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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 8727724" data-attributes="member: 2629">The Role of the Dice section of the DMG covers some of your concerns.  That shows, to a large extent, how 5E is supposed to be run.  And the answer is ... in a way that works for the table.  There are a lot of ways to go.  Why do I have the involuntary response of a PC be governed by the dice?  For one: Because it creates a more 'realistic' feel.  Why?  Because  involuntary responses  are a big part of real world social interactions.  Not being able to control every aspect of your response can give a player a lot to go off of in the situation.  Honestly, to me, allowing PCs to decide their significant involuntary responses as if they were voluntary choices has too many similarities to allowing players to just decide whether their attacks hit or not without rolling dice.  Further, it also adds more variation and creativity to social engagements.  It gives different inputs into the engagement that can alter the dynamics of the conversation and move some PCs into more significant roles.  This avoids the trap of the 'one PC is always the face of the group' problems that reduces social encounters to being something that just one player does for an entire campaign. In the example I provided above, where a tribal marauder leader did something to disgust the players as an intimidation technique I could have them roll dice to see if the PCs had an involuntary response, or I could just ask them how they proceed.Think about how you'd react as a player if you were just going to decide how you proceed.  Now, think about how you'd react if you wanted to be unaffected, but your PC flinches.  And, how you'd proceed if you don't have that involuntary response.  From experience, you get a much wider starting input to a social encounter when you have some more variance in how it starts ... and how it proceeds ... even when that variance only addresses a small element of the engagement (such as the involuntary response). If players decide how to respond, there may be tendencies to always approach these situations in the same way.  If you insert variance for involuntary responses, you can create a broader landscape for how the situations proceed.  It may thrust some PCs to the front in the conversation when they're the one that holds the stare of the enemy leader during one situation, when another PC may get pulled forward the next time when they don't flinch.</blockquote>

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