D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[FrogReaver]

I mean, I can see where you're coming from. RAW does seem to say you can see out of magical darkness. But RAW is also borked in several places, and I don't personally like the idea of Darkness being worse than Fog Cloud, and things get a little weird with Maddening Darkness. Plus there's all this terminology about emanating and spreading. So the ink version is an easy step.

Either way, it's a conversation that comes up every few years.

Interesting take on the power level. IMO In terms of power this ruling arguably overpowers darkness spell. All the ranged characters can stand in 1 darkness spell aoe and get advantage on attacks and disadvantage on ranged attacks against them! Also prevents many spells from targeting them.

 

[Seramus]

Interesting take on the power level. IMO In terms of power this ruling arguably overpowers darkness spell. All the ranged characters can stand in 1 darkness spell aoe and get advantage on attacks and disadvantage on ranged attacks against them! Also prevents many spells from targeting them.

They can get the same benefit from Fog Cloud, by RAW.

But what really boggles my mind is three people standing in a row. The middle one is in magical darkness. If the first one shoots the third one, does the third one get the benefit of partial cover?

 

[Charlaquin]

I mean, I can see where you're coming from. RAW does seem to say you can see out of magical darkness.

I don’t think it does... at most it’s unclear.

 

[Seramus]

I don’t think it does... at most it’s unclear.

Now that I'm going over it again, I guess I confused myself. RAW says darkness blocks vision entirely. Then it says seeing into darkness makes you effectively blind. This way it's describing inside vs outside.

But we know you can see distant lights in darkness. And if we rule it's possible, then magical darkness has the same properties as darkness. Which includes being able to see distant lights while inside of it.

So darkness blocking vision is the RAW, and seeing distant lights is the ruling to make it more like real life. Magical darkness toddles along with whatever decision is made here.

 

[Li Shenron]

I would say the rules are technically silent on whether you can see out of the fog or the non-magical darkness. All the rules now say is that you can’t see things in those areas.

IMO the rest is DM decision. Given the nature of fog I would rule you cannot see through heavy fog. Given the nature of non magical darkness I would rule you can see through it. It’s not that difficult.

I think that if you decide to rule that magical Darkness is opaque i.e. (1) cannot see from the outside to the inside + (2) cannot see from the inside to the outside + (3) cannot see from one side of it to the other side of it + (4) cannot see from the inside to anything else on the inside, then you are probably going to have a somewhat easier time running the game. It also means that the spell has two main applications: make your enemies temporarily blind (until the get out of it, which is probably next round), or hide yourself. If there's a fight between someone inside and someone outside (or both inside, or from opposite sides of the magical darkness), neither party can see each other, so advantages and disadvantages cancel out.

OTOH if magical Darkness works like natural darkness this means the spell is useless to cast of your enemies, but is also quite powerful to cast on yourself because it makes your group both protected from attacks and better at attacking others outside. This is nothing terribly extraordinary, since it is in fact the same beneficial situation you can get from natural darkness, but you may want to ask yourself if you want a 2nd level spell to have the capability of granting you this everytime you want (and I don't know if it's fair or not, after all Fog Cloud which definitely works like opaque darkness is only 1st level, but then the extra flexibility of Darnkess of being quickly "pausable" by covering the target object might alone justify the extra level required).

The designer's bigger mistake was to originally try to treat all sort of concealments in the same way, without thinking that natural darkness simply can't make you "effectively blind" to see outside of it. It just doesn't work the same way as opaque concealment like fog or foliage works.

 

[Charlaquin]

Now that I'm going over it again, I guess I confused myself. RAW says darkness blocks vision entirely. Then it says seeing into darkness makes you effectively blind. This way it's describing inside vs outside.

But we know you can see distant lights in darkness. And if we rule it's possible, then magical darkness has the same properties as darkness. Which includes being able to see distant lights while inside of it.

So darkness blocking vision is the RAW, and seeing distant lights is the ruling to make it more like real life. Magical darkness toddles along with whatever decision is made here.

I’m not convinced RAW is clear on the matter of magical darkness functioning the same way as nonmagical darkness.

 

[Xetheral]

We are on two different planets here...


If that was the basis for their position then why are you the first citing those sources? IMO. It doesn't add up.


So, from my perspective I can't understand why you aren't replying to those on the other side the same way. Instead you are solely focused on my position and using the argument that RAW is silent to deconstruct my argument without also doing the same to theirs. IMO, there's something unfair about your process even if your only point is that RAW is silent about this.

To my understanding, no one in this thread (as of when I had originally posted) had asserted that a close parsing of the spell and rules text requires the ink blot interpretation. Instead the general gist seems to have been limited to opposing your claim that a close parsing favors your interpretation, rather than supporting an alternative close reading. If someone had made the claim that a close reading requires the inkblot interpretation, I missed it.

I provided my best guess as to why the other posters believe the opaque ink-blot interpretation is superior because they did not provide that information themselves. Given that many posters' language suggests they view the issue as one of common sense, it makes sense to me that they wouldn't provide additional detail as to where their intuitive sense is coming from.

I can't say I follow this line of reasoning at all. It seems forced and incoherent. You are saying that magical darkness can't be the same as magical darkness in all other respects other than where it can be induced? That doesn't add up. Of course it can. It's magical.

