as I sais, if you want it to not be implausible, it does affect worldbuilding...
For you to know a messenger everywhere whenever you want to sent a message to your contact, there are basically two options
- there is a universe spanning network of villains, and you 'know' all their contacts, so that you can go to them and send your message
- you are incredibly lucky and one of the handful or so of messengers you know just so happens to be around whenever you need one
Or any of the options I've brought up in many of the previous posts I've made.
Now it is not enough to just hand your message over, you expect something to be sent back too, and all of this should not take months, as by then it would be pointless. So next you need a way to get messages across different worlds in a fast and reliable fashion, which makes powerful magic commonplace
So, you mean, in basically any D&D world, right? Because most of the currently-official D&D worlds and what I would imagine to be a huge chunk of homebrew worlds have a
lot of magic and magitech in them. Or even regular tech. It's just that many DMs don't actually sit down and think of the ramifications of that magic. By RAW,
sending stones are an uncommon item.
Logically, that means that any decently-sized organization will have them, and if your PC is in good standing, they may get the other half of the pair. And
sending itself is only third level.
And the sky's the limit if you go for homebrew items and spells, or converting things from earlier editions.
I googled "D&D long-range communication" and found interesting concepts such as "magic mouth telephone" (no idea how that would work, but the idea sounds cool), "magically enhanced pigeons," and regular messenger services like runners or a pony express, and a homebrew
background. Not to mention using all sorts of spells.
OK, so maybe you have a low-magic world. Cool. I like those. You still have messenger guilds and normal homing pigeons (or other homing animal; low magic doesn't mean no weird creatures, after all).
Anyway, show me where the feature says that you're expected to get a reply quickly. And who says that you even
need a reply? Sure, for many messages you want one, but just as many are going to be reports or warnings, with no replies necessary. You're
interpreting "can send a message" to mean "if they don't get a reply back instantly, it's useless," but that's waaaay out there.
So we now have a global villain network with 'uniforms' that members can recognize and access to a net of teleporter stations to send messages across the multiverse, and all of this because your criminal background supposedly is not limited to the region your character is from...
I have given you dozens of options over the last hundred pages. You choose to ignore them because you can only focus on the worst-case scenario, which you only even think about because you are trying to go by the strictest RAW possible instead of by RAI or Rule of Cool.
Do you go by this strict an interpretation of RAW for any other aspect of the game? Do you refuse to let your players take a long rest until they've had 6-8 Medium Encounters in a day? Do you actually let people grapple a gelatinous cube and not take damage because the cube can't Engulf the PC while grappled? Do make it so that people who can see invisible creatures still attack them at disadvantage? Do you insist that cats can't jump because they have a negative Strength modifier, but elephants
can jump in D&D (even though they can't jump in real life)?
I mean, seriously. You want to talk about illogical and ridiculous? It's this
insistance of yours that you can't use this feature unless you personally know the messenger.
across many worlds? this is your background feature, there is no way you know them across worlds
Please show me concrete examples of games you've been in where people have tried to use this feature across many worlds. Can you show me more than one?
Because if you can't, then all you're doing is dismissing a feature simply because there's a nonzero chance that it
may be used in a way you don't like. How is
that logical? That makes as much sense to me as those DMs who nerf sneak attack damage because they think it's OP and takes away from fighters.
And if you
can, then that just indicates to me that your players want a very different type of game than you do.
So you have to use two very strenuous interpretations
If by "strenuous interpretations" you mean "primary definitions," then sure.
