end of the day you don't want to be noticed by bob over there. Either because you are sneaking past him or following him.

Sure the rest are kind of distinctive, but you could easily combine them to some degree. Escape Artist could become part of gymnastics, palming part of the sneaky, sneaky infiltration/shadowing. Locksmith is a bit off, but roll it into using maglock pass key's and other door openers and it probably covers enough. '

Crap in 1-3e all of this except locksmith was under a single sneak skill, it didn't break the game. Now you have to buy a crap ton of skills at a high cost while lots of times a single attribute will cover a wide range of skills for a still absurdly cheap cost in comparison. Increasing both the relative cost and narrowing the application of what a skill covers was a double whammy of doom.

Combining Leadership with Negotiation isn't feasible. Negotiation, Leadership, and Intimidation are three distinct routes to achieve similar results. Negotiation is coming to agree with another party. Leadership is taking charge of a situation or dictating what someone will do due to your superior standing. Intimidation is using the threat of force to coerce someone to listen.

Entirely renovating the skill system isn't really on topic, either (whether or not it's a good or fun idea), and the game is presumably balanced for the current setup.

The simple point is that skill groups are priced for 3-skill sets. 4-skill sets represent a major bargain (usually balanced by one 'rarer' skill), and 5 is unthinkable. You're not required to use groups at all, if you want Intimidation. You can also beg your GM swap it, as several have said.

Sometimes I think the game would be better with no skill groups at all.

I like them. They're a good means to get skills you may not otherwise bother with.


You're right, we should just have 7 skills:
Combat Skill
Physical Skill
Computer Skill
Social Skill
Mechanic Skill
Drive Skill
Magic/Resonance Skill

I would agree. I'm always somewhat perplexed at how SR can be so overly simplistic in some areas and overly complex in others and remain so through 4 editions.

Well, the number of different skills needed to be an effective Face is pretty high. If you just want to kill people, you don need the whole Firearms+Heavy Weapons skill pack; just one or two will suffice. But a Face needs all five of those skills.

The loadout of the Influence group is rather arbitrary; it might have just as well been Intimidation in there. Having an obvious, common social skill not in there just looks messy.

Personally, I'd take leadership out if I was going to make any changes to the influence group. Using the A-Team as an example, I see it as

Hannibal - Leadership
Face - Negotiate, Con
BA - Intimidate

Whilst Ettiqette is certainly part of the SR Face skillset, Leadership and Intimidate can easily be handled by other characters, most obviously team leader and team big imposing guy.

I don't think a face really needs intimidation, which is why it isn't included in the group.

How does that saying go? "violence is the last resort of the foolish"? Which would make intimidation a close second to last.

The last resort of the incompetent, but if you believe that, why'd you become a shadowrunner?

Intimidation is so much more than physically threatening people; the listed specializations are Physical, Mental, Interrogation and Torture. It's used by the Face when he's telling about his Troll buddy. It's used when showcasing The Stick, when Etiquette and Con are used to present The Carrot. It deserves to be in the Influence group; it was arbitrarily excluded to keep the group small enough. But its exclusion is ugly.

Arbitary exclusion, yes, but also perhaps the most likely social skill after ettiqutte to be taken by non-Faces.

You could say that any of the 4 skill groups are overpowered compared to the 3 skill groups. A 5 skill group more so.

If you houseruled that buying a skill group let you pick 3 of the skills in a group for a BP/Karma discount then it wouldn't matter how many skills were in any given group.

So why should the skill non-Faces are interested in be harder to get? If you think about which socioal skills a typical runner uses, Intimidation seems more logical than Leadership. Only some runners need to lead; all runners need to be able to stand up to enemy Intimidation, or to hold up people with a gun, or show the local gangs not to mess with them.

As for overpowered: I don't think Influence is overpowered compared to Conjuring, Sorcery or Firearms. Those allow you to take very drastic actions indeed; the most directly dangerous skills are in there. Most of the 4-groups contain several rarely-used skills anyway, so the point difference doesn't matter so much.

Leadership = persuasion. Persuasion is very important.

A loaded gun can be equally persuasive.

Not really.

The stick stops working as soon as it's not feared anymore. The idea of more carrots though... I think this is the major reason for the choice.

Basically, intimidation is perfectly viable but shouldn't ever be a long term solution. As my group just learned after they intimidated a rent a cop at an expensive hotel (Ghost Cartels, Baltimore Towers, he was on their side somewhat), the moment they left and didn't have a gun to him anymore he went and gave his contact lens's vid capture to the press and made their lives miserable. Had the face used a Leadership skill things would have gone much differently, well, at least with that guy and his very damaging video of them with a gun in his face.

The four skills in the skill group are all more long term forms of influence, Intimidation is far more temporary. Should this have been the justification for the choice? I don't know, but I'm fine with it.

