D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[Xetheral]

@FrogReaver,

I forgot to include how I handle silhouettes:

I interpret a silhouetted creature in a dark square as not heavily obscured from the perspective of anyone in a position to see the silhouette, but the light level of the square the creature is in remains dark.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

@FrogReaver,

I forgot to include how I handle silhouettes:

I interpret a silhouetted creature in a dark square as not heavily obscured from the perspective of anyone in a position to see the silhouette, but the light level of the square the creature is in remains dark.

Right, so Bunny without her torch, but not with the spell (my second example), may be IN darkness, but Dog and Can can see her silhouette (from each other's torches) and therefore would not be "effectively blind" to her, in spite of the area she's in. It's a fine ruling.

Personally, I'd keep it all simpler for my players, game-mechanics-wise, and just have her Heavily Obscured in spite of Dog and Cat being able to make out her silhouette in each other's torch light. It would only matter if they wanted to attack her, and then, I'd assume, she'd do her best to stick to the deepest shadows.

 

[Xetheral]

Right, so Bunny without her torch, but not with the spell (my second example), may be IN darkness, but Dog and Can can see her silhouette (from each other's torches) and therefore would not be "effectively blind" to her, in spite of the area she's in. It's a fine ruling.

Personally, I'd keep it all simpler for my players, game-mechanics-wise, and just have her Heavily Obscured in spite of Dog and Cat being able to make out her silhouette in each other's torch light. It would only matter if they wanted to attack her, and then, I'd assume, she'd do her best to stick to the deepest shadows.

Cool. I disagree that your approach is simpler (I think they're equally simple), but I doubt that disagreement is surprising.

 

[J.Quondam]

@FitzTheRuke that "wow" I dropped you was a positive "wow" emoji, for the record.
I think I'm convinced!
This thread-- what I've read of it so far-- has been... umm,... illuminating!

 

[FrogReaver]

Based on this description...



... 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's not what I'm doing. I simply rule that silhouettes are not possible in areas of darkness. Which in practice means that in describing the environment, when the creature is in an area of darkness I would never describe a silhouette. So no, I'm not changing anything about the darkness or obscurement rules, or brightening squares that would have otherwise been dark or anything along those lines.

If you want to criticize what I'm doing with silhouettes it may be that there's a slim possibility that what I describe in game terms isn't 100% realistic - but what I am doing in game terms is rule preserving.

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.)

Let's acknowledge 1 thing. When the rules are silent on something, it's expected that the DM fill that gap - but it's also expected that he does so without violating whatever RAW is related to that situation. If the gap is filled by altering the RAW for that instance then you've still altered RAW. If you feel the gap while keeping RAW intact then that's a much different thing. That's what I am doing, while what I see most everyone else doing is filling the gap by changing RAW.

(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.)

I'm saying nothing in darkness is seen as a sihlouette.

You'll have to explain what you mean by 'transparent wall problem'

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.

The issue people took in that series of quotes was in the non-RAW ruling of an area between 2 lit areas not being dark. That's exactly why I responded to Crimson in that section and others were also quoting that same section and gearing their responses toward it because it was so eggregious. Seriously, just go back and read the text they quoted that they were responding to with those responses.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Cool. I disagree that your approach is simpler (I think they're equally simple), but I doubt that disagreement is surprising.

Sure, I mean, either way you'd have to explain how you're handling it to any player who has their own ideas about how it should work.

I guess I just mean it's more binary (trinary?): Each get whatever benefit or penalty they would expect to get from whatever light source they are in, without having to ask the DM if anyone can see them. Of course, you factor in what else is going on for how you describe it, but the mechanics stay distinct.

But yeah, it's easily argued that it's much the same.

Out of curiosity, if being backlit by Cat's torch would make bunny "seen", in your way of ruling, (I mean when her torch is out, without the darkness spell) would she not be allowed to try to hide from Dog? (Does that question make sense?)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The issue people took in that series of quotes was in the non-RAW ruling of an area between 2 lit areas not being dark. That's exactly why I responded to Crimson in that section and others were also quoting that same section and gearing their responses toward it because it was so eggregious. Seriously, just go back and read the text they quoted that they were responding to with those responses.

The RAW is that DM decides the level of illumination. No rules were broken. Not that I cared if they were, but your assertion is still wrong.

Or would you also think that rules are broken when the GM decides that there is a shadow providing obscurement created by an solid stone fence in the area otherwise illuminated by a torch?

 

[FrogReaver]

The RAW is that DM decides the level of illumination. No rules were broken. Not that I cared if they were, but your assertion is still wrong.

Or would you also think that rules are broken when the GM decides that there is a shadow providing obscurement created by an solid stone fence in the area otherwise illuminated by a torch?

The rules specify how much light a torch gives off. Unless there's another light source than the 2 torches then it most certainly is against RAW (provided the torches are at least 45ft away).

@Xetheral this is a perfect example of modifying RAW to fill in a gap.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The rules specify how much light a torch gives off. Unless there's another light source than the 2 torches then it most certainly is against RAW (provided the torches are at least 45ft away).

@Xetheral this is a perfect example of modifying RAW to fill in a gap.

Nonsense. It is just the GM deciding the lightning level based on overall circumstances, like with objects creating shadows. In this instance taking account three intersecting sources of really dim light, none of which alone are sufficient to change darkness into low light; the moon and the edges of the areas the torches illuminate.

And hell, GM is perfectly within their rights to decide that an area is lit without an apparent source, just because. It might be odd, and might cause some wonderment amongst the characters, but no rules would be broken.

The GM decides the environment. That's the rules.

 

[Maxperson]

The rules specify how much light a torch gives off. Unless there's another light source than the 2 torches then it most certainly is against RAW (provided the torches are at least 45ft away).

@Xetheral this is a perfect example of modifying RAW to fill in a gap.

The torches won't illuminate the darkness, though. The spell says so. If the DM determines that the darkness is pitch black, no light will so much as scratch the surface of the spell's area. Darkness by RAW blocks vision entirely and causes effective blindness.

"A heavily obscured area-such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage-blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition..."