Darkness/Blindness question

[Moff_Tarkin]

When you in a room that has darkness cast on it, and have no effective way of seeing, can you still tell were enemies are to attack them?

The darkness rules talk a lot about penalties to attacking and such, but I don’t remember if they specifically restrict you from knowing where your enemies are. Logically you can assume that you wouldn’t know where anybody is, but with a game system you cant make assumptions based on real life physics. If nothing else, I assume you would know where they are because the “listen” DC to find someone who is in combat is probably 0.

I only ask because we have had a couple of encounters where the bad guys cast darkness, and we had no way to counter it. It basically shuts down the party to the point were people just hold action to attack anything that attacks them. And when the bad guys have ranged attacks it almost becomes you just sitting there and taking damage.

So can you move to, and attack enemies when blind or in darkness, and simply suffer the concealment penalties?

 

[NewJeffCT]

When you in a room that has darkness cast on it, and have no effective way of seeing, can you still tell were enemies are to attack them?

The darkness rules talk a lot about penalties to attacking and such, but I don’t remember if they specifically restrict you from knowing where your enemies are. Logically you can assume that you wouldn’t know where anybody is, but with a game system you cant make assumptions based on real life physics. If nothing else, I assume you would know where they are because the “listen” DC to find someone who is in combat is probably 0.

I only ask because we have had a couple of encounters where the bad guys cast darkness, and we had no way to counter it. It basically shuts down the party to the point were people just hold action to attack anything that attacks them. And when the bad guys have ranged attacks it almost becomes you just sitting there and taking damage.

So can you move to, and attack enemies when blind or in darkness, and simply suffer the concealment penalties?

It depends on the type of darkness. Regular Darkness, like the 2nd level spell only darkens a room to shadowy illumination, so you can still see ok, but have a 20% miss chance because of the darkness. That can also be countered by the Daylight spell. Deeper Darkness is a 60 foot radius, but you can still see in it with the 20% miss chance. Since it is level 3, like Daylight, it can counter Daylight and vice versa.

 

[irdeggman]

Remember that the darkness penalties work both ways - so the enemies should suffer the same penalties as do allies.

Darkvision specifically does not work to penetrate the darkness spells either.

Darkness cast an area of shadowy illumination that affects line of sight between anything crossing it - now what I mean is that you can't see through the darkness without suffering the penalties so if the enemies are in an area of light and there is a patch of darkness between them and the allies who are also in an area of light - draw lines through squares and see if any of them pass through the darkness, if so then apply the effects accordingly.

Total darkness provides total concealment by the way which blocks line of sight.