I never want to hear another word about 3.5 being overly complicated after reading this "rules lawyering", smh.
You may have RAW and RAI but there is a simple line where its just commonsense. As someone already pointed out, rather hilariously, imagine standing there with a dimmer switch.
Does a devil watch you go from full color (100%) to eventually a normal shadow and have this weird moment of a black and white shadow to then inverts back to full color at pitch black (0%) but even if there 0.0001% light its comepletely foiled.
Because I will promise you. If you bring this up at your table, in this most obtuse way; every single devil you have will only ever be faced and felled in dim light as your party will constantly do everything they can to prevent full darkness OR daylight and ruin your monster encounters. Fairie Fire and Sickening Radiance constantly just to light them up a little but not the room itself.
And Run from any DM table who ever says "RAW" vs "RAI" wins. DMing and playing is two-way. Find a new DM and let them grow up. If you're not happy; dont play under such a person who cant use basic logic. Some people arent meant to ever be DMs. Some designers arent meant to make games. (We all sorta remember/skipped 4e. So case in point.)
Devil's have darkvison and devil's sight. They see everything in bright light always. Whether actual bright light, dim light or darkness, whether that darkness is magical or not, they see everything in bright light.
The contention is only a Warlock's version of Devil's Sight, which works differently to a Devil's Devil's Sight.
Maybe read more carefully before ranting about our rules-lawyering?
So as a DM, you'd purposefully hamstring your players over exact phrasing rather than commonsense? I think this again a case of simple poor phrasing. "RAW" vs "RAI".
A player going out of their way to effectively buy the ability should get the full effects of said ability. Which is arguably much more character intensive and an investure than a racial trait simply given for free.
If that is what a player wants for their character and you can't come up with a reason no to besides "oh youre a human or halfling, so you can't because you dont have darkvision..." 😑 yeah...okay...
There are several types of color vision impairments, "greyscale" is may or may not be a disadvantage depending on the color of the object one is looking for given the surroundings and its color as an object may acutely become more visable in "greyscale" than in "full color vision" due to quirks of physics. (Interesting sidebar there in its own right.) Yes, regarding magic items and spells. No, it wasn't specifically in reference towards you.
But here is the thing:
an invocation IS more powerful than a singular aspect of a racial trait. It is chosen ability and one is earned, built upon and around by that player character. Few races lack darkvision. So youre really only saying "you can do it but not as a human or halfling and maybe like a few rando races unless you wear a cheap item or have a spell." so it begs the question of is it worth it to you to make the player jump thru the extra hoops for their concept or not, at the table, for being a human or halfling, based on MAYBE how you COULD interpret it, based on it's poor wording.
Again "You" isnt directed at anyone specific.
Actually, i have a good example to pull from here regarding a similar vein:
another invocation creates more powerful familiars than normally available. Thusly so, logic would follow that this invocation granting a greater form a vision than darkvision, which is every edition had been "See in Deeper Darkness (Ex)" or "Devil Sight" or by some other name; the design intention tracks.
So let's do a Deep Dive for a moment. It's best to be thorough.
Below is the Warlock Invocation List which have No Prerequisites AND No Pacts as Devil's Sight has None itself. My notes will be within the parentheses.
ARMOR OF SHADOWS You can cast mage armor on yourself at will, without expending a spell slot or material components. (lvl1 Spell, at will, Defensive)
BEAST SPEECH You can cast speak with animals at will, without expending a spell slot. (lvl1 Spell, at will, Utility)
BEGUILING INFLUENCE You gain proficiency in the Deception and Persuasion skills. (Two free skills, effectively a Background or Feat)
DEVIL'S SIGHT You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.
ELDRITCH SIGHT You can cast detect magic at will, without expending a spell slot. (lvl1 Spell, At will, Passive)
EYES OF THE RUNE KEEPER You can read all writing.
(Hysterical for the "RAW". Blind characters, take this. Make party wear name tags and follow them with ease until your DM switches to "RAI". Literally, this allows you to comprehend languages, without the spell, so it works even in wild or antimagic zones and without concentration. Further, unlike Comprehend Languages you neither have to be touching the surface of the item the words are on nor do the word need to be written on a surface at all. They can be free floating. An often overlooked note. Also you can read magical Sigils, Glyphs, Wards, Spell scrolls, any visibly inscribed spells readily and easily along with any cipher, without Arcana checks, RAW. Something I highly oppose, RAI. Because Spells are written, they are highly formulaic, highly mathematical for Wizards, math uses language itself, formulas are language, and thus thats a scary and sloppy wording. Ciphers are encypted language, meant to make something appear as gibberish. But if you can read it anyways. That's a codebreaker. But again, Depends on WHAT Definition of the verb READ you are using from Webster's dictionary or perhaps Oxford's now doesn't it. Not all grant one an exegetical quality. Food for thought.)
