Greybar
No Trouble at All
So I screwed up.
We just had a big combat where the key tactic used by the half-fiend badguy was surrounding himself with a Darkness spell and lobbing a Deeper Darkness into the heart of the PC formation. My mistake was in thinking that these spells create an impenetrable blackness. I'm not sure if this is a 3.0 to 3.5 change or just a plain screw-up on my part.
Mechanic wise, I was forcing the PCs to have a 50% miss chance when targeting the central square of the darkness, rather than the 20% miss chance in the 3.5 Darkness description. On the flip side, the BBEG was using a Blindsight spell to overcome the problems of being in the area of dark effect.
Anyway... what should be the power level of a True Darkness or a Greater True Darkness. These would create an area of absolute darkness rather than "shadowy illumination" as in the lesser spells. True Darkness would be the absolute black equivalent of Darkness and Greater True Darkness the equivalent of Deeper Darkness. Irritatingly, there is nothing "deeper" about the darkness in the spells as in the SRD...
I'm thinking one level higher. So since Darkness is a 2nd level spell, True Darkness would be a 3rd level spell. The utility is certainly higher. In the true darkness spells, you cannot see traps or even simple pits in front of you, much less opponents.
Just as Darkvision does not penetrate a Darkness spell effect, it would not penetrate a True Darkness. As with the other spells, a higher level light-based spell would overcome a true-darkness based spell. Higher powers such as True Seeing and the See in Darkness of some outsiders would still penetrate these spells.
thoughts?
john
We just had a big combat where the key tactic used by the half-fiend badguy was surrounding himself with a Darkness spell and lobbing a Deeper Darkness into the heart of the PC formation. My mistake was in thinking that these spells create an impenetrable blackness. I'm not sure if this is a 3.0 to 3.5 change or just a plain screw-up on my part.
Mechanic wise, I was forcing the PCs to have a 50% miss chance when targeting the central square of the darkness, rather than the 20% miss chance in the 3.5 Darkness description. On the flip side, the BBEG was using a Blindsight spell to overcome the problems of being in the area of dark effect.
Anyway... what should be the power level of a True Darkness or a Greater True Darkness. These would create an area of absolute darkness rather than "shadowy illumination" as in the lesser spells. True Darkness would be the absolute black equivalent of Darkness and Greater True Darkness the equivalent of Deeper Darkness. Irritatingly, there is nothing "deeper" about the darkness in the spells as in the SRD...
I'm thinking one level higher. So since Darkness is a 2nd level spell, True Darkness would be a 3rd level spell. The utility is certainly higher. In the true darkness spells, you cannot see traps or even simple pits in front of you, much less opponents.
Just as Darkvision does not penetrate a Darkness spell effect, it would not penetrate a True Darkness. As with the other spells, a higher level light-based spell would overcome a true-darkness based spell. Higher powers such as True Seeing and the See in Darkness of some outsiders would still penetrate these spells.
thoughts?
john
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