So my Warlock is about to pick Hunger of Hadar, and I've been scouring reddit etc. to figure out exactly how the darkness effect of this spell is supposed to function and oh boy, this is a contentious subject that noone seems to have fully figured out yet. I'm looking for opinions on my interpretation here but really I think the thing we honestly need is an official ruling on this because right now other than a JC tweet (Which is unofficial, honestly just complicates things further, but I do believe is the correct RAI of the spell), it's really not clear what the correct way to resolve this spell is within the rules provided.
The spell states: "A 20-foot-radius sphere of blackness and bitter cold appears, centred on a point with range and lasting for the duration...[unimportant bit]... No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area, and creatures fully within the area are blinded.
Now first of all to cover the initial instincts of people. This spell magically makes the area black, devoid of light. This is not a magical darkness effect by RAW! Every magical darkness effect states that it is "magical darkness" or creates an area of "magical darkness" and thus interacts with darkvision, devil's sight & truesight in the exact way you'd expect. Without that wording, this spell has nothing to do with the rules surrounding magical darkness! Although this still leaves it open to the rules surrounding regular darkness.
This brings me to the second point of view that I've seen argued, something along the lines of "The spell states nothing in the area can be illuminated, but it isn't magical darkness. That means it's just regular darkness and creatures with darkvision (outside the sphere, to avoid the blinded condition) can see in perfectly fine". This interpretation fits in with the RAW of the second half where it states "No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area", which I assume people visualise as an area totally drenched in dark shadow, but I do not believe it fits in line with the beginning of the spell describing it as "a 20-foot-radius sphere of blackness" which tells me it's entire area is opaque and black, both on it's surface and throughout it's volume (hence the blinded condition), which is entirely different from an area simply drenched in shadow. Ironically this does superficially like a regular darkness spell, but I reinvoke the first point to explain why it is distinct.
I believe the intent is for the entire area to be heavily obscured as if by the spell fog cloud, except a black void instead of a thick gaseous fog. This is supported by the aforementioned JC tweet which states "Devil's Sight is meant to pierce the dark created by a spell like darkness, not the void of hunger of Hadar.", therefore discounting both alternative interpretations since either interpretation would allow a creature with devil's sight to see into the area.
The trouble is unlike fog cloud, or any of the other darkness spells, the spell mentions nothing about blocking vision, the area being heavily obscured, whether or not creatures outside can see in, or any mention of the type of darkness it creates. The only thing it states is that it's a "sphere of blackness" which makes sense, but it doesn't translate well to explicitly defined game mechanics. This needs an errata or clarification!
The reason this is important btw is in the RAI case, the spell causes AOE blindness & damage with no save (except for acid damage at the end of the turn) as well as the darkness stuff. With everyone inside blinded, creatures fighting inside the fog roll attacks as normal (blind vs blind), creatures outside shooting in attack as normal (target is both blind and obscured), but creatures shooting out have disadvantage (they are blind, but their opponents are not *can be countered if creatures inside the fog take the hide action, thus gaining a source of advantage*). This therefore operates identically to fog / heavily obscured areas, which seems appropriate since the spell also layers several additional hindrances like difficult terrain & damage on those inside to justify the 3rd level slot.
However if either of the other two interpretations are correct, it means creatures can shoot into the fog with advantage, vastly increasing the power level since suddenly it's a huge AOE fairie fire with no save (minus the invisibility countering) in addition to all of the other benefits. I don't believe this is the intent as it makes the spell far too powerful for it's level.
I feel like nothing you've just said has added any clarity or opposing point of view to any of the points I've made, except for you saying "it's 5e, the rules are guidelines" which is not sufficient. All you've done is perfectly demonstrate the fact that this point of view is probably right, but not explicitly stated in the spell, which just lends credence to the idea that it deserves some clarification!