FIENDISH VIGOR You can cast false life on yourself at will as a 1st-level spell, without expending a spell slot or material components. (lvl1 spell, at will, self-only/buff)
GAZE OF Two MINDS You can use your action to touch a willing humanoid and perceive through its senses until the end of your next turn. As long as the creature is on the same plane of existence as you, you can use your action on subsequent turns to maintain this connection, extending the duration until the end of your next turn. While perceiving through the other creature's senses, you benefit from any special senses possessed by that creature, and you are blinded and deafened to your own surroundings. (Similar, Willing Humanoid only, Familar senses basically, any distance/same plane, Concentration)
MASK OF MANY FACES You can cast disguise self at will, without expending a spell slot. (lvl1 Spell, at will, Utility)
MISTY VISIONS You can cast silent image at will, without expending a spell slot or material components. (lvl1 Spell, at will, Utility/Tactical)
THIEF OF FIVE FATES You can cast bane once using a warlock spell slot. You can't do so again until you finish a long rest. (lvl1 Spell, 1/LR, Offensive:Debuff, Slot Req)
Now I will ask you:
Compare them, see how they balance at your table and consider if the wording is to be meant one way or the other, given how the others rate side by side. The English Language is full of nuance and contract lawyers are literally paid to compound text to prevent or create loopholes with phrasing because English is the singularly most diverse language on this planet. Nearly 600,000 common color phrases alone while the human eye picks out only 1/10th that reference chart. That's all the more I have to say on the matter. Humans can be fallible with words. Allow them to be so. But don't punish your players for it. No Edition is perfect. I mean look at the 5e sorcerer.
And do the typos in something mean you have to look up those typos and treat the typo as a word if said typo exists as a word? Treat everything as a guideline as best you can and treat your players as best they should be treated. The story being told at the table matters more than conjecture over commas or punctuation or phrasing come the end of the day. Because years down the line, you won't remember the comma or phrasing of some rule. BUT you will remember the stories you lived out together.
It's one of those things people like to try and break. It's like night vision goggles. They only activate in complete darkness. And I would argue, as a DM, if you were in complete darkness and dim light was ahead, while in the darkness, dim light is also bright light.
Oh man, what a rollercoaster of a thread. To OP; I think as-written, the invocation does specifically only say darkness. But as intended, it's probably just supposed to be Darkvision+. That's how every DM I've spoken to runs it, anyways. In the end, ask your DM their ruling and move on.
It's a sticky wicket because 5e hammers the whole "specificity" concept, but then some traits etc. are phrased in a way that could be interpreted as just "vague wording" rather than specifically calling out another feature. Usually, at least in the case of things I've seen on this site, if it's specifically calling out a specific game mechanic, then the text will hyperlink to that page. In this scenario if it were to reference the "darkness" mechanic specifically, I'd imagine you'd see something like "You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet."
I've always taken it to be more colloquial, and just a sort of "your vision's not impeded the lack of light", but again that's really a DM call to be making, every table's got their own thing.
"You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet."
Further we read: "Dim light, also called shadows, creates a lightly obscured area. An area of dim light is usually a boundary between a source of bright light, such as a torch, and surrounding darkness. The soft light of twilight and dawn also counts as dim light. A particularly brilliant full moon might bathe the land in dim light." (emphasis, mine)
You see normally in darkness. Therefore, you just see bright light up to 120 feet.
On top of that, considering warlocks only get 8 invocations throughout their entire career, it seems pretty fair to me.
Just FYI: Crawford says it doesn't interact with dim light, only darkness. Take that as you will, his word on Twitter isn't law, but it helps give insight.
Devil's Sight (the monster ability) simply means a devil's darkvision isn't affected by magical darkness and devils with Devil's Sight (the monster ability) also come with Darkvision 120. Full stop. So devils with this type of sight have "Darkvision 120 that is unaffected by magical darkness." Period. They do not see normally in darkness... they treat darkness as dimly lit per darkvision.
However, the invocation says the invocation lets you see normally in darkness. That's something over and above what devils have, pulled straight out of someone's... hat. It probably shouldn't have been. They probably meant the invocation to let you see like devils: darkvision 120 unaffected by magical darkness.
If you want to allow your characters to treat darkness as brightly lit (which is terminology pulled from the Truesight ability that has nothing to do with the Devil's Sight of actual devils), you can use the weird Crawford justification for these awkward RAW.
