Since Scathing Tirade requires an average coercion check, would having two ranks of Intimidating make Scathing Tirade a simple (no difficulty) check, assuming you burn the strain? I can't find anything that says it won't work together like that.

Sounds like one mean son-of-a-gun! I don't see why not. There's a lot of built-in cost with adding cross-career specializations. Not many characters put a lot into WILL for the Coercion checks. It sounds like an interesting character!

That is correct it becomes a simple check

Well, the Unmatched Expertise modified the difficulty of the rolls, so I don't see why this talent wouldn't either.

SOURCE: Played a politico

Actually, no, that would not work. Intimidating downgrades the difficulty of a check, which means that you replace Challenge Dice with Difficulty Dice. If there are no Challenge Dice to downgrade, any extra downgrades are worthless.

To do this, you need something (like the aforementioned Unmatched Expertise) that DECREASES the difficulty.

EDIT: (the sound of a bubble being burst)

But if you have no challenge die to downgrade, doesn't the downgrade decrease the difficulty? Similar to upgrading? If you have two ranks of true aim, but are throwing four yellow already, the first rank upgrades to four yellow and one green, and the second rank upgrades that green to a fifth yellow. Have I been doing it wrong?

No unfortunately not. Downgrading and Upgrading work slightly differently, both at outlined in the first chapter, but basically:

Upgrading changes all Ability to Proficiency, then adds an Ability before Upgrading that dice.

Downgrading on the other hand just changes Challenge dice to Difficulty dice.

Decreasing Difficulty is the one that takes away Difficulty dice, and is much rarer as a result.

Intimidating downgrades the difficulty of a check, which means that you replace Chanterelle Dice with Difficulty Dice.

Yeah, those Chanterelle dice are nasty!

No unfortunately not. Downgrading and Upgrading work slightly differently, both at outlined in the first chapter, but basically:

Upgrading changes all Ability to Proficiency, then adds an Ability before Upgrading that dice.

Downgrading on the other hand just changes Challenge dice to Difficulty dice.

Decreasing Difficulty is the one that takes away Difficulty dice, and is much rarer as a result.

And this is the reason that one can't just do "5 upgrades and 6 downgrades means I just do 1 downgrade" as the downgrades really depend on that final result from all the upgrades being applied first.

No unfortunately not. Downgrading and Upgrading work slightly differently, both at outlined in the first chapter, but basically:

Upgrading changes all Ability to Proficiency, then adds an Ability before Upgrading that dice.

Downgrading on the other hand just changes Challenge dice to Difficulty dice.

Decreasing Difficulty is the one that takes away Difficulty dice, and is much rarer as a result.

And this is the reason that one can't just do "5 upgrades and 6 downgrades means I just do 1 downgrade" as the downgrades really depend on that final result from all the upgrades being applied first.

Exactly;

A pool of 3 Proficiency dice upgrade to 1 Ability and 3 Proficiency. But downgrade that newly upgraded pool and you have 2 Ability and 2 Proficiency. And the most you can downgrade it too is 4 Ability

But if you have no challenge die to downgrade, doesn't the downgrade decrease the difficulty? Similar to upgrading? If you have two ranks of true aim, but are throwing four yellow already, the first rank upgrades to four yellow and one green, and the second rank upgrades that green to a fifth yellow. Have I been doing it wrong?

No, it explicit stated that downgrading difficulty is different from upgrading ability dice. Right in the first chapter talking about the dice. Though you are right that upgrading dice work that way.

Thanks for the clarification all. It would appear I rolled a despair on my reading comprehension check.

Eh, I have an excuse - I was away from book and going by memory. And my brain isnt what it used to be. . . .

Upgrading and downgrading both work the same if you have a difficulty pool of 1 red 2 purple and you downgrade the check once you change the red to a purple, downgrade once more and because there is no more red you remove a purple you can continue doing this until you make the check simple unless the talent calls a minimum (example downgrade to a minimum of Easy).

Scathing Tirade is a 2 purple difficulty and doesn't target anyone specifically (so cannot be upgraded by an opponent with intimidating) so someone with 2 ranks in intimidating, can reduce the check to simple.

Upgrading works the same way, someone with 2 yellow and a green upgrading once gets another yellow to replace the green. Upgrade twice adds a green to this and a third upgrade means they end with 4 Yellow.

I am pretty sure Downgrading dice doesn't remove them.

Not quite: while you are correct about upgrading, you add a new Ability/Difficulty Die if all you dice are already upgraded, downgrades don't work exactly the same. Once you've downgraded all your Proficiency/Challenge Dice to Ability/Difficulty dice, any remaining downgrades are ignored. So if a check is 2 Difficulty Dice, like Scathing Tirade is, then downgrades are worthless because they can't do anything.

