It was fairly easy to say to SharePoint Workflow (both in 2010 and 2013 versions) that certain action or actions should be executed with the elevated permissions.
In Nintex Workflow for SharePoint (every version), when you use the “Flexi task” action, that creates and assigns tasks to specific users, if you (as a viewer) are not the assignee, workflow tells you that “You are not authorized to respond to this task.” – then to make yourself authorized you have to click the “delegate” link, then to reassign that task to yourself.