Intimidate vs Animals

[Witch Hunter]

I was thinking...
Many of us, while not being rangers, still try to stay away from mindless animal slaughter - but with the current AI most animals charge you... wouldn't it make sense if it made a will save againts an intimidate check to see if it's not scared of you?

Most animals wont stay around if they face danger, and uh, most of us are dangerous.

[Dorganath]

Well...the question is, what is the "proper" reaction of an animal who is scared of a character? Run? Fight? Does it depend on the creature?
  There are at least three different kinds of potentially hostile animals on the server. There's the generally passive things like deer, who usually stand around and wait for you to attack them (though not always), there's the passive-aggressive things that wander a bit, like boars and dire boars, and lastly there are things that are always hostile, like bears, wolves and such.
  Is an animal who attacks you hungry? Scared? Defending its territory against intruders? Protecting its young?
  I'm not sure that intimidate is really the best thing to use.

[Witch Hunter]

Most people don't have intimidate high however - those that do should be able to scare an animal away I think.
The average person barely has it above 2 (and that's due to stats) - just make the DC high.

[Weeblie]

Though... One thing then...

Wouldn't this kind of be for all creatures and not just animals?

And...

Wouldn't you be able to "fail if you wish"? Say... if you are going on a deer hunt, or something, you probably don't look super-threatening.

[Witch Hunter]

Well they dont have to run away - they can just uh, not attack you.

[Dorganath]

Well that's starting to bleed over into the Animal Empathy thing, and to me it just doesn't seem right to have characters that are not nature-oriented have the ability to essentially pacify wild animals....mechanically, that's what would be happening, and it's really not all that fair to druids and rangers.
  A frightened/intimidated animal might run away...it might attack. It depends on a lot of things. But keep in mind, what is "intimidating" to your average sentient humanoid is probably not intimidating in the same way to most of the animal kingdom.

[Witch Hunter]

Well animal empathy makes him an ally >.>

But I guess you made your point clear enough heh.

[Dorganath]

A while ago, we added an ability whereby druids, rangers and clerics with the Nature domain could pacify entire groups of creatures using a modified sort of Animal Empathy. This did not create an ally of the creatures but rather kept them from attacking the characters and usually those with the character.
  Mechanically speaking, what you are asking (i.e. have the animals not attack) would essentially be a non-nature way of achieving the same goal, and that's what I meant specifically about not being fair to druids and rangers.

[Witch Hunter]

Ahh well I didn't know about that ability change, sorry.

[Dorganath]

That's OK...it's why I explained it in greater detail.  

[OldBear]

I have read over the general description of ranger in LORE. I don't see anything mentioning being able to pacify a large group of animals.  Nor have I noticed that ability in game.  Could you elaborate on it a bit more or point me to the thread I missed?

[Dorganath]

I'm not finding it documented very clearly either...heh.
  Here's the gist of it though:
  http://www.layonaraonline.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=23132&start=1#M144714
  I'll see about getting this added to LORE