D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[Xetheral]

Yes, but page 183 of the PHB says normal darkness can't be seen through as well. Does it make you believe normal darkness should be opaque too? The only difference here is that the spell cannot be negated by Darkvision.
Honestly, "it's hard to imagine" isn't a very compelling argument.

The errata'd version of page 183 says that in darkness "[a] creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition... when trying to see something in that area". That doesn't say that normal darkness can't be seen through, and the updated phrasing works well enough for natural darkness in situations without a backlight. (It creates more problems when applied literally to "opaque fog" and other opaque heavy obscurement, as it suggests they aren't opaque after all.)

Similarly, the transparent interpretation of the Darkness spells works well enough in situations without a backlight. But since, unlike natural darkness, the spell can be cast in well-lit areas, the backlight problem would be far more acute with the spell that it is with natural darkness.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So... while I'm sure you feel that we've not "managed to communicate the visuals of the situation understandably"... are you sure it's not just you that's failed to grasp it?

Yes, I'm fairly sure. I'm an artist, and based on your descriptions I could not paint what you want, as it seems to be visual impossibility. And I have worked with art directors for numerous books, and I generally have no such issues.

I suspect that the problem might stem from some people thinking things from more mind's eye theatre perspective whilst others are used to top down tactical map with scarce descriptions style and are unable to snap out of it. Because you constantly keep saying things that might seem sensible if looking top down tactical map, but not at all if you come to the eye level.

Like when I asked you to imagine this picture, but the guy being in darkness spell and the woman behind it, you said something like the area around the guy being very dark and the area around the woman being less dark. But from this perspective, that's the same visual area! The distance between their arms is about the same than the width of the guy's head, and of course they could be even close to each other. And of course the forest behind them is also a thing that could be seen, so your 'darkness around the guy' should not block line of sight to it either. There also seems to be people (or something) at the distance between the guy and the tree. (This picture has camera blur that wouldn't exist in reality if you have good vision, so in reality you could see them more clearly.) How could there be 'dark area' around the guy and yet you could still see them? This just simply does not make sense. Like seriously, stare at this picture and imagine what colour and luminosity each pixel should be for your description to be true. It just doesn't work.

 

[Dausuul]

I'll imagine it as a sphere of darkness that won't get any brighter if you hold a torch up to it, but that you can still see through.

So, if I understand correctly, here is how you would apply darkness to that image:

1. The guy is a vaguely humanoid black blob, with blurry edges. A small amount of the background behind him is blocked out, just enough to obscure the contours of his body.
2. Everything else is slightly dimmed.

Is that right?

 

[Minato]

Considering that the inkblot interpretation leads it to being just slightly more than absolutely useless (outside of the Devil's Sight combo) then I'm not sure asking what purpose it should serve in game is really a relative strength of your position.

I prefer slightly more then absolutely useless to absolutely useless. Darkness is given to Large monsters. A Drider or a Draegloth should be able to use Darkness to hide from it's opponents. In a 15 feet radius inkblob you can't tell where in the inkblob even a Large creature exactly is. If they are just standing in darkness and what standing in 20 feet front of them can still make out what is in the darkness respective of anything that is in lighting behind them that will never be enough.

 

[Nefermandias]

I prefer slightly more then absolutely useless to absolutely useless. Darkness is given to Large monsters. A Drider or a Draegloth should be able to use Darkness to hide from it's opponents. In a 15 feet radius inkblob you can't tell where in the inkblob even a Large creature exactly is. If they are just standing in darkness and what standing in 20 feet front of them can still make out what is in the darkness respective of anything that is in lighting behind them that will never be enough.

Absolutely useless? The "normal darkness, but better" interpretation allows your party to shoot people with advantage while imposing disadvantage to any enemy trying to shoot back.

 

[Xetheral]

Absolutely useless? The "normal darkness, but better" interpretation allows your party to shoot people with advantage while imposing disadvantage to any enemy trying to shoot back.

Not necessarily--it's going to be DM dependent. If there is a backlight, the DM is going to have to decide how to interpret the spell and what effects it has on creatures. If the DM prioritizes the rules for heavy obscurement over spell text and let's the spell turn opaque creatures and objects transparent (which is definitely not mentioned in the spell text!), then backlit creatures will be unseen and won't have silhouettes, and would indeed gain all the benefit of their opponents effectively suffering from the blinded condition. (But this approach can produce other issues, such as turning opaque walls transparent.)

If the DM instead prioritizes the spell text over the rules for heavy obscurement (i.e. not letting the spell make creatures/objects/walls invisible), then backlit creatures will necessarily be visible as silhouettes, thus not getting the benefits of their opponents effectively suffering from the blinded condition. Alternatively, the DM could rule that opponents still effectively suffer from the blinded condition when trying to see creatures and objects in the darkness, despite being able to see the silhouettes. (This seems logically inconsistent to me, but it's been proposed in this thread, so I include it here for completeness.)

