Using intimidation on a fighter main character to avoid combat?

[Windwalker]

I think I want to play a fighter for my first real playthrough. Can I use intimidation to avoid a lot of fights, if I want to? It's based on strength, right?

Thanks!

[Sentient_Toaster]

No and no.

[guard65]

The game has no ego to intimidate. It is an us and them mentality and you can only appeal to the take sides or deceive them into believing so.

[Detective Costeau]

Intimidate is useful in dialog somewhat regularly, and there are some fights you can avoid with it (though there's a lot you can't) but it's based on Charisma rather than strength.

[Bloodwest]

Intimidation scales off charisma which is usually fighter's dump stat and this makes this class a suboptimal choice for doing the talking. You can still counter it with other bonuses - you may get proficiency through various categories of character's background, have your cleric put guidance on you, use shapeshifter's boon, scrolls, etc.
I'd still recommend to use cha-based character though.

[Hobocop]

There are a small handful of Intimidation (Strength) checks in the game, but not nearly enough to make it a primary approach.

Barbarians also get more options than Fighters in this respect.

That said, I was able to get through the vast majority of Charisma checks (including Intimidation) on my first playthrough with a 12 Charisma druid and zero face skills, bolstered with Enhance Ability and Guidance on the regular, so it's definitely doable.

[[TG] zac]

No intimidate is based on charisma and unlike in previous versions of DND or pathfinder there is no way to get any bonus from your strength.

Its also not really useful in a large chunk of the game since there is no way to use it in combat and even if you could 5e unlike previous editions & pathfinder has no incentive to do so or really any solid rulings for how to handle it.

The amount of checks that even use it are also extremely small compared to perseuasion.
(there are some to be sure, just a very small amount compared to persuasion checks that will let you bypass fights)

[Jarsonne]

Barbarian is the way to go if you want use intimidation in plenty dialog, there's a ton. Perhaps many aren't pure intimidation check and more Barbarian option but then with an intimidation mood.

[Kappa]

It’s char based, but you can get 1 lvl rogue and get expertise to double your proficiency.

There are also some items and spells ( if you make a tiefling fighter with thaumaturgy and get your cleric casting guidance, you should be fine even with 12 charisma ).

[Gob]

Some common dialogue checks available are charisma based - that's persuasion, intimidation, deception, and performance checks. Somewhat less common are the intelligence based ones - arcana, history, investigation, nature, religion.

But there are plenty of other checks for race, background, etc to fail without worrying too much about the charisma-based checks.

There's wiggle room in a fighter build for up to 14 charisma, which is plenty for dialogue checks. In fact, anything over 10 is considered good enough.

A consideration is that if you play a drow (not usually the very best choice for fighter but not significantly problematic) then you'll pass a lot of extra checks in acts 1 and 2 against people like goblins.