A creature with blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius. Creatures without eyes, such as oozes, and creatures with echolocation or heightened senses, such as bats and true dragons, have this sense.
If you consider a player character a "creature"
person, as fellow creatures on this planet, deserving of respect.
Which is normally what player characters would be considered, and you let them take Blindsight, they can perceive their surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius.
Who needs any other source?
Geann, you can hear a creature in a Fog Cloud, and even perceive exactly what square they're in (if they aren't Hiding). That doesn't mean you can "see" them for a spell that requires a target you can "see." So, granting that a creature (including a player character) with Blind Sight can "perceive" that creature in the Fog Cloud, what language in Blindsight itself, tells you that you can "see" the target?
"Who needs any other source" would be someone that has noticed that "perceive" is not a synonym for "see", that Blinded provides that a blinded creature both can't "see" but also has disadvantage on attacks, that its unclear whether "perceiving" a creature stops it from hiding/being hidden if you still can't "see" it, etc...
I get your point, but I think the error here is mainly due to the vision-centric point of view that the writers and most people have. If a creature needs to positively identify the position of another creature, it will use its primary sense. For humans (and most D&D humanoids, and maybe many other monsters) that is sight, so you need to "see" a creature to target it with some abilities.
I know you want to say "this isn't RAW," and maybe it isn't, but "perceive its surroundings without relying on sight" is good enough to tell me that a creature with blindsight can positively identify the position of a creature using that sense instead of sight. Again, even if it isn't RAW, it is the best reading of the sentence as it is actually written considering how the game should function. Of course somtimes we can tell how the game should go, even when the words on the page aren't perfect.
To my mind, the Tasha's entry is a restatement of what Blindsight does, because it has caused previous confusion, and they wanted to clarify. Of course, they probably should have issued errata or something instead. :)
That said, I think the Blinded condition states the effects of being unable to see. To my mind, you can't just separate the two bullet points and say "the first does't apply, but the second does." If one is Blind those two bullets apply. If one can see (or can use a sense equivalent to that), then neither bullet applies. (and yes, this means if you're blind outside a certain radius, and the attack comes from outside that radius, I'd say it has advantage against you)...
But yeah, if this is a discussion about the exact words as written, without considering context, I agree that the rules remain unclear. But I don't think the intent remains unclear. Sure you can say SAC isn't RAW, and I won't argue with you on that. But if one is attempting to decide how to interpret, or make a judgement at the game table, I think reading Tasha's as a restatement of what Blindsight does is a reasonable interpretation that leads to a reasonable outcome.
To my mind, the Tasha's entry is a restatement of what Blindsight does, because it has caused previous confusion, and they wanted to clarify. Of course, they probably should have issued errata or something instead. :)
That said, I think the Blinded condition states the effects of being unable to see. To my mind, you can't just separate the two bullet points and say "the first does't apply, but the second does." If one is Blind those two bullets apply. If one can see (or can use a sense equivalent to that), then neither bullet applies. (and yes, this means if you're blind outside a certain radius, and the attack comes from outside that radius, I'd say it has advantage against you)...
But yeah, if this is a discussion about the exact words as written, without considering context, I agree that the rules remain unclear. But I don't think the intent remains unclear. Sure you can say SAC isn't RAW, and I won't argue with you on that. But if one is attempting to decide how to interpret, or make a judgement at the game table, I think reading Tasha's as a restatement of what Blindsight does is a reasonable interpretation that leads to a reasonable outcome.
I came into this pretty convinced that you can divide bullets of conditions, but when I went to find an example from the other conditions.... I became less certain. On the one hand, that's absolutely how spells and effects are generally read, something like say... Arms of Hadar, being immune to necrotic damage doesn't mean that you don't lose the ability to take reactions on a failed save. But for conditions... if a creature was immune from becoming Incapacitated, would they still suffer the other effects of Unconscious? If a creature can't have its speed reduced, would it still suffer other effects from being Restrained?
