D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[FitzTheRuke]

Hey, thanks everyone for this discussion, I found it ILLUMINATING. (Sorry!)

I honestly enjoyed it for the most part, with just a bit of frustration, and I gained a new way of looking at the darkness spell, which I and my players will enjoy. So there's that.

I'll probably get dragged back into it, but my intention is to bow out now. Have fun gaming, gang!

 

[Rabulias]

The same purpose it served back in 3.5 e and the Cleric version served in AD&D 1e.
Also, nobody argued it was impossible to imagine back then.

In AD&D 1e (and 2e), darkness (properly, darkness, 15' radius as it was then) was not a cleric spell. Both 1e and 2e say: "This spell causes total, impenetrable darkness in the area of its effect."

Clerics get darkness added to their spell list with 3e. Here it begins to get a bit muddied. Gone is the word impenetrable. 3e says "This spell causes an object to radiate darkness out to a 20-foot radius. Not even creatures who can normally see in the dark (such as with darkvision) can see in an area shrouded in magical darkness." (emphasis mine). I emphasize the word even as it implies that normal vision cannot see in this darkness either, and the word is noticeably absent from the 5e spell. 3.5e changed darkness to only providing concealment (20% miss chance) to all within it (again notably including creatures with darkvision).

So my question here is what is the intended purpose of darkness in 5e? Is it to block vision and line of sight, or is to provide concealment?

 

[Minato]

Again, that's true using SCIENCE, but not with MAGIC. Heck, the worlds are fantasy, and they don't need to have light work in normal ways at all. Maybe light is just the whims of a Light God? I dunno.

Or if it helps, and I'm starting to get the impression that nothing will help, maybe the magic of the spell creates a bubble that has nothing to do with light? It's an illusion of darkness. The light still passes through normally, but the illusion interprets it as darker-looking and you see what is effectively a selective hologram.

The hologram idea works for me, some false shapes are cast within to make it difficult to determine outlines/centermass of creatures within but leaving general visibility of illuminated stuff behind it.

 

[Mistwell]

No idea who Dan Dillion is but it’s good to know where wotc is saying the RAI is. Thanks for the timely reference.

I wish there was a follow up about a normal area of darkness and how since it’s also a heavily obscured if that means they can’t see the creature through that darkness either.

Dan is a designer on the D&D team at WOTC.

 

[Rabulias]

What exactly is being misapplied? The rules treat darkness as an area of heavy obscurement.

Sorry, I may have been unclear. I am not saying you are misapplying the rules, but that the rules themselves, in trying to be simplified, treat darkness like a solid wall or heavy brush, which hide everything beyond it. Darkness only directly obscures what is within it. Light outside an area of normal darkness (i.e., behind it relative to the viewer) can indirectly reveal what is within the darkness. This is like the bag of flour tossed in the air or footprints in mud indirectly revealing the location of an invisible creature.

When the darkness that is blocking line of site is so limited on radius that it can be moved through or around in 1 turn - is it actually effective at blocking line of sight?

On a flat open field, true. What if your opponents are behind hard cover, say inside a building? Do they leave that cover?

That's not true. In 5e RAW combat, unless you are hidden (unseen and unheard) then the enemy knows your position.

I was speaking in the general sense that they still have disadvantage to hit you, which does not affect area of effect spells you cast on them in the darkness. True, they might have AoE spells, too. Like most spell usage, it's very contextual. But if you're going up against a bunch of brigands who are armed only with bows and javelins, it could be a good tactic.

Sure. though that also means you can't counterspell them.
[…]
Sure. But it also shuts down the ability to hit them with spells that require seeing the target.

True enough. Again, context matters for good spell usage. If both sides have strong casters, darkness might not be useful to either side.

That's a use yes, but it's a pretty niche use. My argument isn't that there is no circumstances darkness is useful when treating it as inkblot, it's that there's so few benefits and the benefits it does have come up very rarely.

I have seen these uses and more for darkness in many editions of D&D. Many spells have niche uses, but it is still useful.

It will only do that to casters that need to target someone they can see. Every other combatant just stands in it and fights anyways, because it doesn't have any effect on what they are doing...

It will impose disadvantage on their attacks if nothing else; that's nothing to sneeze at.

Darkness provides obscurement not cover. It also doesn't make you automatically succeed on stealth or keep the enemies from reacting to the ball of darkness coming at them.