The point being, even if you know your DM is going to run the spell with the transparent interpretation, you still should check with your DM to get the details, as what bonuses you get may vary from DM to DM.

 

[Nefermandias]

Not necessarily--it's going to be DM dependent. If there is a backlight, the DM is going to have to decide how to interpret the spell and what effects it has on creatures. If the DM prioritizes the rules for heavy obscurement over spell text and let's the spell turn opaque creatures and objects transparent (which is definitely not mentioned in the spell text!), then backlit creatures will be unseen and won't have silhouettes, and would indeed gain all the benefit of their opponents effectively suffering from the blinded condition. (But this approach can produce other issues, such as turning opaque walls transparent.)

If the DM instead prioritizes the spell text over the rules for heavy obscurement (i.e. not letting the spell make creatures/objects/walls invisible), then backlit creatures will necessarily be visible as silhouettes, thus not getting the benefits of their opponents effectively suffering from the blinded condition. Alternatively, the DM could rule that opponents still effectively suffer from the blinded condition when trying to see creatures and objects in the darkness, despite being able to see the silhouettes. (This seems logically inconsistent to me, but it's been proposed in this thread, so I include it here for completeness.)

The point being, even if you know your DM is going to run the spell with the transparent interpretation, you still should check with your DM to get the details, as what bonuses you get may vary from DM to DM.

RAW, heavily obscured is heavily obscured, of course the DM can rule otherwise, but for sake of the discussion, we must assume RAW.

 

[Minato]

Absolutely useless? The "normal darkness, but better" interpretation allows your party to shoot people with advantage while imposing disadvantage to any enemy trying to shoot back.

I guess, tough pill to swallow though.

DM: "The silhouette, which looks like a Drider, and definitely doesn't look like anything else in creation, pulls out what can only be described as a longbow and shoots an arrow from it. He has advantage as you are effectively blind to his presence and any movement he makes."

 

[Xetheral]

RAW, heavily obscured is heavily obscured, of course the DM can rule otherwise, but for sake of the discussion, we must assume RAW.

RAW also is that the darkness spell only creates darkness--it doesn't make opaque creatures transparent. But making opaque creatures (and objects, and walls, etc.) transparent is exactly what would happen if the DM rules that silhouettes are heavily obscured by the transparent magical darkness. So there is a RAW conflict, and when that happens its up to the DM to resolve it.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

So, if I understand correctly, here is how you would apply darkness to that image:

1. The guy is a vaguely humanoid black blob, with blurry edges. A small amount of the background behind him is blocked out, just enough to obscure the contours of his body.
2. Everything else is slightly dimmed.

Is that right?

Sure, something like that. The exact level of "dimmed" would be up to whatever you feel comfortable with counting as "not enough obscurement to count mechanically as heavily obscured" (for the woman) and "enough obscurement to count mechanically as heavily obscured" (for the man). You can see her well enough to shoot her without disadvantage, and you can see him poorly enough to have disadvantage on shooting him. From my (perhaps "our" when we keep talking about "sides") perspective, that means she's dark and he's darker, but she's not GONE and nor is he. Again, I (we?) feel that the Inkblot side seems to be insisting that he has to be absolutely black to be "heavily obscured" and she has to be absolutely bright to not be. (And would be utterly gone too, if the area of the spell is in front of her).

Yes, I'm fairly sure. I'm an artist, and based on your descriptions I could not paint what you want, as it seems to be visual impossibility. And I have worked with art directors for numerous books, and I generally have no such issues.

I suspect that the problem might stem from some people thinking things from more mind's eye theatre perspective whilst others are used to top down tactical map with scarce descriptions style and are unable to snap out of it. Because you constantly keep saying things that might seem sensible if looking top down tactical map, but not at all if you come to the eye level.


Like when I asked you to imagine this picture, but the guy being in darkness spell and the woman behind it, you said something like the area around the guy being very dark and the area around the woman being less dark. But from this perspective, that's the same visual area! The distance between their arms is about the same than the width of the guy's head, and of course they could be even close to each other. And of course the forest behind them is also a thing that could be seen, so your 'darkness around the guy' should not block line of sight to it either. There also seems to be people (or something) at the distance between the guy and the tree. (This picture has camera blur that wouldn't exist in reality if you have good vision, so in reality you could see them more clearly.) How could there be 'dark area' around the guy and yet you could still see them? This just simply does not make sense. Like seriously, stare at this picture and imagine what colour and luminosity each pixel should be for your description to be true. It just doesn't work.

I'm an artist too and I absolutely could paint what I'm talking about. I assume that you really, fundamentally just can't grasp what I'm saying, for whatever reason. I have no idea why this is, but it has nothing to do with "top-down" playing or whatever, I play mostly theatre-of-the-mind.