Why was Darkness changed?

[Thanee]

I find the low duration is a pretty good limit, tho.

Otherwise it would totally lose out against See Invisibility and Darkvision.

6th level is just ridiculous, unless you make it 1h/lvl again at the very least and increase the range.

Bye
Thanee

 

[ARandomGod]

I thought the same about the spell when I read it in my 3.5 PH. I just house-ruled it to stay the same as it was in 3.0. Since Drow are the main baddies in my campaign, I really didnt want to nerf their darkness ability which I always thought was pretty cool.

Cheers,

Actually, the current form still does a pretty good job when it's already dark out (or dark IN). The darkness spell ends all non magical light effects. This neatly snuffing out torches and other illumination. Now the drow's darkvision still works, admittedly with a 20% miss chance, but the poor, hapless prey without darkvision is plummeted into 50% miss chance.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Actually, the current form still does a pretty good job when it's already dark out (or dark IN). The darkness spell ends all non magical light effects. This neatly snuffing out torches and other illumination. Now the drow's darkvision still works, admittedly with a 20% miss chance, but the poor, hapless prey without darkvision is plummeted into 50% miss chance.

20% miss chance. 3.5 Darkness radiates 'shadowy illumination'; a creature in shadowy illumination suffers a 20% miss chance, not a 50% miss chance.

-Hyp.

 

[Thanee]

Yep, the way I'm doing it, would work like ARandomGod said.

bye
Thanee

 

[SkidAce]

Just cast Magic Missile at the darkness....






sorry,

 

[Gilwen]

Just cast Magic Missile at the darkness....






sorry,

Where's the Mountain Deeeew!

Gilwen

 

[Saeviomagy]

Except that blindsight shouldn't be easy to come by (the FR version is way overpowered; AU has it pegged as a (weak-ish) 6th-level spell, which I think is spot on).

Blindsight isn't easy to come by for a PLAYER, but as monsters, it's really easy.

Which is one of the reasons that it's a bad idea as it stood - it's a ludicrously powerful ability for certain monsters, and almost useless for anyone else.

 

[Anubis]

Darkness is the least of the naming worries. I think the dumbest one was Disintegrate. It used to do just that, and now it doesn't. Silly. Disintegrate wasn't even overpowered, especially give the fact there there are lower-level death spells.

Darkness, however, was grossly overpowered and dumb to boot. First off, even darkvision couldn't penetrate it. That much was stated. That meant that almost everything that had it (drow, tieflings, etc.) had no reason to use it because they'd hurt themselves as much as they hurt others. On the other hand, those with blindsight became unstoppable in the effect of a Darkness spell.

Generally, I interpret the spell as "reduces light to shadowy illumination".

People, y'all gotta start considering the intentions of rules along with the letter of the rules. I'm more worries about the non-disintegrating Disintegrate than the non-totally dark Darkness.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

That meant that almost everything that had it (drow, tieflings, etc.) had no reason to use it because they'd hurt themselves as much as they hurt others.

Not so. If what you want to do is shut down a fight that's not going your way, or avoid an encounter turning into a fight, having the same effect on everybody is perfectly fine and useful.

 

[UltimaGabe]

Darkness is the least of the naming worries. I think the dumbest one was Disintegrate. It used to do just that, and now it doesn't. Silly. Disintegrate wasn't even overpowered, especially give the fact there there are lower-level death spells.

...Except that there's no way to prevent Disintegration. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Whatever. Aside from boosting your saves, or boosting Spell Resistance (which is the case against any spell), there's NOTHING that can prevent against it.

Plus, you seem to think that the names of spells HAVE to be EXACTLY in tune with their uses against PCs and PCs only. True, it doesn't necessarily Disintegrate a PC- it has a very high chance of it, but not definitely- but what about a wall? A 10-foot cube of the wall is still disintegrated, in both versions. Just because PCs often have more magic items and higher ability scores than ordinary walls doesn't mean that the spell is incorrectly named. Besides, if a character is killed by a Disintegrate spell, they're Disintegrated. So what's the problem?