D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[Hriston]

So the people standing outside the radius of Darkness can see you, just not enough to get the mechanical benefits? I can see that. Like a field of flickering anti-light that reveals distorted glimpses of the things inside. And being Hidden inside it means they don't even see you in there.

Yeah, that sounds cool. I think the important thing is that a creature in a heavily obscured area can't be seen clearly, which allows them to try to hide. In most places in the rules this is just called not being seen, but I tend to lump them together.

 

[gatorized]

It's transparent, but it's not allowing light to go through it.

This is a contradiction. A thing is transparent if and only if light can pass through it. Otherwise, it is opaque.

 

[FrogReaver]

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?

I usually would run it that way and I wish 5e RAW worked that way, but 5e treats terrain and lighting and other non-opaque natural phenomenon that can interfere with vision as areas of obscurement (whether heavy or lightly). It says nothing on whether you can see through obscured area - essentially leaving that completely up to the DM now.

Interestingly, RAW doesn't even say whether you can see something on the other side of the fog created via the fog cloud spell. All RAW actually says now is that you can't see something in the fog.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is a contradiction. A thing is transparent if and only if light can pass through it. Otherwise, it is opaque.

Not if it teleports light to the other side or supresses it as it passes through it

With magic you kind of have to think outside the box...

 

[FrogReaver]

Because that sort of darkness can only render things invisible if there is not an illuminated area behind it! If the spell is cast in a bright area, it either has to render the creatures in it visible as silhouettes,

A creature in regular darkness can become a silhouette when something behind it is lit up. By raw that silhouette creature is still heavily obscured. Which IMO, doesn't make much sense - but such is still RAW. One could use this as proof that RAW treats silhouette's as heavily obscured - which kind of undermines this line of argumentation you are using that argues 'silhouettes are not heavily obscured and therefore a reading which has the darkness spell produce silhouette's contradicts RAW'

 

[Charlaquin]

I usually would run it that way and I wish 5e RAW worked that way, but 5e treats terrain and lighting and other non-opaque natural phenomenon that can interfere with vision as areas of obscurement (whether heavy or lightly). It says nothing on whether you can see through obscured area - essentially leaving that completely up to the DM now.

Interestingly, RAW doesn't even say whether you can see something on the other side of the fog created via the fog cloud spell. All RAW actually says now is that you can't see something in the fog.

What part of cover and line of sight can no one in this thread seem to read?

 

[Seramus]

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?

Hrrm. The street light lets me see you just fine, so no problems there.
But what about magical Darkness? Doesn't that mess with light? What do I see then?

 

[Xetheral]

A creature in regular darkness can become a silhouette when something behind it is lit up. By raw that silhouette creature is still heavily obscured. Which IMO, doesn't make much sense - but such is still RAW. One could use this as proof that RAW treats silhouette's as heavily obscured - which kind of undermines this line of argumentation you are using that argues 'silhouettes are not heavily obscured and therefore a reading which has the darkness spell produce silhouette's contradicts RAW'

If silhouettes always count as heavily obscured, then observers are always "effectively blind" to silhouettes and thus no silhouette can ever be seen.

Ok, for creatures, maybe never having silhouettes be visible isn't that big a deal in practice--human-sized creatures don't actually block that much. But what about walls? Using the same ruling that a silhouette always counts a heavily obscured, a backlit wall's silhouette shouldn't be visible either if it is heavily obscured, right? But if one can't see a backlit wall's silhouette, doesn't that imply that one can see whatever is behind a backlit wall?

I think it's better not to treat the vague obscurement rules as defining "the physics of light" in D&D--it can produce problems like transparent creatures and/or walls. I'd much rather treat the obscurement rules as an abstraction of the real world. So at my table, if a creature in natural darkness is visible as a silhouette, I infer that they, exceptionally, must not be heavily obscured for rules purposes. The gameplay implication of that choice is that characters should take the location of light sources into account when trying to lurk in the darkness, and I'm totally fine with that additional bit of realism.

 

[FrogReaver]

What part of cover and line of sight can no one in this thread seem to read?

Maybe you are just misreading it?

 

[Charlaquin]

Maybe you are just misreading it?

Cover and line of sight are different things than obscurement. I’ve had like four people respond to me saying “nah, obscurement is a type of terrain.” Every time I’ve explained that obscurement isn’t what I’m talking about but it keeps happening anyway.