D&D 5E Darkness, Magical Darkness, and Heavily Obscured Areas

[Pjack]

On careful reading, I think the intent of the 5e Darkness spell is that creatures inside the magical darkness can see illuminated areas that are outside the darkness. I suspect that being inside the radius of the Darkness spell is like being in a pitch-black cave. You might not be able to see your own hand in front of your face, but you could clearly see a lit candle 100 feet away, even if it's too far away to illuminate you.

As I recall, previous editions of D&D described the Darkness spell as completely blocking all light. The 5e Darkness spell, on the other hand, only states that nonmagical light can't illuminate it. It also states that creatures with darkvision "can't see through" the magical darkness, which might make it sound like there's an impenetrable barrier of darkness surrounding each creature within it. My feeling is that if the designers meant for the magical darkness to be a barrier that obscured all vision, they would have just said that creatures are blinded while in the magical darkness. (In fact, the most recent errata clarifies that you're not actually blinded while in a heavily obscured area such as darkness, but do effectively suffer from the blinded condition when trying to see something IN that area.) I believe that the areas of magical darkness are dark to creatures with darkvision, but I don't see why they couldn't use their darkvision when looking beyond the magical darkness. (Or looking into an illuminated area beyond the magical darkness, for that matter.)

[EDIT] You could take this interpretation to its logical conclusion, and say it doesn't prevent creatures on one side of the magical darkness from seeing illuminated areas on the other side of the magical darkness. If the Darkness spell was cast in, say, the middle of a long hallway, it would appear to a creature in that hallway that there was a thirty-foot, pitch-black chasm in the middle of the hallway, with no walls, ceiling, or floor... but they WOULD be able to see the hallway continuing on beyond the "chasm". Walking into the magical darkness, they would not be able to see themselves or anything else in the radius of the spell, but would still be able to see the hallway beyond the magical darkness, both in front of them and behind them. This can't possibly be the intent, however. For one thing, you would be unable to see sections of the far hallway obscured by creatures and objects inside the darkness. They would effectively cast a "shadow" on the area behind them, rendering the spell confusing and less effective.

Logical weirdness aside, treating Darkness as a "dark shadow" and not an "impenetrable black cloud" does have advantages. (For one thing, creatures with the ability to cast Darkness, such as Drow, could see outside the range of the Darkness effect.) On the other hand, it's kind of weird and hard to describe. In play, it might be easier to just to treat the Darkness spell as creating an impenetrable cloud of magical darkness, and say that characters in magical darkness "effectively suffer from the blinded condition" when trying to see anything inside or outside of the area. Like most everything else in 5e D&D, it's up to DM adjudication.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yeah...

 

[redrick]

On careful reading, I think the intent of the 5e Darkness spell is that creatures inside the magical darkness can see illuminated areas that are outside the darkness. I suspect that being inside the radius of the Darkness spell is like being in a pitch-black cave. You might not be able to see your own hand in front of your face, but you could clearly see a lit candle 100 feet away, even if it's too far away to illuminate you.

As I recall, previous editions of D&D described the Darkness spell as completely blocking all light. The 5e Darkness spell, on the other hand, only states that nonmagical light can't illuminate it. It also states that creatures with darkvision "can't see through" the magical darkness, which might make it sound like there's an impenetrable barrier of darkness surrounding each creature within it. My feeling is that if the designers meant for the magical darkness to be a barrier that obscured all vision, they would have just said that creatures are blinded while in the magical darkness. (In fact, the most recent errata clarifies that you're not actually blinded while in a heavily obscured area such as darkness, but do effectively suffer from the blinded condition when trying to see something IN that area.) I believe that the areas of magical darkness are dark to creatures with darkvision, but I don't see why they couldn't use their darkvision when looking beyond the magical darkness. (Or looking into an illuminated area beyond the magical darkness, for that matter.)

One odd wrinkle of this interpretation is that it doesn't prevent creatures on one side of the magical darkness from seeing illuminated areas on the other side of the magical darkness. If the Darkness spell was cast in, say, the middle of a long hallway, it would appear to a creature in that hallway that there was a thirty-foot, pitch-black chasm in the middle of the hallway, with no walls, ceiling, or floor... but they WOULD be able to see the hallway continuing on beyond the "chasm". Walking into the magical darkness, they would not be able to see themselves or anything else in the radius of the spell, but would still be able to see the hallway beyond the magical darkness, both in front of them and behind them.

