D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[Xetheral]

I think the issue isn’t saying there’s a gap, it’s defining gap so broadly
that something that is defined by rules becomes a gap because you don’t like that the rules don’t carve out an exception to a particular situation. In this case: silhouettes.

if it helps, my personal take on silhouettes is that a creature creating a silhouette is not in an area of dark light because to create a silhouette a relatively bright light has to be striking your backside.

Fair enough! I was trying to define the gaps broadly enough to account for everyone's differing interpretations/readings/rulings/etc., as I understand them. But there's so many different perspectives in this thread I can see how that led to the examples appearing unhelpfully broad. Not sure how to resolve that though without substituting my own judgement for what qualifies as too broad.

Your take on sihlouettes works for me, even though I would rule differently, and I think there about a dozen other posters in this thread with their own idiosyncratic take.

 

[Xetheral]

But My post there wasn’t about silhouettes? In fact, I don’t see any post quoted about silhouettes??

My interpretation of the exchange was that @Hriston proposed an example, @Crimson Longinus pointed out that the position of the observer was relevant to apparent lighting levels due to backlight/silhouette issues, and you and other declared that was an incorrect way to account for backlighting and silhouettes, and that level levels are required by RAW to be objective. Do you see the exchange differently?

 

[FrogReaver]

Fair enough! I was trying to define the gaps broadly enough to account for everyone's differing interpretations/readings/rulings/etc., as I understand them. But there's so many different perspectives in this thread I can see how that led to the examples appearing unhelpfully broad. Not sure how to resolve that though without substituting my own judgement for what qualifies as too broad.

Your take on sihlouettes works for me, even though I would rule differently, and I think there about a dozen other posters in this thread with their own idiosyncratic take.

The problem is: most of the other takes on silhouettes I’ve read change the darkness and obscurement rules to fit silhouettes.

that’s no longer a gap based ruling, it’s a blatant change to RAW

 

[Xetheral]

The problem is: most of the other takes on silhouettes I’ve read change the darkness and obscurement rules to fit silhouettes.

My claim is that ALL takes on silhouettes involve changing (i.e. adding to or removing from) the darkness and obscurement rules, even yours, because the rules are silent regarding silhouettes, leaving them up to "DM Decides".

 

[FrogReaver]

My claim is that ALL takes on silhouettes involve changing (i.e. adding to or removing from) the darkness and obscurement rules, even yours, because the rules are silent regarding silhouettes, leaving them up to "DM Decides".

What RAW did my stance on silhouettes change?

Also, what is your stance on silhouettes?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Here's an (IMO) interesting example, if I can do it right, to show what some people have been trying to get across:

Dog, Bunny, and Cat are in a long 5' hallway. Each of them are carrying torches:



Yellow squares are torchlight, brown are dim light from the torches (overlapping areas). With me?

Okay, Bunny's torch goes out.

By RAW we have:



Bunny is in Darkness, but I don't think anyone would argue that Dog and Cat couldn't see each other.

Now, I'm assuming that @Crimson Longinus and their "superior knowledge of light" (please take that as a friendly jab - I really don't mean it to insult at all) would ignore RAW here and just extend the "dim light" to include Bunny. (Please correct me if I'm wrong). Whereas @Hriston (for example) would consider it dark enough in the middle that Bunny has Heavy Obscurement and is in "Darkness". Both are the SAME when it comes to what Dog and Cat can see! Bunny is dark (out of the range of their torchlight) but they can see each other, so enough ambient light is crossing the hall where Bunny is to make out Bunny in the shadows, assuming Bunny does not duck down (or whatever) and Hide. Something that Bunny is permitted (again by RAW) to do, because she has Obscurement from darkness.

Now, if Bunny had her Torch still lit and cast Darkness on herself? Her torch would no longer Illuminate the area around her, and by RAW the Darkness would look like this:



@FrogReaver and the initial posit simply suggested that this would look very similar to the same example of natural light above (let's assume that none of these animals have Darkvision, shall we?) Dog and Cat can still see each other, and Bunny is very hard to see, but not necessarily impossible, if she's not hiding. And her torch doesn't illuminate. If Cat or Dog move up to her, their torches fail to Illuminate the area too.