To the point about magical darkness though, you're probably right in your interpretation is that magical darkness doesn't have a general rule other than that anything specifically named as "magical darkness" is countered by devils sight, and that it's an unhelpful side effect that both the darkness and maddening darkness spells also don't let you see through them so it naively seems like this is general to all magical darkness. However just like me you've concluded it doesn't matter anyway because the effect of this spell isn't caused by magical darkness in the first place so it's not too relevant.
There is a distinct difference between light not illuminating an area, and not being able to see through an area though. Not illuminating an area makes the surface black but light from behind shines straight through, allowing you to see silhouettes in a sufficiently large battlefield. A black sphere however is opaque and makes anything inside it effectively invisible. This is the difference between being heavily obscured or not, which has the mechanical differences I mentioned before.
Point is like the fog spell I believe it would be far clearer if this spell simply stated it causes the area to be heavily obscured as seems to be the RAI of the game designers because it would save a lot of googling/ scrolling reddit threads of various people trying to argue that this wasn't the intent. The absence of this clause is a fault of the spells writing and leads people to erroneously believe there are ways to see into it.
Alternatively if that's not the intent of the spell, then it doesn't cause obscurement, therefore when cast outdoors it doesn't appear as a black sphere so much as a large black shadow, which players can see silhouettes through because the spell doesn't state it blocks vision or causes heavy obscurement, giving them advantage on all ranged attacks. I don't believe this is how the spell is supposed to work but this is why I argue it's badly written.
Basically the spell should just say "the void is an opaque black sphere. All creatures fully inside it are heavily obscured and blinded" and then it wouldn't suffer from the ambiguities we see. This isn't a matter of "it's just guidelines" it's just bad writing.
Yeah this always read to me as if the designer had never heard of magical darkness and didn't realize it was an existing mechanic that could be invoked.
Ultimately, all I can say is that it's contentious and requires a ruling. I pretty much add the text you just quoted and run it that way. I think it's more compelling if the darkness created is a presence rather than just an absence of light, and devil's sight not applying adds to the otherworldliness of it.
Lyxen nobody is arguing about the specifics of darkvision / devils sight and we get the 5e rules aren't perfect. If that's all you have to add to the conversation would you please cease because that's not relevant and you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.
The point made was that the spell has effects implied by RAI that aren't listed in the spell RAW when other spells do list those effects explicitly. Many on 5e forums / subreddits will state "if it doesn't explicitly say it does X then it doesn't do X" which is broadly true in most cases. The fact that it isn't here means it's perfectly valid to ask for rule clarifications, that's what the errata & SAC are for afterall.
It's funny that you keep going back to the magical darkness / devils sight thing actually because that's a great example of something that has been clarified in the SAC for precisely the same reasons.
Just going to jump in having not read any comments.
The spell does not make darkness, it makes blackness. What does it look like? A black sphere. Can darkvision see through it? Darkvision sees through darkness, it does not see through things that are colored black.
Yeah this always read to me as if the designer had never heard of magical darkness and didn't realize it was an existing mechanic that could be invoked.
Ultimately, all I can say is that it's contentious and requires a ruling. I pretty much add the text you just quoted and run it that way. I think it's more compelling if the darkness created is a presence rather than just an absence of light, and devil's sight not applying adds to the otherworldliness of it.
It reads to me as if the designer knew what magical darkness was but wanted to make sure that hunger of hadar is not magical darkness. Features like devil sight do not apply.
That phrase "the darkness is a presence" is great - I'm going to use that in future thanks. Very atmospheric. The spell is literally causing "something" to manifest in the space. Something supernatural, otherworldly, and profoundly wrong.
From the description of the spell, I picture a sort of magical representation of a squid/octopus that inks an area. Since it’s magic the blackness stays in the area, suspended. The cold damage from the cold kind of support deep space voids or perhaps ocean depths. The acid damage with tentacles and slurping noises.
my interpretation of the spells effect is that it creates “blackness” in an area as well as darkness. The spell says it makes blackness AND says light of pretty much any source cannot illuminate this area.
this distinction can change the way the environment is perceived. I’ve been in “fogcloud” and “sleetstorm” like conditions in real life when the sun was around. The fog and snow were thick enough that I was effectively blinded, but the fog and snow were very bright as the light sort of reflected and bounced through everything.