Intimidation is used socially in many, many long term situations. Its used to shut people up with a glance, to get them to not question your authority (real or fake), to keep the riff-raff at bay, to get people to ask "how high" when you say "jump". Its a natural compliment with both Con and Leadership. Can you imagine Lofwyr being such an effective leader (and keeper of secrets) without using intimidation?
I'd actually say that if anything, the Influence group should have just Con, Intimidate, and Leadership. There could be a separate group (Diplomacy?) with Etiquette and Negotiate. Influence would represent the "pushy" social skills, and Diplomacy the "co-operative" social skills.

Well, there would have to be at least one more skill in that group, otherwise nobody would ever buy it; They'd just buy Etiquette and Negotiate individually and save themselves 2BP per rating.




~R~

Shut people up with a Glance = Leadership
Not Question Authority = Leadership
Ask "How High" = Leadership

All three of your examples could be accomplished with Leadership alone, and no hint of Intimidation what so ever.

There are 2 styles of Leadership...
Coercion...
Persuasion...

But they are both styles of Leadership...

Or maybe they're all styles of Intimidation. Or maybe they're all styles of Negotiation. Etc. Social interaction is a mess, so the skills involved are necessarily arbitrary. Your group should decide and stick with it.

Those all work when you are already the accepted leader. Intimidation can be used to do those things when the target is a stranger to you. In some cases, you would use intimidation to establish that you are the leader, and then use leadership. But in the short term its just intimidation.

Intimidation isn't always about stating (or even implying) consequences. Sometimes its just an attitude of social dominance that says "things will go better for you if you just do it my way". That's not leadership...

Which is why the Intimidation skill would work as it is... But it does not have to be in the Influence Group to do so... the Influence group has a pretty good theme going without mucking it all up by trying to shoehorn Intimidation into the mix...

Thanks for everyone’s comments!

Not sure about anyone else, but when playing Shadowrun (or even other RPG games) social skills generally have less value simply because it is much more difficult to protect your character from harm/death by fast talking or bullying, as oppose to casting a spell, throwing a grenade, or just running away and hiding.
Thus, due to their inherent weakness relative to other skills, is it really too unbalancing to have 5 skills in the Influence Skill Group?

On the contrary, social skills can be way too strong, because there aren't rigorous conflict-resolution systems for them (opposed to combat, magic, etc.). I hate to even reference the 'Pornomancer' builds, but there you have it.

The fact that a face archetype exists and is commonly considered something that every group should have to at least some extent suggests to me that social skills aren't actually that low in value.

I mean, if you want a low value skill group, look at outdoors. It is good if you happen to be playing a wilderness sort of game, but otherwise it is exceedingly worthless.

Yeah, I suppose it’s really specific to the campaign and the GM’s ability to resolve the “Pornomancy” encounters

Shadowrun being the setting that it is has enormous potential for the face to shine.

People can be bought, coerced, seduced. Talk your way past board lonely security guards, convince your captors you're more useful to them alive then dead, get the go-gangs to help you in a pinch... the List goes on and on. Be the person who can get what people want, or at least seem like you can, and you can go far in SR.

The one long-term social interaction in SR that I can think of for which Intimidation would be key is extortion. The type of extortion that organized crime often actively participates in where they shake down local shop owners in certain neighborhoods on a regular basis for "protection" money. There may be others, but that was the first thing that came to mind.

Con is also persuasion. You're persuading the opposing party to do something on the basis of the lies you are telling.
Negotiation is also persuasion. You're persuading the opposing party to do something on the basis of compromise.

The kind of persuasion evidenced in leadership is just persuading people to defer to your judgment and authority. It's basically only useful when herding crowds of NPCs... or with commanding voice.

I really feel like we could get away with three social skills, all the overlap they have.
Like, intimidate, mediate and con.
Oh, and, I guess Etiquette. Which is a knowledge skill if I've ever seen one...


As an example of how twisted up and muddled these skills are, leadership has a suggested specialization of "tactics"
Seems like tactics would be a knowledge skill, not a physical active skill.

You've uh... missed the point of the Leadership skill. It has zero application within the runner team.

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It's ugly, but necessary to avoid making the skill group too cost effective and overpowered. If you removed the Leadership skill entirely, I still think the skill group would lack either Intimidation (more likely) or Negotiation (less likely). I feel that the leadership skill isn't played entirely straight and definitely undervalued. A face disguised as someone in the hierarchy of the target site could potentially order away mooks that wander near where the rest of the team is operating.

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My PC has Etiquette and Leadership.

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That isn't necessary an act that is limited to Intimidation. It's also an act of Leadership.



This also can be utilized via both Leadership and Intimidation.



Can be used by both Leadership and Intimidation.



This is more Leadership than Intimidation.

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Arguably, Tracking and Navigation are still useful while it's the Survival skill itself that is useless outside of an Outdoors environment. At this point your character is left with, well do I spend half value for a skill that might not be useful on the off chance I find myself out in the wilderness? However it is precise the fact that social skills are valuable that I cannot see Leadership being supplanted with Intimidation. That skill group would be way too potent for its cost.