People are dangerous. You’re using nit picking as a rhetorical device, rather than trying to engage seriously with other people in a discussion.
Then they are a threat and PCs who notice people can't be surprised, by RAW.
of course you can. 100%. It requires stealth, but unless they are just more Alert than is normally possible, they can be ambushed and taken by surprise.
The dragon con can get surprise on the party just like assassins posing as merchants could, though I’d put the dragon at Disadvantage to ease the worry of the adventurers, where the assassins would roll their deception straight. I’m not sure what is confusing there.
No offense, but I wouldn't want to play in a game where I'm forced to be clueless next to a dragon just so that it can surprise me. Not even Forest Gump would be caught off guard by a dragon.
Those aren’t contradictions. You can communicate however you’re able. Ie by any means you’re capable of. Sign language, speech, telepathy, whatever. The game doesn’t care. You can’t soak at length. You have to keep it short.
The game does care. It limits you to exactly two forms of communication. Verbal(utterances) and gestures.
Oh, and BTW, it’s completely normal and broadly accepted to use terms for spoken communication when discussing telepathy.
Happens all the time in the real world does it? I can't think of being in or hearing about enough conversations regarding telepathy that I would describe it as "normal" and "broadly accepted" to use terms for spoken communication to describe it. I really doubt enough people have had that conversation to qualify as either normal or broadly accepted.
Books that I've read sometimes make it images, or they just understand each other without words, or they hear, but not really hear, words in their head.
It’s not wrong, though. Common usage is literally always correct, by definition. Using terminology originally intended for verbal speech to talk about telepathy is the common usage for speaking about telepathy.
The common usage for utterance is verbal only. That's the common usage, which you say is literally always correct. It's not just uncommon, it's bloody rare for people to even be discussing telepathy at all, let alone using the word utterance when doing it.
Further, in agame written in natural language, obviously clear RAI *is* RAW, in any case where the writing itself makes RAI obviously clear.
Not according to Jeremy Crawford who puts in the RAW interpretation of rules into the Sage Advice, and then includes the RAI interpretation as something separate.
It is a contest. It is a direct context between every combatant, just like deception vs insight, or two character using insight to see who is going to flinch/move/lose their nerve first in a game of chicken
This is flat out wrong. A contest is when you have two ability checks in direct opposition to one another, such as when one person is trying open a door, and the other trying to close it.
A "contest" like a javelin toss might use ability checks to see how far you throw the javelin, but that does not qualify as a contest as written in the PHB. Per RAW there are only two times you have a contest.
"Sometimes one character’s or monster’s efforts are directly opposed to another’s.
This can occur when both of them are trying to do the same thing and only one can succeed, such as attempting to snatch up a magic ring that has fallen on the floor. This situation also applies
when one of them is trying to prevent the other one from accomplishing a goal—for example, when a monster tries to force open a door that an adventurer is holding closed. In situations like these, the outcome is determined by a special form of ability check, called a contest."
When you roll initiative, you are not engaging in an act in which only one can succeed, nor are you trying to prevent anyone else from accomplishing initiative. There is no contest as defined by RAW.
