Perhaps I wasn't clear. No permission is required, we are talking about the resolution process.
Action Declaration: Character goes to Tea House to find sect.
DM: Despite the tea house being full of patrons, you find no sect member present.
Action Declaration: I cast Cause Fear on the Death Knight in attempts to frighten him.
DM: (Without making a saving throw) You successfully cast it, but your spell appears to have no affect as the Death Knight keeps on advancing.
Both are automatic No's.
This is taking tricks in poker, again. Using an explicitly D&D mechanical example to ask how a non-D&D mechanic would work together will never illuminate anything.
/begin ramble
It's fair to point out that D&D relies heavily on the DM to adjudicate player actions according to the DM's judgement. Calling this Mother May I is going straight to a degenerate example of play, which you should not do if your intent is to have productive discussion of play structures. I think it should be fairly obvious that this kind of GM centered play is widely popular and not bad per se. That doesn't mean it suits everyone or that a different center of play isn't worth doing an honest compare/contrast of styles. I do think using bad examples of play and pejoratives is a poor way of doing that.
That said, I understand the frustration on the side of the non-DM-centered play. If you question how D&D plays, even politely, you're met with a kind of unintentional hostility -- most posters aren't trying to he dismissive, but they're trying to understand the argument while firmly stuck within the franework of thinking native to D&D so tgey musunderstand and misrepresent those arguments. You can see an echo of this in the threads where older edition D&D players clash with 5e players on mechanics that litter the rules forum. And they're not disagreeing on fundamental play structures, just specific mechanics within the same general play structure.
This constant having to patiently reiterate your points while reading replies that badly misunderstand the points can lead to anger and frustration. This is further exacerbated if you really don't like a DM-centered play structure.
I don't condone it, though. Engaging here is a choice, a choice to try to understand better both how others play and how you play. I was on the "other" side of these discussions just a few years ago. I didn't get it, yet; I was still firmly within the D&D paradigm of thinking. I think my difference is that I was looking for a different play experience not because I was dissatisfied with D&D, but because I recognized that D&D doesn't do some things I wanted to try well at all. I still very much like D&D, but I also very much like other games that use different play structures, like Blades on the Dark. So, I have a foot on both camps.
This does not afford me any special authority, and I claim none, but I'm seeing valid arguments on both sides, here, and invalid ones. I'd call on others to try to use the best examples of play from the other side to compare/contrast and not the bad ones. Just doing that will naturally avoid pejorative language.
To bring this around, you really must consider how a mechanic works within its game alongside that game's other mechanics. You can't isolate one and compare it within a different game to evaluate it's usefulness in its home game.
/end ramble