This is a very strange question, however Sending can be used to send a message to a creature on another Plane of Existence with a 5% chance of failure. There is also the fact that I am not sure if they are counted as creatures or if they are categorized as something else.
My friend says no based on the fact that Jester could not Scry on the Traveler, in terms on not being able to use a gods own power to direct the magic at themselves.
However if they are creatures and the spell does succeed I argue that it is in fact the divine d&d equivalent of sending an email to yourself.
For the record I am the DM for our game, however I do not have an answer for this and would love input for this question. Also in our game we do not have a divine gate because at first I thought it would be a one-shot and I already had that as established lore later on when it became a campaign set in Wildmount.
No, it won't, because there's already a spell for chatting with gods: Divination. It's 4th level, which makes it much more powerful than Sending, and it's also got a ton of limitations, the most important being that you only get to ask a single question, and that's the whole conversation. Hope that helps!
The message gets through. Your 25 carefully chosen words arrive in your deity's Spam Folder. They sit there for a while because your deity has stuff to do. You know - it's a deity - kinda busy - can't stop deitying just to read every cantrip email sent by every follower in the multiverse. So yeah, your message gets through. Good for you. But... if you're expecting a response, sure, go ahead and have a seat right over there and feel free to hold your breath if it'll make you happy.
Eventually maybe your deity will have a bit of downtime in between battling demonic hordes and causing/preventing earthquakes, and maybe they'll browse through the 4,883,761 messages on their answering machine. And maybe they'll actually make it to yours before nodding off or getting bored and spreading a plague or something just to break up the monotony of immortality. But since all you sent was a cantrip, you'll be lucky if your message even gets a swift nasal exhalation of a response before being deleted and forgotten. I mean, come on, you sent a cantrip to a deity. That's like giving your wife vacuum cleaner bags as an anniversary present. I mean, technically it qualifies as a "present". It was wrapped, there was a bow, it had her name on it, all the prerequisites were met.
I'm just saying, you're probably not gonna get the response you were hoping for.
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Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Deities are creatures. "Creature" is the generic catch-all term that 5e uses, or are we prepared to say that it's literally impossible to attack a deity? They're not objects or locations.
You send a short message of twenty-five words or less to a creature with which you are familiar. 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. The spell enables creatures with Intelligence scores of at least 1 to understand the meaning of your message.
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.
On its face, Sending works, but there are caveats:
How familiar are you with your deity, and what is the threshold for familiarity?
You definitely have a relationship, but it's more like that of a retail worker to their company's CEO than it is to a direct supervisor or coworker. I doubt you're members of the same country club.
They don't have to reply
It's not a compulsion. Even if you vacation with your deity at their summer home every year, they're under no obligation to actually respond. Let it go to the answering machine...
The reply doesn't have to make sense
It's still not a compulsion. They could reply with "go to (location) to find your answer", or pass off your message to a subordinate to handle. "I'm sorry, the deity you are trying to reach is unavailable at this time. Please try again later."
Bottom line is your DM will have to adjudicate what qualifies as being "familiar" with a creature, and then go from there. For a Cleric that isn't at least level 10 (thus having Divine Intervention), I wouldn't say they're familiar enough for this spell, but others may rule differently at their tables.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
I would say that deities do not necessarily fall under the term of "creature".
This. It’s up to the DM whether or not a deity is a creature. The deity may be a creature, sitting on a throne in Celestia; it may be an object, a corpse floating through the astral plane; or it may not even exist at all.
I'm super tempted to have my cleric cast Sending to her God the next chance I get just to see what my DM says! :D
Personally I would think a cleric would have plenty of other ways of contacting their deity ...including other actual spells like Divination and Commune, as well as straight up praying. So it would make sense to go that route first. But I wonder if Sending would get more notice for something important. Using a non-standard channel to deliver a message might get more of a reaction than the "usual" prayers.
It also reminds me of a quote from an episode of M*A*S*H I've always thought about when playing clerics. "Is it true that God answers all prayers?" "Yes, but sometimes the answer is no."
I'd say yeah Sending should reach a god, same as a prayer would I suppose. Though as you are the DM of that game you should handle the response (if any) with care. Last thing you want is that the inbox of the god get's flooded constantly when players try to squeeze easy answers out of them.
There have been many examples how gods might behave given above. Just choose one or more to decide wether a divine reaction is driving the story or completely derailing it.