I'm not sure. On the one hand, its perhaps ridiculous to have a Blinded creature that can "see" just fine nevertheless be treated as having disadvantage on attacks. On the other hand, it seems ridiculous to have a creature that is not immune to Blinded, become Blinded, but suffer no mechanical effects of being Blinded. If I'm honest, that bugs me a lot more than trying to rationalize the sort of general disorientation and compromised nature of a creature that is Blinded but still able to (poorly) perceive its surroundings.
But again... that's all assuming that Blindsight lets you "see", which is not a conclusion I (yet) agree with.
Sure you can say SAC isn't RAW, and I won't argue with you on that.
If SAC isn't RAW, we have no basis for knowing what "melee weapon attack" means, and we have no tiebreaking vote on how to pick an ability modifier for an attack when the PHB makes two different claims about it. There are many rules that either only exist in the SAC or need the SAC as a tiebreaker. Granted, there are also rules that are unambiguous until the SAC renders them ambiguous, like the Great Weapon Fighting style, which has one meaning in the PHB and another in the SAC, but overall you're going to have a tough time trying to play D&D without the SAC to fall back on as a rules source.
Sure you can say SAC isn't RAW, and I won't argue with you on that.
If SAC isn't RAW, we have no basis for knowing what "melee weapon attack" means, and we have no tiebreaking vote on how to pick an ability modifier for an attack when the PHB makes two different claims about it. There are many rules that either only exist in the SAC or need the SAC as a tiebreaker. Granted, there are also rules that are unambiguous until the SAC renders them ambiguous, like the Great Weapon Fighting style, which has one meaning in the PHB and another in the SAC, but overall you're going to have a tough time trying to play D&D without the SAC to fall back on as a rules source.
Sure - Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that, if someone wants to say that they don't want to treat SAC as RAW, I may disagree with them, but I don't really want to get into that argument. You're welcome to tackle that one though ;)
To my mind, the Tasha's entry is a restatement of what Blindsight does, because it has caused previous confusion, and they wanted to clarify. Of course, they probably should have issued errata or something instead. :)
That said, I think the Blinded condition states the effects of being unable to see. To my mind, you can't just separate the two bullet points and say "the first does't apply, but the second does." If one is Blind those two bullets apply. If one can see (or can use a sense equivalent to that), then neither bullet applies. (and yes, this means if you're blind outside a certain radius, and the attack comes from outside that radius, I'd say it has advantage against you)...
But yeah, if this is a discussion about the exact words as written, without considering context, I agree that the rules remain unclear. But I don't think the intent remains unclear. Sure you can say SAC isn't RAW, and I won't argue with you on that. But if one is attempting to decide how to interpret, or make a judgement at the game table, I think reading Tasha's as a restatement of what Blindsight does is a reasonable interpretation that leads to a reasonable outcome.
I came into this pretty convinced that you can divide bullets of conditions, but when I went to find an example from the other conditions.... I became less certain. On the one hand, that's absolutely how spells and effects are generally read, something like say... Arms of Hadar, being immune to necrotic damage doesn't mean that you don't lose the ability to take reactions on a failed save. But for conditions... if a creature was immune from becoming Incapacitated, would they still suffer the other effects of Unconscious? If a creature can't have its speed reduced, would it still suffer other effects from being Restrained?
Interesting. I sort of think that, if a creature were unable to be incapacitated, but was not immune to being Unconscious, then being unconscious would be a way to incapacitate them without using "incapacitation". I haven't ever thought about that kind of interaction before. There are only two creatures immune to Incapacitated, and one is also immune to Unconscious. Hmm. I don't really know of many ways to become immune to speed reduction that doesn't also make you immune to being Restrained (Ring of Free Action). It sort of feels to me that conditions are often expressed in terms of other conditions, but don't necessarily imply they're related to each other, when it comes to immunities.
