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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell
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<blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 8260018" data-attributes="member: 6802765"><p>If silhouettes always count as heavily obscured, then observers are always "effectively blind" to silhouettes and thus no silhouette can ever be seen.</p><p></p><p>Ok, for creatures, maybe never having silhouettes be visible isn't that big a deal in practice--human-sized creatures don't actually block that much. But what about walls? Using the same ruling that a silhouette always counts a heavily obscured, a backlit wall's silhouette shouldn't be visible either if it is heavily obscured, right? But if one can't see a backlit wall's silhouette, doesn't that imply that one can see whatever is behind a backlit wall?</p><p></p><p>I think it's better not to treat the vague obscurement rules as defining "the physics of light" in D&D--it can produce problems like transparent creatures and/or walls. I'd much rather treat the obscurement rules as an abstraction of the real world. So at my table, if a creature in natural darkness is visible as a silhouette, I infer that they, exceptionally, must not be heavily obscured for rules purposes. The gameplay implication of that choice is that characters should take the location of light sources into account when trying to lurk in the darkness, and I'm totally fine with that additional bit of realism. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Xetheral, post: 8260018, member: 6802765"] If silhouettes always count as heavily obscured, then observers are always "effectively blind" to silhouettes and thus no silhouette can ever be seen. Ok, for creatures, maybe never having silhouettes be visible isn't that big a deal in practice--human-sized creatures don't actually block that much. But what about walls? Using the same ruling that a silhouette always counts a heavily obscured, a backlit wall's silhouette shouldn't be visible either if it is heavily obscured, right? But if one can't see a backlit wall's silhouette, doesn't that imply that one can see whatever is behind a backlit wall? I think it's better not to treat the vague obscurement rules as defining "the physics of light" in D&D--it can produce problems like transparent creatures and/or walls. I'd much rather treat the obscurement rules as an abstraction of the real world. So at my table, if a creature in natural darkness is visible as a silhouette, I infer that they, exceptionally, must not be heavily obscured for rules purposes. The gameplay implication of that choice is that characters should take the location of light sources into account when trying to lurk in the darkness, and I'm totally fine with that additional bit of realism. :) [/QUOTE]
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Revisiting RAW Darkness Spell
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