Faolyn
(she/her)
With the Vistani, I believe it was established that they can cross planar lines. Whether they can in your game or not is up to you--I don't think I'd allow it in my game, but as I said, I don't like the "weekend in hell" Ravenloft and prefer that people who happen to fall into Ravenloft stay in Ravenloft, Vistani included.I still have not seen any indication that they could reliably get a message to your contact on another plane, I am not sure they even can at all, and they still have no reason to, just because you have the criminal background
That being said, I did say whether the Vistani would help you or not depends on a lot of factors. If the party goes out of their way to help them in a matter of life or death, they may be more than willing to get a message somewhere. Which doesn't need to be across planar lines, because as I've also said, there's nothing stopping a PC from getting another contact.
Except that the criminal PC has an edge. Their feature grants them a contact. If they can't have access to One Eyed Bob because Bob is in another city/continent/planet/plane, then they can get a new one. The fact that "anyone" can do that is irrelevant.you cannot just leave a message in a hollow trunk and it somehow makes it to your contact... Magic I disregarded because we are talking about the feature, not about ways to contact a person. For the same reason establishing new contacts is irrelevant, anyone can do that.
And as I pointed out, there's many ways to do that. That makes the messenger unimportant. The messenger isn't the one who is going to introduce you to the criminal network, after all.no, the messenger is relevant because that is how you get the message to your contact
And as I said before, there's nothing stopping you from meeting new messengers. I would require the player to RP that out first, but once they did, they'd know a messenger who can get a message to their contact, who may be One-Eyed Bob, his Dark-Powers-supplied simulacrum, or someone entirely new.whatever they mean by that... it also says you know the messengers, so if you are in a place where you know no one, you are out of luck with that
So tell me. If this is the case, what do you do with players whose backgrounds give them a contact or way to send messages? What sort of feature do you give them in exchange for removing their existing one?I do not need a feature for the characters to get messages to people in organizations they have met in the game, or does that not work in your game unless someone chose the criminal background...