D&D 5E Philosophy: Devil's Sight

[Charlaquin]

I have three answers for you. Maybe you will find one of them pleasing?

A) Magically!

B) Darkness is a localised taint or corruption of light. Having passed through the tainted zone, the light is bright once more.

C) Consistent with a non-scientific view of light, we say that light permeates empty spaces whenever the sun (or another lit thing) is about. It does not travel from A to B. Light is at A, and it is at B. So the light found where the Darkness is, is blotted out. That has no bearing on light found at the bottom of a well. Light does not fill spaces hidden behind concrete things from the point of view of the lit thing that inspired it. No one really knows why, but perhaps one day it will turn out to be important.

A and C are essentially the same: we don't know that our real world assumptions should apply. Conversely, B attempts to meet real world physics halfway.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The Darkness spell itself already throws the possibility of light working like it does in real life out the window. I was just wondering how you personally picture light working in D&D that leads to your interpretation. It sounds like maybe C?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Nobody is talking about nerfing any of the half dozen non MC 5e warlock PCs. The problems with warlock's ambiguity are well known to everyone except wide eyed newbies, munchkins ho know better but are attempting to play dumb, and most importantly WotC.

99% of warlocks I’ve seen are not multiclassing.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What is really weird is that you insist an alleged balance issue in a class ability must have some personal issue of the designer's behind it. It's a really strange way of viewing as complex a process as designing an rpg, when the obvious reason for an imbalance in a complex system of interactions is human error; that is, an oversight.

Or, they just didn’t design the game with rules lawyers and power gamers in mind, and instead made a game that could survive oddball interpretations and combinations.

The naïveté (on WotC’s part) that went into this assumption is astounding.

I think it’s more likely they didn’t consider it important whether some folks on the internet got heated about RAW details.

 

[tetrasodium]

99% of warlocks I’ve seen are not multiclassing.

Statistics do not support that claim, in fact it shows almost the exact opposite with 91% of warlocks being multiclassed. Yes my half dozen number was sarcasm not a literal count.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Statistics do not support that claim, in fact it shows almost the exact opposite with 91% of warlocks being multiclassed. Yes my half dozen number was sarcasm not a literal count.View attachment 116718

My “claim” was regarding what I’ve seen, but okay.

Take another look. Warlock/Sorcerer doesn’t even register. Most Warlocks are MCing into weapon using classes.

 

[tetrasodium]

My “claim” was regarding what I’ve seen, but okay.

Take another look. Warlock/Sorcerer doesn’t even register. Most Warlocks are MCing into weapon using classes.

Yes, it shows the top three and there's also the fact that the reasons for abusing it are slapped down by any sane gm despite wotc's refusal to issue errata to further knock it down. Your resistance to wotc issuing errata to fix the ds wording and other bone headed warlock types of things discussed is rather bizarre.

 

[DND_Reborn]

It doesn't matter why you keep bringing up that people could use JC's 5+ year old un-errata'd tweet, the fact is that you keep doing it in ways that try to imply DS is reasonable.

Yes there are tons of regular Darkvision equipped races, but aside from 2(?) exceptions they are all limited to 30-60 feet & that is well within the effective range of nearly every ranged spell or weapon rather than pushing into disadvantage, needing a feat to reach, or just too far away.... It's also well within the range of all but the most powerful spotights available to players (ie bulls eye lantern). I'm not upset that DV equipped races might see normally the things lurking in darkness when they pass into the range of being already in or just inside the start of bad things.

Using light shadow & darkness to build suspense & tension has been a storyteller's tool since fire was new because it speaks to the hyperalert lizard brain within us. Just like storytellers, most players are human. The only person surprised by that "limited" thinking is you and whoever wrote devils sight like a badly worded twinky munchkin homebrew.

Yes using JC's advice in this case could be one of the rare exceptions where he has a good point & would have a good point(yea his advice is usually "crap" as you put it, but he does have say in what gets errata'd & probbly more than us). Devils sight is not limited to 120feet on drow and deep gnomes, nor does it add daylight sensitivity to variant humans or any darkvision equipped race. It's not like they get 120' devils sight because the character has superior darkvision, or even because it follows after the well established goggles of night tradition & improves it a notch... but that kind of 0>60>90 improvement isn't good enough for the twinky munchkin grabbag that is a design goal in the warlock.

