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.
Best Answer
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.