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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 9086011" data-attributes="member: 23751">No, it's really not just an interpretation.  For specific to beat general you require..........................specificity.  Unless you can point to the noble ability and show where it explicitly says that the rule rules the DM in this one case, you have no instance of specific beats general. You can't infer specificity.  Not that there's even an inference of it in that ability.  You have nothing.  On the other hand, I have several passages which SPECIFICALLY allow the DM to alter the rules as he sees fit, which includes background abilities.Nothing one way or the other.  Player agency doesn't hinge on the players creating or enforcing rules, or always getting their own way.  Player agency is that the player has the ability to declare that he is going to try and get the local noble to put him up for the night and that he can expect that it will work unless there's a valid in-fiction reason for it not to work.Why would they automatically know about it.  If it's in my game, I will have ways for them to learn about it, but I'm not going to shove those ways in their faces to ensure that they do.  The players still need to play the game and do research when going into an unknown situation.  If they fail to look and are surprised by it, then that's on them.  If they do look and find out about it, then they know in advance.That's because it appears that you have some super negative views about D&D DMs and they have to be going out of their way to block the players, put their own ideas ahead of the players because muahahahahahah, that's what D&D DMs apparently do, and so on.Your hang-ups regarding D&D DMs, though, just plain don't apply to me.  I'm not defined by your issues.So the point is to deny agency?  Because that's what happens when you go out of your way to say yes in virtually every situation.  Why bother to come up with a reasonable way to open the locked door when you can just spit on the door lock and the DM will find a way to say yes?You're invalidating the ideas of your players by diminishing their meaning.  The meaning of clever idea I came up with is castrated by you saying yes to the ridiculous idea that the other player came up with.  And there is no real meaning to ridiculous ideas when you aren't going to be saying no to them, because you want to think of a way to make it work.I prefer to have real player agency where ideas actually MEAN something. Even if the meaning is failure.I can't share something that doesn't exist.  If the player makes a reasonable request I'm either going to say yes or give it a roll if the outcome is in doubt. I don't shoot down reasonable requests.Where I on the other hand use them to override the rules when the rules hit a situation where following the rule would end up with a nonsensical situation.</blockquote>

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