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Jul 12, 2011 -- 11:02AM, Gadren wrote:

@Lorika. Well, the person with the high intimidate is probably going to have a good will, since both key off of Cha. So "getting even" isn't going to happen, even if it was legal.

Not necessarily. My fiancee's battlerager is +28 to Intimidate at level 18, so she can crack a 30 Will monster on a 12. Her Will is not great as I recall, and she frequently runs a stance that gives her -2 defenses.

She hasn't, to my knowledge, ever tried to intimidate down a monster - whacking it repeatedly with her axe is more fun to her, and Intimidate doesn't apply a mark in case she misses. However, in a grindy fight where everyones eyes are starting to glaze over and the DM looks like she wants to move on, maybe she should.

The high Intimidate is crucial to our skill challenge shenanigans however. Try the Stick + Legend Lore on martial characters is fun times.

Jul 12, 2011 -- 7:14AM, Gadren wrote:

I honestly was mildly annoyed about the time wasted AFTER the combat, when you've got a bunch of defeated, by still alive, monsters, and trying to figure out what to do with them. We kind of just ended up letting them go with a "And never come back!" at their tails, but what if the DM decided to add them to the next encounter, or something (can a DM do that with DME?)

Oh yes.  Yeeeessss. They can.

Jul 12, 2011 -- 10:59PM, jsaint wrote:

this is less an argument about intimidate than it is about DME.  intimidate is completely broken, and very few people fail to realize this at this time.  however so are lots of things.  substitute intimidate for an indestructible revenant or any other perfectly RAW and ussually RAI use of embarassingly bad mechanics.

in answer to your original question, no the DM can not use DME to change the rules.  period.  since intimidate to surrender is very unambiguosly permitted RAW, as well as RAI (not that RAI matters at all to whether you can use DME) the DM has no legal choices but to pick up thier ball and go home, or to allow it.

however, since none of the rules anywhere seem to be enforced in any way at all, the DM can do whatever they want.  not only can they decide that intimidate to surrender fails, they can then decide that the monsters next attack instantly kills you, or merely automatically hits you and you have effectively no recourse.

you can complain about the obvious error of the dm on wotc forums, and people will tell you how they would handle it, but the very fact that all these people are telling you different things clearly indicates that there are not really rules.  only guidelines you should hope are being followed.  i firmly believe no one with any authority would ever do anything about it, and i seriously doubt anyone with any authority actually exists.  there is just too much wrong in too many places to draw any other conclusion.

Yeah, I have noticed that no one really seems to have the authority in the 4e RPGA. I remember back in LG, there was some curse or something that was really more of a blessing than a curse and people were purposely not doing the mod to get it removed (or couldn't do the mod to get it removed because they had DMed it already, etc.)
Then the guys in charge issued an announcement that the rules of the curse had changed (basically to punish all the people abusing it), and it became severely crippling, and many players had no way of removing it from their character. Several DMs stated in the Nyrond forum that they refused to enforce the new rule, and so one of the head guys responded with a message that the DMs who made the public statements of their intention to break the rules had now had their RPGA numbers revoked, and something else very similar to "anyone else want to question my authority?"
I'm not sure which was worse...

Jul 12, 2011 -- 10:59PM, jsaint wrote:

-stuff snipped-
i have plenty of examples of people with theoretical authority saying that something is not permitted (even totally non-broken things), that fly directly in the face of RAW as well as RAI.  DND needs a DCI.

Leaving the absurdity of a claim that something flies in the face of RAI alone, I would claim that if there is anything DnD does not need, it is a DCI. DnD is not and should not try to be Checkers, Chess, Go or even Magic. To turn DnD into only a tactical wargame governed by unambigious and clearly defined rules would lessen the game.

What LFR might need is a DM, like every DnD game goes. Not a table DM, a campaign DM. To make rules calls, determine some house rules where needed, do all the things a DM does for a home campaign....   But, unfortunately there are several factors that make that level of detailed involvement from the admins impossible (and I see no need to restate them cause I am lazy ) So we make do with what we have. 

DnD with a DCI could possibly be my worst nightmare. If you would rather play a tactical wargame I hear Warhammer is pretty good. And you get to paint miniatures. And although I cannot guarantee nobody will use the wrong colour green for their orcs, there is little RAI involved.