Why are non-devils sight warlock topics relevant to devils sight? I felt like my sarcasm & derisive mocking of wotc's choices in some of those areas should have made that clear. Frankly it's impossible to talk about warlock stuff (always on invocations with no level gate especially) without viewing them through the same lens normally reserved for badly worded & probably broken homebrew & not everyone accepts that it should get the sort of gm skeptcism not normally used when looking at "official WotC published content". Whoever at Wotc keeps accidentally releasing badly worded & problematic warlock stuff like some of the things I've mentioned bears some of the blame, but so too does WotC itself for not including the "well obviously RAI was.." & "this is the bit that got left out" shoulders the rest. WotC could fix devils sight as JC suggests & others in this thread have said would be an interesting flavorful change, but that would require them to gather a strong enough consensus to stand up against the director/playwright/owner/manager/producer/DM with a significant other roadblock that results in so many warlock abilities with boneheaded obviously ripe for abuse wordings coming out of WotC that it's hard to say they are just an oversight without skepticism.

Do I really want to spend my time replying to this? I suppose I should give you something...

Nothing I tell you, no matter how logical or well-spoken is going to change your mind. I don't agree with hardly a thing you have to say and obviously whatever issues you have with DS and warlocks is your burden to bear--not mine.

DS isn't unbalanced and isn't broken. It is easy and simple to implement with any amount of good judgement and common sense. Failing that, the DM has final say, as always. Rant on in your rage if you must about twinkies and munckins and whatever. Others can continue this if they wish. I am done.

I wish I could say it was fun, but... well, anyway. Have a nice day.

 

[clearstream]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The Darkness spell itself already throws the possibility of light working like it does in real life out the window. I was just wondering how you personally picture light working in D&D that leads to your interpretation. It sounds like maybe C?

For me, B. I like the idea that magic can taint light, and I think that works well with concepts like the Shadowfell, where darkness has presence and can be formed into entities. It also works quite well with the subject to hand, where dim light has some kind of special interaction with Devil's Sight.

I find it easiest to picture light as radiating (i.e. not permeating or simply present) so C, for me, is more of a stretch. Even though I think it might work well for a non-scientific view of light.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes, it shows the top three and there's also the fact that the reasons for abusing it are slapped down by any sane gm despite wotc's refusal to issue errata to further knock it down. Your resistance to wotc issuing errata to fix the ds wording and other bone headed warlock types of things discussed is rather bizarre.

The only bizarre thing in this thread is the intensity of your hangup with the Warlock.

The class is fine. It doesn’t need errata.

 

[merwins]

Didn't think this would go on for 5 pages, but it looks like my original question has led to a couple tangents. Welcome to the Internet!

Anyway, I'm going to ignore all those and go back to my original ask of "How would you describe it to players?"

And I'm going to share how I handled it at my table since it became relevant in a complex scenario. You all have discussed a lot of this already. I'm just compressing it as best I can. I added "IMO" clarity for my table.

I worked from the premise that there are two items in contention: the environment ("objective") and individual perception ("subjective").

WRT lighting, areas of the environment can be lit, dimly lit, or dark.
Time of day, location, spells and objects affect lighting.
Perception doesn't affect lighting, only the viewer. DS and DV are perception affecting abilities.

IMO, a creature with 120' of DS and DV sees as if their environment were lit, even if it is dark or dimly lit. But because several abilities are dependent on recognizing lighting differences, they can continue to be aware of those differences. So they know when an area is dark or dimly lit, but they can see as if the area was lit anyway.
Because naughty word magic.

The main reason I had to rule this way is because they players ended up in an area constructed of shadows, and housing shadow creatures. I had to consider whether shadow was dark or dimly lit. It's certainly not a lit area. But then logically, shadows (and therefore all creatures and objects in this realm) ran the risk of being partially or completely invisible to creatures with DS and DV.

In the end, for this situation, I had to give shadow substance. Everything was shades of gray, but it was all real. A shadow blocked vision (which did confuse the DS/DV character for a while, because it was darkness that couldn't be seen through).

And so we come back "normal" environments. My ruling would extend here: shadows have substance. Much like the external visual impact of fog, rain, or snow, a shadow is an environmental (para-elemental) effect that persists beyond the concepts of dim light and darkness.

Light and dark may be opposites of a spectrum that includes dim light. But for my game, shadow is not in that spectrum. The interaction of light and dark can produce not only varying levels of light, but also shadow, which is a different thing entirely.

And the first impact of this (that just popped into my head), which I would allow at my table, is that a character that made a successful stealth roll to hide in shadows would remain hidden even if they were in the field of vision of a creature with DS/DV. Perception does not change the environmental reality. All bets are off if the environment changes (frex, a Light spell that gets rid of the shadow).

YMMV.