D&D 5E Does Deafness interfere with Verbal Components?
While I agree that the first sentence of a spell might set a mood or flavor for the spell, I'm also aware that Crawford would revise the word or group of words if they were not intended to be used as commonly interpreted. In this case, I don't fee the text can be ignored; however, I see that if you were the DM you would allow your players to choose a creature regardless of the foe text or not.
Gradine
The Elephant in the Room (she/her)
Echoing (pun intended) the comments above about deafness functionally being blindness for creatures with echolocation-based blindsense.
A non-Deaf person being temporarily-deafened might have some difficulty with verbal components, but based around the established fiction of where most spellcasting classes get their power from I would highly doubt anyone other than maybe a Bard or a Warlock struggling with it in such a way as to even begin considering mechanical implications, and in fact, the established fiction of the Sorcerer really makes me feel like the exact pitch/sounds being made are all that important to any spellcaster (Bards would probably disagree from a philosophical standpoint, but probably less-so from a mechanical one), at least not nearly as much as the ability to cast with a sound (hence why Silence stops spellcasters, and why some creatures without what we would traditionally consider mouths and/or vocal chords are still capable of producing magic).
Someone who is Deaf from birth would almost certainly not have any problems; either they'd have long ago picked up enough speech training to get by as casters, or they'd have have worked out, as a Deaf community, a way to develop more intricate somatic components that have a similar effect (a trade-off I'd be more than willing to make as a DM for a player who wanted to play a from-birth Deaf PC, automatically failing all sound-based perception checks for being able to write off verbal components).
A non-Deaf person being temporarily-deafened might have some difficulty with verbal components, but based around the established fiction of where most spellcasting classes get their power from I would highly doubt anyone other than maybe a Bard or a Warlock struggling with it in such a way as to even begin considering mechanical implications, and in fact, the established fiction of the Sorcerer really makes me feel like the exact pitch/sounds being made are all that important to any spellcaster (Bards would probably disagree from a philosophical standpoint, but probably less-so from a mechanical one), at least not nearly as much as the ability to cast with a sound (hence why Silence stops spellcasters, and why some creatures without what we would traditionally consider mouths and/or vocal chords are still capable of producing magic).
Someone who is Deaf from birth would almost certainly not have any problems; either they'd have long ago picked up enough speech training to get by as casters, or they'd have have worked out, as a Deaf community, a way to develop more intricate somatic components that have a similar effect (a trade-off I'd be more than willing to make as a DM for a player who wanted to play a from-birth Deaf PC, automatically failing all sound-based perception checks for being able to write off verbal components).
Immoralkickass
Adventurer
Um, what? People who are deaf from birth are almost always mute. Nowadays its much better with hearing aids and cochlear implants, but back then, its near impossible to teach a deaf child spoken language.
Gradine
The Elephant in the Room (she/her)
(1) Speech training for those born Deaf is feasible without cochlear implants
(2) D&D typically features an egalitarian fantasy setting that has, definitionally, far more opportunities for people of all stripes than whatever real world historical time and place you could possibly be referring to as "back then"
(3) I can easily imagine such opportunities including established or developed workarounds for spellcasters-in-training who are born Deaf and incapable of what we would commonly understand as "speech" but not at all incapable of vocalization.
I discussed these ideas with my player who is also in the medical field. She was very adamant that being deaf temporarily would not significantly affect spell casting. She also like to play sorcerers.
Would you restrict the player from selecting an ally as a target for Blindness / Deafness?
Gradine
The Elephant in the Room (she/her)
That makes total sense. I buy that.
I'm not really sure the context for this question, but I don't see why not?
The context of this question gets to the first sentence of the spell Blindness / Deafness, "You can blind or deafen a foe." As a DM I would tend to as my player to think about how their target for this spell is a foe and then give them a chance to describe to me why one of their allies might be a foe. This example assume the wizard is casting deafness on an ally to help them in situations where being deaf if a benefit. Such situations might be a fight vs a banshee, a gibbering mouther, a NPC bard with vicious mockery, or similar creatures.
Gradine
The Elephant in the Room (she/her)
Oh. That really didn't factor into anything from my post that you quoted, which is why I got confused.
"Foe" isn't really an established game term. "Creature" is. Literally every other spell in the game that says "Choose one creature in range..." works exactly the same way; choose a creature, any creature (even yourself!) Why should this be any different?
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