Intimidation seems to hardly ever work in a lot of situations. We know the stories:

Your level 81 character, decked out in gear that simply screams "DON'T **** WITH ME", cannot scare off a common thief.

Or that stupid random Orc that tells you to go home to your mother.


Can we get a buff for Intimidation please?

All additional speech options are poorly done in Skyrim, and don't even matter. They might as well have not even had them.

Yeah I don't think I've ever had an intimidation attempt work... Which is really frustrating since I know I could easily kill everyone I try to intimidate. I don't know what controls it though so I don't know what would have to happen to make it work better.

The only modifier is speech and the "intimidation" perk I think. The amulet of Articulation should might, but I have only had it once so far. Even with 100 speech I don't think I can intimidate many people though. The perk probably helps more, but it just doesn't seem worth it with Skyrims level of dialogue. I wish speech would have actually mattered, like in Fallout: New Vegas.

From what I've heard, it is affected by your level, speech skill, intimidation perk, and your armor (Wearing full Daedric gives a 10% bonus). However, this seems to only matter if the target's courage is less than "Foolhardy".

That's right, I have the creation kit, and it seems some targets can't be intimidated even if you personally led an army of CHIM powered Numidiums right to their face.

Speech in Skyrim is generally poor. I prefer even Oblivion's disposition meter (Though certainly not the minigame).

I intimidated successfully only once. That guy in Morthal(?) who hides Mehrunes razor part and only.

There are at least two which seem scripted to work; that is, work no matter the circumstances. One is in the MQ IIRC, and the other is getting some men out of a mine. I've never failed the intimidate option for either. But yes, the system is pretty sparse. I always thought that the game which handed different speech options the best was Vampire,The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Certain situations you automatically fail. Like intimidating a thief, or the orcs that like to fight.

I have had intimidation work on some lower level commoners. Of course that was with my LvL 71 battlemage decked out in enchanted deadric with two storm thralls, and wearing the amulet of Articulation(which is suppose to make you auto pass all tests that 'can' be passed).

if you take the speech perks it works pretty good, persuasion too

Agreed without the perks it is next to useless. However, skyrim's dialogue system doesn't really cope as there is very little need to do at the outcome doesn't differ that much.

I have done it several times. It seems to work for me better than the pursuasion option. Neither of those work for me more than 20% or the time, except certain NPC's it always works on. I never took the perk because I have yet to find a situation where being able to successfully intimidate someone made that much difference. Seems like the perk might be good for someone who was roleplaying a silver tongue, but I don't see much gameplay advantage to it.

The perk that you have to take to get the intimidation perk that lets you bribe guards seems even less useful, since you can get that ability just by joining the thieves guild. Has anyone noticed any benefit to the bribe guard perk for a thieves guild member?

I very rarely use intimidate, but I have gotten it to work most of the time I have used it. I'm not even bothering with the Speech perk tree.