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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DinoInDisguise" data-source="post: 9548216" data-attributes="member: 7045806">That is not the case. The reason is the DM can make decisions prior to a dice roll that removes agency issues. The issues only arise when the DM uses the roll independent of the actions. At that point the DM is disregarding the player actions and is violating player agency.We can see this more clearly if we revisit my two examples. First the Wizard who takes amazing notes every night before bed. The recollection roll is only an issue if not adjusted in a meaningful way to account for the player actions. TQuinn noted lowering the DC, I said in my post that you could use a sliding scale of success and give some reward at much lower DCs. Accounting for the player action in these ways eliminates the issue. The issue only comes up when there is no adjustment to the dice roll's ability to determine the outcome. Because in those cases it's a decision by the DM to ignore player actions through using the dice. That decision is stepping on player agency.On the random combat decisions it is much the same. Simply altering the possible outcomes to reflect that fire is enough to eliminate the player agency issue. Removing all creatures from the random table that are scared or dissuaded by fire, for example. This allows the dice roll to respect player agency. If the players take steps to mitigate the risk of an ambush, lower the chances that the dice produce the outcome that is contrary to player actions. The issue here, again, comes up when you make no such adjustments to the possible outcomes. In that case, you are deciding that player agency means nothing in that case, and that it's actually only about the dice. This is a massive player agency issue, as your player decisions stop having a meaningful effect on the world, which becomes only a random slideshow of dice-decided events.The proper course of action is to adjust the possible dice outcomes to accommodate the actions of the players. To not do so, would be an admission that the game is really solely about the dice and the players are just along for the ride. Which to me screams as no better than more maligned versions of railroading. The decision to roll dice to decide an outcome is a DM decision and should be held to the same standard as all other DM decisions. This means if that roll violates player agency by not respecting player actions in the possible results, the DM has chosen to step on player agency by choosing to roll.Putting your decisions in a rollable table doesn't make them immune to player agency concerns.</blockquote>

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