D&D 5E The semantics of the spell Sending

[Mannahnin]

A few different spells use the word "familiar" (and there's probably more)....

Both locate object and locate creature use verbiage like:


Similarly, the spell clairvoyance refers to familiarity with respect to a location:


On the other hand, the scrying spell has a table defining the term:


There might be a little more nuance in the complete spell descriptions? But generally, the first few make it sound like a meeting in passing is sufficient; whereas the last one is specifically about more intimate acquaintance.
So... make of that what you will.

Thanks for this roundup.

I rule Sending to function more like Locate Object, Locate Creature, and Clairvoyance. Passing familiarity is enough; you must have seen (I would allow heard/conversed with, for a blind spellcaster) and be able to identify the person.

Another question - what happens if the recipient is asleep? Do they 'receive' the message when they wake up and can reply then, or does the message wake them up? The spell description says 'can answer in a like manner immediately', which very tenuously implies the latter. But that'd be a fairly nasty way of fighting a known spellcaster in that case - organise your party to send Sendings to them every 7 hours for a few days to make sure they can't get a long rest, then come at them when their spells are depleted and when they've got a few levels of exhaustion stacked on.

I don't see any good basis for ruling that a Sending would disrupt a long rest. The recipient can respond and resume rest without any issues. As DM I might say that they wake briefly, or that they experience the Sending as a lucid dream, in which they are able to process the message and respond as if awake.

A long rest is ruined by 1 hour of walking, any fighting, any spellcasting, or other similar strenuous activity.

Tangent, but I consider this a house rule. IMO the intent is clearly an hour total of strenuous activity; that the designers want PCs to be able to have a fight or two at night without it ruining the whole night's rest. Losing out on the Long Rest requires an extended interruption of an hour or more, and this is a deliberate change from older editions.

 

[Maxperson]

Tangent, but I consider this a house rule. IMO the intent is clearly an hour total of strenuous activity; that the designers want PCs to be able to have a fight or two at night without it ruining the whole night's rest. Losing out on the Long Rest requires an extended interruption of an hour or more, and this is a deliberate change from older editions.

A combat typically takes less than 10 rounds. But let's say 10 rounds for the combat. That's 60 encounters in the span of one night to break a long rest. Considering that the game is balanced around 5-8 encounters in an adventuring day, do you really think that they would make it so that it takes 60+ encounters to break a long rest. Or needing to cast 600 spells? Because 600 spells is an hour of spellcasting.

No. That's absurd. It has to be any amount of combat or spellcasting is considered to be strenuous or 1 hour of walking.

 

[Mannahnin]

A combat typically takes less than 10 rounds. But let's say 10 rounds for the combat. That's 60 encounters in the span of one night to break a long rest. Considering that the game is balanced around 5-8 encounters in an adventuring day, do you really think that they would make it so that it takes 60+ encounters to break a long rest. Or needing to cast 600 spells? Because 600 spells is an hour of spellcasting.

No. That's absurd. It has to be any amount of combat or spellcasting is considered to be strenuous or 1 hour of walking.

No. I understand the intent to be that a fight (or two, or three) by itself is never going to break a long rest. And neither is casting a spell.

But if a threat emerges which forces you to spend an hour or more in activity- for example, fighting and then breaking camp to move it somewhere safer, or fighting, being on alert for the sound of more enemies approaching for twenty minutes, fighting again, and then spending time rebuilding camp, disposing of bodies, (etc.) All that can add up to an hour or more of strenuous activity which will actually break the long rest.

It seems pretty clear to me that the intent in 5th is that you can have a fight or two on watch without it ruining a long rest. It has to be a more extended interruption to do that. I'd be supportive of a house rule to make any fight or casting ruin it, though, in the right campaign.

Anyway, this is all a tangent.

 

[aco175]

I would think that familiar would mean that I have conversed with them on a few occasions. If I went out to eat with my family, the waitress would not remember me the next day. My local coffee clerk after a couple weeks would recognize my voice and order, but not know my name. I would likely rule the second example to work, but not the first. In game terms, the local innkeeper would not count until the PCs stayed in the inn several times and became regulars. You could maybe rule that in smaller villages the occurrence of travelers is less and the time to know someone is less, but I would keep it to at least 4-5 stays.

