Sorry, this is all wrong. It is not how the rule works. A person standing outside a dimly light area does not have advantage seeing someone, or disadvantage seeing someone in dim light, or vice verse. There is only you can see, or you can not. if there is such a rule, post it please. But I won't hold my breath.
"Unseen Attackers and Targets
Combatants often try to escape their foes' notice by hiding, casting the invisibility spell, or lurking in darkness.
When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn't in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target's location correctly.
When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it. If you are hidden--both unseen and unheard--when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses."
This is the rule for attacking. There is no rule anywhere that says dim light makes an attacker unseen. If there is, post it.
Sorry, this is all wrong. It is not how the rule works. A person standing outside a dimly light area does not have advantage seeing someone, or disadvantage seeing someone in dim light. There is only you can see, or you can not. if there is such a rule, post it please. But I won't hold my breath.
It does actually.
Vision and Light: A given area might be lightly or heavily obscured. In a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage, creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight
Combatants often try to escape their foes' notice by hiding, casting the invisibility spell, or lurking in darkness.
When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn't in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target's location correctly.
When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it. If you are hidden--both unseen and unheard--when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses."
This is the rule for attacking. There is no rule anywhere that says dim light makes an attacker unseen. The only way a PC can be in dim light and not be seen is if he is HIDDEN. and the rules for being hidden are clear. The HIDDEN character gets the advantage to attack, not the one that is seen. Also, This can only happen with the skulker feat or mask of the wild. Which means it can't happen any other way, which means one person standing in dim light normally, and one not, pose no advantage or disadvantage to see each other. You are either seen, or you are not. That is the rule. Perception checks in dim light are to look for traps, secret doors, etc. There is nothing in dim light to suggest advantage or disadvantage to see each other under any positioning, whatsoever
And if you are in the center of a 20 ft radius darkness? Does the darkness prevent you from shooting out of it into a lighted area? No. There is no rule that says any part of an obscured area functions any different than any other part of an obscured area, though I would understand if a DM made that call. Heavily obscured forrest provide the same issue.
The problem with the rules is that they lump all forms of "heavily obscured" into one category while natural darkness is fundamentally different from all the other forms of "heavily obscured" from a "real world" or "logical" perspective.
Here is the issue:
- In the real world you can see through natural darkness to sources of light on the far side. You can clearly see the illuminated areas. If you are in the darkness then you can't be seen and you can't see other creatures in the darkness. You can see through natural darkness to objects or creatures on the other side.
- In the real world you can NOT see through a jungle for more than a few feet. You can NOT see through a dense fog cloud as the spell in D&D produces. (In addition, the magical Darkness spell says that darkvision can not see through it and normal light can NOT illuminate it. If normal light can not illuminate the magical darkness then it also can't pass through it making a magical darkness area similar to fog cloud or a jungle for seeing things on the other side. If you are IN a fog cloud you can't see out of it and you can't see from one side to another or see something on the other side of the fog cloud.
So - do the RULES apply to natural darkness or to fog cloud or other heavily obscured areas - these are treated the same in the rules and this is where the issue comes from.
Either -
1) You can't see things in the heavily obscured area but you can see out of them or through them - this gets into the ridiculous situation of being able to see through 100' of fog or jungle to the clearing in the middle and shoot without a problem. This clearly makes no sense.
2) You can't see things in a heavily obscured area. A heavily obscured area blocks line of sight. You can't see into, out of or through a heavily obscured area. The rules make this clear with the following statement. Heavily obscured areas block vision entirely - meaning you can't see into, out of or through them.
PH 183 "A heavily obscured area-such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage-blocks vision entirely."
However, as I am the first to acknowledge, this makes no sense for natural darkness though it works fine for most other heavily obscured areas.
Until the designers sit down and re-write the rules to treat natural darkness distinct from other heavily obscured areas we will always have this argument about RAW - it doesn't have a resolution - and it is up to the DM to decide how they want to run it. Personally, I run all heavily obscured areas as blocking vision into, out of or through except for natural darkness which blocks vision into it (whether viewed from inside or outside) but does not block vision out of or through the natural darkness. However, that is purely a house rule to make the RAW as consistent as possible with vision in the real world while making the least changes possible to the rules.