This may indeed be the intent, and it does have advantages. (For one thing, creatures with the ability to cast Darkness, such as Drow, could see outside the range of the Darkness effect.) On the other hand, it's kind of weird and hard to describe. In play, it might be easier to just to treat the Darkness spell as creating an impenetrable cloud of magical darkness, and say that characters in magical darkness "effectively suffer from the blinded condition" when trying to see anything inside or outside of the area. Like most everything else in 5e D&D, it's up to DM adjudication.

As I have used this spell in play, the darkness can be seen past. The darkness just becomes like any other pool of darkness in an unevenly lit room, the catch being that even darkvision can't see into it. So, a darkness spell in a bright hallway would be just like looking down a hallway only lit at two ends, with the middle being dark. (Except there would be a very sharp fall-off at the borders of the darkness spell.)

The spell description evokes a bit of an anti-lantern quality, as, from Basic Rules pg 86, "If the point you choose is on an object you are holding or one that isn't being worn or carried, the darkness emanates from the object and moves with it. Completely covering the source of the darkness with an opaque object, such as a bowl or a helm, blocks the darkness."

But I could see it playing it the other way, where the darkness has a black hole effect that actually consumes all light passing through the affected area.

 

[Pjack]

As I have used this spell in play, the darkness can be seen past. The darkness just becomes like any other pool of darkness in an unevenly lit room, the catch being that even darkvision can't see into it. So, a darkness spell in a bright hallway would be just like looking down a hallway only lit at two ends, with the middle being dark. (Except there would be a very sharp fall-off at the borders of the darkness spell.)

I originally agreed with this, then I thought about it and edited my original post. If the darkness obscured an object (say, a pillar, or a chair), then the area of the hallway extending behind that object wouldn't be visible to the observer. It's not x-ray vision; it doesn't let you see through objects, nor does it render the things inside it invisible. So a person trying to hide inside the magical darkness would cast a "shadow" on anything that was illuminated behind them. I like the "pool of darkness" explanation, but I think you have to say that people on the outside of the "pool" can't see into it or through it. It doesn't make sense, otherwise.

 

[steeldragons]

wow.

Well, welcome to EN world. Have some start up XP.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You could take this interpretation to its logical conclusion, and say it doesn't prevent creatures on one side of the magical darkness from seeing illuminated areas on the other side of the magical darkness. If the Darkness spell was cast in, say, the middle of a long hallway, it would appear to a creature in that hallway that there was a thirty-foot, pitch-black chasm in the middle of the hallway, with no walls, ceiling, or floor... but they WOULD be able to see the hallway continuing on beyond the "chasm".

Yes. Post-PHB errata, not only does this appear to be RAW, but it's fairly easy to explain physically: Darkness makes the objects within its radius absorb all light that hits them, reflecting none. From the right angle, you could still see the silhouettes of creatures in the blackness, but for D&D purposes they would be heavily obscured and nearly invisible.

It's certainly an improvement over the 5E PHB's initial rules on Darkness.

 

[dndthrowaway1]

Help me understand the argument here, please.

Say you're in a waist-high grassy field on a bright summer day, and you cast darkness on a solitary small tree in the middle of that field.

- Does someone outside the darkness see the tree?
- if not, what do they see? Do they see the rest of the world behind the tree (the tree is invisible?)? Do they see a silhouette as Hemlock suggests (so the darkness spell is much more useful if cast with a wall behind you to eliminate the silhouetting)?
- Does someone inside the darkness see the tree and the grass within the darkness range?
- if not, how would you describe the boundary between the waist-high grass that you can see, and the part enclosed in the darkness?

Just trying to understand what is being proposed here, thanks in advance.

 

[Hriston]

The spell says creatures with Darkvision can't see through the darkness. To me that means that no one can see what's in or on the other side of it. Also, if anyone is within the radius of the spell, they can't see out of it because that would be seeing through it.

