Potentially. The same thing can happen if a player takes longsword specialisation, or archery style, or whatever for his/her fighter and the GM rules that no longswords (or bows, or arrows) can be had for either love or money.
Or the wizard PC knows fireball, and the GM rules that there is no bat guano to be found anywhere in the land.
D&D tends not to have explicit rules, or even guidelines, on how the GM is meant to handle these issues where player abilities depend upon elements of the shared fiction over which the GM has the final say. (Though as [MENTION=59096]thecasualoblivion[/MENTION] notes, 4e is a bit of an exception here, with a more explicit orientation towards "say yes".)
My own view is that once a player has an ability like that, the GM is expected to allow it to come into play. A bit like thieves stealing the MU's spell book, I think a little bit of infiction action denial can go a long way. (In
this post, I give an example of when - as a consequence of adjudicating a skill challenge - a PC's familiar was temporarily shut down. At the time, this example prompted a
long discussion in another thread of when shutting down abilities via adjudication of the fiction is fair or unfair, when it is best seen as GM force or a consequence of what a player has staked, etc.)
As I see it, there are two main ways that the players impact the fiction.
One way is that they declare an action, and the GM says yes - so the fiction changes in the appropriate way, and the game moves on. Sometimes the rules might oblige the GM to say yes - eg the player casts a Wall of Force spell, and so now the GM is obliged to allow that a wall of force has been brought into being - and sometimes this is up to the GM. In D&D, traditionally spells (and other magical effects) have been the main way to oblige the GM to say yes. But there have been other examples (eg the yakuza class in the original OA book has abilities around contacts and calling on clan assistance that come pretty close to this; and as has been discussed in this thread, there are 4e non-spell abilities that can do this).
The other way is that a player declares an action, and the GM calls for a check, and the check succeeds. In this case, the more resources the player can bring to bear (bonuses to checks; rerolls; etc) the more control the player has over the outcome. I personally find it fairly satisfying for the player to be able to expend resources roughly in proportion to the extent that they care about the outcome. (In 5e this might be via Inspiration, for instance; and you can then get a reward cycle going if the player can earn the inspiration back by declaring the action in the first place, because there is an alignment between what the player cares about and how the goals/flaws etc of the PC are framed.)
In your terminology, is the first way what you mean by "narratively" and the second what you mean by "mechanically"?