I can't recall what it is, but I feel like there's some ability that makes other creatures unable to have advantage on attacks against you (temporarily). That might be a better example... if one were subject to something that said "creatures can't have advantage on attacks against you," it wouldn't be reasonable to say "well, I guess I can't be Prone then can I!" That's what this feels like, treating the second bullet of Blinded as if it is caused by, rather than correlated with, the first bullet.
Again, I get what I think you are going for, but I think I would still just play it as I think the game intends: a creature with blindsight that is is not immune to blinded can still effectively use that sense to perceive within its specified range. If the attacker and target are both within that blindsight range, the creature wouldn't suffer the effects of blinded.
And just to be clear, I'm only talking about how I'd play because I think the rules are lacking here.
For some time, there's been an issue where what Blindsight "does" was a little RAW-questionable (though a lot of folks are quite insistent that it was RAI obvious):
Blindsight
A monster with blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius.
Creatures without eyes, such as grimlocks and gray oozes, typically have this special sense, as do creatures with echolocation or heightened senses, such as bats and true dragons.
If a monster is naturally blind, it has a parenthetical note to this effect, indicating that the radius of its blindsight defines the maximum range of its perception.
It lets you "perceive," but is perceiving the same as "seeing" for spells and effects that require a target you can "see"? Or rather, just enough to let you avoid having to guess what square they're in when targeting an attack?
Does it provide immunity to the Blinded condition (both bullets of it), at least within its radius?
Can an Invisible creature indeed "always try to hide" from a creature with Blindsight, or can they not Hide from a creature that can "see them clearly" within its blindsight radius, or even become automatically uncovered when entering that radius after hidden?
Folks have argued, back and forth on this, usually defending their sense of RAI because the RAW on Blindsight clearly doesn't say anything one way or the other on ANY of that.
But now, we have the Blindfighting fighting style from Tasha's.
Blind Fighting
You have blindsight with a range of 10 feet. Within that range, you can effectively see anything that isn’t behind total cover, even if you’re blinded or in darkness. Moreover, you can see an invisible creature within that range, unless the creature successfully hides from you.
With the Blind Fighting style, you clearly can "see" within your blindsight radius. Is that an additional benefit of the style , or something that Blindsight already could do that the style is belaboring?
The style seems to be pretty explicit that you can be Blinded with respect to things within your radius... and while it lets you see them (Blinded's first bullet point), still doesn't say that you ignore the condition's other effect(disadvantage on attacks, advantage on attacks against you).
The style is explicit that a creature, including an Invisible crature, can Hide from you within your Blindsight radius.
So, Tasha's isn't a core rulebook, this is an "optional" fighting style, and is being presented as a unique ability rather than a correction/clarification to Blindsight in general. Because of that, I think its quite arguable that the best way to read the detail of this fighting style is that it is providing unique additional benefits above and beyond whatever is baseline assumed about Blindsight by default, rather than reading it to be paraphrasing and restating things that are already true about Blindsight. That would mean:
Because the fighting style lets you "see", Blindsight itself does not.
This fighting style demonstrates that RAI, creatures with Blindsight are not immune to Blinded (specifically its second bullet), unless the creature is separately stated to be immune to that condition.
Invisible creatures, and indeed creatures in general, can Hide from creatures with Blindsight (if "circumstances are appropriate for hiding" of course, perhaps hiding by being quiet for a creature with hearing-based blindsight, or by being odorless for one with a scent-based blindsight, etc.).
So you already know that most of us assign powers to Blindsight by RAI that you do not think are supported by RAW. Now a new book appears with Blindsight mentioned, along with all the powers we already believe it includes - and you were wondering if now we will change our opinion on blindsight away from that RAI? No. No we did not change our understanding of blindsight.
To summarize what I believe is our collective RAI understanding of blindsight:
- Blindsight (and for most tremorsense) allows you to "see" anything that you "perceive" with that sense for any rule that cares about seeing. You know their location, can attack without disadvantage, and can target spells that require you to see the target.
