D&D 5E Philosophy: Devil's Sight

[DND_Reborn]

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the darkness spell, especially this bit "A creature with darkvision can’t see through this darkness, and nonmagical light can’t illuminate it." I should not need to explain how that combines with this "You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical". Yea there are indeed dozens, like for example how level 19 sorcerer with one level of warlock does not get back 4x 1st, 2x 2nd-5th, 2x 6th-7th, & 1x8th-9th level sorcerer granted slots +4x 5th level warlock pact magic slots just because wotc can't be bothered to errata "You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a short or long rest." leaving GM's to stop the game and point that out over & over again even to players using ddb. Wotc's refusal to errata devils sight too is just a cherry on top of the nepotism* sandwich that is warlock dip.

* Since you do so dislike terms like playwright's/director's/GM's girlfriend. Or perhaps you's prefer it if it was simply the awkwardly worded "GM's Significant Other".

You really need to get yourself focused.

First, what do you need to explain about the spell darkness and the use of DS? Darkness specifies how DV is affected while DS specifically states you can see "normally" in darkness, even magical darkness. That is pretty straightforward, so where is your confusion?

Now you're jumping into spell slot recovery. First, your example is erroneous. A 19th level Sorcerer would have 4/ 3/ 3/ 3/ 3/ 2/ 1/ 1/ 1 spells slots as a Sorcerer caster plus 1 1st level slot as a Warlock. You have an extra 7th level slot and way too many warlock slots. The slots are kept track of separately as per the section on multiclassing. Sorcerer slots recover on a long rest, as normal. The single Warlock slot recovers on a short or long rest, again as normal. So, it makes sense to always use the warlock slot first when you cast a 1st level spell, since you can recover that slot on either rest. Again, where is your confusion? What exactly are DM's having to explain over and over again?

Regardless of whatever you want to call it (whatever "it" is anyway...), what is your issue with the warlock dip? If you don't like it, don't play with multiclassing. And what that has anything to do with DS and it being unbalanced is not being addressed.

One last time, what is unbalanced about DS?

 

[tetrasodium]

You really need to get yourself focused.

First, what do you need to explain about the spell darkness and the use of DS? Darkness specifies how DV is affected while DS specifically states you can see "normally" in darkness, even magical darkness. That is pretty straightforward, so where is your confusion?

Now you're jumping into spell slot recovery. First, your example is erroneous. A 19th level Sorcerer would have 4/ 3/ 3/ 3/ 3/ 2/ 1/ 1/ 1 spells slots as a Sorcerer caster plus 1 1st level slot as a Warlock. You have an extra 7th level slot and way too many warlock slots. The slots are kept track of separately as per the section on multiclassing. Sorcerer slots recover on a long rest, as normal. The single Warlock slot recovers on a short or long rest, again as normal. So, it makes sense to always use the warlock slot first when you cast a 1st level spell, since you can recover that slot on either rest. Again, where is your confusion? What exactly are DM's having to explain over and over again?

Regardless of whatever you want to call it (whatever "it" is anyway...), what is your issue with the warlock dip? If you don't like it, don't play with multiclassing. And what that has anything to do with DS and it being unbalanced is not being addressed.

One last time, what is unbalanced about DS?

Why bring up how the darkness spell works? The tail end of your post here (which I quoted) seems to be confused at the relevance of this statement ""I have devils sight so see it normally & ignore magical darkness screw uncertainty for any reason other than the dense obscuring fog". There is no confusion on my part, the confusion seems to be you wondering why the fact that DS ignores everything but fog is problematic & you seemed especially hung up on magical darkness so I pointed it out.

regarding the warlock pact magic slots, your right I looked at the wrong line. I'm capable of admitting that mistake and fixing it as I just did with an edit. WotC could have done similar with so many warlock oversights & mistakes still not errata'd five years into 5e... They just haven't & we should reference an obscure tweet from 5 years ago.

Why is the boneheaded wording on Pact Magic's "You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a short or long rest" feature a problem?... run AL games for a bit where you will see a parade of new players & ask that question again. Yes it obviously is not intended to work that way & obviously you recover spell slots based on the rules that are associated with the source of those slots... That doesn't stop hopeful newbies & sometimes people that really should know better from trying to suggest the obvious RAW interpretation.

My issue with warlock dip is that so much of warlock is balanced against "well warlocks have limited slots so it needs to be overpowered to offset that" yet WotC Makes zero attempt to avoid the too good 3.5 fighter dip effect with it. Every class with extra attacks has them linked to their levels in that class for that reason... except warlock Agonizing Eldritch blast. Everything combined is a pattern that supports the "designer's significant other" mocking over issuing errata over an obscure tweet. They've even done misleading things like Aspect of the Moon and should have known fully just how hopeful coffeelocks making their GMs explain why "all extended spell slots" does not include sorcerer slots had sanity checking not been pushed aside with something like "well warlocks have limited spell slots so it's ok if this feature is powerful".

