jgsugden
Legend
That would be a caveat I should have added - Magical darkness does, AFAIK, block sight. It is like squid ink in the air. It would be similar to fog cloud in almost all ways. Non-magical darkness if different, however.
D&D 5E Treantmonk's Guide to Wizards 5e
Darion W Brainerd
First Post
Putting aside what it takes to light natural darkness versus magical darkness, they are both heavy obscurement. So if you are not within the effect of a light source then you shouldn't have line of sight to it if there is natural darkness in the way.
If someone lights a torch 100ft away from you in an open field at night, there is Heavy Obscurement between you.
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CapnZapp
Legend
This is just plain wrong.
You can even see a candle a mile away, assuming perfect conditions.
There was a reason WW 1 soldiers didn't light a cigarette without covering up.
Natural darkness is NOT obscuring anything. It's just the absence of light.
So, while a torch might only provide illumination 20/40 feet away,that illumination (and anyone in it) can still be seen from 100 feet away.
And the torch itself? It can probably be seen from several hundred yards of pitch black darkness away.
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Treantmonklvl20
Explorer
This.
If someone lights a torch 100 feet away, you no longer have a complete absence of light. Although it may not provide illumination 100 feet away, some of that light still travels much, much further. How far can light travel through darkness? It depends on the brightness of the light, there are stars more than 16,000 light years away that we can see with the naked eye. That's 94,000,000,000,000 (94 trillion) miles of dark.
Dude. Mind. BLOWN
CapnZapp
Legend
Back to magical darkness.
We've established that any game that tries to represent natural darkness with obscurement is an epic fail. (Let me just note this happens more often than you think. WFRP2 is my favorite game, but its notion that light from lanterns stop at the far edge of its range tells me only one thing: more game designers need to go out into nature and experience real darkness, perhaps for the first time in their lives! But I digress.)
Anyway. I see three common ways to implement magic darkness in fantasy games:
1. Extinguish lights. This is very easy to adjudicate, but seldom what players expect or want. This could equally easy be called "control lights".
2. Obscurement. Unlike natural darkness, obscurement is a good simple fit for magical darkness. Again fairly simple to adjudicate. Main drawback: people realize this is just a reskinned Fog Cloud. Still, a good choice.
This is what I use for D&D, any edition. Darkness creates a black ball of blackness. Simple. Not too powerful (except for certain Warlocks...)
3a. The area is still see-through, except it's in darkness. This creates all kinds of logical and physical headaches (if you see through the area, but not the people in it, do these people then not block what's behind the area?), and is OP as hell.
3b. You can see out, but not in. Easy to say, a nightmare to adjudicate. And again, very VERY powerful.
What we need to realize is that #3 for most intents and purposes duplicates Invisibility, and more specifically, Greater Invisibility. That should tell you it's inappropriate for a level 2 slot.
And unlike Invisibility all the questions regarding how to run it in game remains unanswered. My only suggestion is to say it IS invisibility (and to bump it up to a higher spell level).
Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app
We've established that any game that tries to represent natural darkness with obscurement is an epic fail. (Let me just note this happens more often than you think. WFRP2 is my favorite game, but its notion that light from lanterns stop at the far edge of its range tells me only one thing: more game designers need to go out into nature and experience real darkness, perhaps for the first time in their lives! But I digress.)
Anyway. I see three common ways to implement magic darkness in fantasy games:
1. Extinguish lights. This is very easy to adjudicate, but seldom what players expect or want. This could equally easy be called "control lights".
2. Obscurement. Unlike natural darkness, obscurement is a good simple fit for magical darkness. Again fairly simple to adjudicate. Main drawback: people realize this is just a reskinned Fog Cloud. Still, a good choice.
This is what I use for D&D, any edition. Darkness creates a black ball of blackness. Simple. Not too powerful (except for certain Warlocks...)
3a. The area is still see-through, except it's in darkness. This creates all kinds of logical and physical headaches (if you see through the area, but not the people in it, do these people then not block what's behind the area?), and is OP as hell.
3b. You can see out, but not in. Easy to say, a nightmare to adjudicate. And again, very VERY powerful.
What we need to realize is that #3 for most intents and purposes duplicates Invisibility, and more specifically, Greater Invisibility. That should tell you it's inappropriate for a level 2 slot.
And unlike Invisibility all the questions regarding how to run it in game remains unanswered. My only suggestion is to say it IS invisibility (and to bump it up to a higher spell level).
Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app
On a good night, it's possible to see the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye. 2.5 million light years. If you have a telescope, *or if you're an elf*, you can see light from far vaster distances. Range is another thing that games tend to get very wrong, especially when it comes to weapons. Firing upward has a very different range from firing at a target at your height, let alone lower. And once you're a few hundred miles up, shooting the moon need not be a metaphor. But getting range right is painful.
Rofel Wodring
Explorer
Malleable Illusions only got a Green?
- Malleable Illusions in conjunction with Secret Chest lets you store multiple copies of permanent, concentration-free Major Images and you can just pull them out and alter them as you see fit. Or if your DM whines about extradimensional spaces, you can always just babysit one or two of them through the dungeon.
- Malleable Illusions is completely bonkers with Mirage Arcana, but someone already mentioned that one. Seriously, though, I don't think you realize just how awesome Malleable Illusions + Mirage Arcana is. It's game-breakingly, army-wreckingly good. Use Malleable Illusions to lure the enemies out into a field, then shape it into a lake. Or waist-deep quicksand. Or a creaky bridge over a deep pit.
- If you have Silence (not that it's on the native wizard list, but you COULD have it through a ring of spell-storing) you could get around the spell's biggest limitation and keep moving it over the foe. If a spellcaster is giving you grief, ready an action to use Malleable Illusions to move your Silence bubble over the target when they start casting a spell.
- Technically you can use Malleable Illusions on Simulacrum to replenish its hit points and spell slots, but haha good luck getting a DM to sign off on that. That said, when your Simulacrum DOES run out of spell slots, you can shift it to a backline fighter who watched you cast this ritual on yourself.
- Use it with Dream to snipe a bunch of spellcasters you don't want getting long rests for the next day, rather than just getting a 1-for-1 deal.
- The Creation use was already discussed.
RustoPhats
First Post
Xanathars specifies Nonmagical flame for pyrotechnics now
Robert Charles
First Post
As an early response to XGtE, I think the INT save targeting debuff is pretty decent because an extra odd stat targeted save but it's level and save-at-end-of-turn makes it sort of meh.
