It seems to me blindness and magical darkness only provides conditions like disadvantage making it harder to hit someone. Let's look at it in a different light... You're in a 100'x100' room somewhere in the center. There's a door on the north end of this big room centerish on the north wall. You're facing south when the big bad cast a heightened/extended (whatever meta magic that increases the diameter) Darkness that covers the entire room (or he blinds you, pick either). You decide to run away. Do you allow them to turn around and run straight to the door they cannot see? So in this case, how do you determine which way they actually run?
IMO, you DM should rule that particular scenario, but in my case, I'd probably ask for a Perception or Survival check, and not a very high DC. You're an adventurer, after all!
This is from the 2014 PHB, but I like the descriptions from that book:
Perception. Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses. For example, you might try to hear a conversation through a closed door, eavesdrop under an open window, or hear monsters moving stealthily in the forest. Or you might try to spot things that are obscured or easy to miss, whether they are orcs lying in ambush on a road, thugs hiding in the shadows of an alley, or candlelight under a closed secret door.
Survival. The DM might ask you to make a Wisdom (Survival) check to follow tracks, hunt wild game, guide your group through frozen wastelands, identify signs that owlbears live nearby, predict the weather, or avoid quicksand and other natural hazards.
Other Wisdom Checks. The DM might call for a Wisdom check when you try to accomplish tasks like the following:
Get a gut feeling about what course of action to follow
At the end of the day making people fumble around their surroundings in combat is just going to make combat encounters drag on long and be notably less fun for the PCs, especially if you make it eat up their action economy each turn.
IMO, you DM should rule that particular scenario, but in my case, I'd probably ask for a Perception or Survival check, and not a very high DC. You're an adventurer, after all!
So, the problem with this from a RAW perspective is what the Blinded Condition says:
Can’t See. You can’t see and automatically fail any ability check that requires sight.
However, also from a RAW perspective, except for the vague statement that "you can't see", the Blinded Condition doesn't actually impact your movement. Yes, that's not very realistic, but those are the rules.
I do like the general approach that TarodNet is suggesting where on a case-by-case basis the DM can always adjudicate what is and is not possible for a character to attempt in the context of "you can't see", and can call for some sort of dice roll if the outcome is uncertain and random -- it's just that in this case the roll really cannot be an ability check that requires sight.
Other "official" options can be found in the general rules in the "Dice" and "What are Dice For" sections. First, we are reminded that:
Dice add randomness to the game. They help determine whether characters and monsters are successful at the things they attempt.
Then, several options for doing this are given -- only one of those options is a D20 tests, which theoretically should only be used for Ability Checks, Saving Throws and Attack Rolls. If we want to determine this randomness in another way, we could use one of the other options that are not D20 tests . . .
The DM could decide that the player should make a roll that will be applied to a Random Table (which the DM might be creating on the fly just before the roll occurs).
If the outcome will be a more binary success/failure outcome, the DM could decide that the player should make a roll that will represent the Percentage Chance of success -- typically rolling percentile dice in this process.
IMO, you DM should rule that particular scenario, but in my case, I'd probably ask for a Perception or Survival check, and not a very high DC. You're an adventurer, after all!
So, the problem with this from a RAW perspective is what the Blinded Condition says:
Can’t See. You can’t see and automatically fail any ability check that requires sight.
[...]
That's true, but you could also use Perception for your other senses (wind coming from behind the door, or touch as you move along the walls), or even your sense of direction thanks to Survival.
IMO, you DM should rule that particular scenario, but in my case, I'd probably ask for a Perception or Survival check, and not a very high DC. You're an adventurer, after all!
This is from the 2014 PHB, but I like the descriptions from that book:
At the end of the day making people fumble around their surroundings in combat is just going to make combat encounters drag on long and be notably less fun for the PCs, especially if you make it eat up their action economy each turn.
So, the problem with this from a RAW perspective is what the Blinded Condition says:
However, also from a RAW perspective, except for the vague statement that "you can't see", the Blinded Condition doesn't actually impact your movement. Yes, that's not very realistic, but those are the rules.
I do like the general approach that TarodNet is suggesting where on a case-by-case basis the DM can always adjudicate what is and is not possible for a character to attempt in the context of "you can't see", and can call for some sort of dice roll if the outcome is uncertain and random -- it's just that in this case the roll really cannot be an ability check that requires sight.
Other "official" options can be found in the general rules in the "Dice" and "What are Dice For" sections. First, we are reminded that:
Then, several options for doing this are given -- only one of those options is a D20 tests, which theoretically should only be used for Ability Checks, Saving Throws and Attack Rolls. If we want to determine this randomness in another way, we could use one of the other options that are not D20 tests . . .
The DM could decide that the player should make a roll that will be applied to a Random Table (which the DM might be creating on the fly just before the roll occurs).
If the outcome will be a more binary success/failure outcome, the DM could decide that the player should make a roll that will represent the Percentage Chance of success -- typically rolling percentile dice in this process.
That's true, but you could also use Perception for your other senses (wind coming from behind the door, or touch as you move along the walls), or even your sense of direction thanks to Survival.
That was my point, really, not your sight.