In the cosmology there are different levels of deities. See page 11 DMG. Some gods are worshiped on multiple worlds and have a different rank on each world, depending on their influence there. But there are 3 ranks:
Greater deities: are beyond mortal understanding. They can't be summoned, and they are almost always removed from direct involvement in mortal affairs. On very rare occasions they manifest avatars similar to lesser deities, but slaying a greater god's avatar has no effect on the god itself. I would guess that these beings are Not classified as creatures and exist in a state beyond our understanding. You would probably not be able to contact them with a sending spell.
Lesser deities: are embodied somewhere in the planes. They physically exist and could be considered creatures. Some lesser deities live in the Material Plane, like the archfey unicorn-goddess Lurue of the Forgotten Realms or the titanic shark-god Sekolah revered by the sahuagin. Others live on the Outer Planes, as Lolth does in the Abyss or Tiamat in Avernus. Such deities can be encountered by mortals and I would say you could possibly contact them... if they allowed it. They are certainly at a power level to not allow it or to simply ignore you if they didn’t wish to acknowledge you.
Quasi-deities: have a divine origin, but they don't hear or answer prayers, grant spells to clerics, or control aspects of mortal life. They are still immensely powerful beings, and in theory they could ascend to godhood if they amassed enough worshipers. Quasi-deities fall into three subcategories: demigods, titans, and vestiges.
Demigods are born from the union of a deity and a mortal being. They have some divine attributes, but their mortal parentage makes them the weakest quasi-deities.
Titans are the divine creations of deities. They might be birthed from the union of two deities, manufactured on a divine forge, born from the blood spilled by a god, or otherwise brought about through divine will or substance. Like an Empyrean
Vestiges are deities who have lost nearly all their worshipers and are considered dead, from a mortal perspective. Esoteric rituals can sometimes contact these beings and draw on their latent power.
Check out my Disabled & Dragons Youtube Channel for 5e Monster and Player Tactics. Helping the Disabled Community and Players and DM’s (both new and experienced) get into D&D. Plus there is a talking Dragon named Quill.
Just because you know a name for your god doesn’t mean it’s the god’s actual name. If I was a god, I wouldn’t go around giving out my true name to any rando who said they want to worship me. Like when I sign up for things that require a phone number and use the number from my landline I never answer. Others can make the phone ring, sure, but I don’t pick it up.
Are you saying that Xalthu is not your real name???
Well... now I just don't know WHAT to trust anymore!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
"You send a short message of twenty-five words or less to a creature with which you are familiar. 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. The spell enables creatures with Intelligence scores of at least 1 to understand the meaning of your message.
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."
As long as: 1-It's 25 or less words. 2-You are somehow familiar (A god you follow or met for example). 3-It chooses to answer. (It's a God/Deity, so it probably god respond with it's own way later). 4-It's alive with at least 1 in intelligence.
1- The part of "recognizes you as the sender if it knows you", points to the fact it doesn't need to, nor do you need to see them. Just know whom exactly you want to try sending to. 2- It bypasses all vanilla DND boundaries. Outside maybe specific spells and/or items. having also unlimited distance. 3- There is a 1/20 chance of it failing. Maybe any DM reading this, can make the odds harder. [Example: Every level a player has, is another 5% chance to have it work. Since a level 20+ is rare in all campaigns]
Simply, Yes. It should be allowed and work. But, the conditions of the normal vanilla spell need to be met logically. If a DM wants to reasonably make it harder than 1/20 chance of failing for creatures, such as GODS, then I gave a reasonable example. Which when a character would naturally have this spell, it would be level 5. Which would be a 5/20 chance to succeed, via my example to limit a character.
My friend says no based on the fact that Jester could not Scry on the Traveler, in terms on not being able to use a gods own power to direct the magic at themselves.
Basing any rules answer on Critical Role is ill advised. They houserule and homebrew quite a bit on that show, and make no pretense otherwise. I believe Matt Mercer's exact words in the first episode were "loosey-goosey". :)
Deities may be creatures, but the spell requires the target to be "a creature with which you are familiar." I'd rule that most clerics aren't familiar with their deities in the way required for this spell to work. Have they met in person? Had any meaningful conversations? Daily prayers don't count, unless the deity personally answers on a regular basis. News flash: that does not happen.
Does the deity know the cleric by name? I don't think so, unless it's an all-knowing deity. But then, if they know everyone's name by their very nature, we couldn't reliably use "knowing someone's name" as an indicator of familiarity, anyway.