 

[Charlaquin]

The problem with magical sight is we can't really imagine how something might work that is beyond our experience. How can we see normally into a darkness beyond the dim light, but not have the dim light in between affected?

I imagine it kind of like the blind spots in human vision. There are actually two small points in our field of vision (one in the corner of each eye) that our eyes actually can’t perceive. But we don’t experience those two pinprick holes in our vision because our brains fill in the gaps with information from around the blind spot(s) to smooth them over. They perform a similar trick with our noses, which we can’t normally see (unless it’s specifically called to our attention) even though they are well within most people’s field of vision. Also, when you move your eyes rather than turning your whole head, your brain throws out the blur of unintelligible information it receives in that fraction of a second and fills in the gap with the first thing you see that it can make sense of, which is why when you glance at a clock with a second hand, it feels like that first tick takes a little bit longer, because your brain slotted the image of the second hand’s position after your eyes settled on it into the previous fraction of a second of your memory.

Point is, our brains mess with the information our eyes give them constantly, so I imagine a warlock with Devil’s sight simply not consciously registering the transition from bright torchlight to dim torchlight to darkness in which they see normally. Their brain just smooths that over with its best guess. They have a harder time spotting the rogue in the dim light not because it appears dim to them, but because the brain is patching up that blind spot imperfectly.

 

[Charlaquin]

Furthermore, the entire point of the natural language format was so that people explicitly didn't nit-pick the exact phrasing of the rules.

The naïveté (on WotC’s part) that went into this assumption is astounding.

 

[keynup]

On a slightly off topic, but still related; if you are in a 50' deep pit and the sun is directly above you, and then some one cast darkness at the top of the pit, do you have any light at the bottom of the pit?

As for how DS actually works;
A human underground, all dark. Someone lights a candle 100' away. You are now able to see past dim light. Imagine DS as just a bunch of magic lights targeting darkness.

DS does not let you see through objects, which is why you can't see in fog. Same thing for a dust cloud.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Why bring up how the darkness spell works? The tail end of your post here (which I quoted) seems to be confused at the relevance of this statement ""I have devils sight so see it normally & ignore magical darkness screw uncertainty for any reason other than the dense obscuring fog". There is no confusion on my part, the confusion seems to be you wondering why the fact that DS ignores everything but fog is problematic & you seemed especially hung up on magical darkness so I pointed it out.

regarding the warlock pact magic slots, your right I looked at the wrong line. I'm capable of admitting that mistake and fixing it as I just did with an edit. WotC could have done similar with so many warlock oversights & mistakes still not errata'd five years into 5e... They just haven't & we should reference an obscure tweet from 5 years ago.

Why is the boneheaded wording on Pact Magic's "You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a short or long rest" feature a problem?... run AL games for a bit where you will see a parade of new players & ask that question again. Yes it obviously is not intended to work that way & obviously you recover spell slots based on the rules that are associated with the source of those slots... That doesn't stop hopeful newbies & sometimes people that really should know better from trying to suggest the obvious RAW interpretation.

My issue with warlock dip is that so much of warlock is balanced against "well warlocks have limited slots so it needs to be overpowered to offset that" yet WotC Makes zero attempt to avoid the too good 3.5 fighter dip effect with it. Every class with extra attacks has them linked to their levels in that class for that reason... except warlock Agonizing Eldritch blast. Everything combined is a pattern that supports the "designer's significant other" mocking over issuing errata over an obscure tweet. They've even done misleading things like Aspect of the Moon and should have known fully just how hopeful coffeelocks making their GMs explain why "all extended spell slots" does not include sorcerer slots had sanity checking not been pushed aside with something like "well warlocks have limited spell slots so it's ok if this feature is powerful".

LOL so you're bringing up magical darkness based on a quote I made based on what you said about it? We aren't going to go anywhere with that thinking so let's just agree to stop that, ok?

I am confused why you think DS ignoring everything but fog is problematic. Powerful, certainly, but not a problem. And it doesn't ignore dim light, apparently, if you choose to follow the SA. Either way, it is a feature a single class has access to, and only at 2nd level and higher. So even if you allow multiclassing, you need two levels to devote to it. That is a lot to spend for a couple 1st level slots and 2 eldritch invocations. You do it early on and it slows you main class significantly (preventing a ASI/feat possibly), you do it late and you are spending a lot of XP (and higher features in your main class) for them. That seems like a balanced trade-off for a powerful feature to me.

