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The Gloves Are Off?
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<blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 8871555" data-attributes="member: 8461"><p>The difference between "enforcing consequences" and "violating player agency" strikes me as being largely a semantic distinction, largely because "what happens to the PC" is often the issue in question, but there's quite often an unclear distinction between "the PC's choices" and "the results of their choices." Hence the gloves issue discussed in the OP; the line between what the PCs did (both beforehand and during the event) and what the DM says happens is nebulous, with questions of who defines what aspects of the scenario in question.</p><p></p><p>If you hold that the DM has the authority of defining those unclear areas when they come up, then there's necessarily going to be times when they violate the player's agency of their character.</p><p></p><p>With regard to the alignment issue, the player's agency over their character is in defining their moral outlook, i.e. them stating as a declarative "I'm not Chaotic Evil," regardless of how their PC acts. Telling them that they are, because they're acting that way, is violating their agency in that regard.</p><p></p><p>The pit trap issue is one that only seems different, until you apply a "but I was wearing gloves"-style issue to it, in that the PC was identifying themselves (retroactively) as having had a hand on the wall to feel for unusual stonework and so should have had advantage on their save since they would have had an arm out to grab the edge of the pit. When you say "no you didn't" (or even "it doesn't matter"), that's violating their agency, at least to a particular degree.</p><p></p><p>Strictly speaking, no, it wasn't.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alzrius, post: 8871555, member: 8461"] The difference between "enforcing consequences" and "violating player agency" strikes me as being largely a semantic distinction, largely because "what happens to the PC" is often the issue in question, but there's quite often an unclear distinction between "the PC's choices" and "the results of their choices." Hence the gloves issue discussed in the OP; the line between what the PCs did (both beforehand and during the event) and what the DM says happens is nebulous, with questions of who defines what aspects of the scenario in question. If you hold that the DM has the authority of defining those unclear areas when they come up, then there's necessarily going to be times when they violate the player's agency of their character. With regard to the alignment issue, the player's agency over their character is in defining their moral outlook, i.e. them stating as a declarative "I'm not Chaotic Evil," regardless of how their PC acts. Telling them that they are, because they're acting that way, is violating their agency in that regard. The pit trap issue is one that only seems different, until you apply a "but I was wearing gloves"-style issue to it, in that the PC was identifying themselves (retroactively) as having had a hand on the wall to feel for unusual stonework and so should have had advantage on their save since they would have had an arm out to grab the edge of the pit. When you say "no you didn't" (or even "it doesn't matter"), that's violating their agency, at least to a particular degree. Strictly speaking, no, it wasn't. [/QUOTE]
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