It looks to me like it's any conflict that has a moral component to it. "Do we murder this orc, or let him go and risk him warning his tribe that we are here before we get far enough away?" We can't do both, so those ideas are in conflict and deal with morals.
Even with those different roles, I think most players know that cheating ruins the experience for everyone and don't do it. Players should be given the same initial trust that DMs should get. If the player demonstrates that trust to be an error, it should be addressed. Just like a DM...
Man. Years of playing with negative AC and I thought -6 was good! My bad. Animals starving to death is a negative, but if there is severe overpopulation, those deaths allow the species to live, which is good.
Negatives are not always a bad thing, even if they feel like that in the short...
The rules don't prevent the DM from creating nuclear explosions from PC farts, either.
The social interaction rules as written are PC to NPC and not vice versa. The DM can of course allow them to work on PCs, but that's not RAW.
A few things.
1) The way you described it, it was plot armor until a certain situation comes to pass, then the named characters can die. That's not zero death rules. That's limited death rules.
2) You are talking about the modules, which aren't any version of D&D. They're modules. The...
I typed DMG instead of PHB by mistake. The rules are in the PHB. The DMG just says creature and the like, which are 100% NPCs.
"ABILITY CHECKS
In addition to roleplaying, ability checks are key in determining the outcome of an interaction.
Your roleplaying efforts can alter an NPC's...
But......this is exactly what I was talking about. You don't feel like you have agency, because you don't. It's a negative and it's one that it seems isn't tenable for you just as it isn't for me. :)
For other folks who that negative isn't a bad thing, using non-magical compulsion like that...
Player 1: "I just saw two guys playing Russian Roulette and the first one lost and is dead."
Player 2: "You can't use dead since that paints what happened as a negative and he understood the risk."
Player 1: "Why on earth would we have to call it something else just because it's a negative? The...
I understand those sorts of things. My players wouldn't ask, though. They would tell me that they are using Burning Spray to set fire to the oily mimic, and then I'd allow it, deny it, or ask for a roll. They generally wouldn't ask me questions about those sorts of things.
I've worked hard...
Why? Do your players not know their abilities? Mine don't generally ask. They do. And if what they are trying to do won't have a chance of working, then I say something.
Nice Strawman there. I never said they didn't ask anything at all. I said they don't ask several times in a few minutes like would happen in a social setting.
I answered that already multiple times, and even spelled it out clearer in my last post.
Maybe stop rolling so much and just roleplay...