I would imagine a creature with darkvision inside a “hunger of hadar” spell could perhaps see the blackness if that makes sense, but would still be effectively blinded.
One - the spell does not need to explicitly say that it 'creates darkness' in order for it to be an area of darkness. There are more general rules at play than spell-specific wordings:
The presence or absence of light in an Environment creates three categories of illumination: bright light, dim light, and Darkness.
An area is alwaysone of three categories of illumination. Since there is absolutely no light in the area, it certainly isn't an area bright light or dim light. That makes it an area of darkness by default. I think it is ALSO an area of "blackness" or "void" or whatever you want to call it, which leads to the other point:
Two - Much like cover, obscurement is fairly flexible and relies on DM judgement calls. It isn't the type of effect that needs to be explicitly called out in order for it to exist. The DM should take into account various factors at play in order to determine if an area is heavily obscured or not. This is not about Rule 0 - this is about a type of game mechanic that isn't always cut and dry, and needs DM adjudication. Otherwise, you end up with some pretty ridiculous scenarios.
Do I think explicitly causing the area to be considered heavily obscured would have been a good idea? Sure. But I think the wording of the spell sufficiently describes an area that would and should be considered heavily obscured.
Everything you've said *is* in line with my expectations yet you keep arguing every single sentence I say to prove you're right which isn't contributing like everyone else it's just super toxic. And no "warp in the fabric of space" isn't a useful description. "Sphere of blackness" is, the other is literally nonsense sci fi words. I'm 5 years into a physics degree if warp was a thing I'd know about it.
"Sphere of blackness" is, the other is literally nonsense sci fi words. I'm 5 years into a physics degree if warp was a thing I'd know about it.
You do realize that this is a fantasy game right???
I'm thinking that this might be the source of the problem. The "warp in the fabric of space" is a fairly common trope in fantasy and sci-fi that most people can understand, the physics degree might be a hindrance here unfortunately.
I'm 5 years into a physics degree if warp was a thing I'd know about it.
There is gravity and black holes (not to mention hypothetical space-time phenomena like white holes or worm holes), but I doubt that is what you mean.
Oh ofcourse yeah, I just mean it's not a technical term which accurately describes how something looks. If the spell said "the area creates a magical effect akin to a gravitational lense, with a singularity in the centre and light rays curved round from objects behind" then sure. But that's not very D&D or easy for people to understand :P
"Sphere of blackness" is, the other is literally nonsense sci fi words. I'm 5 years into a physics degree if warp was a thing I'd know about it.
You do realize that this is a fantasy game right???
I'm thinking that this might be the source of the problem. The "warp in the fabric of space" is a fairly common trope in fantasy and sci-fi that most people can understand, the physics degree might be a hindrance here unfortunately.
Eh, if you Google image search "warp in the fabric of space" you mostly get representations of general relativity or a ship going to warp speed, not a big black sphere. I can maybe get behind the implication that it bends or distorts light but that's not clear or precise enough to define a sphere of blackness (obviously hence them using the term "a sphere of blackness" in addition). It's more describing the mechanism behind how the sphere comes to be, which essentially means it's flavour. Removing the line doesn't change anything visually or mechanically if you were to reflavour the spell to a non-eldritch horror patron.
Incidently since Tasha's it has become more important to precisely define the mechanical effects of a spell, vs their purely cosmetic effects. This is due to the spell personalization rules / advice:
"Regardless of what type of spellcaster you’re playing, you can customize the cosmetic effects of your character’s spells. Perhaps you wish the effects of your caster’s spells to appear in their favorite color, to suggest the training they received from a celestial mentor, or to exhibit their connection to a season of the year. The possibilities for how you might cosmetically customize your character’s spells are endless. However, such alterations can’t change the effects of a spell..."