If you think the warlock dip for DS or whatever else is too powerful, don't play with mutlicalssing or nerf DS to not work with dim light as JC suggests. These aren't homebrew or houserules, they are not using an available variant (lots of people don't use many of the variant options so nothing new there...) and following SA from JC (which a lot of people follow if they agree with it).

Also, many tables have a lot of adventures during daytime and in lit conditions, or even just dim light, both of which make DS useless.

As for Agnoizing Eldritch Blast, all cantrips scale by character level, not caster level. Personally, I have always thought that was a mistake and we house-ruled against it. The sole exception to this is if you get a cantrip as part of a feat or some other way. So a High-elf's cantrip will scale, as would one chosen from Spell Sniper.

Everything combined is a pattern that supports the "designer's significant other" mocking over issuing errata over an obscure tweet. They've even done misleading things like Aspect of the Moon and should have known fully just how hopeful coffeelocks making their GMs explain why "all extended spell slots" does not include sorcerer slots had sanity checking not been pushed aside with something like "well warlocks have limited spell slots so it's ok if this feature is powerful".

Again, I have no idea what you are rambling on about here. You keep bringing this stuff up and I have no idea why. Now you are talking about Aspect of the Moon and coffeelocks? And again with the epxlaining about recovering spells slots... what is wrong with that now? I can't read your mind, if you want me to discuss anything about this part of your post, you'll have to explain yourself. Otherwise, forget it.

 

[tetrasodium]

LOL so you're bringing up magical darkness based on a quote I made based on what you said about it? We aren't going to go anywhere with that thinking so let's just agree to stop that, ok?

I am confused why you think DS ignoring everything but fog is problematic. Powerful, certainly, but not a problem. And it doesn't ignore dim light, apparently, if you choose to follow the SA. Either way, it is a feature a single class has access to, and only at 2nd level and higher. So even if you allow multiclassing, you need two levels to devote to it. That is a lot to spend for a couple 1st level slots and 2 eldritch invocations. You do it early on and it slows you main class significantly (preventing a ASI/feat possibly), you do it late and you are spending a lot of XP (and higher features in your main class) for them. That seems like a balanced trade-off for a powerful feature to me.

If you think the warlock dip for DS or whatever else is too powerful, don't play with mutlicalssing or nerf DS to not work with dim light as JC suggests. These aren't homebrew or houserules, they are not using an available variant (lots of people don't use many of the variant options so nothing new there...) and following SA from JC (which a lot of people follow if they agree with it).

Also, many tables have a lot of adventures during daytime and in lit conditions, or even just dim light, both of which make DS useless.

As for Agnoizing Eldritch Blast, all cantrips scale by character level, not caster level. Personally, I have always thought that was a mistake and we house-ruled against it. The sole exception to this is if you get a cantrip as part of a feat or some other way. So a High-elf's cantrip will scale, as would one chosen from Spell Sniper.



Again, I have no idea what you are rambling on about here. You keep bringing this stuff up and I have no idea why. Now you are talking about Aspect of the Moon and coffeelocks? And again with the epxlaining about recovering spells slots... what is wrong with that now? I can't read your mind, if you want me to discuss anything about this part of your post, you'll have to explain yourself. Otherwise, forget it.

You are still couching your argument in "if you follow the SA"... The fact that you are referencing a 5+ year old tweet from crawford that has not at any point made it into an errata only adds weight to the playwright/director/producer/owner/manager/DM's Significant other mocking of WotC's choice to not correct their mistakes when it comes to warlock. If you need to include those words it's a tacit admission that the ability as written is messed up.

Without adding a feat, the effective non-disadvantaged range of most spells & ranged weapons is in the 30-60' range give or take bit with some outliers like martial longbow & xbow or eldritch spear invocation agonizing repelling eldritch blast.* Melee is obviously short range. A drow or deep(?) gnome with superior darkvision could see in the darkness 120' off too, but they would have trouble doing the same on a flat desert plain during the day & any kind of bright flash from a spell like daylight at night would cause them trouble. Meanwhile a changeling, kalashtar, warforge, human, dragonborn, etc would be blind in the dark. A warlock of any of those darkblind races meanwhile has both benefits but neither drawback & further extends the "anything you can do I can do better" finger in the eye cross table dynamic between warlocks & other classes. In short, it breaks a big chunk of the GM's ability to add suspense/tension of the unknown and does it without drawback... That's impo imagine Alien, Doom, Quake, or Deadspace brightly lit at all times & the story falls apart


*Before you ask "why is this relevant?" Because it continues to show the pattern of warlock needing to be able to do everything including use any weapon or armor using charisma now.

