Cap'n Kobold
Hero
Its bad form to shut down features "just because", but if its a very established world and the group tends to run off DM fiat more than collaborative contribution, then there may be areas that have already been established as completely isolated, or antimagic, or whatever situation will disable that character's background, class or racial feature.Isn't it normally considered to be a bad thing to deliberately shut down your PC's abilities in such a way "just because"?
This sub-thread started with the idea of taking the PCs to a place where their feature doesn't work because of the demands of the adventure--such as whisking them to Ravenloft for Curse of Strahd and not mentioning ahead of time that such a feature would not be useful for them.
Or they can leave the group. The social contract goes both ways, and a flat out "no, because I said so" is not going to be a satisfying answer for a lot of players. Especially when a "yes" can be achieved with just a bit of thought on the DM's part--and because to me, at least, a flat "no" sounds very rail-roady.
Why doesn't the DM want the PC to work for their passage? Would the DM be OK with the PC buying a ticket? Why is having the players spend a few gold versus a free ride that important to the DM? Do they Just not want to run a nautical side-adventure? Is the DM going to allow for a roll (with a reasonable DC and not a "roll a 21 on an unmodified d20 bs)? If the PC is a sailor, then why can't they use their knowledge of sailing to their advantage when asking for passage? Even if it's not an automatic success, that should be worth something on a die roll.
But to hear from some people on this thread, even that is so illogical to be magical in origin, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a rules lawyer.
I have no idea why a DM might want to do this in any particular situation: This is not a situation that will likely come up for me given the increasingly extreme hypothetical situations and nitpickery both sides of this debate have clagged up what was previously a quite interesting thread with.