The Dungeon Master Guide has this passage though regarding mundane darkness and light;
Darkness and Light: The light of a torch or lantern helps a character see over a short distance, but other creatures can see that light source from far away. Bright light in an environment of total darkness can be visible for miles, though a clear line of sight over such a distance is rare underground.
The Dungeon Master Guide has this passage though regarding mundane darkness and light;
Darkness and Light: The light of a torch or lantern helps a character see over a short distance, but other creatures can see that light source from far away. Bright light in an environment of total darkness can be visible for miles, though a clear line of sight over such a distance is rare underground.
Yep, and your character walking alone at night can still see the moon. It's just the werewolf that may not get noticed.
The only way a PC can be in dim light and not be seen is if he is HIDDEN.
Careful with words like "only". When you use them there is a good chance you're intentionally saying things you didn't mean to. Can you see someone on the other side of a wall or inside a house that is dimly lit inside, while you're outside? No. You can't.
So being unseen isn't "only" while hidden.
and the rules for being hidden are clear. The HIDDEN character gets the advantage to attack, not the one that is seen. Also, This can only happen with the skulker feat or mask of the wild.
Only. Again. It snuck up on your sentence and added meaning to it you probably didn't intend to add. You get advantage in that situation if you are unseen and make an attack, regardless of if you have skulker or mask of the wild. Those features are not the "only" way to be hidden and unseen while in dim light. You could find some cover to hide behind, heck you could be invisible.
"Only" is a funny word like that. Gotta be careful with it.
Perception checks in dim light are to look for traps, secret doors, etc. There is nothing in dim light to suggest advantage or disadvantage to see each other under any positioning, whatsoever
So, here's why you wrong. Its a full moon, and the night sky is lit up. Dim light everywhere. The party is trying to sneak up and ambush a group of thugs they've been trailing for the past couple hours. Combat is about to begin and we need to compare the group's stealth check vs the thugs perception to determine surprise. Now, since I know that being in dim light gives disadvantage to perception checks, and I know having disadvantage on checks drops your passive score by 5, I'll go ahead and treat all the thug's passive perceptions as 5 less than normal.
That is but one of many imaginable scenarios in which someone might need to make a perception check while in dim light.
The disadvantage or automatic failure caused by lightly or heavily obscured areas doesn't apply to Perception vs Stealth, only to ability checks that rely on sight. Perception vs Stealth rely on not just sight but hearing, smell, touch etc..
Otherwise a creature would never be able to perceive a hiding creature it can't see due to darkness or invisibility.
Lightly Obscured: In a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage, creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Heavily Obscured: A heavily obscured area—such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage—blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition (see appendix A) when trying to see something in that area. A blinded creature can’t see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight.
A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.
There are two sentences, so let's examine the first one.
A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely.
That seems pretty clear in terms of intent, but not necessarily in terms of rules.
Let's remove the examples to distil the statement:
A heavily obscured area blocks vision entirely.
So, the whole of that area blocks vision. It is not possible to see through any part of that area. A character standing inside the area cannot see other creatures in the area, nor can they see out of the area, as some part of the area is between them and creatures outside of the area.
The second sentence of this rule states:
A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.
The important thing to note here is that this is a separate sentence and it doesn't override, or change, the previous sentence.
It's important to note that, with the way the rules are written, we sometimes see statements like this that are there to help clarify common situations.
Let's evaluate a situation I've seen discussed, where a creature is inside the heavily obscured area. Are they at advantage or disadvantage to attack a creature outside the area?
Applying the first statement of this rule, we know that neither creature can see the other, because there is at least some of the area between them (even though one is inside and the other is outside).
As others have noted, this leads to an odd situation where, as neither creature can see the other, they both have disadvantage on their attacks, as well as advantage on their attacks - this cancels out.
It's also worth noting that it's not possible to "stack" multiple instances of advantage or disadvantage.
My favourite odd example of this is a character suffering from 3 levels of exhaustion, which causes disadvantage on attack rolls. That character casts a darkness spell over the combat, so now all combatants have advantage and disadvantage (assuming no other way to see, such as blindsight). This effectively removes the penalty for being exhausted.
This is because the interpretation you are using is wrong. This is what I am trying to say. The rule is fine.
