D&D 5E Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell

[Maxperson]

Yes, opaque is used as an intensifying descriptor for fog. I don't think that establishes opacity as a necessary condition for something to constitute a heavily obscured area. Also, fog isn't actually opaque. It might appear so from a distance (like dense foliage), but at its edges it is quite translucent or even transparent, especially to an observer looking out into an area under daylight.

Fog, like foliage, comes in ranges of thickness. It can be so thick that you cannot see break lights a few feet in front of you. You get 100+ car pileups that way. Or it can be light and you can see for hundreds of yards. One of those is heavily obscured and the other is not. If you do have a heavy fog and it's light around the edges, then the edges are not heavily obscured. Same with foliage. Foliage heavy enough to be heavy obscurement is the kind that's so thick you have to chop your way through every foot of it. The kind with holes to see through is not heavy, it's moderate and gives light obscurement.

 

[Xetheral]

You aren't actually seeing the creature/object when you see the silhouette.

But, I was making the exact opposite point....

I really am in poor form today given the rate at which my posts are being read as saying something entirely different than I intended. I'll try again tomorrow when hopefully I can write more clearly.

 

[Hriston]

Fog, like foliage, comes in ranges of thickness. It can be so thick that you cannot see break lights a few feet in front of you. You get 100+ car pileups that way. Or it can be light and you can see for hundreds of yards. One of those is heavily obscured and the other is not. If you do have a heavy fog and it's light around the edges, then the edges are not heavily obscured. Same with foliage. Foliage heavy enough to be heavy obscurement is the kind that's so thick you have to chop your way through every foot of it. The kind with holes to see through is not heavy, it's moderate and gives light obscurement.

Yes, I'm familiar with various types of fog and foliage.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I don't think that's quite it. I think the difference is in how we each expect this rule to function in the game. For me, it tells me what happens when and only when a creature tries to see something in that area. I get to make up why that happens. For you, it seems to establish some causative quality of the area (opacity) that exists in the fiction even when a creature is not trying to see something in that area. Does that make sense?

This is very telling as to why we wind up on the same "side" - I'm with you here.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't think that's quite it. I think the difference is in how we each expect this rule to function in the game. For me, it tells me what happens when and only when a creature tries to see something in that area. I get to make up why that happens. For you, it seems to establish some causative quality of the area (opacity) that exists in the fiction even when a creature is not trying to see something in that area. Does that make sense?

It was you who was earlier insisting that obscurement is objective quality of the square when I told you that it is more sensible to interpret as transient subjective state that depends on the specific situation!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Fog, like foliage, comes in ranges of thickness. It can be so thick that you cannot see break lights a few feet in front of you. You get 100+ car pileups that way. Or it can be light and you can see for hundreds of yards. One of those is heavily obscured and the other is not. If you do have a heavy fog and it's light around the edges, then the edges are not heavily obscured. Same with foliage. Foliage heavy enough to be heavy obscurement is the kind that's so thick you have to chop your way through every foot of it. The kind with holes to see through is not heavy, it's moderate and gives light obscurement.

I'm pretty sure that most foliage that I've seen in adventures can grant Heavy Obscurement while only counting as Difficult Terrain. It would be hard to Hide in the kind of foliage that you'd have to hack your way through. (On the other hand, I don't like the idea that all foliage that grants Heavy Obscurement would be the type that's easy to push through while being so leafy that you can't see a thing in there).

I'm still of a mind to expect it to be a range of foliage types that include both of those, and other varieties and densities (as long as they could all be considered suitably "thick" - same goes for fog, and for darkness. Thick is relative. Dense is relative. Dark is relative. To me, the degrees of each that would count as Heavy Obscurement are certainly down near the end of the line, but not limited to the very extreme end.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

It was you who was earlier insisting that obscurement is objective quality of the square when I told you that it is more sensible to interpret as transient subjective state that depends on the specific situation!

I think back then he was referring to the RULE part, not the fiction! Now he's saying that the fluff is relative. The square is either obscured or not. (Most of the time).

 

[Nefermandias]

How about we agree to disagree as to the viewpoints of other posters expressed in past posts? The alternative is wading through 40 pages to find quotes, then arguing about the context of those quotes, and we'll likely just end up conceding that the other one's interpretation of the thread is plausible, even though we each prefer our own.

Can we skip ahead to that?

Hey Xen, do you know Vsauce? They have recently released a nice video about how people are terrible when it comes to rationalize why they have any given opinion. Since most of our decision making through the day is made heuristically, sometimes we don't even know wh to we think that way. I believe it's relevant to this thread somehow

 

[Hriston]

It was you who was earlier insisting that obscurement is objective quality of the square when I told you that it is more sensible to interpret as transient subjective state that depends on the specific situation!

What I said isn't at odds with establishing that an area is obscured. In play, I'll describe areas in ways that hopefully make it obvious to the players whether they are obscured or not. I might outright say an area is heavily or lightly obscured. Then, if they try to "see something" in that area, meaning that the player declares an action for their character that depends on vision to an object or creature in that area, the rules tell me whether a check is required, what type, and what the result of their action is.

 

[gatorized]

But that's precisely what happens with normal darkness too. Why would the spell be any different?

Because it's magic.