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Your reply seems to suggest that you interpreted my post as making a statement of fact with which you disagree. However, when quoting me you omitted the part of my post where I explicitly said that I was providing my opinion.... Did you misunderstand my post as making a broad claim regarding how...

Jumping back in here because I think the answer to this question was discussed earlier in this thread but has since gotten lost. Put succinctly, in my opinion, how a character feels or reacts to outside stimuli defines who that character is as a (fictional) person. By contrast, whether or not a...

(Bold emphasis added.) The bolded assertion appeats to be incorrect. By my reading, casting a bonus action cantrip triggers all the same restrictions as casting a bonus action leveled spell. I suggest replacing this bullet point with: Order does not matter. If a character casts a leveled spell...

My preference is to leave combat difficulty up to the PCs. As long as the GM is accurately telegraphing how powerful various opponents are, the players can make informed choices for their PCs based on how much risk they're comfortable taking. That's true regardless of the party's level of...

Hmm, with a second person bowing out, I think that's a good sign the conversation has run its course, so I'm going to do the same. I'll happily read any responses to my most recent post, but I'm going to refrain from posting again. Thanks for the discussion! I've learned a lot about different...

I agree--that's basically what I was trying to say. Fear invoked by dragons (or magically, via the Fear spell) is different enough from ordinary fear that it doesn't impinge on my preference for reactions to ordinary fear to be left up to the player to decide for their character. Reframed in...

I'm not sure I understand where the tension you see is coming from. From my standpoint it seems clear that the better one knows who a character is and what they've been through, the more nuance one will be able to provide when determining how/when/why that character will react to natural stress...

I can't speak for @Bill Zebub, but I definitely agree that it's realistic for the character to not be in full and rational control. Personally, however, absent magic or magic-like abilities, I have a preference for how/when/why the character is not in full and rational control to be up to the...

Sure a DM could grant ad-hoc advantage on the saving throw (although I think ad-hoc adv/disadv is more common for ability checks than saving throws), but I don't see why the chance of success is pertinent? Even if there was a 95% chance to successfully save, when it does take effect the dragon...

Because (at least in 5e) the fear produced by Dragons is strong enough to override any motivation to approach the dragon. A Frightened parent literally can't approach the dragon to save their own child. That level of terror is well beyond anything that can typically be achieved via mundane...

Regularly. Maybe every other session for the campaign where I first instituted the rule, and a bit less since then. The usual context is a potential combat where one PC (not always the same one!) decides to attack while the other PCs are still pursuing a non-violent course. The houserule ensured...

(Bold emphasis added.) I think differences of opinion on this point may be related to different conceptions of self and decisionmaking in the real world. For example, if, in the real world, someone cowers in terror despite ostensibly preferring to act, should that be classified as (e.g.): (i)...

I think the previously noted distinction between magic influence and non-magical influence could be better characterized as realistic vs unrealistic. If a creature has an explicit mind control ability that would be impossible in the real world, that's "magic" enough for me to categorize it...

My questions weren't rhetorical--I was asking how you personally addressed the potential issue. Your answers were informative--thanks! The DM announced that because it was a joke. ;) More practically, I have seen a lot of variation in when DMs have said they call for initiative, so the joke was...

I think I misunderstood what you meant by "performative" vs "experiential" roleplaying when you first brought up the distinction. I interpreted "performative" roleplaying as concerning the performance at the table--the player showing the other participants what their character is thinking and...

I've seen it argued that RAW limits the number of objects that can be interacted with to one, but doesn't limit the number of interactions with that object. The text in the PHB says: I think there is definitely some ambiguity in there. In any case I think that RAI has to be only one...

I misread the title of this thread and thought it was going to be about D&D combat being frictionless.... (Edit to clarify: my thought was frictionless in the physical sense. As in, D&D combat taking place in the "assume a frictionless vacuum" scenario of high school physics problems. I hope...

How do you address the issue that the transition to initiative affects surprise, and surprise is (arguably) an in-world phenomenon? Specifically, if you transition to initiative before a hidden character even tries to take a noticable action (maybe they're casting subtle buff spells, or readying...

From my perspective the statement you quoted reflects the current main point of contention, with posters disagreeing whether it is possible to learn anything about a character one is authoring. I am unsure, however, whether the disagreement is substantive or merely reflects differing usages of...

I apologize for being imprecise. I should have said that in the BW example the character's political affiliation was determined by a game mechanic, rather than by a roll. I am aware of the play examples you posted, but to my understanding they were offered in the context of a different...