At your table, if two creatures are standing in areas of light (for example both holding a torch) and there is an area of non-magical darkness between them (for example, they are underground with no other light sources present), can they see each other?
A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.
There are two sentences, so let's examine the first one.
A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely.
That seems pretty clear in terms of intent, but not necessarily in terms of rules.
Let's remove the examples to distil the statement:
A heavily obscured area blocks vision entirely.
So, the whole of that area blocks vision. It is not possible to see through any part of that area. A character standing inside the area cannot see other creatures in the area, nor can they see out of the area, as some part of the area is between them and creatures outside of the area.
The second sentence of this rule states:
A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.
The important thing to note here is that this is a separate sentence and it doesn't override, or change, the previous sentence.
It's important to note that, with the way the rules are written, we sometimes see statements like this that are there to help clarify common situations.
Let's evaluate a situation I've seen discussed, where a creature is inside the heavily obscured area. Are they at advantage or disadvantage to attack a creature outside the area?
Applying the first statement of this rule, we know that neither creature can see the other, because there is at least some of the area between them (even though one is inside and the other is outside).
So while everything you said is 100% true, RAW, it is also 100% true that no one I've ever played with runs the game this way because it is so objectively foreign our intuition refuses to accept that it could/would/should work that way. Instead: If you're in a dark (Heavily Obscured) corner of the room, you can see the people walking around with their lit torches on the other side of the room just fine. They just can't see you.
I read the line "A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely." as descriptive and I read the line "A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area."as prescriptive. The first is narrative summary, the second is mechanically how it functions. This, at least for me, produces a normal functioning area that actually makes sense for darkness. If you're standing in a dark spot you can still see stuff that is being illuminated far off. Why? Because that's how vision works and I reject anything that tries to argue otherwise.
What's true, no matter what your opinion how it all works is this: Fog vs natural dark light don't (shouldn't) work in an identical way even if the rules do in fact treat them as identical. You should be able to see through areas of dim light and darkness but not well/at all into them. However, fog and foliage and the like should indeed block vision through their area as well as into them.
As others have noted, this leads to an odd situation where, as neither creature can see the other, they both have disadvantage on their attacks, as well as advantage on their attacks - this cancels out.
It also leads to the very real possibility that they don't even know where one another are so can't even actually attack at all. That's the issue. If you cannot see the enemies, don't even know what or where they are, and just start shooting wildly into an area of darkness, having your attacks even target a creature at all is problematic let alone rolling straight d20s.
A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.
There are two sentences, so let's examine the first one.
A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely.
That seems pretty clear in terms of intent, but not necessarily in terms of rules.
Let's remove the examples to distil the statement:
A heavily obscured area blocks vision entirely.
So, the whole of that area blocks vision. It is not possible to see through any part of that area. A character standing inside the area cannot see other creatures in the area, nor can they see out of the area, as some part of the area is between them and creatures outside of the area.
The second sentence of this rule states:
A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.
The important thing to note here is that this is a separate sentence and it doesn't override, or change, the previous sentence.
It's important to note that, with the way the rules are written, we sometimes see statements like this that are there to help clarify common situations.
Let's evaluate a situation I've seen discussed, where a creature is inside the heavily obscured area. Are they at advantage or disadvantage to attack a creature outside the area?
Applying the first statement of this rule, we know that neither creature can see the other, because there is at least some of the area between them (even though one is inside and the other is outside).
As others have noted, this leads to an odd situation where, as neither creature can see the other, they both have disadvantage on their attacks, as well as advantage on their attacks - this cancels out.
It's also worth noting that it's not possible to "stack" multiple instances of advantage or disadvantage.
My favourite odd example of this is a character suffering from 3 levels of exhaustion, which causes disadvantage on attack rolls. That character casts a darkness spell over the combat, so now all combatants have advantage and disadvantage (assuming no other way to see, such as blindsight). This effectively removes the penalty for being exhausted.
The light of a torch or lantern helps a character see over a short distance, but other creatures can see that light source from far away. Bright light in an environment of total darkness can be visible for miles, though a clear line of sight over such a distance is rare underground.
If we only referred to the PHb rule, then a creature, even if it was just in natural darkness, could not see the effects of a daylight spell if the centre of that effect was a mere 125 feet away.
