Greetings,
Normally I can get by with "specific trumps general", but in this case I'm not entirely sure.
Mage's disjunction claims it can destroy any artifact, while the text for "Major Artifacts" states that a major artifact has exactly one method of destruction (namely, the one listed under the description). So, does it work on major artifacts?
Can you destroy a minor or major artifact with rod of cancellation, miracle, wish, sphere of annihilation, or some of the deck of many things draws? Can a god destroy a minor or major artifact? Any other methods I've missed besides that particular artifact's listed destruction method?
This is mostly to set player expectations. Of course I can design an artifact immune to all of these things, but I'd like to know when I'm house ruling.
so let me go through them each
rod of cancellation - lacks the wording from mages disjunction to destroy artefacts, so no it cant.
mages disjunction - ofc as the spell says that it can
wish/miracle - no, because the things those spells can do is clearly defined within the spells, and this is not one of those things.
orb of annihalation - i would go with yes, because artefacts are destructable in general, and an orb of annihalation destroys everything. But i would still leave it to GM discretion because imovable meets unstoppable thing.
lesser God/ greater God - cant see why they should be able to destroy them in another way that regular mortals, but its probably up to the specific game world to decide how powerfull the gods are. In my game world they cant, unless they cast mages disjunction and might then lose all their spell cast levels.
and cant think of any other method to do it
deck of many things can only make all of your items disappear permanently, that does not actually mean destroyed just somewhere you cant find them. Which would mean that it cant actually destroy artifacts, only make u lose them
General vs. specific can be interpreted in many ways. Hence my confusion. One could argue that disjunction is specific (a particular spell designed to destroy artifacts) and "major artifacts" is specific (as opposed to just "artifacts").
I suspect that there is no solid rule for this, so I won't spend much time thinking about it further. Thanks for the interpretations.