I would like some way to accomplish what you're suggesting, Allen. It would be awesome if there was significant skill use during combat. Right now skill use in combat looks like it was an afterthought (always has, every edition) and the few places skills present themselves it's a horrible or or nothing thing.
For example, while I want Edrondol to use Intimidate during combat, I hate the mechanic presented. If the foe is bloodied, a successful check will get him to surrender. That's lousy when you realize how that works out. It's not the end result that I have any issue with, it's how the mechanic bypasses the normal flow of combat. I could probably describe that better than "flow" but read on to understand what I'm getting at.
A foe with 30 hit points will be bloodied at 15. Some At-Will powers can deal that, and most encounter powers will. If I use that as my baseline, that's cool. I think that a skill use should yield roughly the same benefit as an attack. However, then we get to my problem with this use of Intimidate. A foe with 150 hit points is bloodied at 75 hit points. There is no daily power that can deal that much damage, so Intimidate becomes way too good . . . when it works. And that's the second major problem I'd like to fix. Intimidate doesn't seem likely to work. It works way too well, and it doesn't work at all.
Would adding a morale factor in here work? My first thought is that once the foe is bloodied, enough intimidate checks bring him to his knees in surrender. I can see this working in two ways, and on first glance I like the second.
First way: If the Intimidate check is greater than the foe's current hit points, he surrenders. Multiple Intimidate checks against the same foe accumulate so that, say, 3 PCs each Initimidate the same foe with check results of 15, 20 and 25; given that they could force a bloodied foe with 60 hit points or less to surrender.
Second way: each successful Intimidate check inflicts a -1 morale penalty. When the morale penalty is greater than the foe's level, he surrenders or flees or something not so predictable every fucking time. The morale penalty, as implied, stacks and would affect the foe's attack rolls and defenses.
I like the second way because it gives that immediate benefit for the Intimidator's side through the morale penalty, and isn't tied to hit points. However, I'm not terribly keen on how many Intimidate checks would be required to take down a high level foe but I can live with that. (It probably should not go without saying that the -10 penalty to Initimidate checks for forcing an opponent to surrender would be cut down significantly if not eliminated)
Then, if we could get other skills in there for combat, that'd be sweet. Like Nature checks to grant bonuses to attack and defense against some creatures. Or whatever. Loads of shit.
I'd really like to find a way for this to work. Perhaps we could even write up some Encounter powers associated with Skills. So that Training in a skill grants you these powers. They'd perhaps be like the Channel Divinity feature where the cleric and paladin have several different powers, but can only use of them each encounter. Or maybe even let them be normal encounter powers (on the weak side for encounter powers, roughly equal in benefit to At Will powers) and give tonnes of options.
Weaker uses of skills could even be At Will powers use-able as move actions.
But I'd love to get away from Initimidate's current "Too good/too shitty" combat use while expanding its use and the rest of the skills' use in encounters.
