D&D (2024) I attack the darkness!

[evilbob]

This came up in a game and made me realize the rules for attacking things you cannot see are weird.

This was discussed a lot for 5.0 but I don't think 5.5 fixed it, and this entire post is specific to 2024 rules: RAW, if you are attacking a target in Magical Darkness (such that darkvision is not in play) that also cannot see because of said darkness, you roll normally to attack them. This is because you have disadvantage to hit because you cannot see them, but they grant you advantage because you are an unseen attacker, which cancel each other out. Similarly, they roll normally to attack you, since you cannot see them but also they cannot see you.

This makes Magical Darkness functionally useless (unless someone has blindsight).

But wait: it gets weirder. Two hidden archers that are 200 feet away from each other have a normal chance to hit each other (because all the disadvantages are cancelled by one advantage), whereas someone 10 feet away from a prone target they can see only has disadvantage. If you have disadvantage to hit something, your best bet is to jump into a fog cloud - because now you have a better chance to hit! RAW, if someone is Invisible (I capitalize the condition), this doesn't stop someone from attacking them (if their attack doesn't require a target they can see): they just have disadvantage. Which means the Hide action doesn't stop someone from attacking you either, since all it does is grant the Invisible condition. The frustrating part is that nothing really talks about locating an Invisible creature other than the Search action - which you do to find something you know is there, and then it removes the Invisible condition. What happens when something is Invisible and you don't know it's location? Is that even a thing that can happen? The problem is that nothing specifies that if you are hidden (Invisible), does it make anything unaware of your location? (It's specifically NOT the Hide action because that only makes you Invisible!)

As far as I can find, there's exactly one detail in the entire PHB & DMG that talks about targeting a creature you can't see: a sidebar on p.26 of the PHB that talks about targeting something that isn't in the location you targeted, and that you would miss if you targeted the wrong location. Unfortunately, the rules don't specify how you determine if you're targeting the wrong location - unless you take a Search action to find a thing, which makes it no longer hidden, and thus no longer Invisible. (Even if they are still standing in Magical Darkness????)

I'm pretty content with the Search action being used as a counter to the Hide action / the Invisible condition, and that this action nullifies the condition. And even the problem of "you are not aware of a creature that is hidden" is answered with Passive Perception: when you are hidden and gain the Invisible condition, your Stealth check becomes the DC for the Search check, and Passive Perception can be used when something is not making an active Search. So walking Invisible into a camp full of goblins doesn't mean they automatically see you, unless their Passive Perception beats your Stealth roll. I'm even ok with "the DM is assuming you are Hiding when you turn Invisible and thus you can go ahead and make a Stealth roll without using the Hide action" interpretation of the rules, which I honestly cannot tell if that is RAW or RAI, but either way it seems ok. And I'm even ok with the idea that if you are hidden you become Invisible and stay that way even after you leave your hiding spot (hide behind a boulder and sneak up on someone during combat). All of that seems to work together, IMO, even if sometimes it doesn't make logical sense - at least it's all consistent.

The issue comes from targeting a creature you know exists that is still Invisible. When a creature is hidden/Invisible, how can you know where to target? How do you guess its location? In the example of a rogue hiding behind a boulder and then sneaking out to hit someone, if I Ready an action to attack the rogue when I can target it, does that mean as soon as the rogue leaves full cover I can now attack (I just get disadvantage)? What if the rogue is hiding in Magical Darkness - can I attack them anyway? How do I know where the rogue is if I can't see them?

Can anyone else find something in the rules talking about targeting something you are aware of but cannot see, or how one would guess the location of an Invisible target? RAW as far as I can tell, nothing about hiding or being Invisible conceals your precise location at any time - it just gives disadvantage, and thus creates the unintuitive situation that Magical Darkness is only useful with blindsight.

 

[GMMichael]

This makes Magical Darkness functionally useless (unless someone has blindsight).

Why would one choose to enter an area of magical darkness? Especially when there's probably an enemy in there?

 

[billd91]

This was discussed a lot for 5.0 but I don't think 5.5 fixed it, and this entire post is specific to 2024 rules: RAW, if you are attacking a target in Magical Darkness (such that darkvision is not in play) that also cannot see because of said darkness, you roll normally to attack them. This is because you have disadvantage to hit because you cannot see them, but they grant you advantage because you are an unseen attacker, which cancel each other out. Similarly, they roll normally to attack you, since you cannot see them but also they cannot see you.

This makes Magical Darkness functionally useless (unless someone has blindsight).

Well, what did you expect magical darkness to do for you if you had no way to not be affected by it yourself? It's not going to give you any combat advantage if you can't see through it, whether it's you or your potential target who is in the darkness. So its utility either has to be tied to you (or exploiting ally) to have a way to "see" despite the darkness or it has to be for general battlefield control such as obscuring the line of sight between your enemies and yourself so you can move without being observed.

That said, yes, it seems very weird that fighting in darkness is much like fighting in broad daylight (though without opportunity attacks). That's a weird quirk of the advantage/disadvantage rules since both apply. I'm not entirely satisfied with that result. But that doesn't mean that magical darkness is functionally useless.