 

[dndthrowaway1]

That's how I have interpreted it too, Hriston, but since the thread seemed to be getting traction, I'm trying to understand the other perspective better in case I've been missing something.

 

[CapnZapp]

Ruling anything else than darkness being an opaque blob of blackness leads to insanity, so don't do it.

Saying you rule "you can see past the darkness but not into it" might sound easy, but what does that even mean?

Just don't do it.

 

[Azurewraith]

Im with @hirston on this one it also just makes it easier to adjudicate the rules and i like simples.

 

[Uchawi]

We are fast approaching the event horizon.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Help me understand the argument here, please.

Say you're in a waist-high grassy field on a bright summer day, and you cast darkness on a solitary small tree in the middle of that field.

- Does someone outside the darkness see the tree?
- if not, what do they see? Do they see the rest of the world behind the tree (the tree is invisible?)? Do they see a silhouette as Hemlock suggests (so the darkness spell is much more useful if cast with a wall behind you to eliminate the silhouetting)?

I don't see how it fails to be useful even if you can see silhouettes (from certain angles). The main utility of Darkness is to prevent yourself being seen. It doesn't even have to be absolute, zero light darkness to count as darkness from a D&D perspective (e.g. most moonlit nights are heavy obscurement, not light obscurement) although absolute darkness is what the Darkness spell gives you. The utility is this:

Vision and Light (p. 183). A heavily obscured area doesn’t blind you, but you are effectively blinded when you try to see something obscured by it.

So what if a creature could, from a certain angle, perceive your silhouette against a lighted backdrop? You're still unseen by that creature. You're heavily obscured from it, with all the advantage goodness that implies, and all the immunity to spells like Counterspell and Disintegration it implies also. Unlike Faerie Fire, the enemy doesn't even have to fail a saving throw in order for you to gain advantage against it, which means it works against dragons (as long as you are out of their Blindsight range).

There are some countertactics like charging into the darkness and retreating behind cover, but for the most part Darkness and Fog Cloud/etc. are brokenly good under the new PHB rules. Better, frankly, than I had expected--I was running heavy obscurement as bidirectional. But at least now you can use Darkness to cancel out someone else's Minor Illusion.

I feel as if most players don't fully grasp the implications of 5E vision rules for tactical doctrine. One of the major downsides to melee combat modes in 5E is that you cannot easily exploit cover and vision rules to gain advantage.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The spell says creatures with Darkvision can't see through the darkness. To me that means that no one can see what's in or on the other side of it. Also, if anyone is within the radius of the spell, they can't see out of it because that would be seeing through it.

To me it means that Darkvision does not trump the Darkness spell. "Can't see through the darkness" is a fairly natural way to write that. WotC isn't noted for the clarity of their writing.

Consider the fact that the new wording on heavy obscurement rules in the errata make most obscurement unidirectional. Errata is not for rules changes, it's for ideas the designers had in mind all along but failed to clearly convey. If they've been thinking of obscurement like Fog Cloud as something you can see out of but not into or within, it would be natural to write that "you can't see through Fog Cloud with Darkvision", even though you're clearly intended to see out of it.

And because there exist ways to gain unidirectional heavy obscurement, making Darkness a special case of bidirectional obscurement doesn't really gain you anything from a game balance perspective, since there are other spells that can be exploited just as easily in exactly the same way. And it's more difficult to adjudicate, because you have to calculate angles and line of sight. As a DM I think it's better to just go with the apparent intent and say, "anything within the Darkness radius cannot be seen, modulo truesight/tremorsense/etc."

The difference between Darkness and Invisibility is that Darkness can be used against you (if enemies close to melee range), and Darkness cannot usually be used to be sneaky, since it's a big moving blot of anti-light.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Charitably, I think this thread is a great example of people bringing their rich fantasy life to the rules.

There is absolutely nothing in the PHB or the errata document to support the interpretation of the original post or in any of the post supporting this interpretation.

If someone could point to any actual text that supports this interpretation, I would appreciate it. As it stands, I find no reason to confuse the common noun, "darkness," with the spell with the proper name, "Darkness".