The DMG rule changes things considerably and I'd interpret this to go beyond just talking about a source of bright light to talking about an area of bright light. By this interpretation, a creature in darkness could still see a visible creature or any other visible thing that was in an area that was brightly lit. Furthermore, if a creature was directly between you and an area that was brightly lit, I'd personally rule that you could see their silhouette.
I'd also personally rule that, even if they were in an area of darkness, they would have a similar chance to observe creatures or objects in dim light as at least by an interpretation of the normal rules.
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.
In a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage, creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
I'd change this to read:
A lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage will give creatures disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight on anything in that area.
I think generally this all works. A player can't demand that they can see every twinkling dot at a potentially limitless range but a DM can provide information on things that can rationally be seen.
Individual DMs may imo fairly rule differently but, by RAW, nighttime darkness will typically, and with few exceptions, be exactly that.
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.
If it's not too cloudy, I guess there might be a chance against that werewolf after all. :D
In other circumstances, item descriptions will make it clear as to areas of bright and dim light that they each support.
In darkness, I'd also give a chance for light bearers to see eyes looking in their direction or to see various reflective objects and creatures.
Outdoor nights can effectively be dim lit, which therefore ins't darkness. Darkness is heavily obscured, wether outdoor at night or in lightless cavern, with everything it entails mechanically speaking.
In a situation in which advantages and disadvantages are balanced out within the context of a single effect like mutual blindness, I'd prefer to just discount them both and accept any additional advantage or disadvantage for what it was. I certainly wouldn't want to let an NPC avoid an otherwise legitimate disadvantage by their switching the lights off.
I think the biggest problem is that darkness is lumped in with other forms of concealment, when it should really be a separate category all its own. Other forms of concealment consist of environmental effects blocking light, whereas darkness is the simple absence of light. It thus is very different and behaves differently and should be recognized as such.
The root cause is darkness blinding/blocking vision to light. If there isn't any light and you don't have darkvision, it's okay for darkness to be heavily obscured.
In a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage, creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
I'd change this to read:
A lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage will give creatures disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight on anything in that area.
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Sorry, this is all wrong. It is not how the rule works. A person standing outside a dimly light area does not have advantage seeing someone, or disadvantage seeing someone in dim light, or vice verse. There is only you can see, or you can not. if there is such a rule, post it please. But I won't hold my breath.
"Unseen Attackers and Targets
Combatants often try to escape their foes' notice by hiding, casting the invisibility spell, or lurking in darkness.
When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn't in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target's location correctly.
When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it. If you are hidden--both unseen and unheard--when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses."
This is the rule for attacking. There is no rule anywhere that says dim light makes an attacker unseen. If there is, post it.
This is because the interpretation you are using is wrong. This is what I am trying to say. The rule is fine.
It does actually.
With THIS ONE TRICK he gets around obscurement rules.
DMs hate him!
"Not all those who wander are lost"
"Unseen Attackers and Targets
Combatants often try to escape their foes' notice by hiding, casting the invisibility spell, or lurking in darkness.
When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn't in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target's location correctly.
When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it. If you are hidden--both unseen and unheard--when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses."
This is the rule for attacking. There is no rule anywhere that says dim light makes an attacker unseen. The only way a PC can be in dim light and not be seen is if he is HIDDEN. and the rules for being hidden are clear. The HIDDEN character gets the advantage to attack, not the one that is seen. Also, This can only happen with the skulker feat or mask of the wild. Which means it can't happen any other way, which means one person standing in dim light normally, and one not, pose no advantage or disadvantage to see each other. You are either seen, or you are not. That is the rule. Perception checks in dim light are to look for traps, secret doors, etc. There is nothing in dim light to suggest advantage or disadvantage to see each other under any positioning, whatsoever
The problem with the rules is that they lump all forms of "heavily obscured" into one category while natural darkness is fundamentally different from all the other forms of "heavily obscured" from a "real world" or "logical" perspective.
Here is the issue:
- In the real world you can see through natural darkness to sources of light on the far side. You can clearly see the illuminated areas. If you are in the darkness then you can't be seen and you can't see other creatures in the darkness. You can see through natural darkness to objects or creatures on the other side.