Character has no darkvision (sees poorly in dim light):
bright = bright
darkness = bright to 120'
dim = dim
Character has darkvision 60 (sees poorly in "dim light 60-120"):
bright = bright
darkness = bright to 120'
dim = bright to 60'
I think the RAW as interpreted by Crawford is unnecessarily complicated and smacks more of justification of a poorly written invocation than any real design intent. So my campaigns houserules are either:
Devil's Sight invocation as I think it was intended (dark=dim 120): darkvision 120' unaffected by magical darkness
Devil's Sight invocation on steroids for the cool factor (dark=bright 120): see normally in darkness, magical darkness, and dim light to 120'
And if the characters get Option 2 for Devil's Sight... then so do NPC devils. Fair's fair!
I love this thread. Better learning rules is awesome. The thing that occurred to me though is that the invocation is poorly named. Not only can you chose it when you make a non-fiend Warlock, it also isn't the same thing as the monster trait that it shares its name with.
It also occurred to me that the invocation eye abilities piece meal True Sight, so it is my belief that Patrons must have True Sight and are bestowing a part of their power on their Warlocks.
A question I did have though. Lets say you are playing a human Warlock with the Devil's Sight invocation and are walking down a dark hall with a torch so your other party members can see who don't have the invocation. The Torch creates a radius of Bright Light, then some dim light beyond that, and then there is pure darkness beyond that.
So would your character see normally near the Torch, dimly in the middle, and then normally again past the effect of the torch, or does the area of dim light effectively obscure your vision past that?
exactly reason why i chose a Tabaxi as a lv 5 warlock\2 sorcerer so i can have both dark-vision and devils sight and help my team better and also have darkness to make it better when playing.
Ignoring how it shows up on the character sheet for a moment.
No it isn't Dark vision, it's more powerful. At least the way me and my group interpret it, we read it as you effectively have bright vision up to 120ft at all times then there is just a wall of darkness at the end of the range.
It doesn't mention Dim light in the text because if it can ignore full on darkness, pretty likely it just ignores dim light too.
this is how every game I've played in uses it, and it's how I use it as a DM
You’re REALLY overthinking it if you think Devil’s Sight doesn’t work in dim light. We gotta fight that devil during the magic hour so that his vision is blurry! Give me a break…
You can always count on JC to make absolutely no sense, that much is certain. Dim light is pretty much irrelevant anyway. It’s disadvantage on perception checks and that’s all, which really doesn’t matter because you can’t hide in dim light anyway. Yep, those are the rules…
You can always count on JC to make absolutely no sense, that much is certain. Dim light is pretty much irrelevant anyway. It’s disadvantage on perception checks and that’s all.
Then what's the problem?
JC can usually be counted on to follow what the rule literally says, btw, which seems like something you'd expect from someone official asked to explain what it means.
Ask yourself this, is dim light a hard counter to a devil? It's not, it doesn't counter devils sight either. Although I can respect the arguments running either way sometimes a DM has to rule with common sense, and common sense states that devils sight works in dim light as it is a degree of darkness.
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Devil's have darkvison and devil's sight. They see everything in bright light always. Whether actual bright light, dim light or darkness, whether that darkness is magical or not, they see everything in bright light.
The contention is only a Warlock's version of Devil's Sight, which works differently to a Devil's Devil's Sight.
Maybe read more carefully before ranting about our rules-lawyering?
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So as a DM, you'd purposefully hamstring your players over exact phrasing rather than commonsense? I think this again a case of simple poor phrasing. "RAW" vs "RAI".
A player going out of their way to effectively buy the ability should get the full effects of said ability. Which is arguably much more character intensive and an investure than a racial trait simply given for free.
If that is what a player wants for their character and you can't come up with a reason no to besides "oh youre a human or halfling, so you can't because you dont have darkvision..." 😑 yeah...okay...
New DM it is.
No no. I meant to move on to a new DM.
There are several types of color vision impairments, "greyscale" is may or may not be a disadvantage depending on the color of the object one is looking for given the surroundings and its color as an object may acutely become more visable in "greyscale" than in "full color vision" due to quirks of physics. (Interesting sidebar there in its own right.) Yes, regarding magic items and spells. No, it wasn't specifically in reference towards you.
But here is the thing:
an invocation IS more powerful than a singular aspect of a racial trait. It is chosen ability and one is earned, built upon and around by that player character. Few races lack darkvision. So youre really only saying "you can do it but not as a human or halfling and maybe like a few rando races unless you wear a cheap item or have a spell." so it begs the question of is it worth it to you to make the player jump thru the extra hoops for their concept or not, at the table, for being a human or halfling, based on MAYBE how you COULD interpret it, based on it's poor wording.
Again "You" isnt directed at anyone specific.
Actually, i have a good example to pull from here regarding a similar vein:
another invocation creates more powerful familiars than normally available. Thusly so, logic would follow that this invocation granting a greater form a vision than darkvision, which is every edition had been "See in Deeper Darkness (Ex)" or "Devil Sight" or by some other name; the design intention tracks.
It's one of those things people like to try and break. It's like night vision goggles. They only activate in complete darkness. And I would argue, as a DM, if you were in complete darkness and dim light was ahead, while in the darkness, dim light is also bright light.