On the other hand, most of us scratch the above RAW out in favor of this: (For dog, and the same for Cat on the other side).




Does that make sense?

 

[FrogReaver]

My interpretation of the exchange was that @Hriston proposed an example, @Crimson Longinus pointed out that the position of the observer was relevant to apparent lighting levels due to backlight/silhouette issues, and you and other declared that was an incorrect way to account for backlighting and silhouettes, and that level levels are required by RAW to be objective. Do you see the exchange differently?

Well if you happened to include the quote I replied to in that exchange I think it would make more sense.

@Crimson Longinus stated: "I would not rule an area between two nearby well lit areas to be darkness to begin with."
I replied: "By 5e rules , provided the torches are 100ft apart , and there are no other light sources then the area between is darkness."

Going back through the quotes of the other posters that you attempted to use as examples, they were replying to the same thing. I don't know if you quickly skimmed over this to find an example or not, but your view on what was happening in these posts (them being about silhouettes) isn't even debatable. It's flat out wrong.

 

[FrogReaver]

@FrogReaver and the initial posit simply suggested that this would look very similar to the same example of natural light above (let's assume that none of these animals have Darkvision, shall we?)

To be fair, I may have done more than 'simply suggested' that

But when it's 1 vs 10 (or however many it was at the thread start) and nearly everyone is outright dismissing the premise - it's easy to take a stronger position than you otherwise would have.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

To be fair, I may have done more than 'simply suggested' that

But when it's 1 vs 10 (or however many it was at the thread start) and nearly everyone is outright dismissing the premise - it's easy to take a stronger position than you otherwise would have.

Haw! Yeah, that's probably true. Still, I didn't get the impression that you ever meant "everyone has to adopt this now, because I have proved it to be true by RAW and RAW is LAW!"

You convinced me, anyway, so there's a small victory.

 

[Xetheral]

What RAW did my stance on silhouettes change?

Also, what is your stance on silhouettes?

Based on this description...

if it helps, my personal take on silhouettes is that a creature creating a silhouette is not in an area of dark light because to create a silhouette a relatively bright light has to be striking your backside.

... I interpret you as ruling that a silhouetted creature isn't in a dark area. So you're willing to increase the light level of the square the silhouetted creature is in even if it's outside the bright or dim light radius of any light source, so that the silhouette can be seen, yes? That totally works, but there is no text in the book to support it, so from my perspective you're filling a "gap" in the RAW to address a situation the RAW doesn't cover. (And doing so in a manner very similar to @Crimson Longinus's observer-dependent ruling that backlit darkness isn't dark.)

(If, alternatively, you're ruling that creatures in darkness can't be seen as silhouettes at all, then you're probably filling a different gap in the rules concerning why you don't let creatures in darkness be seen as silhouettes, but do let objects in darkness be seen as silhouettes. If instead you don't even let objects in darkness be seen as silhouettes, then we're right back to the transparent wall problem.)

Well if you happened to include the quote I replied to in that exchange I think it would make more sense.

@Crimson Longinus stated: "I would not rule an area between two nearby well lit areas to be darkness to begin with."
I replied: "By 5e rules , provided the torches are 100ft apart , and there are no other light sources then the area between is darkness."

Going back through the quotes of the other posters that you attempted to use as examples, they were replying to the same thing. I don't know if you quickly skimmed over this to find an example or not, but your view on what was happening in these posts (them being about silhouettes) isn't even debatable. It's flat out wrong.

I could quote even more posts, showing that the entire context of the discussion at that point was about silhouettes, but that seems like an excessive amount of quoting.

I did make a mistake, however, as I thought the post you were replying to was an excerpt from @Crimson Longinus's reply to @Hriston's white room example in which Crimson was explicitly talking about making darkness dependent on the perspective of an observer (and implicitly that mattered due to the location of the backlight). Instead Crimson's post that you were replying to was slightly before @Hriston's example. I apologize for the error. I don't think it makes a substantive difference in how I portrayed the exchange, however, since the post you were actually replying to was making a similar statement about an area of darkness between two lit areas (i.e. a situation of backlit darkness that would lead to silhouettes for creatures and objects in that darkness).

If you read the series of posts as not pertaining to backlights and silhouettes, then clearly we have completely different understandings of the context of that part of the discussion.