D&D 5E Sight/Vision Rules

[Sword of Spirit]

I ruled that the area that was heavily obscured basically made everyone in it invisible, so no direct targetting, any attack picks a square and has disadvantage, but equally you have advantage on attacks because you are invisible to your target so.. basically it's a normal attack if you know where your target is.

When it first hit me that two blind foes (or two invisible foes, or two heavily concealed foes) would be making normal attacks against each other my gut reaction was not to like it.

But then I thought about it. Sure, it would probably make a bit more sense if they were both suffering a penalty (maybe they'll change it so you can't gain advantage from being unseen unless you can see your opponent). But even if they leave it like that, it really makes the game a lot easier to run. Turning out the lights (one way or another) simply means that the tactical issues of battlefield positioning become important, since you may be attacking into empty squares if you aren't paying attention to where your opponents are.

Proposed change to rules would be something along the lines of making the text on invisibility say "your attacks gain advantage against any opponent that you can see."

Perhaps instead of having an invisible condition there could be an unseen condition. Things like heavy obscurement and the invisibility spell could both simply say that you become unseen.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I envision "Heavily Obscured" as a smoke cloud where you can make out the outlines of people if you look carefully. A certain area of the cloud will be darker than another area. You can listen for people moving around.

But someone hiding can stay low to make it harder to pick them out of the cloud and be quiet so you can't hear them.

I'd normally say there should be some negatives for targeting someone who is "Heavily Obscured", but given the game doesn't give any, I'd say there are no negatives at all for attacking people in the cloud.

 

[Sadrik]

Perhaps instead of having an invisible condition there could be an unseen condition. Things like heavy obscurement and the invisibility spell could both simply say that you become unseen.

I agree but perhaps call it hidden. Used when someone is unseen for any reason, due to stealth, spell, blindness, or feat.

 

[Starfox]

"Hidden" implies you've successfully used Stealth. Unseen is a clumsy word, but it covers the situation without implying that you've used Stealth.