 

[redrick]

Ruling anything else than darkness being an opaque blob of blackness leads to insanity, so don't do it.

Saying you rule "you can see past the darkness but not into it" might sound easy, but what does that even mean?

Just don't do it.

I mean, it works like seeing past any other area of darkness. If I look down a dark hallway at a lit area at the other end, and something is in my way, I might not know what that thing is, but I might be able to tell that something is blocking my view. Sort of like an eclipse. It's not really even that hard to model.

As for casting it on a tree in a bright field? Yeah, if we run it that way, the tree would still block your view, effectively creating a shadow. That makes sense to me. Why are you casting Darkness in a bright field? If you want to create an opaque visual obstruction, why not cast fog cloud?

I'm not saying that the Darkness=black hole model is wrong. It makes sense, it fits within the rules text as written and it's easy to adjudicate. But there's not a whole lot in the rules that say Darkness can't just be "turning off the lights." It's magic, so it doesn't have to worry about the physical properties of light, so long as it can be applied consistently.

 

[Hriston]

A heavily obscured area—such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage—blocks vision entirely. A creature in a heavily obscured area effectively suffers from the blinded condition (see appendix A) when trying to see something in that area.

The bolded part has had me a bit confused I guess. I've been reading it to mean the vision of observers both inside and outside of the area, as if there is a barrier between the two. I couldn't for the life of me understand why they didn't fix this phrase when the errata were issued, since it obviously couldn't apply to darkness the way I was interpreting it.

I see now, thanks to this thread, and those who've patiently explained their understanding of Darkness, that the second sentence does indeed clarify the meaning of the first. It might have been more clear to say that a heavily obscured area blocks vision into the area entirely, or something like that. Now that I understand it, it seems clear enough.

I still don't think I like the idea of backlight shining through the sphere of a Darkness spell, due to the above language about it blocking vision, but the spell is quite good run with observers on the inside being able to see out, as are heavily obscured areas in general. I really didn't know what the spell was good for until now.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The bolded part has had me a bit confused I guess. I've been reading it to mean the vision of observers both inside and outside of the area, as if there is a barrier between the two. I couldn't for the life of me understand why they didn't fix this phrase when the errata were issued, since it obviously couldn't apply to darkness the way I was interpreting it.

I see now, thanks to this thread, and those who've patiently explained their understanding of Darkness, that the second sentence does indeed clarify the meaning of the first. It might have been more clear to say that a heavily obscured area blocks vision into the area entirely, or something like that. Now that I understand it, it seems clear enough.

I still don't think I like the idea of backlight shining through the sphere of a Darkness spell, due to the above language about it blocking vision, but the spell is quite good run with observers on the inside being able to see out, as are heavily obscured areas in general. I really didn't know what the spell was good for until now.

(Oh WotC, sigh.) I haven't looked at a revised PHB, I'm just going off the errata document v1.1, but it sounds like the errata still left things in a confusing state. But I agree that your current interpretation is likely correct--the second sentence is meant to explain the first.

It is a horrible way to write a rules text by the way, but it's hardly the only place WotC does that with their writing--the daily XP budget rules in the DMG are written exactly the same way (clarifying sentence last), and they confuse people into believing the that daily XP values are supposed to be raw XP instead of adjusted. Oh, WotC. [shakes head]

 

[Hriston]

(Oh WotC, sigh.) I haven't looked at a revised PHB, I'm just going off the errata document v1.1, but it sounds like the errata still left things in a confusing state.

In case you didn't know, any of the errata that apply to the text of the Basic Rules have been incorporated into the online PDF and HTML versions. I find the errata document itself is helpful for finding out what's been changed and perhaps the intent behind the changes, but it doesn't give you the final language, or tell you what hasn't been changed.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It is a horrible way to write a rules text by the way, but it's hardly the only place WotC does that with their writing--the daily XP budget rules in the DMG are written exactly the same way (clarifying sentence last), and they confuse people into believing the that daily XP values are supposed to be raw XP instead of adjusted. Oh, WotC. [shakes head]

It's a 'pendulum swing' back towards vague natural language after previous editions' love affair with closely-parsed 'Rules As Written,' and precise jargon & 'exception based design.'