How does it make it incomplete? Is non-magical darkness somehow incomplete as well?

One would argue that the term 'magical darkness' with no other details would imply it's darkness that's like regular darkness but magically induced. Why would it mean anything else?

I don't follow how you are concluding that my reading makes the spell unusable or incomplete? Elaborate?

I'll try a different way to explaining. To run Darkness under your interpretation, one has to answer the question: "What if we take a well-lit room and make part of it naturally dark?" But no part of a well-lit room is naturally dark, by definition. So your question has the same fundamental problem as the question: "What if we take an immovable object and move it?" The resulting consequences from magically forcing a part of well-lit room to be dark, or moving an unmovable object can't be answered "naturally" because we're already in the realm of impossible-by-definition.

Ergo, magically induced non-magical darkness can't be "just like [natural] darkness in all other respects other than where it can be induced" when it is magically induced in a well-lit area because natural darkness isn't defined in such conditions. Nobody knows what natural darkness in a well-lit area would be like, so Darkness can't be run "just like" natural darkness--instead the DM has to fill in the gaps such an interpretation creates.

Examples of such gaps include:

• Are backlit creatures/objects in the area of induced non-magical darkness visible by their silhouettes (violating the errata'd rule that makes creatures effectively blind when attempting to see things in the obscured area), or completely unseen (adding functionality to the spell not present in the spell text)?
• What does the floor/walls look like in the area of magically induced non-magical darkness? Are they visible as an expanse of pure black (again violating the errata'd rule that would instead make the floor/walls unseen by the effectively blind outside observers), or completely unseen? If the floor/walls are completely unseen, can characters outside the heavily obscured area now see through the unseen floor/walls into lit areas beyond?
• Is the extent of the area of magically induced non-magical darkness in a well-lit area evident to those outside it? Or is it only apparent by the effect it has on objects/creatures/walls/floor in the area (i.e. either painting them black or making them invisible based on choices made for how to fill the gaps above)?
• If there is a non-magical light source in the area of magically induced non-magical darkness, what does it look like to observers outside the affected area? Is it bright? Is it black? Is it invisible?
• If there is a non-magical light source in the area of magically induced non-magical darkness, does it illuminate objects outside of the heavily obscured area?
• Can objects and creatures in the area of magically induced non-magical darkness have shadows that extend outside of the heavily obscured area?

So, yes, I am saying that non-magical darkness is "incomplete" (i.e. not enough information for a DM to run it) if induced in a well-lit area, because knowing how natural darkness works doesn't provide a DM definitive answers to any of the above questions. None of the DM's real-life experiences apply, because the situation is impossible in the real world: natural darkness can't exist in a well-lit area. If you force it to with magic, the spell itself needs to provide the definitive answers to fill these gaps or else it too is "incomplete".

Np. Why does distance between the brightly lit areas and darkness inbetween matter when it comes to the substance of the example?

Because the complex interaction of the darkness and a well-lit background behind the darkness is more likely to be an issue at close ranges. Also, because in the D&D context what the Darkness spell looks like up close is likely to be relevant more often than what it looks like at a distance.

Well, being in the majority doesn't necessarily equate to being right. Nor does being in the majority equate to not having adopted an outlier interpretation.

Are you arguing that an interpretation held by a majority of the population can still be an outlier interpretation? If so, how are you defining "outlier"?

 

[Hriston]

Post 177 and 175 at the minimum.

Those are posts by @Mistwell and @prabe, and one of them is making the same claim as the one you're trying to support. I meant an actual example of someone saying the thing you claimed they were.

It's clear they tried to fix things so you can be inside an area of normal darkness and still see something lit in the distance. But just like a programmer who changes something, new bugs have appeared. Now you can be inside thick fog and see things outside it, or stand on one side of a thick fog and see something on the other side of it. Obviously not intended, but still a consequence of the change.

The errata needs errata. Give it two years and it will get changed.

You seem to think you know what was intended and what wasn't, allowing you to dismiss any text that doesn't agree with that understanding as incorrect. That isn't how textual analysis works.

 

[Hriston]

This is from the 2015 PHB errata document that was current when the change was made, which I think sheds some light on the reason (intent) for the correction:

Vision and Light (p. 183). A heavily obscured area doesn’t blind you, but you are effectively blinded when you try to see something​

obscured by it.​

​

I would suggest to @FrogReaver to add this to the relevant texts in the OP.

 

[FrogReaver]

To my understanding, no one in this thread (as of when I had originally posted) had asserted that a close parsing of the spell and rules text requires the ink blot interpretation. Instead the general gist seems to have been limited to opposing your claim that a close parsing favors your interpretation, rather than supporting an alternative close reading. If someone had made the claim that a close reading requires the inkblot interpretation, I missed it.

These 3 examples are from the very first page on the thread. Can you square these with your assertion above?

Darkness creates a heavily obscured area.

A heavily obscured area blocks vision entirely.

So if you are in a heavily obscured area, your vision is entirely blocked.

But the sentence before that says "A heavily obscured area-such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage-blocks vision entirely".

The "Blocks Vision Entirely" and "Nonmagical Light Can't Illuminate It" are the phrases that cement RAW for me. Without assuming basic physics, you trigger the "But it doesn't say I can't" argument. And that way leads to madness.*
*Madness in this case meaning a completely non-functional game.