Personally I'd rule that deities in their raw form are far beyond the term "creatures", because as mortals we simply cannot comprehend them. Their avatars would be considered creatures, but their avatars are just a small piece of themselves manifesting in a way that we can comprehend.
Plus, there are spells that explicitly put you in contact with your deity, so using sending seems like a very roundabout way of doing the same thing.
This is a very strange question, however Sending can be used to send a message to a creature on another Plane of Existence with a 5% chance of failure. There is also the fact that I am not sure if they are counted as creatures or if they are categorized as something else.
My friend says no based on the fact that Jester could not Scry on the Traveler, in terms on not being able to use a gods own power to direct the magic at themselves.
However if they are creatures and the spell does succeed I argue that it is in fact the divine d&d equivalent of sending an email to yourself.
For the record I am the DM for our game, however I do not have an answer for this and would love input for this question. Also in our game we do not have a divine gate because at first I thought it would be a one-shot and I already had that as established lore later on when it became a campaign set in Wildmount.
No, it won't, because there's already a spell for chatting with gods: Divination. It's 4th level, which makes it much more powerful than Sending, and it's also got a ton of limitations, the most important being that you only get to ask a single question, and that's the whole conversation. Hope that helps!
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I would say that deities do not necessarily fall under the term of "creature".
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I'm gonna say "yes, but."
The message gets through. Your 25 carefully chosen words arrive in your deity's Spam Folder. They sit there for a while because your deity has stuff to do. You know - it's a deity - kinda busy - can't stop deitying just to read every cantrip email sent by every follower in the multiverse. So yeah, your message gets through. Good for you. But... if you're expecting a response, sure, go ahead and have a seat right over there and feel free to hold your breath if it'll make you happy.
Eventually maybe your deity will have a bit of downtime in between battling demonic hordes and causing/preventing earthquakes, and maybe they'll browse through the 4,883,761 messages on their answering machine. And maybe they'll actually make it to yours before nodding off or getting bored and spreading a plague or something just to break up the monotony of immortality. But since all you sent was a cantrip, you'll be lucky if your message even gets a swift nasal exhalation of a response before being deleted and forgotten. I mean, come on, you sent a cantrip to a deity. That's like giving your wife vacuum cleaner bags as an anniversary present. I mean, technically it qualifies as a "present". It was wrapped, there was a bow, it had her name on it, all the prerequisites were met.
I'm just saying, you're probably not gonna get the response you were hoping for.
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Anzio Faro. Lvl 5 Prot. Aasimar Light Cleric.
Deities are creatures. "Creature" is the generic catch-all term that 5e uses, or are we prepared to say that it's literally impossible to attack a deity? They're not objects or locations.
On its face, Sending works, but there are caveats:
Bottom line is your DM will have to adjudicate what qualifies as being "familiar" with a creature, and then go from there. For a Cleric that isn't at least level 10 (thus having Divine Intervention), I wouldn't say they're familiar enough for this spell, but others may rule differently at their tables.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Sure they can cast the spell. What happens (or doesn't happen) as a result is a storytelling decision.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
This. It’s up to the DM whether or not a deity is a creature. The deity may be a creature, sitting on a throne in Celestia; it may be an object, a corpse floating through the astral plane; or it may not even exist at all.
I'm super tempted to have my cleric cast Sending to her God the next chance I get just to see what my DM says! :D
Personally I would think a cleric would have plenty of other ways of contacting their deity ...including other actual spells like Divination and Commune, as well as straight up praying. So it would make sense to go that route first. But I wonder if Sending would get more notice for something important. Using a non-standard channel to deliver a message might get more of a reaction than the "usual" prayers.
It also reminds me of a quote from an episode of M*A*S*H I've always thought about when playing clerics.
"Is it true that God answers all prayers?"
"Yes, but sometimes the answer is no."
Find me on Twitter: @OboeLauren
I'd say yeah Sending should reach a god, same as a prayer would I suppose. Though as you are the DM of that game you should handle the response (if any) with care. Last thing you want is that the inbox of the god get's flooded constantly when players try to squeeze easy answers out of them.
There have been many examples how gods might behave given above. Just choose one or more to decide wether a divine reaction is driving the story or completely derailing it.
In the cosmology there are different levels of deities. See page 11 DMG. Some gods are worshiped on multiple worlds and have a different rank on each world, depending on their influence there. But there are 3 ranks:
Greater deities: are beyond mortal understanding. They can't be summoned, and they are almost always removed from direct involvement in mortal affairs. On very rare occasions they manifest avatars similar to lesser deities, but slaying a greater god's avatar has no effect on the god itself. I would guess that these beings are Not classified as creatures and exist in a state beyond our understanding. You would probably not be able to contact them with a sending spell.
