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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ptolemy18" data-source="post: 1800019" data-attributes="member: 24970">I dunno... IMHO, Darkness is really only powerful when you're fighting in severely enclosed areas. (Which, admittedly, show up a lot in D&D campaigns... it is called DUNGEONS and Dragons after all, not Wilderness & Dragons... :/ ) But even underground, unless you're trapped in some super-tight spot, "Getting out of the Darkness" would probably only take one or two rounds and incur some attacks of opportunity if anyone on the other side had Blindsight. I played in a 3.0/3.5 D&D campaign for four years and no player ever even cast Darkness, although the DM *did* use it against us once when we were attacked by a bunch of Grimlocks, which was a very dangerous, but ultimately very fun, encounter. (We all got our butts kicked. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )(Random question: since Darkness isn't that useful unless you have Blindsight to use with it, I guess the question is, what's the lowest level that a player can use magic to get the Blindsight ability? Hmm....)Anyway, a lot of combats end up with some of the players having bigger roles than others. This is inevitable. All character concepts are not useful at all times. People get knocked out and can't do anything, some monsters are immune to some players' attacks, some monsters are flying and can only be hit by ranged weapons or other flying people, etc. etc. Then the DM tailors the next encounter so the other players, who were unconscious or unfitted for the previous combat, get their chance to shine. Relying on the dude who can cast Darkness, or has Blindsight, is no different than relying on the cleric who's the only person in the party who can heal people or turn undead.More than that, though, it's a matter of Coolness factor. It is Cool (capital C for emphasis) to be able to create darkness in the game. It is not particularly cool to create "shadowy illumination." If they thought it was unbalanced, they should've made it a higher-level spell, like Polymorph Other becoming Baleful Polymorph, instead of eliminating this very cool ability from the game. (Take the White Wolf games, for example.... completely unbalanced to the point of near-unplayability? YES! But everyone got to have really cool powers, so they were popular games despite the terrible system. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) Rules aside, a magic-using universe where no spellcaster can create true darkness is stupid.The "Geomancer" in "Masters of the Wild" is unbalanced. "Harm" with no saving throw is unbalanced. "Darkness" isn't unbalanced. I think they struck the wrong balance between coolness and game balance on this one.**AGGHG! I've succumbed to the urge to complain about 3.5! ** (hurls himself off rooftop of tall building)Jason</blockquote>

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