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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 7369162" data-attributes="member: 12731">Sorry but you wrote "Random question occurred to me as a I read this thread: can you use telepathy to communicate with a petrified person?"It was not clear to me you were asking about personal opinions. I thought you asked about RAW, and my reply should be read "there is no RAW on this, the individual DM's ruling is decisive". Formally, of course, there *is* RAW on this. A petrified victim is not a statue and not an object, merely a flesh-and-blood creature afflicted by the Petrified condition. And so the answer is clearly "yes" since nothing says the petrified creature cease to be a valid target for telepathy, and nothing says the petrified creature cease to be conscious and able to respond mentally.But to many players this is clearly (and outrageously) unreasonable. Not only are most petrified victims described as statues - if they really remained creatures, it would be trivial to find out whether a statue really is a creature using wholly unwelcome meta tactics - simply cast any spell that targets only creatures, not objects, at the statue.Besides the horror aspect would be a hundred times worse. Common sense says that any victim of petrification would be utterly insane if her mind was trapped inside the stone shell - it is a popular trope to find victims of a Medusa's gaze, and going by RAW here would be a hard no for gamers reading about "N.N. was petrified a hundred years ago".  The rules say petrification turns you into a "solid inanimate substance". Reasoning you can still think while your brain is made out of stone is not a given conclusion. The rules say a petrified creature can't take actions or reactions, and can’t move or speak. While that's good enough from a combat perspective - it's very close to functionally identical to being unconscious - it is not good enough for many gamers. Just because you can't take actions and can't speak doesn't mean your mind isn't in anguish. It is far better, this line of reasoning goes, to simply say the victim is both creature (for purposes of un-petrification) and object (for pretty much everything else).RegardsPS. Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to rule it the other way too. "Maybe the magic fortifies the petrified creature's mind so it isn't so damn sensitive; maybe making it think like an earth elemental or something". After all it's magic - and the Flesh to Stone spell doesn't say "the victim slowly goes insane if left in the petrified state for long".</blockquote>

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