D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[Charlaquin]

I describe it like the darkness that surrounded Morgoth when he descended on Valinor to destroy the Trees and take the Silmarils, an un-light with an existence of its own, but smaller.

That’s nicely poetic, but it wouldn’t give me as a player enough information to know what it’s actually supposed to look like.

Creatures within the area are not visible in a game sense, but if they don't make an effort to hide, then observers who are close enough know their location which could include things like perceiving silhouettes but not seeing the creatures themselves.

This is a bit more helpful, but very focused on the pure mechanics. It’s still not clear to me what this would look like.

The sphere of magical darkness is visible as a dark area.

This confuses me. My understanding of the “transparent darkness” interpretation is that the dog in @Crimson Longinus example

Bunny has casted a dakness spell around herself. What can the dog see?

Could see the trees, the flowers, and the mushroom, but not the bunny. But from your description of the darkness itself being visible as a dark area, that you’re saying should block the dog’s line of sight to the trees, flowers, and mushroom? Is that correct?

 

[Hriston]

I mean, yeah, darkness that isn’t foiled by darkvision is a very simple concept with a lot of implications. The problem is that the spell is also “darkness without any opaque source casting it,” which is impossible. Now, that’s fine, Magic does all sorts of impossible things. But it generally does things that we can imagine and describe. I, a creature with vision that is based on light, can’t do that with darkness without an opaque source to cast it. It’s just not something my brain has a reference for, any more than I can visualize supernumerary spatial dimensions. The closest my brain can conceive of is a massless opaque medium, functionally similar to darkness. Which certainly would also foil Darkvision.

I don't think the description of the spell area from the outside is necessarily that different between the two interpretations. It's darkness as a thing unto itself emanating from a source. This is impossible according to our understanding of physics, but since we're talking about fantasy, that shouldn't matter. It's darkness behaving the way light does.

The important difference is what it looks like to those inside the area of the spell, i.e. can they see out or not? which is also a pretty simple binary to describe.

 

[Hriston]

That’s nicely poetic, but it wouldn’t give me as a player enough information to know what it’s actually supposed to look like.

This is a bit more helpful, but very focused on the pure mechanics. It’s still not clear to me what this would look like.


This confuses me. My understanding of the “transparent darkness” interpretation is that the dog in @Crimson Longinus example

Could see the trees, the flowers, and the mushroom, but not the bunny. But from your description of the darkness itself being visible as a dark area, that you’re saying should block the dog’s line of sight to the trees, flowers, and mushroom? Is that correct?

I try not to do a lot of PoV-type descriptions in my RPG-ing. I find it tends to confuse players rather than immerse them in the game-world. I try to put my effort instead into describing what's there in the scenario that the characters are aware of. So yes, I would describe everything visible in that example as see-able to the PCs, and I would also describe an area of unnatural darkness in the middle of the area. This puts as much relevant information into the players hands as possible so they can engage with the situation.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't think the description of the spell area from the outside is necessarily that different between the two interpretations. It's darkness as a thing unto itself emanating from a source. This is impossible according to our understanding of physics, but since we're talking about fantasy, that shouldn't matter. It's darkness behaving the way light does.

It’s not really behaving the way light does either because you can’t have a bubble of light that just stops after a certain point. That’s also impossible to visualize from an outside perspective. What it’s behaving like is smoke, or fog, or some other non-solid opaque medium. Hence the opaque darkness interpretation being the more intuitive.

The important difference is what it looks like to those inside the area of the spell, i.e. can they see out or not? which is also a pretty simple binary to describe.

I would argue it’s absolutely vital to understand what it looks like from the outside, so that the DM can adequately describe the environment to players whose characters are outside the area of the spell. What am I, as DM, supposed to tell the dog’s player he sees? A dome of blackness? Trees, flowers, and a mushroom in the distance and the silhouette of a bunny? Is the bunny blocking line of sight to the mushroom? Is the bunny just invisible and everything else looks normal? None of these answers really seem consistent with either what we intuitively expect “free-standing darkness” to look like.

 

[Charlaquin]

I try not to do a lot of PoV-type descriptions in my RPG-ing. I find it tends to confuse players rather than immerse them in the game-world. I try to put my effort instead into describing what's there in the scenario that the characters are aware of. So yes, I would describe everything visible in that example as see-able to the PCs, and I would also describe an area of unnatural darkness in the middle of the area. This puts as much relevant information into the players hands as possible so they can engage with the situation.

So, does the bunny obscure the dog’s view of the mushroom even though the dog can’t see the bunny? Or put another way, would the mushroom have half-cover from the dog if he tried to shoot it with an arrow?