- Blindsight (within its radius) cannot be adversely affected by the Blinded condition. While you may not be immune to the condition, neither of its bulleted effects will apply for any checks or enemies within the blindsight radius. Any perception check or attack happening outside the blindsight radius will be affected by the blindness, just as it would for any other reason that you can see in one area but cannot see into another area.
- An invisible creature is, for all intents and purposes, not invisible to a blindsighted creature within its radius. So it gets no advantage, and may not hide unless it is in a situation where a non-invisible creature could also hide.
All of that aligns just fine with the text in the new fighting style, and we do not see that as evidence that it wasn't true before.
I find it really ironic that Jeremy's tweets get regularly dismissed for being unofficial but when he tries to put some of that stuff back into a book in an official capacity it gets second-guessed.
I find it really ironic that Jeremy's tweets get regularly dismissed for being unofficial but when he tries to put some of that stuff back into a book in an official capacity it gets second-guessed.
Jeremy Crawford has a very straightforward way to get his opinions recognized as rules: issue an errata. Or, stick them in a new sourcebook in a way that identifies it as DM tips, optional rules, etc. I don't understand this defense of JC as if he or WotC are powerless to avoid these misunderstandings. If he wants Blindsight to say "A creature with Blindsight can see its surroundings...", nobody is stopping that from happening in a clear and direct errata or sidebar in a rulebook. If he wants it to say Blindsight provides immunity from the Blinded condition.... nobody's stopping that either! The fact that errata hasn't been published saying that.... is a pretty good indication that even if JC feels that way, his feelings aren't the start and end of the rules as written.
Me whining about JC's half measures aside... I'm hearing a consensus that:
The things that Blind Fighting says it does that Blindsight doesn't say (the ability to "see" creatures), people are reading as a clarification of what Blindsight already always does.
The limitations that Blind Fighting has (can't see through total cover; can't see hidden creatures), people are reading those as limitations of Blind Fighting that don't apply to Blindsight.
People generally still read Blindsight as providing de-facto immunity to the (effect of the) Blinded condition, despite neither the sense entry nor the Fighting Style saying that it does.
That doesn't sound very consistent from my perspective. Am I phrasing that unfairly?
... Me whining about JC's half measures aside... I'm hearing a consensus that:
The things that Blind Fighting says it does that Blindsight doesn't say (the ability to "see" creatures), people are reading as a clarification of what Blindsight already always does.
The limitations that Blind Fighting has (can't see through total cover; can't see hidden creatures), people are reading those as limitations of Blind Fighting that don't apply to Blindsight.
People generally still read Blindsight as providing de-facto immunity to the (effect of the) Blinded condition, despite neither the sense entry nor the Fighting Style saying that it does.
That doesn't sound very consistent from my perspective. Am I phrasing that unfairly?
I think 1 is a correct reflection, though its not a clarification to be officially applied elsewhere, just a simple listing of stuff that the sense does. Just like the second bullet point of the blinded condition is a simple listing of the stuff that being unable to see your opponents does.
I think 3 is a loaded but correct reflection.
I don't think 2 is right. I don't think people are generally of the opinion that blindsight lets you see through solid walls. Depending on the specific nature of the blindsight, it might be able to see through some materials that eye-based sight could not. The example given was a bat's hearing-based blindsight perhaps seeing through thin silk. By the same token, you might rule that the same bat could not see through thick glass with that hearing-based sense. The closest interpretation to both RAW and RAI is that generally total cover is total cover, and stuff just doesn't go through it.
Well. It's certainly not an unreasonable way to arbitrate blindsight if we were designing a redraft, I'm just (still) not convinced its RAW or demonstrably-RAI-in-text, with or without Tasha's. The arguments you and most of the others have laid out all seem to come down to (1) everybody just generally agrees that this is how to read it no matter what the text actually says or doesn't say, or (2) JC said X on Twitter/SAC. To zoom out from this specific ruling towards the broader body of textual interpretation... for a strict textualist who yearns for RAW answers to 5E's burning questions, those both just feel profoundly unsatisfactory as rule foundations.
