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Only if the darkness is opaque. If the darkness is transparent than anyone with normal vision would be assumed to see through it just fine.

I disagree that it is RAW. I have maintained from the beginning that the vision and obscurement rules are too abstract to permit a RAW answer to the question of whether the darkness created by the spell is opaque or transparent. I'm glad you agree that the transparent interpretation creates...

I've previously pointed out how interpreting the spell as magically induced non-magical darkness produces gaps that the spell text does not resolve. In particular, it doesn't answer the question of what magically induced non-magical darkness in an otherwise well-lit area would look like to an...

@FrogReaver, I'm having a hard time following how you're interpreting the phrase "can't see through this darkness". The relevant text of the spell says: So the magical darkness created by the spell fills a volume--we know this because the spell text explicitly says that the darkness "fills a...

None of the three examples you provided appear to me to be a close parsing of the text. They're simply citing the text as justification, which is a different type of analysis. I will grant, however, that all three are making a text-based claim contrary to yours, and @Iry even mentions "RAW". So...

To my understanding, no one in this thread (as of when I had originally posted) had asserted that a close parsing of the spell and rules text requires the ink blot interpretation. Instead the general gist seems to have been limited to opposing your claim that a close parsing favors your...

But that's not the example provided.... The example has a single, sharp-edged zone of darkness seen at short range in the middle of an area that would otherwise be lit. Your house example is almost the exact opposite: a single brightly lit object seen at long range in an otherwise dark...

That example can't exist with natural darkness in the real world because natural darkness doesn't exist as a volume-filling concept (instead darkness is the lack of perception of light on a particular vector). It can kind-of-sort-of exist in the abstraction of D&D if you approach the rules as...

I don't think anyone else is arguing in favor of the opaque ink-blot interpretation based on a close reading of the spell text or obscurement rules. They're ruling based on which interpretation makes sense on an intuitive level (I believe "common sense" has been cited in this thread), practical...

Doesn't that weigh against your interpretation? If magic has endless possibilities, and we have one possible interpretation where the spell text fully resolves the spell, and another possible interpretation where the spell text leaves gaping holes, isn't that evidence that the completely...

This is a great example. Under the "opaque ink-blot" interpretation, the resolution is easy: the Dog can't see anything in or behind the darkness. Under the "transparent zone of magically induced non-magical darkness" interpretation, things get much trickier. The Dog should be able to see the...

The errata was necessary for normal darkness to work properly. As originally written, anyone standing in normal darkness suffered from the Blinded condition and so couldn't even see distant light sources. This would have meant (e.g.) that stars couldn't be seen at night, torches would be...

I think there's room to thread the needle and refashion classes on something similar to the 5e Warlock chassis without ending up with 4e. One could probably end up closer to Star Wars Saga Edition, which managed to have the classes on identical chassis without the same level of pushback that 4e...

I agree with much of this, but I emphatically disagree that a design critique necessarily involves comparing something to its own design goals. I think it's perfectly valid to critique something based on the purposes of the end users. So while a bare "I don't like it" isn't a useful design...

The more I look into various dictionaries, the more conflicting information I'm seeing about what "critique" actually means. It feels a little surreal, since I thought I had a good understanding of the word. Most dictionaries seem to restrict "critique" to a detailed analysis, so a bare "I...

(Bold emphasis added.) I don't follow the bolded claim. How do subjective personal opinions of an RPG fail to qualify as design criticism? When I express my opinion of a game's design aren't I critiquing criticizing that design, by definition? Edit: interestingly, the dictionary definitions of...

Wasn't your original claim that without the risk of permanent character death, there would be no permanent consequences at all? Isn't failure itself still meaningful if it has permanent consequences?

How does later bringing the royal family back to life fix the failure? The royal family has been gone in the interim. Isn't that an unfixed permanent consequences for failure?

Thanks for clarifying. What other types of solutions do you have in mind that are able to retroactively correct consequences from past failures? I understand how high-level spells (or political influence, or even, in some cases, simply tons of cash) can change the current situation, but I'm...

Ok, I'm confused. I thought your entire point was that without the possibility of permanent character death, no consequences of any sort will ever be permanent because one could just wait to high level and use high-level resources and/or get a god to retroactively fix all the past consequences...