Obviously since not every table uses Tashas and it was released after Hunger of Hadar this wasn't considered beforehand. Nonetheless it is official.
Trouble is if spells don't say they block vision or provide heavy obscurement like several other spells do, there's nothing stopping someone customising it differently, for example creating a glowing sheet of ice that reflects light to blind people & occasionally bursts out with eruptions of acid, causing the sounds of ice cracking audible out to 30ft.
I'm honestly not entirely sure if the spell customising rules really count as rules or simply a guide on homebrew so don't get too mad if you disagree, but nonetheless it is worth considering.
1) I am in the camp that interprets the Darkness spell as a globe of darkness imposed on the surroundings. I interpret it as a heavily obscured area that blocks vision entirely per the vision rules - "A heavily obscured area-such as darkness,". Other folks interpret it differently - that is their choice.
2) Hunger of Hadar creates an area of blackness which can not be illuminated (physics segue: the only way to NOT illuminate an area is to prevent the propagation of photons since otherwise they can scatter off the atmosphere and illuminate grains of dust and whatever else is present). So in my opinion, creatures can't see into it, they can't see each other inside it and they can't see out of it. This means that all creatures either inside the Hunger of Hadar or outside can not see each other. They all have advantage to hit their target because they can't be seen and disadvantage because they can't see their target. This means that attack into, out of or within the darkness have neither advantage nor disadvantage (the OP example seemed to say that creatures attacking out of the blackness would attack with disadvantage which I disagree with since the blackness (in my opinion) blocks all vision).
3) Since the obscuring effect is described as "blackness" and not darkness - neither darkvision nor devils sight can penetrate it.
That's how I would play it and I believe it is consistent with at least one reading of RAW :)
1) I am in the camp that interprets the Darkness spell as a globe of darkness imposed on the surroundings. I interpret it as a heavily obscured area that blocks vision entirely per the vision rules - "A heavily obscured area-such as darkness,". Other folks interpret it differently - that is their choice.
2) Hunger of Hadar creates an area of blackness which can not be illuminated (physics segue: the only way to NOT illuminate an area is to prevent the propagation of photons since otherwise they can scatter off the atmosphere and illuminate grains of dust and whatever else is present). So in my opinion, creatures can't see into it, they can't see each other inside it and they can't see out of it. This means that all creatures either inside the Hunger of Hadar or outside can not see each other. They all have advantage to hit their target because they can't be seen and disadvantage because they can't see their target. This means that attack into, out of or within the darkness have neither advantage nor disadvantage (the OP example seemed to say that creatures attacking out of the blackness would attack with disadvantage which I disagree with since the blackness (in my opinion) blocks all vision).
3) Since the obscuring effect is described as "blackness" and not darkness - neither darkvision nor devils sight can penetrate it.
That's how I would play it and I believe it is consistent with at least one reading of RAW :)
Neither darkvision nor devil's sight need photons to see; from a physics perspective, both act a lot like the eyes involved emit a magic particle which bounces off things and returns to the eye, with darkvision particles not picking up color info and being blocked by magical darkness, and devil's sight particles not being blocked.
I don't think there's a way to rule on it fully consistent with the RAW (meaning your house rule is certainly as good as any), since as others have pointed out, "blackness" makes absolutely no sense in the context of the spell - many things are black without being darkness, but I'd just stare into my own personal void if my GM declared that Hunger of Hadar was filled with dark chocolate syrup and everyone inside had to start rolling for suffocation and had to swim to get out of it. It's basically impossible to faithfully obey the RAW of "blackness"[1].
[1] I swear to god, if anyone suggests Hunger of Hadar is filled with smooth jazz...