Lesser deities: are embodied somewhere in the planes. They physically exist and could be considered creatures. Some lesser deities live in the Material Plane, like the archfey unicorn-goddess Lurue of the Forgotten Realms or the titanic shark-god Sekolah revered by the sahuagin. Others live on the Outer Planes, as Lolth does in the Abyss or Tiamat in Avernus. Such deities can be encountered by mortals and I would say you could possibly contact them... if they allowed it. They are certainly at a power level to not allow it or to simply ignore you if they didn’t wish to acknowledge you.
Quasi-deities: have a divine origin, but they don't hear or answer prayers, grant spells to clerics, or control aspects of mortal life. They are still immensely powerful beings, and in theory they could ascend to godhood if they amassed enough worshipers. Quasi-deities fall into three subcategories: demigods, titans, and vestiges.
Check out my Disabled & Dragons Youtube Channel for 5e Monster and Player Tactics. Helping the Disabled Community and Players and DM’s (both new and experienced) get into D&D. Plus there is a talking Dragon named Quill.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPPmyTI0tZ6nM-bzY0IG3ww
My personal ruling is that a deity is not a "creature".
Easy rule of thumb: if it don't have a stat block, you can't cast sending to it.
Just because you know a name for your god doesn’t mean it’s the god’s actual name. If I was a god, I wouldn’t go around giving out my true name to any rando who said they want to worship me. Like when I sign up for things that require a phone number and use the number from my landline I never answer. Others can make the phone ring, sure, but I don’t pick it up.
Are you saying that Xalthu is not your real name???
Well... now I just don't know WHAT to trust anymore!
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Anzio Faro. Lvl 5 Prot. Aasimar Light Cleric.
It’s a family name. From the old country.
Sending: Unlimited Range.
"You send a short message of twenty-five words or less to a creature with which you are familiar. 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. The spell enables creatures with Intelligence scores of at least 1 to understand the meaning of your message.
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."
As long as: 1-It's 25 or less words. 2-You are somehow familiar (A god you follow or met for example). 3-It chooses to answer. (It's a God/Deity, so it probably god respond with it's own way later). 4-It's alive with at least 1 in intelligence.
1- The part of "recognizes you as the sender if it knows you", points to the fact it doesn't need to, nor do you need to see them. Just know whom exactly you want to try sending to.
2- It bypasses all vanilla DND boundaries. Outside maybe specific spells and/or items. having also unlimited distance.
3- There is a 1/20 chance of it failing. Maybe any DM reading this, can make the odds harder. [Example: Every level a player has, is another 5% chance to have it work. Since a level 20+ is rare in all campaigns]
Simply, Yes. It should be allowed and work. But, the conditions of the normal vanilla spell need to be met logically. If a DM wants to reasonably make it harder than 1/20 chance of failing for creatures, such as GODS, then I gave a reasonable example. Which when a character would naturally have this spell, it would be level 5. Which would be a 5/20 chance to succeed, via my example to limit a character.
Message is a cantrip.
Sending is a 3rd level spell.
Also what is the 3 clerics, and 1 Sorcerer thing about?
Basing any rules answer on Critical Role is ill advised. They houserule and homebrew quite a bit on that show, and make no pretense otherwise. I believe Matt Mercer's exact words in the first episode were "loosey-goosey". :)
Deities may be creatures, but the spell requires the target to be "a creature with which you are familiar." I'd rule that most clerics aren't familiar with their deities in the way required for this spell to work. Have they met in person? Had any meaningful conversations? Daily prayers don't count, unless the deity personally answers on a regular basis. News flash: that does not happen.
Does the deity know the cleric by name? I don't think so, unless it's an all-knowing deity. But then, if they know everyone's name by their very nature, we couldn't reliably use "knowing someone's name" as an indicator of familiarity, anyway.
Forget about it; this is getting ridiculous.
Behind every successful Warlock, there's an angry mob.
Personally I'd rule that deities in their raw form are far beyond the term "creatures", because as mortals we simply cannot comprehend them. Their avatars would be considered creatures, but their avatars are just a small piece of themselves manifesting in a way that we can comprehend.
Plus, there are spells that explicitly put you in contact with your deity, so using sending seems like a very roundabout way of doing the same thing.
RAW yes
RAI maybe :)
Either way I agree the deity can decide to ignore and even get upset at this.