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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8257629" data-attributes="member: 6779196">It’s not just an issue of having a hard time imagining what it would look like. The issue is that the transparent darkness interpretation produces results that would be visually incomprehensible to creatures with light-based vision.Darkness is absence of light. Transparency is the ability for light to pass through something. If light passed through an area of darkness, it would by definition not be dark, because there wouldn’t be an absence of light. Heck, the only reason the animals in that image cast silhouettes is because they’re opaque. For light on the other side of an area of darkness to be visible, it would have to pass through the area, which would illuminate it.We can imagine that, by magic, the light is somehow suppressed when passing through an area affected by the Darkness spell, but becomes luminous again when it reaches the other side. But we can’t imagine what that would look like because we have no frame of reference for it, which makes it impractical to use in game. Additionally, as FrogReaver observed, the visual description of the spell does appear to be consistent with opaque darkness. Which makes sense, given that opaque darkness is the only comprehensible visual description of free-standing darkness possible.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8257629, member: 6779196"] It’s not just an issue of having a hard time imagining what it would look like. The issue is that the transparent darkness interpretation produces results that would be visually [I]incomprehensible[/I] to creatures with light-based vision. Darkness is absence of light. Transparency is the ability for light to pass through something. If light passed through an area of darkness, it would by definition not be dark, because there wouldn’t be an absence of light. Heck, the only reason the animals in that image cast silhouettes is because they’re opaque. For light on the other side of an area of darkness to be visible, it would have to pass through the area, which would illuminate it. We can imagine that, by magic, the light is somehow suppressed when passing through an area affected by the Darkness spell, but becomes luminous again when it reaches the other side. But we can’t imagine what that would look like because we have no frame of reference for it, which makes it impractical to use in game. Additionally, as FrogReaver observed, the visual description of the spell does appear to be consistent with opaque darkness. Which makes sense, given that opaque darkness is the only comprehensible visual description of free-standing darkness possible. [/QUOTE]

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