Like first of all, as this thread has proven, applying physics to D&D rulings / worlds doesn't work at all. But as noted, regular darkvision could simply be seen as having a higher sensitivity to light (or photons if you want to see it that way) thus allowing for greater visual acuity in dark areas, since in most cases there is still scattered light (or photons again) even in areas we observe to be extremely dark.
Devil's sight can't work like this. A darkness spell blocks light (or photons) for normal observers but not observers with devil's sight. There's two plausible explanations I can think of for this. 1) is it's just magic, so once again don't apply physics to it. 2) is that potentially if you look at prior editions which had features such as infra vision and ultra vision, devil's sight could work on a slightly different version (physicists read wavelength / frequency) of light, which is not blocked by whatever magical darkness is made of. This would still preserve the bright light/dim light of regular vision & dark vision assuming the general light in the environment contains equivalent amounts of this other type (or wavelength) of light.
This is all speculative based on their relevant descriptions & interactions though. It doesn't have any baring on how the rules operate.
Hey all,
So my Warlock is about to pick Hunger of Hadar, and I've been scouring reddit etc. to figure out exactly how the darkness effect of this spell is supposed to function and oh boy, this is a contentious subject that noone seems to have fully figured out yet. I'm looking for opinions on my interpretation here but really I think the thing we honestly need is an official ruling on this because right now other than a JC tweet (Which is unofficial, honestly just complicates things further, but I do believe is the correct RAI of the spell), it's really not clear what the correct way to resolve this spell is within the rules provided.
The spell states:
"A 20-foot-radius sphere of blackness and bitter cold appears, centred on a point with range and lasting for the duration...[unimportant bit]... No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area, and creatures fully within the area are blinded.
Now first of all to cover the initial instincts of people. This spell magically makes the area black, devoid of light. This is not a magical darkness effect by RAW! Every magical darkness effect states that it is "magical darkness" or creates an area of "magical darkness" and thus interacts with darkvision, devil's sight & truesight in the exact way you'd expect. Without that wording, this spell has nothing to do with the rules surrounding magical darkness! Although this still leaves it open to the rules surrounding regular darkness.
This brings me to the second point of view that I've seen argued, something along the lines of "The spell states nothing in the area can be illuminated, but it isn't magical darkness. That means it's just regular darkness and creatures with darkvision (outside the sphere, to avoid the blinded condition) can see in perfectly fine". This interpretation fits in with the RAW of the second half where it states "No light, magical or otherwise, can illuminate the area", which I assume people visualise as an area totally drenched in dark shadow, but I do not believe it fits in line with the beginning of the spell describing it as "a 20-foot-radius sphere of blackness" which tells me it's entire area is opaque and black, both on it's surface and throughout it's volume (hence the blinded condition), which is entirely different from an area simply drenched in shadow. Ironically this does superficially like a regular darkness spell, but I reinvoke the first point to explain why it is distinct.
I believe the intent is for the entire area to be heavily obscured as if by the spell fog cloud, except a black void instead of a thick gaseous fog. This is supported by the aforementioned JC tweet which states "Devil's Sight is meant to pierce the dark created by a spell like darkness, not the void of hunger of Hadar.", therefore discounting both alternative interpretations since either interpretation would allow a creature with devil's sight to see into the area.
The trouble is unlike fog cloud, or any of the other darkness spells, the spell mentions nothing about blocking vision, the area being heavily obscured, whether or not creatures outside can see in, or any mention of the type of darkness it creates. The only thing it states is that it's a "sphere of blackness" which makes sense, but it doesn't translate well to explicitly defined game mechanics. This needs an errata or clarification!
The reason this is important btw is in the RAI case, the spell causes AOE blindness & damage with no save (except for acid damage at the end of the turn) as well as the darkness stuff. With everyone inside blinded, creatures fighting inside the fog roll attacks as normal (blind vs blind), creatures outside shooting in attack as normal (target is both blind and obscured), but creatures shooting out have disadvantage (they are blind, but their opponents are not *can be countered if creatures inside the fog take the hide action, thus gaining a source of advantage*). This therefore operates identically to fog / heavily obscured areas, which seems appropriate since the spell also layers several additional hindrances like difficult terrain & damage on those inside to justify the 3rd level slot.