 

[evilbob]

A player (with foreknowledge of the enemy locations) kicked in a door and cast Magical Darkness on a group of unaware enemies, with the reasonable intention that the blinded enemies would not be able to target the players, and "as they move out, we can pick them off." But RAW, this did nothing: the other players can attack those enemies normally, and those enemies can attack the players normally.

I suppose you could rule that since the unaware enemies were caught in the spell before they knew the characters' exact locations, the characters could all make Stealth rolls and see if that beat the enemies' Passive Perceptions, as all the characters were effectively Invisible; if not, the enemies were "unaware" of the characters and therefore cannot target them, whereas the players could simply target the enemies and roll normally (see OP). And as each character attacked, this would fail their Invisibility from being hidden (although the enemies are still blinded), and thus allow the enemies to target them (and roll normally - see OP). Except that in this specific case, that's much ado about nothing as the characters all went before the enemies, and thus the Darkness was once again useless.

Also just FYI, one player decided to run into the darkness and hack away, which RAW would have made all their rolls normal as well. My "rule on the spot" was to impose disadvantage on anyone (without blindsight) attacking anything inside the cloud or from within the cloud, because that made the most sense, even if it broke the rule of "advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out." The darkness-casting player made a reasonable tactical choice and spent a 2nd level spell and I didn't want to make that decision useless, and the reckless player that ran into the darkness made a tactically poor decision and I didn't want to make it tactically sound. But what became harder to reckon was how they could all target each other inside the darkness; there are just no rules to adjudicate that. In the end, it just became another thing I had to make up on the spot.

 

[Stormonu]

I must be unusual. I've run several combats/encounters where the target can't be seen. If it makes some sort of attack roll, the attacker has to specify a 5 ft. square in range. If the target isn't in that square, it's an automatic miss. If it is there, the attack is still made with disadvantage.

If the target makes an attack while unseen (say in darkness or invisible) that doesn't automatically break being unseen, the target has a general idea where the attack came from, and if the target hasn't moved since making the attack you can counter-attack with disadvantage (you are considered to have enough awareness to know in general where the attacker is).

This is, of course, a slight alteration of the RAW rules, with a lot taken from prior editions. It's made for some scary fights against invisible opponents though (namely an very interesting encounter with Skulks that had the party quite flustered until they finally were able to locate and fireball part of the enemy).

Funnily enough, I've run two characters with Devil Sight that allowed seeing in magical darkness, but I've never been able to effectively use Darkness offensively without royally screwing allies - it's fairly annoying I haven't been able to effectively use it better. I've ended up only using Darkness and Devil sight on two occasions in those two campaigns.

 

[Distracted DM]

I must be unusual. I've run several combats/encounters where the target can't be seen. If it makes some sort of attack roll, the attacker has to specify a 5 ft. square in range. If the target isn't in that square, it's an automatic miss. If it is there, the attack is still made with disadvantage.

AFAIK unless the unseen creature is actively hiding via their action (or bonus etc), they still make sound which is enough to tell others roughly where they are. This was the case in 5e14 at least, I'm not sure if they altered it in 5e24.

 

[evilbob]

If it makes some sort of attack roll, the attacker has to specify a 5 ft. square in range. If the target isn't in that square, it's an automatic miss. If it is there, the attack is still made with disadvantage.

Good point: part of the reason this is so tricky is that we are not using minis. There is no grid and everything is theater-of-the-mind.

It doesn't change the underlying problem, but if you are using a grid, it becomes much simpler to request a player to pick a target location for their attack, and they can use their own knowledge of whether or not an enemy has moved to make an educated guess. In my case, there's not a good way to know if the player is targeting the correct spot or not, without going back to old rules like "roll a d8 to see if you pick the right direction" and such.

 

[Theory of Games]

This is where RAI trumps RAW:

RAW, attacks aren't affected by the attacker being blinded. RAI, attacks are affected by being blinded the same as ability checks. Makes perfect sense and (a more 'group-centric') Rule Zero handles it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is where RAI trumps RAW:

RAW, attacks aren't affected by the attacker being blinded. RAI, attacks are affected by being blinded the same as ability checks. Makes perfect sense and (a more 'group-centric') Rule Zero handles it.

Though one should think that something this basic-and-simple should not need to be fixed by Rule Zero.

Like, this isn't some bizarro edge case. This is literally "the party Arcane Trickster dropped darkness on us so we could try to escape...and it made no difference for whether we would get hit by opportunity attacks."

This is perhaps the strongest single argument I've ever seen for the rampant over-use of Advantage and Disadvantage. So, at the very least, thank you @evilbob for mentioning this. Definitely going to keep this in my back pocket for the times people say nothing goes wrong with the alleged "elegance" of the Ad/Dis mechanic.

 

[evilbob]

This is where RAI trumps RAW:

RAW, attacks aren't affected by the attacker being blinded. RAI, attacks are affected by being blinded the same as ability checks. Makes perfect sense and (a more 'group-centric') Rule Zero handles it.

Sure, and that's fine - that's what I already did.

The targeting is the main thing I'm wondering about. Can anyone find something about targeting?