Again, "cover" in the idea of advancing forward with opponents having disadvantage on attacking you as you approach, possibly to a better location (with actual cover) where you can use hide for your turn. Forgive my use of "cover" in the non-technical sense here.

This goes back again to the argument of it being next to useless and not useless entirely. You seem to be arguing that there's some small bit of use that can be found for it. And my response is: So what? Before we even started discussing I already conceded there were some small bits of 'use' for it, so arguing that there are some small bits of 'use' for it isn't actually a counterpoint to my position...

I will forgive your "There's no offensive or defensive use of the spell" as a broad statement. So what do you see as examples for its use with your interpretation? This goes back to my question about the wizard (or whoever) who first created the darkness spell; what did they set out to accomplish with the spell? Which version is more useful? Which version is more appropriate for its spell level?

It doesn't keep them from attacking you normally like they already are...

Again imposing disadvantage is helpful, IMO. They will not be attacking normally, unless they were attacking you with advantage. In which case, attacking normally is a step up.

 

[Nefermandias]

In AD&D 1e (and 2e), darkness (properly, darkness, 15' radius as it was then) was not a cleric spell. Both 1e and 2e say: "This spell causes total, impenetrable darkness in the area of its effect."

Clerics get darkness added to their spell list with 3e. Here it begins to get a bit muddied. Gone is the word impenetrable. 3e says "This spell causes an object to radiate darkness out to a 20-foot radius. Not even creatures who can normally see in the dark (such as with darkvision) can see in an area shrouded in magical darkness." (emphasis mine). I emphasize the word even as it implies that normal vision cannot see in this darkness either, and the word is noticeably absent from the 5e spell. 3.5e changed darkness to only providing concealment (20% miss chance) to all within it (again notably including creatures with darkvision).

So my question here is what is the intended purpose of darkness in 5e? Is it to block vision and line of sight, or is to provide concealment?

I was clearly not talking about Darkness 15' (which is obviously a Magic User spell), I was referring to the anti-cleric's reverse light. Someone else has already pointed it out in another forum, so allow me to paraphrase them:


"Here is the AD&D first edition version.

First, it depends on whether you are talking about the clerical or mage version. The clerical Darkness was actually the reverse of the Light spell. The PH makes no mention of how it affects infravision or ultravision... only the duration and area of effect.

Now the Mage spell, Darkness 15' radius, does state that "total, impenetrable darkness in the area of effect. Infravision and Ultravision are useless. Neither normal nor magical light will work unless a light or continual light spell is cast. In the former event, the darkness spell is negated"

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I find the discussion so niche I can't wade through 30 pages of it...but I do have a thought provoking question for the OP.

In what way would this spell operate differently for you if the word "opaque" wasn't in the description of the dark zone?

 

[Charlaquin]

I find the discussion so niche I can't wade through 30 pages of it...but I do have a thought provoking question for the OP.

In what way would this spell operate differently for you if the word "opaque" wasn't in the description of the dark zone?

Umm... It isn’t, and the implications of ruling it as opaque or as transparent is exactly what this thread has been discussing...

 

[Mistwell]

Umm... It isn’t, and the implications of ruling it as opaque or as transparent is exactly what this thread has been discussing...

Well technically it is. "Completely covering the source of the darkness with an opaque object, such as a bowl or a helm, blocks the darkness."

 

[Dausuul]

Again, that's true using SCIENCE, but not with MAGIC. Heck, the worlds are fantasy, and they don't need to have light work in normal ways at all. Maybe light is just the whims of a Light God? I dunno.

Or if it helps, and I'm starting to get the impression that nothing will help, maybe the magic of the spell creates a bubble that has nothing to do with light? It's an illusion of darkness. The light still passes through normally, but the illusion interprets it as darker-looking and you see what is effectively a selective hologram.

Framing darkness in scientific terms is mostly straightforward. In either interpretation of the spell, darkness absorbs some of the photons passing through the AoE. The difference depends on which photons get absorbed:

Inkblot Version: All photons are absorbed, period.
Transparent Version: All photons which strike a solid object are absorbed. Photons which pass near a solid object have a high chance of being absorbed. Other photons have a small chance of being absorbed.

In both cases, nothing in the area can be illuminated--"illuminated" means "lit up, made bright," and you cannot light up something that absorbs all photons striking it--and objects and creatures in the area are heavily obscured.

(As for the science of how darkness interacts with darkvision... that can't be explained without figuring out the science of how darkvision works normally. Good luck with that one.)