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So, a question came up in one of our games. The party was ambushed by a Black Dragon that used Cloud of Darkness. After the Cloud was used, the Wizard decided to cast Light on the Fighter's shield. The question came up as to whether the Light cantrip did anything?
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Cloud of Darkness (standard; sustain minor; recharge 4,5,6)
Zone
Close burst 2; this power creates a zone of darkness that remains in place until the end of the dragon’s next turn. The zone blocks line of sight for all creatures except the dragon. Any creature entirely within the area (except the dragon) is blinded.
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Light
At-Will - Arcane
Minor Action Ranged 5
Target: One object or unoccupied square
You cause the target to shed bright light. The light fills the target’s square and all squares within 4 squares of it. The light lasts for 5 minutes. Putting out the light is a free action.
So the Light has a larger area than the Darkness, and potentially can totally encompass it. Does that affect the status of anyone who is blinded inside the Cloud, or is the "darkness" aspect essentially fluff and it's really a blindness effect?
Furthermore, does the Light eliminate the line of sight blockage? In other words, is the text in Cloud of Darkness just a restating for convenience's sake that, per p.280, squares of darkness provide total concealment. Well, the Light description states that it fills the entire square, and if a square is filled with Light it cannot also be dark.
My personal take is that the cloud is not physical, and thus provides no physical blockage to line of sight. Therefore, if the area is no longer dark, Line of Sight is no longer blocked. A DM wishing to split the difference, however, could rule that instead the area is "shadowy illumination" and provides instead partial concealment. However, the blindness effect has nothing to do with the relative darkness of the area, and would remain.
Thoughts?
__________________ "If your will is not strong, if your thought does not oppose injustice, you will fritter away your life stuck in the commonplace, silently submitting to the bonds of emotion, forever cowering before mediocrities, never escaping the downward flow."
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There was like a three page discussion of this just yesterday. I swear, I think someone adds a thread on this topic and whether people use hex grids instead of squares, like every day.
A nice idea that I heard of was allowing the wizard to attempt an "Int vs Will" attack to make his light overcome the darkness.
I like this because it means that a strong dragon vs a weak wizard, or strong wizard vs weak dragon is likely to be the winner, rather than attempt to 'hard code' a priority of one over the other.
Seems in the 4e spirit.
Cheers
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There was like a three page discussion of this just yesterday. I swear, I think someone adds a thread on this topic and whether people use hex grids instead of squares, like every day.
Apologies. I missed that when I looked back further in the posts. I found it now. Unfortunely, it doesn't look like anything was settled in that thread either, or anything else I might have missed brought up.
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Originally Posted by Boarstorm
As a level 1 at-will cantrip versus a higher level recharge power, I'd say the cloud of darkness wins.
And I don't mean "shadowy illumination," I mean black as ink, snuff that light spell out like it had never existed wins.
That's a fine way to run it, but AFAIK there are no rules on "power precedence". If there was even wording like "complete darkness", "total darkness", or "magical darkness" I would also agree with your interpretation. However, it just says darkness, and light normally fixes that problem. Darkness normally blocks Line of Sight, so nothing special is happening there.
My reading is that the power is just giving us the information so we don't have to look up what darkness does, per the design goals of the MM, and stating that the Dragon can see through it. Note that even that part isn't needed - the Dragon already has darkvision, which should be able to see through the darkness regardless. They just added it for completeness.
Blindness, on the other hand, is a penalty over and above what darkness does, and you can't see if you're blind, regardless of how light or dark it is. Therefore the blindness effect seems like it would remain regardless.
This seems a little counterintuitive, and I might run things differently myself if I were running the encounter again, as a house rule, but I think this would be the correct RAW way to run things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane Sailing
A nice idea that I heard of was allowing the wizard to attempt an "Int vs Will" attack to make his light overcome the darkness.
I like this because it means that a strong dragon vs a weak wizard, or strong wizard vs weak dragon is likely to be the winner, rather than attempt to 'hard code' a priority of one over the other.
Seems in the 4e spirit.
Cheers
That is cool. I think I'll definitely use that in the future, since it allows the Wizard to keep trying every round (or technically, 3 times in a round if he wants to do nothing but that), allowing him a good chance of success, but not automatic success.
__________________ "If your will is not strong, if your thought does not oppose injustice, you will fritter away your life stuck in the commonplace, silently submitting to the bonds of emotion, forever cowering before mediocrities, never escaping the downward flow."
--Zhuge Liang
The darkness wins. The level of ilumination has no bearing on the Cloud of Darkness's Blocking of line of sight or blinding.
Yup. I'll probably stick with the Int versus Will house-rule, myself, but if one is going by the rules as written, the darkness wins. The light effect would have to say that it "negates zones with the darkness keyword" or something.
__________________ Have you ever known a person who always behaved exactly the way you expected? Real people don't stay in character.
I wonder if this is a case of former D&D methods of handling light/darkness effects are causing this to come up so much, or would it come up as much without prior precedent.
At any rate, light does not say it does anything about blocking line of effect or blinding or zones - another example of needing to turn your thinking off for a second and just read the powers.
Light does absolutely nothing to Cloud of Darkness. Unless you house rule in something - whatever you house rule will _probably_ severely weaken the effect.
I wonder if this is a case of former D&D methods of handling light/darkness effects are causing this to come up so much, or would it come up as much without prior precedent.
Yeah, I think this is the case. People are just used to Light being able to do something to darkness and vice versa. With the RAW, it looks like the only way to get rid of the zone of darkness is to dispel it, end the encounter or kill the dragon.
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Unless you house rule in something - whatever you house rule will _probably_ severely weaken the effect.
Yep. Light is easy for a party come by, what with the wizard cantrip and the other higher level class utilities (not just Wizard) that create zones of light. If it comes up in the next level or two, I'll let them do it but tell them that by level 4 it's a house rule that will be going away. Right now, they need all the help they can get just to survive.
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I agree with the sentiment that the light cantrip has no effect on the Darkness spell.
Flavor wise I do like the idea of a battle of wills between the person casting light and the other casting Darkness to see who wins.
However the only way I could justify something like that would be to make the light spell part of a will attack that used up a standard action.
If I was going to do something like that I'd also rule that the light spell had to be at least equal to or greater than the size of the darkness spell.
Dispelling darkness as a minor action at level 1 is just to powerful an ability for me to really justify with out at least making it a standard action.
and provides instead partial concealment. However, the blindness effect has nothing to do with the relative darkness of the area, and would remain.
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