And if it has emotions, we can taunt it? Or apparently not! Because that would be unrealistic!
But this tells us nothing about whether or not they can taunt others. I mean, to reiterate a point from upthread, 5e D&D already has a Goad ability!
As
@MuhVerisimilitude posted the ability, it applied to enemies - who, in the context of D&D, would be "people already out to get the PC". Further amendments have since been suggested.
And of course the suggested taunting doesn't
always happen - the player has to choose to use it, and then the GM has to fail their saves for the NPCs.
This is true for everything else in the game too: Action Surge, Second Wind, Second Storey Work, Cunning Action, all the Battle Master Manoeuvres, Extra Attack, etc, etc. Not to mention spells could be adjudicated in this way too, as
@Gammadoodler has noted.
Presumably there is a design reason why these player-side abilities are written in the way they are. I'm guessing it's about given players a degree of greater control over how their declared actions work out within the mechanical framework of the game. The suggested Taunt ability seems to me to live in this same design space.
This was posted as a contrast between magic and non-magic. But is being correlated to
player gets to say vs
GM gets to say. Hence it rests on an implicit premise that
the GM is the world of the game. I think it would help some of these conversations if that premise were made explicit, instead of taking it as unarguable and then using genre and trope labels like "that ability is supernatural".
I don't know what PbtA game you have in mind. Apocalypse World doesn't look much like what you describe here. It actually seems a much better description of D&D combat, where the if the roll goes in the player's favour then the mechanics - dropping a NPC/creature to zero hp via an attack roll or damage-dealing spell - force the GM to describe the creature/NPC being dead, regardless of circumstance.
The bigger point here is that D&D combat resolution is not consistent with the premise that
the GM is the world of the game. It always puzzles me that people who want the GM to be the world of the game nevertheless use a RPG that has a combat resolution engine that is at odds with that.
I think it's worth noting, in reply to this, that the Fireball and Lightning Bolt spells have been part of the game since its inception. "Pressing buttons" has always been the core play experience for players of D&D spell casters.