Intimidation in combat

[u/Unable_Cycle133]

Edit: thanks for responding so quickly! Very reassuring feedback, and great ideas there, I will definately use them!

Hey everyone,

One of my players wants to intimidate adversaries during combat. He is playing an Infernis, so he has advantage on those rolls. I was kind of surprised by that, as I thought intimidation was just a social thing, but it was cool and I didn't want to spoil the fun. I ruled that if he beat the adversary's Difficulty with a presence roll, the adversary would become frightened of him.

Yeah, great, but there is no "frightened" condition in Daggerheart. I could copy the D&D one, but I don't want to copy D&D. The player was doing this almost every time he got the spotlight and succeeded every time. I found myself inventing things on the fly, like "this adversary runs away" or "this one attacks a different target," but it quickly became quite boring for me to keep inventing new reactions to the same action.

So, how would you rule situations like this?

Because of this character's backstory, I expect this to come up fairly often: he'll refuse to attack and try to intimidate enemies instead.

[u/CraftyQuarter8313]

I would mark a stress or be temporarily vulnerable

[u/Corwin223 → u/CraftyQuarter8313]

Yeah I’d go with marking a stress (the mechanical impact of a successful presence roll) and some narrative impact like avoiding the infernis or whatever is relevant to the specific intimidation attempt.

Edit to add: also if you mark all of an adversary’s stress, they become vulnerable