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(Emphasis added.) I understand that you're comfortable with applying vision-based advantage/disadvantage even when a creature is neither affected by the Invisible condition, nor when their opponent is (effectively) suffering from the Blinded condition. That's definitely a way to make the...

RAW also is that the darkness spell only creates darkness--it doesn't make opaque creatures transparent. But making opaque creatures (and objects, and walls, etc.) transparent is exactly what would happen if the DM rules that silhouettes are heavily obscured by the transparent magical darkness...

Not necessarily--it's going to be DM dependent. If there is a backlight, the DM is going to have to decide how to interpret the spell and what effects it has on creatures. If the DM prioritizes the rules for heavy obscurement over spell text and let's the spell turn opaque creatures and objects...

The errata'd version of page 183 says that in darkness "[a] creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition... when trying to see something in that area". That doesn't say that normal darkness can't be seen through, and the updated phrasing works well enough for natural darkness in...

For my part, the fact that the spell says that you can't see through it, even if you have darkvision, suggests the intent is that it is opaque, because that's what opaque means. I realize you interpret that line differently (even if I'm still unsure exactly how you're interpreting it), so I know...

Here's one of the definitions of "illuminate" from Merriam Webster: The stars both supply earth with light and brighten the earth with light, so they meet the ordinary definition of illuminating the earth. The definition quoted is neither a technical usage nor is it jargon--it's just natural...

I would say that silhouettes are never heavily obscured by transparent heavy obscurement. Opaque heavy obscurement can obscure a silhouette just fine. What they probably should have done when writing the rules was treat natural darkness separately from heavy obscurement. Then heavy obscurement...

Ruling that a creature that can be seen must not be Heavily Obscured is perfectly consistent with the rules. It's just refusing to treat the rules as defining the physics of light in the game world, and instead treating them as an abstraction of real world lighting. There can be multiple valid...

Not at all. I was responding to your contention that RAW could be read to mean that silhouettes are always heavily obscured (and thus never seen) in 5e, and pointing out the complication that produces for the silhouettes of walls.

If silhouettes always count as heavily obscured, then observers are always "effectively blind" to silhouettes and thus no silhouette can ever be seen. Ok, for creatures, maybe never having silhouettes be visible isn't that big a deal in practice--human-sized creatures don't actually block that...

Adventurers' Guilds start to make a lot more sense in-fiction if you treat them as intended to exploit adventurers, rather than assist them.... "What? You're looking for a place to sell that magic sword to raise cash? Well, I don't know anyone in these parts who would want a magic sword, but...

It's not that it's a paradox, so much as a contradiction by definition. If the darkness is fully transparent, then it can't be seen at all, by definition. If the darkness is instead partially transparent and partially opaque, then it can be seen (if it's backlit, anyway) because it partially...

I'm confused. You say it's filled with "elemental darkness, so completely transparent like the air of a pitch-dark room". But you also say you want the darkness itself to be visible. How can the elemental darkness itself be visible if it's completely transparent?

I think you and I may have very different conceptions of the neurological phenomenon of "sight". To me it's perfectly meaningful to talk about seeing the absence of something. For example, if a wall is all green except for a white patch, it's perfectly reasonably for me to say I can see the...

There's certainly room to quibble over whether, e.g., the moon can be "seen" in a solar eclipse or if instead one is seeing a shadow perfectly superimposed over the moon. Differing perspectives on what it means to be "seen" could definitely affect the relative complexity of opaque vs transparent...

Personally, I think the main purpose of having classes is to make character creation a conceptually different exercise than it would be if abilities could be picked al a carte. By combining abilities into thematically linked packages, players taking levels in a class to get a certain ability...

Then I'm glad your intuition and designer intent lined up in this case. :) Obviously I have merely anecdotal data on how often "melee weapon attack" is misunderstood in practice, but I've definitely had multiple new players be confused about how attacking with a melee weapon does not...

Out of curiousity, if it had instead been written "melee-weapon attack" would you still consider it a contradiction in terms to make a "melee-weapon attack" with a thrown weapon?

The confusion comes from whether "melee weapon attack" means "an attack with a melee weapon" or "a melee attack with a weapon" throughout the text. In technical/formal English, the lack of a hyphen signifies that each adjective independently modifies the noun, whereas the presence of a hyphen...

To my knowledge, "melee-weapon attack" appears nowhere in the rules, so unless you know differently, I believe your claim that both phrases are used differently in the text to be false. Jeremy Crawford has said so explicitly. The Sage Advice Compendium says: "Here’s a bit of wording minutia: we...