However if either of the other two interpretations are correct, it means creatures can shoot into the fog with advantage, vastly increasing the power level since suddenly it's a huge AOE fairie fire with no save (minus the invisibility countering) in addition to all of the other benefits. I don't believe this is the intent as it makes the spell far too powerful for it's level.
I feel like nothing you've just said has added any clarity or opposing point of view to any of the points I've made, except for you saying "it's 5e, the rules are guidelines" which is not sufficient. All you've done is perfectly demonstrate the fact that this point of view is probably right, but not explicitly stated in the spell, which just lends credence to the idea that it deserves some clarification!
To the point about magical darkness though, you're probably right in your interpretation is that magical darkness doesn't have a general rule other than that anything specifically named as "magical darkness" is countered by devils sight, and that it's an unhelpful side effect that both the darkness and maddening darkness spells also don't let you see through them so it naively seems like this is general to all magical darkness. However just like me you've concluded it doesn't matter anyway because the effect of this spell isn't caused by magical darkness in the first place so it's not too relevant.
There is a distinct difference between light not illuminating an area, and not being able to see through an area though. Not illuminating an area makes the surface black but light from behind shines straight through, allowing you to see silhouettes in a sufficiently large battlefield. A black sphere however is opaque and makes anything inside it effectively invisible. This is the difference between being heavily obscured or not, which has the mechanical differences I mentioned before.
Point is like the fog spell I believe it would be far clearer if this spell simply stated it causes the area to be heavily obscured as seems to be the RAI of the game designers because it would save a lot of googling/ scrolling reddit threads of various people trying to argue that this wasn't the intent. The absence of this clause is a fault of the spells writing and leads people to erroneously believe there are ways to see into it.
Alternatively if that's not the intent of the spell, then it doesn't cause obscurement, therefore when cast outdoors it doesn't appear as a black sphere so much as a large black shadow, which players can see silhouettes through because the spell doesn't state it blocks vision or causes heavy obscurement, giving them advantage on all ranged attacks. I don't believe this is how the spell is supposed to work but this is why I argue it's badly written.
Basically the spell should just say "the void is an opaque black sphere. All creatures fully inside it are heavily obscured and blinded" and then it wouldn't suffer from the ambiguities we see. This isn't a matter of "it's just guidelines" it's just bad writing.
Yeah this always read to me as if the designer had never heard of magical darkness and didn't realize it was an existing mechanic that could be invoked.
Ultimately, all I can say is that it's contentious and requires a ruling. I pretty much add the text you just quoted and run it that way. I think it's more compelling if the darkness created is a presence rather than just an absence of light, and devil's sight not applying adds to the otherworldliness of it.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Lyxen nobody is arguing about the specifics of darkvision / devils sight and we get the 5e rules aren't perfect. If that's all you have to add to the conversation would you please cease because that's not relevant and you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.
The point made was that the spell has effects implied by RAI that aren't listed in the spell RAW when other spells do list those effects explicitly. Many on 5e forums / subreddits will state "if it doesn't explicitly say it does X then it doesn't do X" which is broadly true in most cases. The fact that it isn't here means it's perfectly valid to ask for rule clarifications, that's what the errata & SAC are for afterall.
It's funny that you keep going back to the magical darkness / devils sight thing actually because that's a great example of something that has been clarified in the SAC for precisely the same reasons.
I never said it creates darkness. I didn't say anything in the text you quoted. I said it creates a black sphere.
There is no such thing as a warp in the fabric of space, that's just nonsense fluff XD
This is a rules forum. I'm just trying to clearly define the rules. That is the point of this forum.
I'm not even arguing the case that you should be able to see into it, I'm pointing out that's false.
Can you please chill?
Just going to jump in having not read any comments.