That said... I'd honestly welcome an errata that just changed "perceive" to "see", and happily fall in line with you and the rest of humanity about the rest of the rulings (well, maybe not #3, that still feels shaky) once that one teeny tiny change comes to pass. I guess I'll start a change.org petition or something :)
Well. It's certainly not an unreasonable way to arbitrate blindsight if we were designing a redraft, I'm just (still) not convinced its RAW or demonstrably-RAI-in-text, with or without Tasha's. The arguments you and most of the others have laid out all seem to come down to (1) everybody just generally agrees that this is how to read it no matter what the text actually says or doesn't say, or (2) JC said X on Twitter/SAC. To zoom out from this specific ruling towards the broader body of textual interpretation... for a strict textualist who yearns for RAW answers to 5E's burning questions, those both just feel profoundly unsatisfactory as rule foundations.
That said... I'd honestly welcome an errata that just changed "perceive" to "see", and happily fall in line with you and the rest of humanity about the rest of the rulings (well, maybe not #3, that still feels shaky) once that one teeny tiny change comes to pass. I guess I'll start a change.org petition or something :)
to be fair, the SAC is WotC officially putting things to paper as clarifications and *is* considered RAW. So... Blindsight is sight within its radius, as per the SAC.
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Formerly Devan Avalon.
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This, I think, again, is a problem where the senses rules and the rules for spells and many other areas of the game conflate words. "See" in the vision and light section probably means use eyeballs on, but outside of that area it seems to mean "perceive with your primary sense." I know "primary" is wishy-washy here, but at the least, I'd take it to mean vision, darkvision, blindsight, or truesight as the statblock/character sheet provides.
Otherwise you are arguing that a adult oblex can't actually use its eat memories. I don't see that argument making sense.
This, I think, again, is a problem where the senses rules and the rules for spells and many other areas of the game conflate words. "See" in the vision and light section probably means use eyeballs on, but outside of that area it seems to mean "perceive with your primary sense." I know "primary" is wishy-washy here, but at the least, I'd take it to mean vision, darkvision, blindsight, or truesight as the statblock/character sheet provides.
Otherwise you are arguing that a adult oblex can't actually use its eat memories. I don't see that argument making sense.
You found one! I don't have Mordenkainen's on here. I was hoping there was a creature with blindsight (blind beyond this radius) and a "sight" based ability. That really hammers home that the intent of the ability is to meet the requirement for "seeing" without the use of eyes, and it's in published RAW.
Jeremy Crawford has a very straightforward way to get his opinions recognized as rules: issue an errata.
What's more straightforward: sending a tweet or reformatting a huge book and sending it to the printers whenever it's time for the next big production batch? Do you think the PHB would even be recognizable at this point if they amended it every time someone quibbled over the meaning of a word?
Or, stick them in a new sourcebook in a way that identifies it as DM tips, optional rules, etc.
I suspect most players frankly don't care whether they clearly label their helper text because the end result is the same for them: they understand what the feature is supposed to do. And if they did take this approach someone would surely complain that it still doesn't agree with what's printed in the Player's Handbook.
I really don't understand the purpose of this thread. We already know what blindsight is supposed to do and as long as you refuse to accept any kind of "unofficial" answer (like that makes any meaningful difference to playing the game) we're just beating the same dead horse yet again. The best possible outcome is that after much wasted time you finally arrive at the exact same conclusion Crawford already tweeted years ago and at worst you'll walk away thinking blindsight works in a different way from how WotC expects it to work.
That Adult Oblex is a good find, I'll take that as a good-enough RAI indication that Blindsight is meant to be treated as "sight" for spells etc. that require a "target you can see"! I mean, in truth, Oblex are complicated creatures which already seem like they don't work great with established rule systems... it isn't implausible that giving it an ability requiring sight was an error... but I'll assume that isn't true, and that the Oblex is the proof we've been looking for that Blindsight creatures "see."
