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<blockquote data-quote="bsss" data-source="post: 9866589" data-attributes="member: 7054302">Player agency is vital to the game but also delicate in times of interpretation. To preserve that agency, features that compel any kind of PC action should be used sparingly. As a way to allow the fiction to mean something to the gameplay while within that agency, the GM has considerable options at their disposal (e.g. a Fear effect, or a simple &quot;attacks against the orc are at -2 because you're shaken&quot; even without a defense). The GM can just do those things because they are in the language of the game and the GM as arbiter and world-presenter can just say &quot;well, this orc is exceptionally intimidating&quot;. But they should never get into &quot;mind control&quot; territory, which a general application of Intimidate applied to a PC may often dance the line of, depending on how it's written.An interesting case study of this line is a charm effect, which in my experience when targeting PCs is deployed with extreme caution and special cases, is still fairly constrained, and even then considered pretty nasty.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="bsss, post: 9866589, member: 7054302"] Player agency is vital to the game but also delicate in times of interpretation. To preserve that agency, features that compel any kind of PC action should be used sparingly. As a way to allow the fiction to mean something to the gameplay while within that agency, the GM has considerable options at their disposal (e.g. a Fear effect, or a simple "attacks against the orc are at -2 because you're shaken" even without a defense). The GM can just [I]do[/I] those things because they are in the language of the game and the GM as arbiter and world-presenter can just say "well, this orc is exceptionally intimidating". But they should never get into "mind control" territory, which a general application of Intimidate applied to a PC may often dance the line of, depending on how it's written. An interesting case study of this line is a charm effect, which in my experience when targeting PCs is deployed with extreme caution and special cases, is still fairly constrained, and even then considered pretty nasty. [/QUOTE]

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