Two very different and distinct versions of darkness exists within the game, and the rules in vision and light clearly define the difference.
Mundane darkness is considered shadows by game terms, and magical darkness is just labeled as darkness when the qualifier of magical should be placed before it to denote the difference.
No that is incorrect, the rules about "Darkness" (from the vision and light entry) mentions both normal and magical darkness and it makes no difference between them (except from one being magical).
Darkness. Darkness creates a Heavily Obscured area. Characters face Darkness outdoors at night (even most moonlit nights), within the confines of an unlit dungeon, or in an area of magical Darkness
Also, shadows are mentioned in the "Dim Light" section and it explicitly not defined as being darkness but rather as being what's in-between bright light and darkness.
Dim Light. Dim Light, also called shadows, creates a Lightly Obscured area. An area of Dim Light is usually a boundary between Bright Light and surrounding Darkness. The soft light of twilight and dawn also counts as Dim Light. A full moon might bathe the land in Dim Light.
The presence or absence of light determines the category of illumination in an area, as defined below.
Bright Light. Bright Light lets most creatures see normally. Even gloomy days provide Bright Light, as do torches, lanterns, fires, and other sources of illumination within a specific radius.
Dim Light. Dim Light, also called shadows, creates a Lightly Obscured area. An area of Dim Light is usually a boundary between Bright Light and surrounding Darkness. The soft light of twilight and dawn also counts as Dim Light. A full moon might bathe the land in Dim Light.
Darkness. Darkness creates a Heavily Obscured area. Characters face Darkness outdoors at night (even most moonlit nights), within the confines of an unlit dungeon, or in an area of magical Darkness.
Vision and Light provides three examples of Darkness, outdoors at night (non-magical), with the confines of an unlit dungeon (non-magical), and an area of magical Darkness (magical). All of them create the same area of Darkness and that creates the same Heavily Obscured area.
The rules of the game very much define and distinguish the difference between mundane and magical darkness.
The rules clearly do not. I think you are holding over assumptions from an earlier edition.
Even in 3.5 Darkvision did not work in the area of the Darkness Spell because the Darkness spell said so. This is the standard for decades, not what you are proposing.
Magical darkness blocks darkvision only if the rules text for a particular instance of darkness says it does. For example, the darkness spell specifies that it produces a magical darkness that obstructs darkvision. That obstruction is a feature of the spell, not of magical darkness in general.
Quote Sage Advice all you want, the rules have to stand alone on context without the intent of the designer.
so effectively the context is darkness has two distinct and different mechanics that force certain elements that rely on that distinction to address the Issue by including context that distinguishes the mechanics.
If both mundane darkness and magical darkness where to be treated the same, then no such rules that emphasize that dark-vision doesn’t not work in magical darkness would ever need to be made, yet those rules have been a part of the game for decades.
That rule doesn't exist in 2024. Most or all Darkvision can't see in the area of magical darkness created by the Darkness spell. Any Darkvision can see in the area of magical darkness created by the Darkness option of the Hallow spell.
For the duration, magical Darkness spreads from a point within range and fills a 15-foot-radius Sphere. Darkvision can’t see through it, and nonmagical light can’t illuminate it.
Alternatively, you cast the spell on an object that isn’t being worn or carried, causing the Darkness to fill a 15-foot Emanation originating from that object. Covering that object with something opaque, such as a bowl or helm, blocks the Darkness.
If any of this spell’s area overlaps with an area of Bright Light or Dim Light created by a spell of level 2 or lower, that other spell is dispelled.
If Darkvision did not work in any magical Darkness, it would not be necessary to mention in the spell description that it did not work.
You touch a point and infuse an area around it with holy or unholy power. The area can have a radius up to 60 feet, and the spell fails if the radius includes an area already under the effect of Hallow. The affected area has the following effects.
Hallowed Ward. Choose any of these creature types: Aberration, Celestial, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, or Undead. Creatures of the chosen types can’t willingly enter the area, and any creature that is possessed by or that has the Charmed or Frightened condition from such creatures isn’t possessed, Charmed, or Frightened by them while in the area.