That doesn't get us all the way towards whether (1) the bullet points of conditions are causally related, where immunity to/logical ineffectiveness of one bullet relives one from the others, or (2) how exactly the (already complicated) rules about Hiding work within the radius of a creature with Blindsight. Both of those, however, are full topics of discussion that could be more appropriately examined in their own threads instead of tacked on here.
Thanks for the discussion folks, it took a while to land somewhere productive, but good effort!
Geann, you can hear a creature in a Fog Cloud, and even perceive exactly what square they're in (if they aren't Hiding). That doesn't mean you can "see" them for a spell that requires a target you can "see." So, granting that a creature (including a player character) with Blind Sight can "perceive" that creature in the Fog Cloud, what language in Blindsight itself, tells you that you can "see" the target?
"Who needs any other source" would be someone that has noticed that "perceive" is not a synonym for "see", that Blinded provides that a blinded creature both can't "see" but also has disadvantage on attacks, that its unclear whether "perceiving" a creature stops it from hiding/being hidden if you still can't "see" it, etc...
In other words, the entire thread.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I get your point, but I think the error here is mainly due to the vision-centric point of view that the writers and most people have. If a creature needs to positively identify the position of another creature, it will use its primary sense. For humans (and most D&D humanoids, and maybe many other monsters) that is sight, so you need to "see" a creature to target it with some abilities.
I know you want to say "this isn't RAW," and maybe it isn't, but "perceive its surroundings without relying on sight" is good enough to tell me that a creature with blindsight can positively identify the position of a creature using that sense instead of sight. Again, even if it isn't RAW, it is the best reading of the sentence as it is actually written considering how the game should function. Of course somtimes we can tell how the game should go, even when the words on the page aren't perfect.
To my mind, the Tasha's entry is a restatement of what Blindsight does, because it has caused previous confusion, and they wanted to clarify. Of course, they probably should have issued errata or something instead. :)
That said, I think the Blinded condition states the effects of being unable to see. To my mind, you can't just separate the two bullet points and say "the first does't apply, but the second does." If one is Blind those two bullets apply. If one can see (or can use a sense equivalent to that), then neither bullet applies. (and yes, this means if you're blind outside a certain radius, and the attack comes from outside that radius, I'd say it has advantage against you)...
But yeah, if this is a discussion about the exact words as written, without considering context, I agree that the rules remain unclear. But I don't think the intent remains unclear. Sure you can say SAC isn't RAW, and I won't argue with you on that. But if one is attempting to decide how to interpret, or make a judgement at the game table, I think reading Tasha's as a restatement of what Blindsight does is a reasonable interpretation that leads to a reasonable outcome.
I came into this pretty convinced that you can divide bullets of conditions, but when I went to find an example from the other conditions.... I became less certain. On the one hand, that's absolutely how spells and effects are generally read, something like say... Arms of Hadar, being immune to necrotic damage doesn't mean that you don't lose the ability to take reactions on a failed save. But for conditions... if a creature was immune from becoming Incapacitated, would they still suffer the other effects of Unconscious? If a creature can't have its speed reduced, would it still suffer other effects from being Restrained?
I'm not sure. On the one hand, its perhaps ridiculous to have a Blinded creature that can "see" just fine nevertheless be treated as having disadvantage on attacks. On the other hand, it seems ridiculous to have a creature that is not immune to Blinded, become Blinded, but suffer no mechanical effects of being Blinded. If I'm honest, that bugs me a lot more than trying to rationalize the sort of general disorientation and compromised nature of a creature that is Blinded but still able to (poorly) perceive its surroundings.
But again... that's all assuming that Blindsight lets you "see", which is not a conclusion I (yet) agree with.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
If SAC isn't RAW, we have no basis for knowing what "melee weapon attack" means, and we have no tiebreaking vote on how to pick an ability modifier for an attack when the PHB makes two different claims about it. There are many rules that either only exist in the SAC or need the SAC as a tiebreaker. Granted, there are also rules that are unambiguous until the SAC renders them ambiguous, like the Great Weapon Fighting style, which has one meaning in the PHB and another in the SAC, but overall you're going to have a tough time trying to play D&D without the SAC to fall back on as a rules source.
