D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[gatorized]

No, I mean it supresses light or whatever, in order to create the effect of darkness that won't allow light to make it less-dark. C'mon, work with me here, you know what darkness is!

"Suppresses light" doesn't make any sense.

 

[FrogReaver]

The area in which you can see light is not darkness. Darkness is defined as absence of light, if you see light, it's not darkness. Now if we imagine seeing some distant small spots of light, but everything else is dark, then sure it's still mostly darkness. But imagine this spell in a middle of a field on a bright day. Everything outside of it is perfectly lit. If you see that through the area of the spell, then that area most definitely is not darkness, it has loads of light coming through it. And to get back to rules, the text especially says, that the area cannot be illuminated. If the light is visible trough the area, then that light is illuminating it, but that is not allowed.

The area between you and the source of the light is darkness. It’s like you’ve never been outside at night. Forget about the darkness spell a moment and let’s talk normal darkness.

your answer is really that it’s not actually dark between you and the light source because you can see the light source of in the distance?

 

[gatorized]

Not impossible at all. You just described it. "You can clearly see things on the other side of the patch of darkness. But within, all seems dark and obscured."

How is this possible? Magic.

You haven't described anything. Saying words is not the same as communicating information.

 

[gatorized]

Spells don’t get into physics minutia - which leaves us to speculate on those phenomenon.

You haven't speculated on anything. Your post didn't contain any information.

 

[FrogReaver]

You haven't speculated on anything. Your post didn't contain any information.

Yes it did.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The area between you and the source of the light is darkness. It’s like you’ve never been outside at night. Forget about the darkness spell a moment and let’s talk normal darkness.

If there is light, then it is not complete darkness. Now at what point this light is sufficient to move the illumination from one of the D&D's trinary categories to another is a matter of judgement, but it is literally a fact that if light is passing through an area, then that area is not by definition in complete darkness. That is how light works. Hell, even starlight illuminates things a bit and moonlight a lot.

 

[gatorized]

Darkness doesn't block light. I can see a light far away, even though there is darkness between myself and the light. Makes perfect sense to me.


There are no logical impossibilities here. I can imagine all of this quite consistently.

However, also..yes. Magic is capable of creating "logical impossibilities". Portable holes, time travel paradoxes, effect-before-cause...all of these are common tropes of magic.

One need only read any Lovecraft-inspired materiel to find buildings with impossible geometries, creatures that exist and don't exist all at once, and other "impossibilites."

The darkness spell blocks light. You can't see through it, by the spell's definition.

A portable hole is not a logical contradiction. Portals, in general, can create both physical and logical contradictions depending on their implementation (see portal, the games), but portable holes only create physical impossibilities (in ordinary use cases), which can be imagined and described.

 

[gatorized]

Yes it did.

No it didn't.

 

[FrogReaver]

If there is light, then it is not complete darkness. Now at what point this light is sufficient to move the illumination from one of the D&D's trinary categories to another is a matter of judgement, but it is literally a fact that if light is passing through an area, then that area is not by definition in complete darkness. That is how light works. Hell, even starlight illuminates things a bit and moonlight a lot.

Until now, not a single person has talked about complete darkness. Why you suddenly adding that qualifier?

 

[FrogReaver]

No it didn't.

There comes a time when a post is so far outside the bounds of reasonable that there’s no point in further interacting with it. For me, this is one of those times.