D&D 5E The semantics of the spell Sending

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...
Resting has been supposed to be dangerous in dangerous areas since the game began.
 

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It already is dangerous, several party members are sleeping...
That has always been the case. Being interrupted has interrupted the rest. If they made a change to cause it to require 60+ encounters worth of fighting or 600 spells to interrupt a long rest, they've pretty much removed a huge chunk of the danger in a rather ridiculous manner.
 

Indeed. No proper campaign is complete until the PCs have endured a recurring herd of irate demon-squirrels chucking acorns at them in the middle of the night for weeks on end.
 

All right, so because the OP's topic is interesting, and to stop derailing the thread, I've created a new one here:

 

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...
Is that a bad thing?
Searching for a safe haven?
Usually having too many long rests is what makes travelling unfun, because you can't challenge the party with "fair" means or massive amounts of encounters.
 

Since there is explicit language for the case the target doesn't know the caster despite the familiarity requirement, I'd allow the Margo Robbie situation.

If you're a player, easy, ask your DM.
If you're the DM, tough luck. Go on an Internet forum and hope nobody tell you to ask your DM :)

You'll have to determine what level of information the character must acquire to be familiar with someone without the target necessarily knowing the sender. Is one familiar with all his coworkers outside immediate collegues ? Is having met enough ? Is the character familiar with a mere employer?

You'll also have to determine if the sender knows intuitively when he's familiar enough for the purpose of the spell (so he doesn't lose a spell slot) or if you prefer him to cast it in the wild without knowing (unless an answer is given there is no way to know whether the sending got through) of his secret admirer routine/careful study of the target was enough.

From what I have seen the players mostly use it for intra party communication (so familiarity can be assumed) but it might be used for emergency communication. If you declare that the target is unsuitably familiar without havibg a clear idea of why, you might pass for this kind of DM that doesn't design adventures to take PC powers into account and resort to nerfing them. And you risk to teach the players to develop a sending-routine of testing sending with potential contacts while they are safe to ensure communication later when they will need it, if they have been burned once. Which isn't very fun.

I'd err on the side of player empowerment and give them a lot of leeway, not introduce "loss of familiarity" (are you still familiar with your old childhood friend you have not seen in 20 year?) and generally let the spell work but the target could use its 25 word to answer "who are you? what, you creep, you've been studying me?!? STOP THAT!"

And don't count words too strictly either. Insisting on exactly 25 will just have the group hunt for synonyms and convoluted writing style and since the target doesn't need a common language with the author you'll soon be faced with the question: is draconic an agglutinative language?
 
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