D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[FrogReaver]

My assumption is that nonmagical light cannot illuminate the area of darkness. I am bringing in the idea that light has to reach your eyes for you to see it. That's not strictly necessary in a world created by gods and magic, but allowing you to see without light reaching your eyes (and no other modifiers like blindsense) leads to all kinds of shenanigans.

Light doesn’t necessarily need to ‘illuminate’ the darkness to reach your eyes. In magic terms it’s illumination could simply be suppressed in that area while passing through. With magic literally any explanation is possible.

 

[Xetheral]

Light doesn’t necessarily need to ‘illuminate’ the darkness to reach your eyes. In magic terms it’s illumination could simply be suppressed in that area while passing through. With magic literally any explanation is possible.

Doesn't that weigh against your interpretation? If magic has endless possibilities, and we have one possible interpretation where the spell text fully resolves the spell, and another possible interpretation where the spell text leaves gaping holes, isn't that evidence that the completely described interpretation is the intended one?

 

[Hriston]

My assumption is that nonmagical light cannot illuminate the area of darkness. I am bringing in the idea that light has to reach your eyes for you to see it. That's not strictly necessary in a world created by gods and magic, but allowing you to see without light reaching your eyes (and no other modifiers like blindsense) leads to all kinds of shenanigans.

What you quoted from the spell isn't an assumption. It's literally what the spell says. I think what you're assuming, though, is that illuminate in the spell has a different meaning from its usual definition, i.e. to light up the darkness or make things within the area of darkness visible by shining light on them. I think we agree that things within the area of darkness are not visible. What we seem to disagree on is whether things outside the area of darkness that are illuminated are visible from within the area of darkness, and what you quoted doesn't say anything about that.

 

[Iry]

Light doesn’t necessarily need to ‘illuminate’ the darkness to reach your eyes. In magic terms it’s illumination could simply be suppressed in that area while passing through. With magic literally any explanation is possible.

Would you assume that interpretation if it isn't explicitly stated?

 

[FrogReaver]

The errata was necessary for normal darkness to work properly. As originally written, anyone standing in normal darkness suffered from the Blinded condition and so couldn't even see distant light sources. This would have meant (e.g.) that stars couldn't be seen at night, torches would be invisible outside of their dim light radius, etc.

Exactly.

@FrogReaver The basic problem is that opacity and illumination are complex topics that don't lend themselves well to succinct rules. Ergo, trying to use a close reading of the obscurement rules to divine how the Darkness spells "actually" works isn't meaningful, because the rules don't support such a close reading.

One might suggest that this point should also apply equally to everyone else that is so sure it "actually" works the other way based on their close reading of the obscurement rules.

(For example, even the errataed version of the rules starts falling apart when trying to apply it literally to opaque heavy obscurement.)

IMO, post errata they are silent on the topic of how heavy obscurement works when your not looking at something in the heavily obscured area. Seems like they've left that up to the DM - perhaps so that he can rule areas behind opaque heavily obscured areas also count as heavily obscured while areas behind natural darkness that are well lit will not count as heavily obscured.

Instead, the DM just needs to decide if they want to treat the Darkness spell as an opaque inkblot or instead as a transparent zone of magically induced non-magical darkness. Neither interpretation can be excluded based on the text alone, so it's simply a judgement call.

While I agree there's nothing preventing either interpretation in the Spell text. I would suggest that: opaque inkblot certainly is an addition to the text even though it doesn't actually contradict it. Magical darkness that functions similarly to non-magical darkness except how it's explicitly spelled out in the Spell is not an addition and also doesn't contradict the text. Isn't that sufficient reason to make mine the stronger stance?

Note, however, that the transparent zone of magically induced non-magical darkness interpretation is going to produce a ton of headaches when trying to figure out what such a zone looks like from the outside. The spell text certainly doesn't say, and trying to rely on physics is problematic, as you noted. (It's even more problematic in this case, because a physics-based approach will give entitely different answers depending on how detailed you want to get.)

Agreed. Like with the diagram above it would result in individual DM rulings - though in all fairness that's never stopped them from creating a rule before. In terms of power this normal darkness except where explicitly defined as different also makes the darkness spell stronger. So IMO there are plenty of reasons to stick with opaque inkblot ruling even if it's decided RAW best supports my my stance.

The fact that the visual appearance of the spell under the "transparent zone of magically induced non-magical darkness" interpretation isn't included in the spell text is strong evidence, IMO, that the opaque ink-blot interpretation is RAI.

Wait, how the heck? I don't get the leap of logic where you go 'it doesn't say A' therefore it must be the other thing it doesn't say, B'

IMO. I'm not sure how much more clear one would need to get to mean "transparent zone of magically induced darkness" than saying "magical darkness". If any words would need to be explicitly there for the interpretation to work it would be something to indicate opaque inkblot.

I just don't get the leap of logic

 

[FrogReaver]

Would you assume that interpretation if it isn't explicitly stated?

If the choices are:
A. Make an explanation for how real world physics can work with a magical spell so that it's effects are only what is explicitly stated
B. Add words to the effects of the magical spell so that it functions differently than it would without those words added

If those are my choices then I'm going with A everytime.

 

[FrogReaver]

Doesn't that weigh against your interpretation? If magic has endless possibilities, and we have one possible interpretation where the spell text fully resolves the spell, and another possible interpretation where the spell text leaves gaping holes, isn't that evidence that the completely described interpretation is the intended one?

Not when you are adding words to the spell effect to reach that place.

 

[Iry]

What we seem to disagree on is whether things outside the area of darkness that are illuminated are visible from within the area of darkness, and what you quoted doesn't say anything about that.

I actually think that interpretation IS possible, but warn away from using it because of the collateral damage it causes if we apply it to other aspects of the game, including other spells.

 

[FrogReaver]

I actually think that interpretation IS possible, but warn away from using it because of the collateral damage it causes if we apply it to other aspects of the game, including other spells.

I'm curious about an example?

 

[Hriston]

I actually think that interpretation IS possible, but warn away from using it because of the collateral damage it causes if we apply it to other aspects of the game, including other spells.

Ninja'd by @FrogReaver. I'd like to hear some examples as well!