D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[FrogReaver]

Edit: Oh, and makes it so that if you have darkvision, you cannot see through it no matter what.

Let's ignore the darkvision exception for now and just figure out whether it functions more or less as regular darkness in the non-darkvision case.

 

[FrogReaver]

It says that they face darkness, not that they are always in darkness. I expect it means cloud cover, passing through woods, or some other reason why even in the real world, we can face darkness even on moonlit nights.

I like that explanation!

 

[Xetheral]

Interesting, i'd never paid much attention to that detail. Looks like I'm not playing by RAW lol. I think one could take this fact a slightly different way that's interesting - that darkness by RAW covers areas quite a bit more lit than what most of us think of as darkness.

I really don't know about the dragon by RAW then. I'll have to think on that some more.

The combination of darkness evidentially including areas that we would consider enough to (badly) see by, plus linking darkness to the Blinded condition, where sight is impossible, seems an odd design choice.

It says that they face darkness, not that they are always in darkness. I expect it means cloud cover, passing through woods, or some other reason why even in the real world, we can face darkness even on moonlit nights.

Oooh, I hadn't considered it that way. I interpreted it as anything less than unobstructed full moon was considered darkness. (I ran moonlight as dim light anyway, so this doesn't change anything at my table, but thanks for pointing out ambiguity I hadn't noticed!)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Does that help?

Sure. It's exactly why I believe that Darkness and Heavy Obscurement do not mean that you can never see anything at all. Effective Blindness does not mean Full Blindness and they used the word "Heavy" with Obscurement for a reason - they could have chosen "Total Obscurement" or "Absolute Obscurement". Things are just obscured a lot not 100% completely.

You seem to have made my case, unless I'm missing something. (I guess I must be, because I still don't understand what you were getting at with "transparent walls".

As far as I can tell, the alternative to what you were describing would be that the walls would be so dark that you couldn't tell that they were there, not that you could see through them.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Except that if Darkness was cast, dog and cat couldn't see each other because the spell would prevent it. It becomes an area of pitch black in the middle that non-magical illumination doesn't enter. Bunny WOULD be impossible to see, without True Sight or magical light to negate the darkness, because RAW says darkness makes a creature effectively blind when trying to see something in that area.

The combination of darkness evidentially including areas that we would consider enough to (badly) see by, plus linking darkness to the Blinded condition, where sight is impossible, seems an odd design choice.

Regarding the Bold bits: It's been a long thread. I assume you both missed the part, quite awhile back, where I talked about knowing a few people who are Legally Blind who can see movement, shadows, and/or light. Even actual real-world Blindness does not equal "absolutely cannot ever see anything at all. One would think that EFFECTIVE Blindness suggests that it could possibly have exceptions, when useful to the narrative.

(Also, @Maxperson , not faulting you for it -long thread - but your first sentences I quote there suggest that you didn't read much of the early thread, as what you're talking about there was the whole start of this conversation!)

 

[Maxperson]

Regarding the Bold bits: It's been a long thread. I assume you both missed the part, quite awhile back, where I talked about knowing a few people who are Legally Blind who can see movement, shadows, and/or light. Even actual real-world Blindness does not equal "absolutely cannot ever see anything at all. One would think that EFFECTIVE Blindness suggests that it could possibly have exceptions, when useful to the narrative.

(Also, @Maxperson , not faulting you for it -long thread - but your first sentences I quote there suggest that you didn't read much of the early thread, as what you're talking about there was the whole start of this conversation!)

Legally blind and effectively blind are two different things. Legally blind isn't actually blindness. It's just very, very poor eyesight and qualifies you for certain benefits. Blind and effectively blind = not being able to see at all.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

After nearly 40 pages, perhaps the conclusion is that there is no RAW Darkness? The rules text is inherently ambigious and can't be used without DM interpretation, and several interpretations are supported by the rules.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

After nearly 40 pages, perhaps the conclusion is that there is no RAW Darkness? The rules text is inherently ambigious and can't be used without DM interpretation, and several interpretations are supported by the rules.