Sure - Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that, if someone wants to say that they don't want to treat SAC as RAW, I may disagree with them, but I don't really want to get into that argument.
You're welcome to tackle that one though ;)
Interesting. I sort of think that, if a creature were unable to be incapacitated, but was not immune to being Unconscious, then being unconscious would be a way to incapacitate them without using "incapacitation". I haven't ever thought about that kind of interaction before. There are only two creatures immune to Incapacitated, and one is also immune to Unconscious. Hmm. I don't really know of many ways to become immune to speed reduction that doesn't also make you immune to being Restrained (Ring of Free Action). It sort of feels to me that conditions are often expressed in terms of other conditions, but don't necessarily imply they're related to each other, when it comes to immunities.
To your point, there are only two creatures immune to incapacitated and they both happen to be immune to unconscious.
Edit: or maybe it isn't happenstance...
I can't recall what it is, but I feel like there's some ability that makes other creatures unable to have advantage on attacks against you (temporarily). That might be a better example... if one were subject to something that said "creatures can't have advantage on attacks against you," it wouldn't be reasonable to say "well, I guess I can't be Prone then can I!" That's what this feels like, treating the second bullet of Blinded as if it is caused by, rather than correlated with, the first bullet.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Again, I get what I think you are going for, but I think I would still just play it as I think the game intends: a creature with blindsight that is is not immune to blinded can still effectively use that sense to perceive within its specified range. If the attacker and target are both within that blindsight range, the creature wouldn't suffer the effects of blinded.
And just to be clear, I'm only talking about how I'd play because I think the rules are lacking here.
So you already know that most of us assign powers to Blindsight by RAI that you do not think are supported by RAW. Now a new book appears with Blindsight mentioned, along with all the powers we already believe it includes - and you were wondering if now we will change our opinion on blindsight away from that RAI? No. No we did not change our understanding of blindsight.
To summarize what I believe is our collective RAI understanding of blindsight:
- Blindsight (and for most tremorsense) allows you to "see" anything that you "perceive" with that sense for any rule that cares about seeing. You know their location, can attack without disadvantage, and can target spells that require you to see the target.
- Blindsight (within its radius) cannot be adversely affected by the Blinded condition. While you may not be immune to the condition, neither of its bulleted effects will apply for any checks or enemies within the blindsight radius. Any perception check or attack happening outside the blindsight radius will be affected by the blindness, just as it would for any other reason that you can see in one area but cannot see into another area.
- An invisible creature is, for all intents and purposes, not invisible to a blindsighted creature within its radius. So it gets no advantage, and may not hide unless it is in a situation where a non-invisible creature could also hide.
All of that aligns just fine with the text in the new fighting style, and we do not see that as evidence that it wasn't true before.
I find it really ironic that Jeremy's tweets get regularly dismissed for being unofficial but when he tries to put some of that stuff back into a book in an official capacity it gets second-guessed.
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Jeremy Crawford has a very straightforward way to get his opinions recognized as rules: issue an errata. Or, stick them in a new sourcebook in a way that identifies it as DM tips, optional rules, etc. I don't understand this defense of JC as if he or WotC are powerless to avoid these misunderstandings. If he wants Blindsight to say "A creature with Blindsight can see its surroundings...", nobody is stopping that from happening in a clear and direct errata or sidebar in a rulebook. If he wants it to say Blindsight provides immunity from the Blinded condition.... nobody's stopping that either! The fact that errata hasn't been published saying that.... is a pretty good indication that even if JC feels that way, his feelings aren't the start and end of the rules as written.
Me whining about JC's half measures aside... I'm hearing a consensus that:
That doesn't sound very consistent from my perspective. Am I phrasing that unfairly?
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I think 1 is a correct reflection, though its not a clarification to be officially applied elsewhere, just a simple listing of stuff that the sense does. Just like the second bullet point of the blinded condition is a simple listing of the stuff that being unable to see your opponents does.