Extra Effect. You bind an extra effect to the area from the list below:
Courage. Creatures of any types you choose can’t gain the Frightened condition while in the area.
Darkness.Darkness fills the area. Normal light, as well as magical light created by spells of a level lower than this spell, can’t illuminate the area.
Daylight.Bright light fills the area. Magical Darkness created by spells of a level lower than this spell can’t extinguish the light.
Peaceful Rest. Dead bodies interred in the area can’t be turned into Undead.
Extradimensional Interference. Creatures of any types you choose can’t enter or exit the area using teleportation or interplanar travel.
Fear. Creatures of any types you choose have the Frightened condition while in the area.
Resistance. Creatures of any types you choose have Resistance to one damage type of your choice while in the area.
Silence. No sound can emanate from within the area, and no sound can reach into it.
Tongues. Creatures of any types you choose can communicate with any other creature in the area even if they don’t share a common language.
Vulnerability. Creatures of any types you choose have Vulnerability to one damage type of your choice while in the area.
Hallow can create an area of magical Darkness that does not block Darkvision and does not display lower level spells that create Light.
Feel free to quote a rule outside of a spell, item, or ability description that says magical Darkness is any different than non-magical Darkness.
Magical Darkness, by default, can be illuminated by magical and non-magical light sources, doesn't dispel spells that create magic, and Darkvision will work normally in the area. I don't think you will find a magical source of Darkness for which all of that was true, but only because the effect (such as a spell) adds additional restrictions.
Might want to look back and reread that darkness part again as it clearly reiterates the same wording as magical darkness does, meaning that feature is magical and darkvision is useless within.
Attempting to use wording that is clearly intended to convey the same meaning as another feature, minus the extra fluff that should be common knowledge is a indication of just how rushed the production of the new rules was handled.
Your example only reinforces the context that two very different types of “darkness” can exist, and that using “darkness” as a term that describes both without a qualifying descriptor of which version is being addressed is the primary reason for the confusion.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
It's still only one and a same category of illumination called Darkness as posted above.
Unfortunately that is not correct as the rules for vision & light clearly state a difference between the two, and the effects that create the difference respectively reflects the difference by reinforcing within the descriptive context that difference.
Just because the digital version of the rules point to a particular rule that doesn’t emphasize that distinction, doesn’t make it false or misunderstood, it means the digital version is inherently flawed by misleading how darkness is perceived.
Two very different and distinct versions of darkness exists within the game, and the rules in vision and light clearly define the difference.
The same information about Darkness is published in print and digital and has no difference for mundane or magical ones. If you claim it clearly state a difference, please quote it as no one else here can clearly see such statement.
In the meantime you should avoid insinuating others are debating in bad faith because of disagreement.
At this point in the discussion all rules pertaining to Vision & Light have been quoted multiple times. Role of Rules as written when looking at how text stand on its own is one thing but DMs can always rule how they see fit.
RAW. “Rules as written”—that’s what RAW stands for. When I dwell on the RAW interpretation of a rule, I’m studying what the text says in context, without regard to the designers’ intent. The text is forced to stand on its own.
Whenever I consider a rule, I start with this perspective; it’s important for me to see what you see, not what I wished we’d published or thought we’d published.
I'm the OP and have just come back to this after a few days.
Thank you to everyone who contributed, especially references to previous discussions.
To be clear, my question was attempting to find out if the game designers intended something interesting and weird. There's a lot of consensus (in those other threads too) that it's just poor writing.
It looks to me like someone has tried to reduce the number of words in the PHB with a kind of programmer's idea of making the conditions neat and modular, but have introduced all sorts of stuff that now requires the DM to overrule RAW. (Another example: hiding technically makes you "Invisible" -- with a capital I and a link -- and "See Invisible" lets you see creatures with "Invisible", even if they hid inside an opaque container -- obvious nonsense.)
