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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6236335" data-attributes="member: 17106">It seems logical to counter your dogma about megalomaniacal DMs with something a little more typical.But take the charm and the king out of it, and make it a more reasonable scenario. Let's say there's a wizard who deals in magic items, and the players have some they want to sell. They go to his tower, and ask to see him, nicely. The imp at the door says that he is not accepting visitors. They make a persuasive case as to why he would want to see them, roll a Diplomacy check and get a high result, definitively enough to make the imp's attitude friendly. But the imp still says no.Which lends itself to a variety of possibilities. Maybe the wizard is, again, out of town and the player's endeavor is (perhaps unbeknownst to them) pointless because there is no wizard to find. Maybe the wizard is working hard on spell research and gave specific instructions that he not be disturbed no matter what, and the imp explains this to the players cordially. Maybe the imp is an illusion programmed to always say no. In none of those cases does the player have any right to expect that any ability on his character sheet will change that.None of which changes meaningfully if a player whips out a charm monster spell and successfully charms the imp. It's not a plot coupon that lets the player decide what happens next, simply another way of modeling social interaction. The only thing that changes if the player does that is that by casting the spell, he risks angering the wizard through his use of magic (or possibly impressing him, to be fair).And of course, the opposite is always possible. Perhaps whatever gatekeeper we're talking about says "welcome in" and leads the PC to the king/wizard or otherwise gives them what they want. The point is not that the answer is always no, merely that the DM, who is in charge of arbitrating actions and roleplaying NPCs, decides whether the answer is yes or no. It's very possible that the DM says yes, but nothing on the player's character sheet will ever mandate that answer.In D&D, anyway.</blockquote>

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