The 5e approach you described sounds rather strange to me, as it implies that what a character experiences when a dragon imposes the Frightened condition on them isn't fear at all, but some other (perhaps not even emotional) state.
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 terms of my original point in this thread: a character's reaction to ordinary fear is character-defining, and I prefer for defining the character to be left up to the player, rather than game mechanics. Explicit monster abilities, spells, etc., in 5e that produce the
Frightened condition are different enough from ordinary fear that I don't consider a character's reaction to those effects to be character-defining, and thus they don't run afoul of my preferences.
It's similar to how the ability to resist ordinary temptation is character-defining, whereas the ability to resist a
Suggestion spell is not (in my opinion, anyway).
I mean, people were shocked that fear would make a parent not rush to save their child from a dragon. I really hate to break it to you, but, that happens all the time in the real world. Frozen in fear is a real thing. Being totally in control, while so afraid of something that it actually has a game effect, is just bizarre really.
To clarify, I entirely agree that being frozen in fear happens all the time in the real world. However, that's outside the range of fear that one person can typically influence in another, particularly without knowing the person, or saying anything to them, or doing anything scary. Combined with the fact that dragon fear in 5e
doesn't make someone frozen in fear (a
Frigthened character can still act however they want, except that they can't approach the dragon), and its fleeting nature (it lasts no more than a minute), and I think there is good reason to classify dragon fear as something other than acute normal fear.
I also dispute your suggestion that a character frozen in fear in DnD 5e can still act. The lack of any mechanical restriction from ordinary fear means the
player is, indeed, unconstrained in their action declarations for their character. But if the player decides that their character is so afraid that they don't act, then the
character indeed can't act.
If it's okay, can I rephrase that implication from "never" to "nowhere near often enough"? Sure, you can point to where it has happened, but, like your example of using dice to determine mental processes, it's likely pretty rare. Which, frankly, is a lost opportunity to real delve into the persona of the character. The number of times a character "falters" without any sort of mechanics like this is likely somewhere between zero and once in a campaign.
Now, think about it this way. Those moments, when the PC faltered, were really stand out moments no? These were events in the game that really stick out in your mind. So, why not have mechanics which bring those moments forward in the game more often?
Personally, I wouldn't find such moments nearly as meaningful if they were the consequence of game mechanics rather than the decision of the player. It's similar to how I'd consider brilliant tactics on the part of the player meaningful in a way that wouldn't apply to (e.g.) a wildly successful Tactics roll in the
In Nomine system (where which side in a combat has better positioning can be abstracted by a single die roll), even if both the player's plan and the successful Tactics roll led to the same level of tactical advantage.
Also, I find such player-initiated faltering moments come up
frequently at tables where fuzzy lines between friends and foe are common, regardless of the system being run. It's one of the reasons my D&D 5e combats last unusually long, as players skip their own actions or spend them on characterization rather than using them to contribute to the fight. I've occasionally had so much faltering on both sides that the fight has effectively stopped mid-combat and dialogue has started.
A game in which players get to choose how their PCs respond to these things is not one in which the game has something to say about what sorts of events and/or actions are dreadful and weighty.
One of my recurring issues with D&D, and I will be upfront with it, is that the game doesn't fundamentally care who my character is nor does it respect the roleplaying of that character as anything other than the bare minimum performatory function, like being a warm butt in a chair. The rest is entirely opt-in. My character and their characterization is largely irrelevant to the game and how it functions. It can and will often ignore my character and their characterization at the leisure of the GM or adventure. There is little to nothing about the game that actually engages my character and who they are. Nothing fundamentally challenges my conception of the character in any way. The game doesn't care anything about who Tom the Fighter is other than whether they complete the Tomb of Annihilation. Nor does it care why they are doing it. Who they are afterwards? Meh. Who cares? The same is not true for other games. Entering the Tomb of Annihilation in a game like Burning Wheel or Torchbearer may utterly break Tom the Fighter.
These comments about what the game has to say or what the game cares about suggest to me that there may be a deeper philosophical difference at play in terms of how we approach RPGs. From my perspective, my group has our own "game". Our choice of system is simply a question of what ruleset would be most helpful for running our game. Our games deeply care about who the characters are, and we deeply respect roleplaying, regardless of which system we happen to be using. Accordingly, a system designed to make our game care about the characters isn't helpful to us, because our game already does so. And a system designed to make our game care about characters differently than it already does would be actively
unhelpful because it would create tension between the mechanics and our game.
If I'm understanding correctly,
@pemerton and
@Aldarc, you see the choice of system as
defining the game you are playing, and thus if the system has nothing to say about who the characters are, then the game doesn't either. That makes perfect sense, and makes it easier to understand where your preferences are coming from. It's just so different from how I approach RPGs at a conceptual level that I can see why it makes understanding each other's preferences (and even just communicating them) so difficult.