Yes, I said it on page six. The rules are written in casual tone, they say what they say, do what you will with it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The combination of darkness evidentially including areas that we would consider enough to (badly) see by, plus linking darkness to the Blinded condition, where sight is impossible, seems an odd design choice.

The vision rules are just weird. The long invisibility thread a while ago showed it as well. Equating 'pretty hard to see' and 'cannot be seen at all' will cause unintuitive results no matter what you do. I also feel that the stated mechanical effects of 'blinded' are actually way too lenient for total 'can't see at all' situation, so in that sense I understand the desire to not describe the darkness spell in a manner that produces zero visibility. But invisibility spell would still produce similar results, so...

 

[Hriston]

I put together your first and last paragraphs, because read together they're making me think we're talking past east other. I'll try to explain--maybe we can better isolate where we agree and disagree.

First, I entirely agree with you that "DM decides" is an explicit part of the rules. The vision/light/obscurement rules are short and non-comprehensive, by design. (And, as commentary, I think that's better than trying to be comprehensive, even if I would have written the short rules differently.) So the DM has to make a ruling in situations the text of the rules doesn't cover. The DM can't simply plop down light sources and objects/walls and have the rules exactly determine who sees what (as if the rules define the physics of light in D&D). Are we in agreement so far? I think we are, based on what you said above, and based on your mention in the discussion of the examples of the DM choosing light levels on a square-by-square basis--if we're not in agreement to this point, any clarification would be helpful.

The gaps I listed were examples of issues regarding light/vision/obscurement that the rules don't explicitly discuss. I apologize that they came across to you as bizarre, but since I think we agree that the DM needs to make rulings, I don't understand how the existence of gaps requiring rulings comes across as bizarre?

Where I think we disagree regards which of my examples are places the DM will need to decide, and which are covered by the rules. That's totally cool--there is room for disagreement over where the rules are non-comprehensive without affecting my claim that the rules are not comprehensive.

You definitely seem to be taking issue with how literal some of my examples are, and I find that somewhat confusing because it seems to me like you are the one arguing in favor of a more-literal interpretation of the rules. For example, yes, I am familiar with what "opaque" means, and I would rule that anything opaque blocks someone from seeing beyond it. But it sounds like you would rule that dense foliage (which, absent magical transparent plants, is, of course, opaque) does not block vision of creatures on the other side. Indeed, both of the examples of heavy obscurement in the book other than darkness ("dense foliage" and "opaque fog"), are opaque, but it sounds like you would nevertheless let someone see past them unless "there is something opaque (like a wall or a tree trunk) in a heavily obscured area"? You'd expressed as much in response to @Crimson Longinus's dense foliage example, which is why I included examples that didn't take the common definition of opaque for granted, since you didn't appear to be using it. Again, I apologize that you apparently found the example preposterous, I just don't see how it can be preposterous if you're (e.g.) letting the Dog see the Bunny on the opposite side of the dense foliage. Could you please clarify?


Similarly, my intent with the shadow example was not to raise something you would consider preposterous. The rules don't mention shadows with regards to illumination at all, and given how close a parsing of the text some posters in this thread have advocated, it seemed reasonable to me that someone (not necessarily you) would argue that the light from a light source would fill the entire area of its radius, spreading around corners, which in turn would affect the interaction of shadows and light levels. Does that make sense?

Since you objected to the length of my list of examples, I'm going to not discuss the others--I think we can probably nail down where we are disagreeing with what we have so far. I appreciate that you took the time to respond to all of them, and if you would instead prefer a complete response, please let me know.

A plant, its leaves, stems, etc., is an opaque object. That doesn't mean that an area of dense foliage constitutes an opaque area. There are gaps between the leaves, stems, branches, and vines that incompletely fill the area. Again, this is the sort of thing that the rules don't need to spell out for you. I seriously doubt that anyone imagines an area of dense foliage as a solid block of plant material. The fiction comes first. You imagine an area in which there is much growth of plants, and if the level of obscurement provided by that area in your imagination meets the description of a heavily obscured area then you apply the rules for that type of area. This is pretty fundamental to how the rules function, and if you don't understand this, you're going to see these types of gaps. That isn't a fault of the rules.

Same with shadow. Imagine the scene. Is there a shadow? Good, put it there.