Now, if your target has ranks in Nobody's Fool, or is an Adversary and your GM treats Scathing Tirade as an attack, then go nuts! Your intimidating can ensure that you're not rolling any Challenge Dice. But without a houserule, Intimidating can't reduce the number of bad dice you roll below 2.

Also of note is that if your ST pool gets upgraded three or more times, (from DD to CCD, for instance), while you can downgrade to get rid of the Challenges, you'll still be rolling at least 3 Difficulty Dice, for the same reason.

I'll concede I was wrong initially, but it really takes the teeth out of intimidating, especially for trees like Agitator that has four ranks of it. Granted I realize it works both to upgrade the difficulty of incoming coercion checks and downgrade the outgoing ones, but it seems like a lot of instances of a talent that apparently has very limited effectiveness.

Sorry my bad , thanks for pointing that out I've been doing it wrong for a long time now.

I'll concede I was wrong initially, but it really takes the teeth out of intimidating, especially for trees like Agitator that has four ranks of it. Granted I realize it works both to upgrade the difficulty of incoming coercion checks and downgrade the outgoing ones, but it seems like a lot of instances of a talent that apparently has very limited effectiveness.

Ever tried to intimidated someone with adversary rank 3 or a lot of yellow dice on cool/discipline? You start to love this talents or curse that you have not enough of them and constantly still rolling red dice.

Still a useful talent but a useless combination except if the Gm flips w destiny point. Now makes a lot more sense to me a discussion I had read before where the devs confirmed that scathing tirade worked as it did as described in a thread I pointed out where intimidating was used to drop ST to a simple check then used 3 times a round as a simple check, I asked if it was considered as a combat check. This seemed overpowered and technically it was because intimidating didn't apply and the check is still 2 purple difficulty while it doesn't seem much those 2 dice can make ST that bit more believable with the results instead of 5 yellow with no opposing difficulty.

As I said though I still appreciate hhe talent. There are actually not that many that downgrade difficulty.

Intimidating is also good if your GM allows social checks against PCs. If you are running a game that is mostly politics, intimidating would be quite the useful talent, as checks to coerce an agitator become significantly more difficult due to the fact that you are threatening someone that is an effective master of social situations. However, as I have experienced, many GMs believe that players should have full control of their own character's emotions, which is an understandable notion.

Similar to Nobody's fool and a bunch of the setback removal talents, the usefulness of any given talent really depends on the style and philosophy of the GM.

Intimidating still gets some use in my campaign, as any attempts to use Scathing Tirade on an NPC with the Adversary talent would see the difficulty upgraded a number of times equal to Adversary ranks. Not to mention that if an NPC has Intimidating he can choose to upgrade the difficulty of the incoming Scathing Tirade check, which means that if the PC using Scathing Tirade also has Intimidating he can downgrade it right back down.

This was the question I brought to the devs way back to see of a scathing tirade check could be considered a combat check and therefore got upgraded by adversary, they did confirm that it didnt , and I felt at the time that made scathing tirade along with its upgrades too powerful esp as it ignores soak. At the time on the thread that this was mentioned on they also used intimidating (which was why I thought it downgraded the check) meaning that in one turn they could use the check 3 times back to back and rip nemesis to pieces with strain dmg. However given that its always going to be an average check it does even it out.

Do some test rolls with 5 yellow against 2 purple more often than not you are not getting the advantage to be able to cause additional strain DMG against the same target so you often do 1 strain to lots of targets and if you are lucky you might do 1 or 2 strain extra from advantage. This means its going to take a while to take down a nemesis that way and its costing you 2 stain per round to do this. Rarely you get that awesome roll with lots of advantage , but this is really rare.

I just did a quick test with 3 rolls with 5 yellow against 2 purple and rolled 2 rolls with no advantage and one with 2 advantage. I did get 5, 4 and 4 success on them. Given the lack of advantage I don't think this needs a house rule here. Remember this is a guy with willpower 5, 5 ranks in coercion and a stack load of talents , I actually would have expected better results. If you add in adversary the rolls become more likely to roll threat than advantage (even against 5 yellow, go try it) and this has a knock on effect on talents like No Escape,

This combo was one I was originally concerned with (intimidating, scathing tirade, and no escape) and even with high levels of coercion against 2 purple, its very hard to get the 2 advantage to trigger No Escape adding in adversary makes it high on impossible.

Also note that scathing tirade doesn't target anybody, so even if you said adversary comes into play it also doesn't work since you aren't targeting that NPC

Also note that scathing tirade doesn't target anybody, so even if you said adversary comes into play it also doesn't work since you aren't targeting that NPC

The character may take the Scathing Tirade action; making an Average Coercion check. For each

EotE Core page 142

The emphasis on target is mine.

Could you link to the dev response that Scathing Tirade doesn't target?