The spell does not make darkness, it makes blackness. What does it look like? A black sphere. Can darkvision see through it? Darkvision sees through darkness, it does not see through things that are colored black.
It reads to me as if the designer knew what magical darkness was but wanted to make sure that hunger of hadar is not magical darkness. Features like devil sight do not apply.
That phrase "the darkness is a presence" is great - I'm going to use that in future thanks. Very atmospheric. The spell is literally causing "something" to manifest in the space. Something supernatural, otherworldly, and profoundly wrong.
From the description of the spell, I picture a sort of magical representation of a squid/octopus that inks an area. Since it’s magic the blackness stays in the area, suspended. The cold damage from the cold kind of support deep space voids or perhaps ocean depths. The acid damage with tentacles and slurping noises.
my interpretation of the spells effect is that it creates “blackness” in an area as well as darkness. The spell says it makes blackness AND says light of pretty much any source cannot illuminate this area.
this distinction can change the way the environment is perceived. I’ve been in “fogcloud” and “sleetstorm” like conditions in real life when the sun was around. The fog and snow were thick enough that I was effectively blinded, but the fog and snow were very bright as the light sort of reflected and bounced through everything.
I would imagine a creature with darkvision inside a “hunger of hadar” spell could perhaps see the blackness if that makes sense, but would still be effectively blinded.
Just want to make a couple of points:
One - the spell does not need to explicitly say that it 'creates darkness' in order for it to be an area of darkness. There are more general rules at play than spell-specific wordings:
An area is always one of three categories of illumination. Since there is absolutely no light in the area, it certainly isn't an area bright light or dim light. That makes it an area of darkness by default. I think it is ALSO an area of "blackness" or "void" or whatever you want to call it, which leads to the other point:
Two - Much like cover, obscurement is fairly flexible and relies on DM judgement calls. It isn't the type of effect that needs to be explicitly called out in order for it to exist. The DM should take into account various factors at play in order to determine if an area is heavily obscured or not. This is not about Rule 0 - this is about a type of game mechanic that isn't always cut and dry, and needs DM adjudication. Otherwise, you end up with some pretty ridiculous scenarios.
Do I think explicitly causing the area to be considered heavily obscured would have been a good idea? Sure. But I think the wording of the spell sufficiently describes an area that would and should be considered heavily obscured.
Everything you've said *is* in line with my expectations yet you keep arguing every single sentence I say to prove you're right which isn't contributing like everyone else it's just super toxic. And no "warp in the fabric of space" isn't a useful description. "Sphere of blackness" is, the other is literally nonsense sci fi words. I'm 5 years into a physics degree if warp was a thing I'd know about it.
There is gravity and black holes (not to mention hypothetical space-time phenomena like white holes or worm holes), but I doubt that is what you mean.
You do realize that this is a fantasy game right???
I'm thinking that this might be the source of the problem. The "warp in the fabric of space" is a fairly common trope in fantasy and sci-fi that most people can understand, the physics degree might be a hindrance here unfortunately.
Oh ofcourse yeah, I just mean it's not a technical term which accurately describes how something looks. If the spell said "the area creates a magical effect akin to a gravitational lense, with a singularity in the centre and light rays curved round from objects behind" then sure. But that's not very D&D or easy for people to understand :P
Eh, if you Google image search "warp in the fabric of space" you mostly get representations of general relativity or a ship going to warp speed, not a big black sphere. I can maybe get behind the implication that it bends or distorts light but that's not clear or precise enough to define a sphere of blackness (obviously hence them using the term "a sphere of blackness" in addition). It's more describing the mechanism behind how the sphere comes to be, which essentially means it's flavour. Removing the line doesn't change anything visually or mechanically if you were to reflavour the spell to a non-eldritch horror patron.
