Telepathy and Hearing

[Gale]

I'm curious if people believe that telepathic communication in D&D counts as hearing for the sake of abilities such as Bardic Inspiration, Suggestion, etc.

This thought was inspired by a picture next to the Telepathic feat in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything where "a telepathic Bard inspires her wizard companion." When I first saw this picture I thought this was a really clever way to use the feat. But giving it some more thought I realized that this doesn't actually work. Bardic Inspiration requires the creature you are inspiring to hear you. Telepathy does not involve hearing, rather it ostensibly bypasses the senses to send a message directly to a creature's mind.

Now, a counterargument would be to say that telepathy does involve hearing. One could theorize that it effectively stimulates a person's mind in the same way as actual, audible speech would, and therefore should count as hearing. But if this is hearing then does that mean you can't speak telepathically to a creature who's deafened? The deafened condition explicitly says you can't hear, and doesn't elaborate further. It seems silly to say that telepathy involves hearing and therefore deafened creatures can't hear telepathy; but there is no support to say that telepathy bypasses deafened either. Therefore it can't involve hearing.

My friends seem to believe that telepathy both involves hearing and bypasses deafened. However, I can't really find this opinion defensible. If telepathy was explicitly stated to bypass the deafened condition then I might agree, but it doesn't. They seem to believe the deafened conditions only refers to the mundane, physical inability to hear. That is an intuitive interpretation and most likely what the designers intended. But the condition doesn't specify anything more than, "A deafened creature can't hear and automatically fails any ability check that requires hearing." If there are multiple types of hearing in D&D, such as hearing messages telepathically, then being deafened would prevent you from hearing them as well. If the condition was not intended to block the hearing of telepathically sent messages then it would have clarified.

Even if we were to concede that telepathy does involve hearing, and the deafened condition only refers to mundane hearing we are still left with a problem. What does the word "hear" mean in every other use case? It is never clarified. Therefore we would have to assume that it means the same thing as it does when it's used to define how being deafened works. Or in other words, whenever an ability says a creature must be able to hear you, it means they need to be able to hear you through ordinary, mundane means. If they can only hear you telepathically then the ability does not work. There is no way to infer that the use of the word "hear" in the description of an ability like Bardic Inspiration includes telepathic hearing, but it does not include telepathic hearing when used to define being deafened. That would be entirely arbitrary. Words and phrases that get used frequently in a rulebook should have simple, static meanings so that they can be easily understood.

Ultimately, I'm not trying to say that abilities like Bardic Inspiration shouldn't be usable through telepathy. I think the game designers likely intended for it work this way, and I don't think it would create an issue if allowed. I simply don't believe it works according to the rules as written. But I am wondering what other people think about this. My friends seemed really steadfast in their opinions which makes me think I'm looking at this whole thing the wrong way.

[OldTrees1]

Depends on which type of telepathy and which ability. All of this is completely in the "5E RAW: Go ask your GM" territory. Especially since "hearing" is not necessarily used the same way twice (it is not a game keyword, it is an English word).

For telepathy that acts like speech or better, I would treat it as speech or better.
For telepathy that is limited to passing a series of low quality images, or a series of nouns, or fluctuating emotional states, then I would not treat it as speech.

Can the telepathy communicate "Hey, team we did a great job this morning. Let's keep it up this afternoon."?



As for deafened, how were they deafened? Were the ears or ear like things damaged? Or was it brain damage?

[Greywander]

This question has actually been around since the PHB first released, as the GOOlock's Awakened Mind trait opened up some interesting possibilities. In particular, one aspect of Awakened Mind that makes it superior to any other form of telepathy is that you don't need to share a language. This (potentially) allows you to use spells like Suggestion or Command on creatures that you don't share a language with. Of course, those spells also require the target to be able to hear you, so it's open to debate if this would still work if they were deafened.

I think this is one of those edge cases where the rules get a bit fuzzy. It feels like the spirit of the rules is that telepathy would function as if the creature could hear you, but at the same time since there isn't really a way to block telepathy this could be overly strong. Imagine a GOOlock with Subtle Spell and the Blind Fighting style; even bound, gagged, and blindfolded*, they can still cast many of their spells (any not requiring material components), including spells like Command or Suggestion that require the target to hear you. Although this raises another good point; blindsight seems to be treated as seeing, and nothing short of total cover or being out of range can stymie it, so it kind of serves as an analogue to what telepathy might do for speaking/being heard. Although, I'm pretty sure you can't use telepathy to perform verbal components.

*I noticed that the Blind Fighting style only works for things that aren't behind total cover. Does a blindfold give other creatures cover against being seen by you? In a way, I'd say not, as you can still attack them (if they were behind total cover, you wouldn't be able to attack them, ergo since you can attack them, they're not behind total cover).

[Segev]

Yeah, ultimately, this is thoroughly into the "DM ruling" realm of 5e. Personally, for most cases, I would allow "they can hear your telepathic words" to qualify for "hearing" you.

[Tanarii]

RAW aside, any ruling should depend on the intent and delivery of the ability.

What makes sense to me:
- If it's a spell and it says they must be able to hear you, they have to be able to hear you. Spells aren't adaptable, they do what they say they do.
- if it's a class feature that has an intent of your speaking & communicating being understood in some fashion to cause an effect, then it probably works by telepathy. But DM judgement required.

So Bardic inspiration via Telepathy works for me, it's inspiration via your words or singing. But Suggestion requires them to actually hear your suggestion out loud to work, for the Magic of the spell to do it's thing.

Edit: debating if telepathy is hearing is kind of a misleading rabbit hole to go down IMO. It only matters if you're intended to hew to RAW. In which case, too bad so sad. Telepathy clearly isn't hearing.

[Chronos]

Back when I was running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, I ran into an issue closely related to this (minor spoilers for one version of the adventure):

There's an NPC in the book who's deaf (possibly from birth; the book doesn't specify), and who communicates with her friends through a sign language she developed. At one point, she gets ahold of the Stone of Golor, a telepathic intelligent artifact, and is so distraught by the experience that she drops the stone, screams, and is quite willing to turn it over to anyone else (probably the PCs).

But... just what would she have experienced? We're used to thinking of telepathy as "hearing voices in one's head"... but if she somehow had the experience of hearing, she wouldn't even know what it was, and certainly wouldn't have understood it. So I did some research (https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deaf-people-and-hearing-voices/855016/3) on deaf people with schizophrenia or similar conditions, and what they experience instead of "hearing voices". What I ended up going with would be that she would "see" signing hands... except that it wouldn't actually be "hands" doing the signing, which would have been a clue as to the Stone's nature.
Except, of course, after all that prep work, my party managed to derail things sufficiently that they never even met that NPC. Such is the life of a DM.