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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8472910" data-attributes="member: 71699">That is a reasonable position. I'd like to put forth a line of argument for consideration. A lacuna is that it leaves the inclusion of skills like Intimidate (on orc war chief and champion, for example) poorly explained. To suppose it is flavour text is weak. Skills are called out in the MM as something monsters have and can use, and we see examples of skills such as athletics on champion, and can have no doubt that a champion foe can use athletics to grapple and shove PCs. Intimidate - also on champion - is rules text.Rejecting a theory that there can be rules text that is empty of meaning, leaves us forced to infer that social skills on monsters are there to be used on one another. I can't find any rules or guidelines that support that, other than the shadow cast by the positive assertion that players decide what their characters do. There are exceptions to that positive assertion. For example, players don't get to decide when their character falls to zero hit points and goes down. They don't get to decide when they are tripped by a wolf and fall prone. They can't decide that they can jump 20 feet without a check if they only have strength of 10. In fact, it is a general exception to player decision-making, that where the game mechanics yield an outcome then players don't get to decide on that outcome.That might be adduced in an argument that says that Intimidate is a game mechanic that can cause an outcome, and when it does players don't get to decide. Just as they do not decide when dissonant whispers forces their character to move as far as it can away from the caster. Game mechanics clearly and generally decide for players what happens to their characters and what their characters do in precisely the circumstances governed by those mechanics. Seeing as that is in direct conflict with the justification you are relying on, it seems to me that we are forced to choose. Taking a pragmatic view, we don't know the meaning of game mechanics if players simply decide what their outcome is going to be. Therefore it seems to me that we should prefer the view that where there is a mechanic that decides what a character does, then that is an intended exception to the general rule you are relying on.</blockquote>

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