Incidently since Tasha's it has become more important to precisely define the mechanical effects of a spell, vs their purely cosmetic effects. This is due to the spell personalization rules / advice:
"Regardless of what type of spellcaster you’re playing, you can customize the cosmetic effects of your character’s spells. Perhaps you wish the effects of your caster’s spells to appear in their favorite color, to suggest the training they received from a celestial mentor, or to exhibit their connection to a season of the year. The possibilities for how you might cosmetically customize your character’s spells are endless. However, such alterations can’t change the effects of a spell..."
Obviously since not every table uses Tashas and it was released after Hunger of Hadar this wasn't considered beforehand. Nonetheless it is official.
Trouble is if spells don't say they block vision or provide heavy obscurement like several other spells do, there's nothing stopping someone customising it differently, for example creating a glowing sheet of ice that reflects light to blind people & occasionally bursts out with eruptions of acid, causing the sounds of ice cracking audible out to 30ft.
I'm honestly not entirely sure if the spell customising rules really count as rules or simply a guide on homebrew so don't get too mad if you disagree, but nonetheless it is worth considering.
Just a couple of comments ...
1) I am in the camp that interprets the Darkness spell as a globe of darkness imposed on the surroundings. I interpret it as a heavily obscured area that blocks vision entirely per the vision rules - "A heavily obscured area-such as darkness,". Other folks interpret it differently - that is their choice.
2) Hunger of Hadar creates an area of blackness which can not be illuminated (physics segue: the only way to NOT illuminate an area is to prevent the propagation of photons since otherwise they can scatter off the atmosphere and illuminate grains of dust and whatever else is present). So in my opinion, creatures can't see into it, they can't see each other inside it and they can't see out of it. This means that all creatures either inside the Hunger of Hadar or outside can not see each other. They all have advantage to hit their target because they can't be seen and disadvantage because they can't see their target. This means that attack into, out of or within the darkness have neither advantage nor disadvantage (the OP example seemed to say that creatures attacking out of the blackness would attack with disadvantage which I disagree with since the blackness (in my opinion) blocks all vision).
3) Since the obscuring effect is described as "blackness" and not darkness - neither darkvision nor devils sight can penetrate it.
That's how I would play it and I believe it is consistent with at least one reading of RAW :)
Neither darkvision nor devil's sight need photons to see; from a physics perspective, both act a lot like the eyes involved emit a magic particle which bounces off things and returns to the eye, with darkvision particles not picking up color info and being blocked by magical darkness, and devil's sight particles not being blocked.
I don't think there's a way to rule on it fully consistent with the RAW (meaning your house rule is certainly as good as any), since as others have pointed out, "blackness" makes absolutely no sense in the context of the spell - many things are black without being darkness, but I'd just stare into my own personal void if my GM declared that Hunger of Hadar was filled with dark chocolate syrup and everyone inside had to start rolling for suffocation and had to swim to get out of it. It's basically impossible to faithfully obey the RAW of "blackness"[1].
[1] I swear to god, if anyone suggests Hunger of Hadar is filled with smooth jazz...
Like first of all, as this thread has proven, applying physics to D&D rulings / worlds doesn't work at all. But as noted, regular darkvision could simply be seen as having a higher sensitivity to light (or photons if you want to see it that way) thus allowing for greater visual acuity in dark areas, since in most cases there is still scattered light (or photons again) even in areas we observe to be extremely dark.
Devil's sight can't work like this. A darkness spell blocks light (or photons) for normal observers but not observers with devil's sight. There's two plausible explanations I can think of for this. 1) is it's just magic, so once again don't apply physics to it. 2) is that potentially if you look at prior editions which had features such as infra vision and ultra vision, devil's sight could work on a slightly different version (physicists read wavelength / frequency) of light, which is not blocked by whatever magical darkness is made of. This would still preserve the bright light/dim light of regular vision & dark vision assuming the general light in the environment contains equivalent amounts of this other type (or wavelength) of light.
This is all speculative based on their relevant descriptions & interactions though. It doesn't have any baring on how the rules operate.