Nefermandias
Hero
It makes sense and illustrates very clearly the main point of this thread! Thank you.Here's an (IMO) interesting example, if I can do it right, to show what some people have been trying to get across:
Dog, Bunny, and Cat are in a long 5' hallway. Each of them are carrying torches:
Yellow squares are torchlight, brown are dim light from the torches (overlapping areas). With me?
Okay, Bunny's torch goes out.
By RAW we have:
Bunny is in Darkness, but I don't think anyone would argue that Dog and Cat couldn't see each other.
Now, I'm assuming that @Crimson Longinus and their "superior knowledge of light" (please take that as a friendly jab - I really don't mean it to insult at all) would ignore RAW here and just extend the "dim light" to include Bunny. (Please correct me if I'm wrong). Whereas @Hriston (for example) would consider it dark enough in the middle that Bunny has Heavy Obscurement and is in "Darkness". Both are the SAME when it comes to what Dog and Cat can see! Bunny is dark (out of the range of their torchlight) but they can see each other, so enough ambient light is crossing the hall where Bunny is to make out Bunny in the shadows, assuming Bunny does not duck down (or whatever) and Hide. Something that Bunny is permitted (again by RAW) to do, because she has Obscurement from darkness.
Now, if Bunny had her Torch still lit and cast Darkness on herself? Her torch would no longer Illuminate the area around her, and by RAW the Darkness would look like this:
@FrogReaver and the initial posit simply suggested that this would look very similar to the same example of natural light above (let's assume that none of these animals have Darkvision, shall we?) Dog and Cat can still see each other, and Bunny is very hard to see, but not necessarily impossible, if she's not hiding. And her torch doesn't illuminate. If Cat or Dog move up to her, their torches fail to Illuminate the area too.
On the other hand, most of us scratch the above RAW out in favor of this: (For dog, and the same for Cat on the other side).
Does that make sense?
PS: I'm still with the idea that the spell is no different than natural darkness.