- In the real world you can NOT see through a jungle for more than a few feet. You can NOT see through a dense fog cloud as the spell in D&D produces. (In addition, the magical Darkness spell says that darkvision can not see through it and normal light can NOT illuminate it. If normal light can not illuminate the magical darkness then it also can't pass through it making a magical darkness area similar to fog cloud or a jungle for seeing things on the other side. If you are IN a fog cloud you can't see out of it and you can't see from one side to another or see something on the other side of the fog cloud.
So - do the RULES apply to natural darkness or to fog cloud or other heavily obscured areas - these are treated the same in the rules and this is where the issue comes from.
Either -
1) You can't see things in the heavily obscured area but you can see out of them or through them - this gets into the ridiculous situation of being able to see through 100' of fog or jungle to the clearing in the middle and shoot without a problem. This clearly makes no sense.
2) You can't see things in a heavily obscured area. A heavily obscured area blocks line of sight. You can't see into, out of or through a heavily obscured area. The rules make this clear with the following statement. Heavily obscured areas block vision entirely - meaning you can't see into, out of or through them.
PH 183 "A heavily obscured area-such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage-blocks vision entirely."
However, as I am the first to acknowledge, this makes no sense for natural darkness though it works fine for most other heavily obscured areas.
Until the designers sit down and re-write the rules to treat natural darkness distinct from other heavily obscured areas we will always have this argument about RAW - it doesn't have a resolution - and it is up to the DM to decide how they want to run it. Personally, I run all heavily obscured areas as blocking vision into, out of or through except for natural darkness which blocks vision into it (whether viewed from inside or outside) but does not block vision out of or through the natural darkness. However, that is purely a house rule to make the RAW as consistent as possible with vision in the real world while making the least changes possible to the rules.
The Dungeon Master Guide has this passage though regarding mundane darkness and light;
Yep, and your character walking alone at night can still see the moon. It's just the werewolf that may not get noticed.
Careful with words like "only". When you use them there is a good chance you're intentionally saying things you didn't mean to. Can you see someone on the other side of a wall or inside a house that is dimly lit inside, while you're outside? No. You can't.
So being unseen isn't "only" while hidden.
Only. Again. It snuck up on your sentence and added meaning to it you probably didn't intend to add. You get advantage in that situation if you are unseen and make an attack, regardless of if you have skulker or mask of the wild. Those features are not the "only" way to be hidden and unseen while in dim light. You could find some cover to hide behind, heck you could be invisible.
"Only" is a funny word like that. Gotta be careful with it.
So, here's why you wrong. Its a full moon, and the night sky is lit up. Dim light everywhere. The party is trying to sneak up and ambush a group of thugs they've been trailing for the past couple hours. Combat is about to begin and we need to compare the group's stealth check vs the thugs perception to determine surprise. Now, since I know that being in dim light gives disadvantage to perception checks, and I know having disadvantage on checks drops your passive score by 5, I'll go ahead and treat all the thug's passive perceptions as 5 less than normal.
That is but one of many imaginable scenarios in which someone might need to make a perception check while in dim light.
I got quotes!
The disadvantage or automatic failure caused by lightly or heavily obscured areas doesn't apply to Perception vs Stealth, only to ability checks that rely on sight. Perception vs Stealth rely on not just sight but hearing, smell, touch etc..
Otherwise a creature would never be able to perceive a hiding creature it can't see due to darkness or invisibility.
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Let's take a look at the specific rules as written (RAW) for the term heavily obscured.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/adventuring#VisionandLight
There are two sentences, so let's examine the first one.
That seems pretty clear in terms of intent, but not necessarily in terms of rules.
Let's remove the examples to distil the statement:
A heavily obscured area blocks vision entirely.
So, the whole of that area blocks vision. It is not possible to see through any part of that area. A character standing inside the area cannot see other creatures in the area, nor can they see out of the area, as some part of the area is between them and creatures outside of the area.
The second sentence of this rule states:
The important thing to note here is that this is a separate sentence and it doesn't override, or change, the previous sentence.
It's important to note that, with the way the rules are written, we sometimes see statements like this that are there to help clarify common situations.
Let's evaluate a situation I've seen discussed, where a creature is inside the heavily obscured area. Are they at advantage or disadvantage to attack a creature outside the area?
