Great Old Ones and detect thoughts

[stewstew5]

The first level feature of a Great Old Ones warlock is as follows:
“Starting at 1st level, your alien knowledge gives you the ability to touch the minds of other creatures. You can communicate telepathically with any creature you can see within 30 feet of you. You don't need to share a language with the creature for it to understand your telepathic utterances, but the creature must be able to understand at least one language”

Detect thoughts had the following stipulation: “Questions verbally directed at the target creature naturally shape the course of its thoughts”

Since this indicates any calling attention to ideas brings then to the “surface level” of the targets thoughts, could a great old ones warlock inject the idea of fear into a target’s mind, and learn there deepest fears through it?

[stewstew5]

Follow up question: does the target know you are reading it’s thoughts no matter what, or only if you are probing deeper into its mind?

[Lunali]

You might be able to ask them about their fears and find out about some of them, but their deepest fear might not be one that they know about consciously.

If you attempt to probe deeper, the target definitely knows that you're probing, but there is no indication either way for surface thoughts so it will depend on your DM.

[Keravath]

Just a heads up, but apparently, the communication provided by the Awakened Mind feature is one way, allowing the warlock to transmit but not receive. Personally, I kind of disagree with that interpretation but I guess the designers figured it would be too useful otherwise. The ruling can be found in the current sage advice compendium.

"Does the warlock’s Awakened Mind feature allow two-way telepathic communication?
The feature is intended to provide one-way communication. The warlock can use the feature to speak telepathically to a creature, but the feature doesn’t give that creature the ability to telepathically reply. In contrast, the telepathy ability that some monsters have (MM, 9) does make two-way communication possible."

[Millstone85]

Just a heads up, but apparently, the communication provided by the Awakened Mind feature is one way, allowing the warlock to transmit but not receive. Personally, I kind of disagree with that interpretation but I guess the designers figured it would be too useful otherwise.Not so much an interpretation than a correction.

The text has been changed from "communicate telepathically" to "telepathically speak to".

[stewstew5]

Just a heads up, but apparently, the communication provided by the Awakened Mind feature is one way, allowing the warlock to transmit but not receive. Personally, I kind of disagree with that interpretation but I guess the designers figured it would be too useful otherwise. The ruling can be found in the current sage advice compendium.

"Does the warlock’s Awakened Mind feature allow two-way telepathic communication?
The feature is intended to provide one-way communication. The warlock can use the feature to speak telepathically to a creature, but the feature doesn’t give that creature the ability to telepathically reply. In contrast, the telepathy ability that some monsters have (MM, 9) does make two-way communication possible."

That’s why I’m including detect thoughts in this

[MaxWilson]

Not so much an interpretation than a correction.

The text has been changed from "communicate telepathically" to "telepathically speak to".

Feel free to change it back though if you think the change is lame.

[Chronos]

Detect Thoughts is useful, but it's not a mind-probe. If you're using it and ask someone "what do you fear?", you might well get that they're afraid that you'll attack them, or that they're afraid that they left the garage door open. This might happen even if you ask "what is your deepest fear?" or the like, because they're not forced to think about exactly what you want them to think about. Contrary to the old saying, it is in fact really easy to avoid thinking about a purple elephant.

Nor does it make a big difference to do this using Awakened Mind, rather than just talking. The only advantages to using Awakened Mind would be that you could bypass a language barrier, and you could do it without anyone else knowing.