Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 8257320" data-attributes="member: 6802765"><p>[USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER], I'm having a hard time following how you're interpreting the phrase "can't see through this darkness". The relevant text of the spell says:</p><p></p><p></p><p>So the magical darkness created by the spell fills a volume--we know this because the spell text explicitly says that the darkness "fills a 15-foot radius sphere". Ergo, whatever other properties magical darkness has, it is a medium that fills a sphere. So far so good?</p><p></p><p>When someone asks whether one can see through a medium, from my standpoint, under ordinary usage, the answer to the question is "yes" if the medium is transparent, "no" if the medium is opaque, and "partially" if the medium is neither fully opaque nor fully transparent.</p><p></p><p>I had thought that you were using a close parsing of the text in conjunction with the errata'd obscurement rules to argue that "can't see through this darkness" in D&D terms means "heavily obscured". And that because the errata'd rule for heavy obscurement requires only that creatures are effectively blind when trying to see <em>into</em> a heavily obscured area, not when trying to see <em>past</em> it, you were inferring that the magical darkness created by the spell must actually be transparent, even though that conflicts with the ordinary meaning of "can't see through this darkness" as describing an opaque medium. From my standpoint this interpretation is not excluded by the text, but I thought it was unlikely to be the intended function of the spell for the reasons I've previously described (in particular, that it creates ambiguities that the DM would have to resolve, whereas interpreting the spell as opaque is very straightforward to run).</p><p></p><p>Now it looks like you're saying that your interpretation instead depends on reading "see through this darkness" to mean something other than describing the opacity of the darkness. Could you please clarify how you're reading the phrase "can't see through this darkness" and how that informs your interpretation of the spell as creating a transparent medium?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Xetheral, post: 8257320, member: 6802765"] [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER], I'm having a hard time following how you're interpreting the phrase "can't see through this darkness". The relevant text of the spell says: So the magical darkness created by the spell fills a volume--we know this because the spell text explicitly says that the darkness "fills a 15-foot radius sphere". Ergo, whatever other properties magical darkness has, it is a medium that fills a sphere. So far so good? When someone asks whether one can see through a medium, from my standpoint, under ordinary usage, the answer to the question is "yes" if the medium is transparent, "no" if the medium is opaque, and "partially" if the medium is neither fully opaque nor fully transparent. I had thought that you were using a close parsing of the text in conjunction with the errata'd obscurement rules to argue that "can't see through this darkness" in D&D terms means "heavily obscured". And that because the errata'd rule for heavy obscurement requires only that creatures are effectively blind when trying to see [I]into[/I] a heavily obscured area, not when trying to see [I]past[/I] it, you were inferring that the magical darkness created by the spell must actually be transparent, even though that conflicts with the ordinary meaning of "can't see through this darkness" as describing an opaque medium. From my standpoint this interpretation is not excluded by the text, but I thought it was unlikely to be the intended function of the spell for the reasons I've previously described (in particular, that it creates ambiguities that the DM would have to resolve, whereas interpreting the spell as opaque is very straightforward to run). Now it looks like you're saying that your interpretation instead depends on reading "see through this darkness" to mean something other than describing the opacity of the darkness. Could you please clarify how you're reading the phrase "can't see through this darkness" and how that informs your interpretation of the spell as creating a transparent medium? [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell
Top