Applying the first statement of this rule, we know that neither creature can see the other, because there is at least some of the area between them (even though one is inside and the other is outside).
As others have noted, this leads to an odd situation where, as neither creature can see the other, they both have disadvantage on their attacks, as well as advantage on their attacks - this cancels out.
It's also worth noting that it's not possible to "stack" multiple instances of advantage or disadvantage.
My favourite odd example of this is a character suffering from 3 levels of exhaustion, which causes disadvantage on attack rolls. That character casts a darkness spell over the combat, so now all combatants have advantage and disadvantage (assuming no other way to see, such as blindsight). This effectively removes the penalty for being exhausted.
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At your table, if two creatures are standing in areas of light (for example both holding a torch) and there is an area of non-magical darkness between them (for example, they are underground with no other light sources present), can they see each other?
So while everything you said is 100% true, RAW, it is also 100% true that no one I've ever played with runs the game this way because it is so objectively foreign our intuition refuses to accept that it could/would/should work that way. Instead: If you're in a dark (Heavily Obscured) corner of the room, you can see the people walking around with their lit torches on the other side of the room just fine. They just can't see you.
I read the line "A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely." as descriptive and I read the line "A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area." as prescriptive. The first is narrative summary, the second is mechanically how it functions. This, at least for me, produces a normal functioning area that actually makes sense for darkness. If you're standing in a dark spot you can still see stuff that is being illuminated far off. Why? Because that's how vision works and I reject anything that tries to argue otherwise.
What's true, no matter what your opinion how it all works is this: Fog vs natural dark light don't (shouldn't) work in an identical way even if the rules do in fact treat them as identical. You should be able to see through areas of dim light and darkness but not well/at all into them. However, fog and foliage and the like should indeed block vision through their area as well as into them.
It also leads to the very real possibility that they don't even know where one another are so can't even actually attack at all. That's the issue. If you cannot see the enemies, don't even know what or where they are, and just start shooting wildly into an area of darkness, having your attacks even target a creature at all is problematic let alone rolling straight d20s.
I got quotes!
The rules are contradictory.
Yes, the rules at https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/phb/adventuring#VisionandLight state that:
However, as Plaguescarred noted, the rules at https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/adventure-environments#DarknessandLight state that:
If we only referred to the PHb rule, then a creature, even if it was just in natural darkness, could not see the effects of a daylight spell if the centre of that effect was a mere 125 feet away.
The DMG rule changes things considerably and I'd interpret this to go beyond just talking about a source of bright light to talking about an area of bright light. By this interpretation, a creature in darkness could still see a visible creature or any other visible thing that was in an area that was brightly lit. Furthermore, if a creature was directly between you and an area that was brightly lit, I'd personally rule that you could see their silhouette.
I'd also personally rule that, even if they were in an area of darkness, they would have a similar chance to observe creatures or objects in dim light as at least by an interpretation of the normal rules.
I'd change this to read:
I think generally this all works. A player can't demand that they can see every twinkling dot at a potentially limitless range but a DM can provide information on things that can rationally be seen.
The missing piece is that dim or bright light should always be visible in darkness, your vision should never be blocked or blinded to it.
Individual DMs may imo fairly rule differently but, by RAW, nighttime darkness will typically, and with few exceptions, be exactly that.
If it's not too cloudy, I guess there might be a chance against that werewolf after all. :D
In other circumstances, item descriptions will make it clear as to areas of bright and dim light that they each support.
In darkness, I'd also give a chance for light bearers to see eyes looking in their direction or to see various reflective objects and creatures.
Outdoor nights can effectively be dim lit, which therefore ins't darkness. Darkness is heavily obscured, wether outdoor at night or in lightless cavern, with everything it entails mechanically speaking.
In a situation in which advantages and disadvantages are balanced out within the context of a single effect like mutual blindness, I'd prefer to just discount them both and accept any additional advantage or disadvantage for what it was. I certainly wouldn't want to let an NPC avoid an otherwise legitimate disadvantage by their switching the lights off.
The root cause is darkness blinding/blocking vision to light. If there isn't any light and you don't have darkvision, it's okay for darkness to be heavily obscured.
They've got all the right concepts, but not necessarily the right way round.