I think 3 is a loaded but correct reflection.
I don't think 2 is right. I don't think people are generally of the opinion that blindsight lets you see through solid walls. Depending on the specific nature of the blindsight, it might be able to see through some materials that eye-based sight could not. The example given was a bat's hearing-based blindsight perhaps seeing through thin silk. By the same token, you might rule that the same bat could not see through thick glass with that hearing-based sense. The closest interpretation to both RAW and RAI is that generally total cover is total cover, and stuff just doesn't go through it.
Well. It's certainly not an unreasonable way to arbitrate blindsight if we were designing a redraft, I'm just (still) not convinced its RAW or demonstrably-RAI-in-text, with or without Tasha's. The arguments you and most of the others have laid out all seem to come down to (1) everybody just generally agrees that this is how to read it no matter what the text actually says or doesn't say, or (2) JC said X on Twitter/SAC. To zoom out from this specific ruling towards the broader body of textual interpretation... for a strict textualist who yearns for RAW answers to 5E's burning questions, those both just feel profoundly unsatisfactory as rule foundations.
That said... I'd honestly welcome an errata that just changed "perceive" to "see", and happily fall in line with you and the rest of humanity about the rest of the rulings (well, maybe not #3, that still feels shaky) once that one teeny tiny change comes to pass. I guess I'll start a change.org petition or something :)
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to be fair, the SAC is WotC officially putting things to paper as clarifications and *is* considered RAW. So... Blindsight is sight within its radius, as per the SAC.
Formerly Devan Avalon.
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This, I think, again, is a problem where the senses rules and the rules for spells and many other areas of the game conflate words. "See" in the vision and light section probably means use eyeballs on, but outside of that area it seems to mean "perceive with your primary sense." I know "primary" is wishy-washy here, but at the least, I'd take it to mean vision, darkvision, blindsight, or truesight as the statblock/character sheet provides.
Otherwise you are arguing that a adult oblex can't actually use its eat memories. I don't see that argument making sense.
You found one! I don't have Mordenkainen's on here. I was hoping there was a creature with blindsight (blind beyond this radius) and a "sight" based ability. That really hammers home that the intent of the ability is to meet the requirement for "seeing" without the use of eyes, and it's in published RAW.
What's more straightforward: sending a tweet or reformatting a huge book and sending it to the printers whenever it's time for the next big production batch? Do you think the PHB would even be recognizable at this point if they amended it every time someone quibbled over the meaning of a word?
I suspect most players frankly don't care whether they clearly label their helper text because the end result is the same for them: they understand what the feature is supposed to do. And if they did take this approach someone would surely complain that it still doesn't agree with what's printed in the Player's Handbook.
I really don't understand the purpose of this thread. We already know what blindsight is supposed to do and as long as you refuse to accept any kind of "unofficial" answer (like that makes any meaningful difference to playing the game) we're just beating the same dead horse yet again. The best possible outcome is that after much wasted time you finally arrive at the exact same conclusion Crawford already tweeted years ago and at worst you'll walk away thinking blindsight works in a different way from how WotC expects it to work.
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That Adult Oblex is a good find, I'll take that as a good-enough RAI indication that Blindsight is meant to be treated as "sight" for spells etc. that require a "target you can see"! I mean, in truth, Oblex are complicated creatures which already seem like they don't work great with established rule systems... it isn't implausible that giving it an ability requiring sight was an error... but I'll assume that isn't true, and that the Oblex is the proof we've been looking for that Blindsight creatures "see."
That doesn't get us all the way towards whether (1) the bullet points of conditions are causally related, where immunity to/logical ineffectiveness of one bullet relives one from the others, or (2) how exactly the (already complicated) rules about Hiding work within the radius of a creature with Blindsight. Both of those, however, are full topics of discussion that could be more appropriately examined in their own threads instead of tacked on here.
Thanks for the discussion folks, it took a while to land somewhere productive, but good effort!
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.