D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[Seramus]

You got it! They can sort-of see you. If you hide, you are gone. If you don't, they can see movement, or a shadow, or a silhouette, or whatever seems the most appropriate to the story being told at the time. Enough to, say, shoot arrows at you, but with a good chance that they'll miss.

Alright, with you so far. What about the people inside the Darkness? Are they exempt from the same effect?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Alright, with you so far. What about the people inside the Darkness? Are they exempt from the same effect?

Not exactly. They can't see anything very well INSIDE the area either. They can probably see just enough to get around (after all, there's no chance that they'll trip over their own feet and fall on their face - and they can find their quiver to shoot arrows at you) but they can't see others in the area any better than someone looking in can.

They CAN, however, see out of it into areas of light.

 

[Seramus]

Not exactly. They can't see anything very well INSIDE the area either. They can probably see just enough to get around (after all, there's no chance that they'll trip over their own feet and fall on their face - and they can find their quiver to shoot arrows at you) but they can't see others in the area any better than someone looking in can.

They CAN, however, see out of it into areas of light.

Alright. Do they have to deal with Heavy Obscurement between themselves and things outside the light?

 

[Hriston]

Wouldn’t one have to be, to establish things like cover and line of sight?

I don't think so. Heavily obscured areas don't provide cover, and it's very simple to adjudicate line of sight around them. Is the creature or object to which you're establishing line of sight in the heavily obscured area or not? If it is, then there's no line of sight.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Alright. Do they have to deal with Heavy Obscurement between themselves and things outside the light?

Not unless something was hiding in the darkness between them. Then there might be cover that they're unaware of. But here we're getting into corner cases. Hriston's answer above works just as well for your question as it does for the one it answered!

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't think so. Heavily obscured areas don't provide cover, and it's very simple to adjudicate line of sight around them. Is the creature or object to which you're establishing line of sight in the heavily obscured area or not? If it is, then there's no line of sight.

Right, again, I’m not talking specifically about heavily obscured areas. Let’s say there’s a character standing in position A, a character standing in position B, and a character standing in position C. A wall blocks the path between position A and position C, but not between position B and position C. Wouldn’t it be necessary to know what can be seen from these three characters’ vantages to establish who has line of sight to whom and who has cover from whom?

 

[Hriston]

If you're a halfling or a gnome or a dwarf then you're looking up at just about every enemy that casts darkness, insisting they are escaping your notice by blending in to the shadows they've created on the ground doesn't do it for me.

I don't understand this. Who's insisting? Presumably whether the enemy escapes your notice would be decided by a Stealth check. And I don't know where the idea that all the spell does is create shadows on the ground is coming from. It's a 30 foot diameter sphere of darkness.

 

[Hriston]

Exactly, so the wall still exist to be in your view rather then what's behind, so to would the creature in the forementioned example. So people would see it, it would look like a something.

No, the part of the wall inside the area of effect would not be in anyone's view.

 

[Seramus]

Not unless something was hiding in the darkness between them. Then there might be cover that they're unaware of. But here we're getting into corner cases. Hriston's answer above works just as well for your question as it does for the one it answered!

I'm not sure this is a corner case. I'm trying to wrap my head around a somewhat common situation: Two people in Darkness, and one person outside Darkness. The two people inside Darkness see flickering shadows and anti-light when they look at each other, but less than Light Obscurement shadows when they look outside? I know "A Wizard Did It", but it's almost like Quantum Darkness, where it exists or doesn't exist depending on where you look.

Which, to be fair, is how Illusions work.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm not sure this is a corner case. I'm trying to wrap my head around a somewhat common situation: Two people in Darkness, and one person outside Darkness. The two people inside Darkness see flickering shadows and anti-light when they look at each other, but less than Light Obscurement shadows when they look outside? I know "A Wizard Did It", but it's almost like Quantum Darkness, where it exists or doesn't exist depending on where you look.

Which, to be fair, is how Illusions work.

But... if you are standing in a dark room, and someone is standing beside you, and you look out onto a dark street, and I am standing there under a street light... you can see me. Why would a person in the darkness area have trouble seeing someone standing in full light?

For the record, before reading this thread, I thought that Darkness (the spell) created an area that had absolutely no light whatsoever, but I agree with the OP that the spell does not NEED to be read that way. It can just be darkness that light sources do not illuminate. (Which is quite a bit different than "no photon can enter the area", which is something that the spell does not say.