 

[jgsugden]

You send a short message of twenty-five words or less to a creature with which you are familiar.

Your DM is the ultimate judge on what is familiar to your PC. In this context, I would say the definition that applies is something with which you are well acquainted. The easy standard, and the one that I use, is that you have to have either spent several hours with them or studied them briefly in order to make them eligible for sending.

The creature hears the message in its mind, recognizes you as the sender if it knows you, and can answer in a like manner immediately.

Knows is a much lower standard than familiar, so unless you studied the target in secret, it knows you.

The spell enables creatures with Intelligence scores of at least 1 to understand the meaning of your message.

And this is a primary reason it does not work in the real world.

You can send the message across any distance and even to other planes of existence, but if the target is on a different plane than you, there is a 5 percent chance that the message doesn't arrive.

This is horrible drafting. 5% of the time you have to waste an extra slot if the target is on another plane. Ugh. This is all unfun, no fun.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I would rule "familiar with" to include having seen them (including through scrying) or having a detailed description from somebody who has. I guess my test would be, "If I were writing a fantasy novel, what would be cool here?"

I mean...what's the point of being overly restrictive and saying 'no' to an interesting use of the spell?

 

[Bill Zebub]

5% of the time you have to waste an extra slot if the target is on another plane. Ugh. This is all unfun, no fun.

Agreed. Although, perhaps strangely, I'd be ok with a higher chance of failure with greater consequences. "If the creature is on another plane you must succeed at a DC 20 Arcana check, and if you fail there is a 10% chance the message goes to the wrong recipient, possibly attracting their attention."

Or require up-casting for alternate planes?

 

[Mannahnin]

I would rule "familiar with" to include having seen them (including through scrying) or having a detailed description from somebody who has. I guess my test would be, "If I were writing a fantasy novel, what would be cool here?"

I mean...what's the point of being overly restrictive and saying 'no' to an interesting use of the spell?

I suppose it's to put constraints and limitations on it which have to be accounted for or worked around.

Much like Teleportation Circle is limited by needing to know the runes at your destination circle, Sending is limited by having to have met/seen & be able to personally identify the recipient. I think this is probably better for most of my game worlds than letting people do it from just a description.

 

[Lyxen]

Your DM is the ultimate judge on what is familiar to your PC. In this context, I would say the definition that applies is something with which you are well acquainted. The easy standard, and the one that I use, is that you have to have either spent several hours with them or studied them briefly in order to make them eligible for sending.

Indeed, there are so many different ways of getting some level of acquaintance with someone that it would be impossible to list them and this is not 3e where we would add tons of small modifiers together, to be in any case overshadowed by the pure luck of a d20. YOu DM will tell you.

This is horrible drafting. 5% of the time you have to waste an extra slot if the target is on another plane. Ugh. This is all unfun, no fun.

It's a historical thing on the spell, but I agree that this relic from the past could really have been removed or at least updated to 5e. Percentages are almost never used nowdays, for example.

That being said, it's not (at least to me) as you say it. You don't know if the message is delivered, so you don't know whether you should try it again, for once. The only thing that you know is that you did not receive a reply, which might be for a number of reasons.

But for me, the main problem is that the "saving grace" of that feature in 3e was the fact that it was not a straight 5%: "Local conditions on other planes may worsen this chance considerably.)" And that may have meant a very different use of the spell, or made it more hazardous. Unfortunately, that sentence did not make it to 5e.

 

[Ancalagon]

1 hour of fighting or spellcasting is pretty much unheard of in D&D, in fiction anyway. A 10 round fight is only 1 minute. It has to be any fighting or spellcasting at all, which would be strenuous, or 1 hour of walking which gets strenuous after a long time.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

I am 99.9% sure that someone posted something showing that was not the case. Because if any fighting interrupts a long rest, long rests in the wild are now extremely dangerous because the smallest of attacks ruins the entire long rest. But this should be a separate thread...