D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 Darkness Spell: What's the Point?

[Odysseus]

The best use for 3.5 darkness, is to cast it on your self. You get 20% concealment.

 

[Rashak Mani]

The best use for 3.5 darkness, is to cast it on your self. You get 20% concealment.

You still suffer the "darkness" yourself too though. Its an area spell.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You still suffer the "darkness" yourself too though. Its an area spell.

But that's not a real problem for a caster (unless he has many ranged touch spells), and it is still an advantage if you have numerous opponents against you, especially Rogues...

 

[lukelightning]

It's also useful for casting on already-existing light spells, which tends to send the party into real darkness.

I rule darkness is an additive quality: on a sunny day you get shadowy darkness, but at night you get pitch black.

 

[Inigo Carmine]

Still why call it darkness ? Its shadowy... not dark.

When the sun goes down, people generally say "It's dark outside". You can stil see, just not as well (it's shadowwy illumination).

 

[Infiniti2000]

The best use for 3.5 darkness, is to cast it on your self. You get 20% concealment.

Keep in mind that you don't cast it on yourself, you cast it on an object in your possession. This is a potentially important distinction if the creature doesn't have an object in its possession, such as a summoned babau demon.

Another use of darkness is that it reduces movement to half (or three quarters for those with blind-fight) because darkness creates poor visibility and poor visibility is hampered terrain. This means that people with poor visibility in the darkness cannot charge and cannot take a 5ft-step. This will likely royally screw up spellcasters and archers. I know some people claim that darkness is not poor visibility, but I personally don't agree with that -- concealment by definition has got to mean poor visibility.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

If you're a warlock devil's sight plus darkness works pretty well (or hungry darkness if you don't mind the damage or have good enough DR).

 

[TheGogmagog]

Also remember that darkness only imposes the miss chance to targets in it's area of effect. If you are inside the area of 3.5 darkness you don't have a miss chance to fire an arrow out. This would allow a rogue to snipe or a caster to make ranged touch attacks. A rogue could also stand at the edge and sneak attack out with melee weapons.

3.0 Darkness would block line of site, 3.5 does not affect line of site to those not in the area.

 

[ken-ichi]

Excellent point Gogmagog. I had not even thought about that.
Keep your Concealment while firing out at non-concealed targets.
If you have good hide skills and/or enough range you can Hide and do sniping shots.
You would only have to worry about area affect spells as targeted spells can't get you if they can't Spot you.

 

[Infiniti2000]

You would only have to worry about area affect spells as targeted spells can't get you if they can't Spot you.

And if you are doing sneak attacks, likely you have evasion and can completely dodge most of those area effect spells.