D&D 5E Fixing Eldritch Blast

[Ristamar]

Nobody is talking about invisibility. We're talking about total concealment and blindness, which is different. Again, even if you could use hearing to identify where someone is, there is nothing about hearing which identifies WHO someone is. And nothing to identify objects - like walls. You will still have to guess who is friend and who is foe, and where things are, no matter how you slice it.

I mean, you guys are literally arguing darkvision is mostly meaningless, that light sources are mostly meaningless, that everyone can see everything all the time just by hearing. That's not the rules as written. The rules don't make your hearing into radar. You still must be able to identify where a target is by normal logic and language. They don't need a rule for that - it's the friggen game that you have to say what you do where you do it!

Total Concealment, as a game term, no longer exists. Heavily Obscured is the 5e equivalent.

As for the rest, the rules are as [MENTION=6801209]mellored[/MENTION] presented them. As far as I can tell, Mearls nor Crawford have contradicted or further qualified them.

That isn't to say a DM would not be justified to require additional checks or decision points in certain circumstances. However, there are no official rules that dictate such measures.

 

[mellored]

I know what the rules say. The problem is, the rules aren't perfect, and it's part of the DM's job to make sense of them. Especially the vague rules.

I don't see anything vauge about the rules. It seems pretty straight forward. No guessing (unless hidden), no advantage, no disadvantage.

If you don't like how it's handled, that's by all means, change it. I've certainly changed several things.
But I don't see any vagueness in how it's written.

 

[Mistwell]

I never claimed it was logical, it's simply what's written. Unless a creature takes an action to hide, you continue to know where it is even when you lose sight of it.

It really doesn't say that. You guys are interpreting it that way when there are multiple interpretations, and instead of taking the logical one you're choosing to take the one you acknowledge isn't logical.

If the circumstances are such that you wouldn't normally be able to hear where a specific creature is at, you need to make a perception check against a fixed DC set by the environment and circumstances, not a hide check. Not all perception checks are against a hide check. "Perception: Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses..."

In this case, when you're in darkness attacking someone in darkness and you're all in combat and it would be hard to determine who is who with just hearing, you're going to need a perception check against a fixed DC appropriate to that situation, to "hear or otherwise detect the presence of something...[as a] measure [of] your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses." That's not a house rule, it's just how the 5e type of rules (which focuses on rulings and not rules) tends to operate. It's circumstantial. Particularly with this part of the rules that constantly emphasizes a DM's call.

 

[Mistwell]

I don't see anything vauge about the rules.

"The most fundamental tasks of adventuring–noticing danger, finding hidden objects, hitting an enemy in combat, and targeting a spell, to name just a few–rely heavily on a character's ability to see. "

 

[neogod22]

I don't see anything vauge about the rules. It seems pretty straight forward. No guessing (unless hidden), no advantage, no disadvantage.

If you don't like how it's handled, that's by all means, change it. I've certainly changed several things.
But I don't see any vagueness in how it's written.

I was speaking in general, but this is exactly the reason players don't get no,say in how the game should be run. You try and take what ever stupid loophole you can try and find to try and give yourself an advantage. You know it don't make sense but you argue "this is the way the RAW so this is what we are going with."

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[mellored]

I was speaking in general, but this is exactly the reason players don't get no,say in how the game should be run. You try and take what ever stupid loophole you can try and find to try and give yourself an advantage. You know it don't make sense but you argue "this is the way the RAW so this is what we are going with."

It's not really much of an advantage.

darkness
(1d10+4 )* .84 (advantage) = 7.98 DPR.

hex
(1d10+4+1d6) * .6 = 7.8 DPR.

= 0.18 more damage than hex, per ray. And you had to spend an invocation on it, a higher level slot, and pre-cast it.


So I don't see any balance issue and find it pretty flavorful for a warlock to sit in the darkness.

 

[mellored]

"The most fundamental tasks of adventuring–noticing danger, finding hidden objects, hitting an enemy in combat, and targeting a spell, to name just a few–rely heavily on a character's ability to see. "

That's correct. Things can hide in the dark with an action, you get disadvantage if you can't see the enemy (blind, dark, or invisible), and can't use some spells.

But defending also relies on sight. If you can't see the attacker, you can't dodge it. They get advantage.
Net result cancels out.


But I'm just repeating myself. So have fun playing, however you do it.

 

[Psychman]

That's correct. Things can hide in the dark with an action, you get disadvantage if you can't see the enemy (blind, dark, or invisible), and can't use some spells.

But defending also relies on sight. If you can't see the attacker, you can't dodge it. They get advantage.
Net result cancels out.


But I'm just repeating myself. So have fun playing, however you do it.

I read that differently. The target gets disadvantage on checks against the hider in your first statement.

The attacker (the hider) gets advantage against the target (the defender) in the second.

In both cases the person attacking (from some form of hidden/unseen) is in the better position, so advantage is with them.

That's my reading, anyway.

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[CapnZapp]

Of course the Warlock, being able to see through his darkness, gets advantage.

It is other creatures fighting each other inside the darkness (any darkness) where advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out.

Which, BTW, is an excellent simplification - when the *entire* combat takes place inside darkness. This merely saves time by not adding a whiff factor.

When *some* combatants fight in darkness, however, and others in regular light, feel free to rule that both sides* inside the darkness gets disadvantage on their attacks, to account for the reduced capacity to fight effectively (and encourage characters to seek out the light)

*) again excepting the Warlock

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[Mistwell]

You will still need a perception check to figure out who is a foe and who is a friend. There is nothing at all about the rules which say you can determine that by sound alone. And there is nothing at all in the rules that says you only need to make a perception check if something else made a hide check.