Oh man, what a rollercoaster of a thread. To OP; I think as-written, the invocation does specifically only say darkness. But as intended, it's probably just supposed to be Darkvision+. That's how every DM I've spoken to runs it, anyways. In the end, ask your DM their ruling and move on.
It's a sticky wicket because 5e hammers the whole "specificity" concept, but then some traits etc. are phrased in a way that could be interpreted as just "vague wording" rather than specifically calling out another feature. Usually, at least in the case of things I've seen on this site, if it's specifically calling out a specific game mechanic, then the text will hyperlink to that page. In this scenario if it were to reference the "darkness" mechanic specifically, I'd imagine you'd see something like "You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet."
I've always taken it to be more colloquial, and just a sort of "your vision's not impeded the lack of light", but again that's really a DM call to be making, every table's got their own thing.
Here is how I look at it.
"You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet."
Further we read: "Dim light, also called shadows, creates a lightly obscured area. An area of dim light is usually a boundary between a source of bright light, such as a torch, and surrounding darkness. The soft light of twilight and dawn also counts as dim light. A particularly brilliant full moon might bathe the land in dim light." (emphasis, mine)
You see normally in darkness. Therefore, you just see bright light up to 120 feet.
On top of that, considering warlocks only get 8 invocations throughout their entire career, it seems pretty fair to me.
Eh, posts are a few months apart anyway.
Just FYI: Crawford says it doesn't interact with dim light, only darkness. Take that as you will, his word on Twitter isn't law, but it helps give insight.
Devil's Sight (the monster ability) simply means a devil's darkvision isn't affected by magical darkness and devils with Devil's Sight (the monster ability) also come with Darkvision 120. Full stop. So devils with this type of sight have "Darkvision 120 that is unaffected by magical darkness." Period. They do not see normally in darkness... they treat darkness as dimly lit per darkvision.
However, the invocation says the invocation lets you see normally in darkness. That's something over and above what devils have, pulled straight out of someone's... hat. It probably shouldn't have been. They probably meant the invocation to let you see like devils: darkvision 120 unaffected by magical darkness.
If you want to allow your characters to treat darkness as brightly lit (which is terminology pulled from the Truesight ability that has nothing to do with the Devil's Sight of actual devils), you can use the weird Crawford justification for these awkward RAW.
I think the RAW as interpreted by Crawford is unnecessarily complicated and smacks more of justification of a poorly written invocation than any real design intent. So my campaigns houserules are either:
And if the characters get Option 2 for Devil's Sight... then so do NPC devils. Fair's fair!
I love this thread. Better learning rules is awesome. The thing that occurred to me though is that the invocation is poorly named. Not only can you chose it when you make a non-fiend Warlock, it also isn't the same thing as the monster trait that it shares its name with.
It also occurred to me that the invocation eye abilities piece meal True Sight, so it is my belief that Patrons must have True Sight and are bestowing a part of their power on their Warlocks.
A question I did have though. Lets say you are playing a human Warlock with the Devil's Sight invocation and are walking down a dark hall with a torch so your other party members can see who don't have the invocation. The Torch creates a radius of Bright Light, then some dim light beyond that, and then there is pure darkness beyond that.
So would your character see normally near the Torch, dimly in the middle, and then normally again past the effect of the torch, or does the area of dim light effectively obscure your vision past that?
According to the Crawford ruling, it would be the first. Dim in the middle, fine before and after.
exactly reason why i chose a Tabaxi as a lv 5 warlock\2 sorcerer so i can have both dark-vision and devils sight and help my team better and also have darkness to make it better when playing.
this is how every game I've played in uses it, and it's how I use it as a DM
You’re REALLY overthinking it if you think Devil’s Sight doesn’t work in dim light. We gotta fight that devil during the magic hour so that his vision is blurry! Give me a break…
https://www.sageadvice.eu/devils-sight-vision/
I guess the Sage is overthinking it too then.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
You can always count on JC to make absolutely no sense, that much is certain. Dim light is pretty much irrelevant anyway. It’s disadvantage on perception checks and that’s all, which really doesn’t matter because you can’t hide in dim light anyway. Yep, those are the rules…
Then what's the problem?
JC can usually be counted on to follow what the rule literally says, btw, which seems like something you'd expect from someone official asked to explain what it means.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
This is a bugs & support thread, not rules discussion. If you want to discuss how Devil's Sight works, please take it to Rules & Game Mechanics
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Of course you can hide in dim light. You just need something to hide behind.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Ask yourself this, is dim light a hard counter to a devil? It's not, it doesn't counter devils sight either. Although I can respect the arguments running either way sometimes a DM has to rule with common sense, and common sense states that devils sight works in dim light as it is a degree of darkness.