 

[NotAYakk]

The bit where Devil's Sight can see only in Darkness is awesome flavourful. It implies that Darkness is a kind of anti-light, and not the absence of light; that fits with a lot of human intuitive fear.

Devil's Sight uses Dark to see. Normal vision uses Light to see.

In my view, while you see "normally" with no penalty, I'd make colours in the Devil's Sight vision be sort of inverted, but that the ability includes this not hindering you in any way. But not really inverted -- you aren't seeing red in the place of green, you are seeing a 4th 5th and 6th colour that is illuminated by Darkness.

For the most part, colour 4/5/6 correspond to colours 1/2/3; but there would be exceptions. Things drawn in materials that are only visible from the Dark.

Under that model, dim light has both dim Darkness and dim Light, and they don't add to full vision. But if you have DS, you can still tell where the Light ends, the Dim Light ends, and then when the Devil's Sight dominates.

 

[keynup]

*Before you ask "why is this relevant?" Because it continues to show the pattern of warlock needing to be able to do everything including use any weapon or armor using charisma now.

I came to this thread to discuss Devil's Sight, not any personal issues you might have with Warlocks.
Anything that is whining about Warlocks that doesn't involve DS is just a waste of time in this thread.

A drow or deep(?) gnome with superior darkvision could see in the darkness 120' off too, but they would have trouble doing the same on a flat desert plain during the day & any kind of bright flash from a spell like daylight at night would cause them trouble. Meanwhile a changeling, kalashtar, warforge, human, dragonborn, etc would be blind in the dark. A warlock of any of those darkblind races meanwhile has both benefits but neither drawback

Are you thinking that DS cancels sunlight sensitivity?

That's impo imagine Alien, Doom, Quake, or Deadspace brightly lit at all times & the story falls apart

Sounds you want to force a type of story on every D&D group out there.
You tell your story (and ban DS), and the rest of us will tell ours.

 

[DND_Reborn]

You are still couching your argument in "if you follow the SA"... The fact that you are referencing a 5+ year old tweet from crawford that has not at any point made it into an errata only adds weight to the playwright/director/producer/owner/manager/DM's Significant other mocking of WotC's choice to not correct their mistakes when it comes to warlock. If you need to include those words it's a tacit admission that the ability as written is messed up.

Without adding a feat, the effective non-disadvantaged range of most spells & ranged weapons is in the 30-60' range give or take bit with some outliers like martial longbow & xbow or eldritch spear invocation agonizing repelling eldritch blast.* Melee is obviously short range. A drow or deep(?) gnome with superior darkvision could see in the darkness 120' off too, but they would have trouble doing the same on a flat desert plain during the day & any kind of bright flash from a spell like daylight at night would cause them trouble. Meanwhile a changeling, kalashtar, warforge, human, dragonborn, etc would be blind in the dark. A warlock of any of those darkblind races meanwhile has both benefits but neither drawback & further extends the "anything you can do I can do better" finger in the eye cross table dynamic between warlocks & other classes. In short, it breaks a big chunk of the GM's ability to add suspense/tension of the unknown and does it without drawback... That's impo imagine Alien, Doom, Quake, or Deadspace brightly lit at all times & the story falls apart

*Before you ask "why is this relevant?" Because it continues to show the pattern of warlock needing to be able to do everything including use any weapon or armor using charisma now.

You just don't get it, do you? Every time I bring up SA it is because other people use it. I think most of JC's "advice" is crap personally. Whether you follow that advice or not, I don't care. I think DS IS balanced for exactly the reasons I've stated. You have yet to show why, other than it "ruins the DM's fun" (basically) for planning adventures.

So, you're upset that superior DV races have something against them (seeing in bright light), non-DV races have something against them (seeing in darkness), but DS breaks things? Aha, right, ok. So, what about regular DV races? There are TONS of them! They have no penalty in light or dim light (up to 60 feet anyway), and are better in dark having only disadvantage (which, doesn't impact attacks at all). A warlock of ANY race without sunlight sensitivity would see equally well in dark and bright light, but have disadvantage in dim light. Play a warlock with both DV and DS and you never have disadvantage for the most part.

The idea that this removes suspense is very limited thinking.

As for Eldritch blast being too good with the Agonizing/Spear combo? Nah. Again, warlocks have limited invocations and if a player wants to focus that much, have at it. Is it pretty good? Sure. Broken? Nope.

As an aside, I do agree CHA is over-used in 5E, especially for warlocks and catering to them to not need to rely on STR or DEX for combat. CHA is the new mental version of DEX if you make the right build. With Bard, Sorcerers, and Warlocks all CHA casters, it makes multiclassing between them a no-cost thing.