I think we even have a different understanding of what 'sensible' means, finding wild excuses to get it to work is not what I mean by that, so no. My primary goal is not to find a way to get it to work, with no consideration for anything else
Absolutely nothing I've said has been a "wild excuse." That's
your misinterpretation of what I'm doing, because you want to stick so heavily to RAW.
no, as I said it needs to make sense and if you tell me that seeing someone for the first time and knowing 'hey, this is not only a shady guy who could be a messenger, but they also know how to reach my contact', then we are far beyond any kind of reason as far as I am concerned
Again, completely misinterpreting what I wrote.
A criminal is going to be able to determine that someone else is a criminal. The DM may tell the PC that they automatically recognize a tattoo, scar, or other mark that's definitely means criminal. Or the DM may require an Intelligence or Insight roll--perhaps with a low DC or with advantage--to see if they know what criminals from other lands are like or if they can spot the tells. The player then roleplays and/or uses skills to determine if this person could potentially act as a messenger and/or knows the contact.
Or--if the idea that they could get to their original contract is too "ridiculous"--this potential messenger could, with roleplay and/or skill rolls, be convinced to introduce the PC to someone who could eventually become a
new contact. (There's literally nothing in the feature that says that the PC can
only have a single contact, after all.)
In either of these cases, the DM may decide that non-criminals can't do any of the above (niche protection), or they can attempt to make criminal contacts, but it's harder or riskier.
See? Nothing automatic. No sudden knowledge at first sight. Instead, all it takes is for the DM to have the same level of judgement they have to use with practically every single other thing in the book.
("But the background indicates its automatic!" To that I say, so $!&% what? Use your own judgement to decide if something is automatic or not.)
As an example of something else requiring judgement, the
charm person spell. The charmed person sees the caster as a "friendly acquaintance," and that's the only thing the spell's description says. So what,
precisely, does that mean?
- Some DMs will decide it means the charmed person will do anything for the caster that doesn't require too much effort or is dangerous.
- Some DMs will decide it means the charmed person will smile and say 'hi,' but that's about it.
- Some DMs will decide it means just like the charmed condition that dryads inflict and say that the charmed person will try to protect the caster and will believe everything they say and do what's asked of them.
- Some DMs will go strictly by the book's definition of the condition and say that the charmed person will act exactly the same as before, but the caster just gets advantage on checks made to interact socially with them.
The DM has to use their judgement here, which will be based on a mixture of the DM's own social awareness and what will work best for the game--and that might mean that the spell will act differently at different times.
And so, with the backgrounds, they don't
need to go into huge amounts of detail, because you've seen how many pages we've been arguing over those details. All they require is that you use your judgement for the details, but let them work. You wouldn't shut down
charm person just because the PHB doesn't define "friendly acquaintance," so don't shut down the background because it doesn't define every possible way it can be used. The PCs are on another plane? Let them find someone who will cast
sending for them if they can't already cast it themselves, or let them find a new contact and new messengers.
I understand that, I am not sure what your point is. Are you saying the criminal should be limited to one town, similar to the home temple? Are you saying the criminal should not be limited to an area because the temples can be in other places?
<Sigh> Not at all.
The acolyte can get healing for free at any temple of their faith (provided they supply the material components), but only at their home temple can they get the priests to help them in other ways, especially ways that may prove to be dangerous.
The criminal, presented in the same book, doesn't have any sort of similar limitation as to range, and in fact specifically says you can get in touch with your contact even at long distances.
The writers, unless they were
grossly incompetent when it came to editing for consistency, didn't feel that criminals needed the same sort limitations that acolytes had, or feel they needed to update the criminal in errata or later printings.
As I said, your faith can very much also be a local one and have no temples outside say, a continent, let alone on other worlds.
Sure. And that is up to the DM to describe. But if the player made an acolyte of a god that
wasn't some niche localized deity and the DM then tells them that their faith covers only a few square miles and they'll never be able to use that feature anywhere outside of that, the player would probably feel very cheated.
As to the DM being able to override the feature and make it more widely or less widely applicable, that is a given. There is nothing special about this feature that would require pointing this out for this one but not the others.
I would assume they were written by different people who had different assumptions or writing styles. One writer felt the need to specify things. The other writer took it as a given.
