Forums: Rules Questions: Clarification on Mind-Affecting Effects (2025)

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Nubzcrymore Jan 2, 2010, 09:09 am

What is a mind affecting effect? Is fear a mind affecting effect? Does the undead immunity of mind-affecting effect protect things from fear (panicked, freightened, shaken) therefore protect undead from being intimidated?

nidho Jan 2, 2010, 01:52 pm

Mind-affecting is just a descriptor for magic effects.
It's defined as:

A mind-affecting spell works only against creatures with an Intelligence score of 1 or higher.

Thid just means that any creature with no intelligence, mindless, is naturally immune to mind-affecting effects. The lemure devil comes to mind.

Panicked, frightened or shaken are conditions.
The undead traits do not list immunity to them but to most sources for these conditions. Making it relatively difficult to impose such a condition on them.
Turn undead for example imposes the panicked condition on those that fail its save.

As for undead being protected from intimidation...

I cannot find a rule saying Intimidate is a mind-affecting effect so I'd say it could affect undead, specially intelligent ones.
I, for example, could see a vampire being intimidated but I'd consider unintelligent undead like zombies are virtually immune to intimidation because they cannot grasp the concept of danger and have their behavior programmed into them. Makes sense?

Nubzcrymore Jan 2, 2010, 02:59 pm

nidho wrote:

Mind-affecting is just a descriptor for magic effects.

It's defined as:

A mind-affecting spell works only against creatures with an Intelligence score of 1 or higher.

Thid just means that any creature with no intelligence, mindless, is naturally immune to mind-affecting effects. The lemure devil comes to mind.

Panicked, frightened or shaken are conditions.
The undead traits do not list immunity to them but to most sources for these conditions. Making it relatively difficult to impose such a condition on them.
Turn undead for example imposes the panicked condition on those that fail its save.

As for undead being protected from intimidation...

I cannot find a rule saying Intimidate is a mind-affecting effect so I'd say it could affect undead, specially intelligent ones.
I, for example, could see a vampire being intimidated but I'd consider unintelligent undead like zombies are virtually immune to intimidation because they cannot grasp the concept of danger and have their behavior programmed into them. Makes sense?

Yeah thats exactly what the player in my campaign said, so he can intimidate undead? I wanted to rule that he cannot intimidate undead without their own sense of free will, but idk is that too harsh of a house rule? considering in the rules as written he CAN intimidate ANY undead he wants. and he isn't happy about it one bit

KnightErrantJR Jan 2, 2010, 03:05 pm

As far as using intimidate on undead, I know I looked into this one other time, but I can't find what I figured out. On its face, intimidate in combat only allows you to impose the Shaken condition on someone, and further applications only lengthen the time the creature is shaken, so without other effects (like spells) that can further bump up the condition track, at worst your undead are only at -2 on their rolls.

Its a penalty, but its by no means making the undead cower in fear. In fact, it could just be that the character is so over the top on his intimidation that the "victim" of the intimidation can't figure out what the character is capable of or not, and a such, isn't quite as competent against that character.

As far as socially interacting with a character, I can totally see a properly phrased comment intimidating a lich, graveknight, or vampire, as they are intelligent creatures, and the right person could still make them doubt themselves or their ability to ignore threats from that person.

Michael Johnson 66 Jan 4, 2010, 11:20 am

I would rule that mindless undead (zombies and skeletons) cannot be Intimidated, but I don't have my PF rulebook in front of me to check on Intimidate, so my 2 cents are worth about that, if even.

Jo Bird Oct 14, 2011, 04:26 pm

What about intelligent swords versus characters? Is that a saving throw against a mind affecting effect?

Troubleshooter Oct 14, 2011, 08:02 pm

Red Mantis Assassins can Fascinate creatures. Their Fascinate is not Mind-affecting, and the Fascinated condition is not Mind-affecting. So can a Red Mantis Assassin swing his sword in a pretty circle and entrance a pack of mindless zombies?

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