Can Sending fail in either direction?

Question

My character wants to make sure that a village was able to return to the Feywild safely. She plans to use Sending to check in with one of the villagers.

Sending states:

The creature hears the message in its mind, recognizes you as the sender if it knows you, and can answer in a like manner immediately...if the target is on a different plane than you, there is a 5 percent chance that the message doesn’t arrive.

(PHB, p.274, emphasis mine)

Does the 5% chance of interplanar interference also apply to the villager's response? That would seem to be overly complicated, but also in line with the "like manner" wording of the spell.

Answer 1

No.

Per the spell description, the failure chance only applies to the message arriving. It doesn't say anything about the answer that the target can provide being affected. Note in particular that the spell doesn't say that the target "sends a message back to you" or anything like that, so there's no reason to think that the clause about failure chances is intended to apply.

"In a like manner" refers to the previous description of the spell's communications — twenty-five words or less, heard in the mind.

Answer 2

I'd argue this boils down to interpretation. Personally, I'd say "no" as it would be not fun for the message to arrive, but then fail to return. I'd rule that the chance of success is for the exchange, not the individual message. That said, I can see an argument for the 5% failure chance to apply both ways because it only makes sense logically for the interference to exist in both directions. That said, there's an adage that I think applies here, "if it doesn't say 'yes', then the answer is no." It doesn't say that the interference works both ways, so it's safe to assume it doesn't work both ways.