 

[Eric V]

Yeah, as far as I can tell, @FrogReaver 's interpretation is that the sphere of darkness acts just like normal darkness that you can see out of but not in, except that darkvision doesn't pierce it.

The part that is really hard to conceptualize is that somehow you can also see things on the other side of it.

Seriously. Apparently it is both transparent (things can be seen on the other side of it) and also can't be seen through (the spell description)...which is the actual definition of opaque.

So it's both transparent and opaque.

 

[Nefermandias]

I don't think the description of the spell area from the outside is necessarily that different between the two interpretations. It's darkness as a thing unto itself emanating from a source. This is impossible according to our understanding of physics, but since we're talking about fantasy, that shouldn't matter. It's darkness behaving the way light does.

The important difference is what it looks like to those inside the area of the spell, i.e. can they see out or not? which is also a pretty simple binary to describe.

I think the 3.5 text makes a good job at describing it:
This spell causes an object to radiate shadowy illumination out to a 20-foot radius

"Shadowy Illumination" like a black light.

 

[FrogReaver]

Problem with this is that it effectively lets things inside the darkness to be seen, as people cannot see things behind them but they can see things behind the darkness.

This is what things in FrogReaver's darkness would look like, rendering the whole spell pretty much pointless.

I think this is a good thought provoking post. I've been contemplating this picture and what other plausible ways the spell could be described and it strikes me that it's either this or inkblot style (provided there is illumination behind the darkness emanating in a sphere.)

But this picture doesn't really go with the first few sentences of the spell description IMO - 'Magical darkness spreads from a point you choose within range to fill a 15-foot-radius sphere for the duration. The darkness spreads around corners.' IMO The above picture is definitely not depicting what the spell describes.

So IMO, despite those sentences being easily written off as unmeaningful descriptive fluff, the importance of these first couple of sentences in the spell is paramount. They are the RAW that validates darkness spell isn't transparent such that you can see things on the other side. Once that has been established, it's clear that normal vision can't see something in the darkness spell, nor something on the other side of it. The spell also specifies that this is the same for darkvision.

I think this makes for a strong case that RAW functions you say.

 

[Hriston]

It’s not really behaving the way light does either because you can’t have a bubble of light that just stops after a certain point. That’s also impossible to visualize from an outside perspective. What it’s behaving like is smoke, or fog, or some other non-solid opaque medium. Hence the opaque darkness interpretation being the more intuitive.

It behaves like light within the area of the spell. Of course it doesn't go beyond that because the spell is limited in extent. And you can certainly have a bubble or any other shape of light that stops after a certain point. All it requires is a barrier, like the walls of a house that's illuminated on the inside. Imagine a house at night full of light and then imagine what just the light looks like without the walls getting in the way of you seeing it. Now do the same thing with darkness. What does a dark cave look like if you brought it up to the surface on a sunny day and removed the walls with your imagination (they're really still there keeping the light out) so you can see the darkness? The fact that it seems unnatural and unintuitive, I think, is a bonus because this is magical darkness after all.

I would argue it’s absolutely vital to understand what it looks like from the outside, so that the DM can adequately describe the environment to players whose characters are outside the area of the spell. What am I, as DM, supposed to tell the dog’s player he sees? A dome of blackness? Trees, flowers, and a mushroom in the distance and the silhouette of a bunny? Is the bunny blocking line of sight to the mushroom? Is the bunny just invisible and everything else looks normal? None of these answers really seem consistent with either what we intuitively expect “free-standing darkness” to look like.

Sure, describing it to the players is important, I just don't think that description is going to differ that much between these two interpretations. I think a dome of blackness would be a fine thing to describe, although I think I would personally opt for the word darkness. I would describe everything that's visible on the map: trees, flowers, the mushroom. I don't think describing the bunny's silhouette would be especially helpful unless I was trying to telegraph the presence of the bunny, in which case it might be a good idea. I never have creatures block line of sight, so no, the bunny wouldn't do that, and no, the area of darkness would be a present and perceivable feature of the landscape. I'm not sure what your last sentence means since you didn't have my answers until now.

So, does the bunny obscure the dog’s view of the mushroom even though the dog can’t see the bunny? Or put another way, would the mushroom have half-cover from the dog if he tried to shoot it with an arrow?

Well, as I've already said now, no, the bunny wouldn't obscure the dog's view of the mushroom. The mushroom is visible to all present. I don't describe things from one, static point of view. The assumption is that characters are always moving and filling the space. On the other hand, yes, I would give the mushroom half cover because of the bunny.

 

[FrogReaver]

Ultimately the purpose of RPG rules is to help us to create the fiction, so any rule that produces outcomes that cannot be imagined in said fiction is a non-functional rule.

Well - It's possible for RAW to contain non-functional rules. Typically we treat RAI as RAW in that instance.