In other words, the PHB is *precise* in the way it talks about conditions, but is in fact horribly *inaccurate*. That's a failure of technical writing. It would be better to leave the wording more clearly open to interpretation.
How much this matters depends on who you're playing with. Some places I've played (especially online Westmarches) rely on a kind of nearly-RAW consensus. This stuff is going to mean a lot more house rules work for them (to overrule the precise nonsense).
IMHO while Designer's intents only they can really tell i often question wether they deliberately wrote some rules to allow multiple interpretations such as Vision & Light, Hide etc...as they could have very well wrote them in such a way that leave place for no ambiguity.
[...] It looks to me like someone has tried to reduce the number of words in the PHB with a kind of programmer's idea of making the conditions neat and modular, but have introduced all sorts of stuff that now requires the DM to overrule RAW. (Another example: hiding technically makes you "Invisible" -- with a capital I and a link -- and "See Invisible" lets you see creatures with "Invisible", even if they hid inside an opaque container -- obvious nonsense.) [...]
In my opinion, it's true we need some clarification on Hiding and Invisibility, as the number of threads below demonstrate, but also in my opinion it's difficult to say you can see a creature using See Invisibility even if the creature is behind Total Cover because you don't have line of sight to it.
It looks to me like someone has tried to reduce the number of words in the PHB with a kind of programmer's idea of making the conditions neat and modular, but have introduced all sorts of stuff that now requires the DM to overrule RAW. (Another example: hiding technically makes you "Invisible" -- with a capital I and a link -- and "See Invisible" lets you see creatures with "Invisible", even if they hid inside an opaque container -- obvious nonsense.)
In other words, the PHB is *precise* in the way it talks about conditions, but is in fact horribly *inaccurate*. That's a failure of technical writing. It would be better to leave the wording more clearly open to interpretation.
Welcome back. Sorry for the mess. :)
Historically that precision and accuracy are a trade-off with accessibility.
3.0 and 3.5 (3.x) were very precise (and accurate) versions of the game that used keywords very well but sometimes was weird with "crossbow rules" (if I remember correctly, reloading a crossbow was explained in the Heavy Crossbow entry instead of a general section of the Equipment chapter). Some people enjoyed it (like me) and there were wonderful discussions regarding the rules. I didn't delve much into 4e, but 5e has taken a hybrid approach which is fine as long as you acknowledge it as such. I think it's done a pretty good job and is more accessible than the more technical 3.x editions.
I personally would really enjoy an updated 3.x version of the game, but I would also rather keep the accessibility of 5e.
However, that's off-topic. Did you reach a conclusion for your own purposes or do you still have questions?
I personally would really enjoy an updated 3.x version of the game, but I would also rather keep the accessibility of 5e.
However, that's off-topic. Did you reach a conclusion for your own purposes or do you still have questions?
I also love a geeky rules discussion, but not as much a roleplay. But I recognize that the *huge* gain in popularity (and therefore the number of games I can play with all kinds of friends) is due to the accessibility of 5e. I don't want to return to the days of 3.x, no matter how much I might personally enjoy constructing a huge mind palace of detail. Keep it simple, I say, or the hobby might end up back in a niche.
As for conclusion, yes. This has been a very useful probe that has helped me assess the 2024 changes as a whole and decide what I should do about it all. It's likely I'm starting a 2024-based campaign this month.
Regarding the difference between magical and nonmagical Darkness, I shared my opinion in the linked threads, but basically my point is that the spell states nonmagical light can't illuminate the area, meaning you can't bring light in from outside, unlike with mundane darkness.
So, if there's light outside the sphere, the spell completely blocks it, preventing any stimulation of your eyes.
Additionally, here's the Dev's opinion on this:
@skullmandible does this apply to magical darkness as well? can you see things on the other side of it? @JeremyECrawford A heavily obscured area, like darkness, blocks vision entirely (see PH, 183).
Anyway, I understand not everyone will agree with me, and that's totally fine since I get the other point of view too. If in your games magical and nonmagical Darkness behave the same and your players enjoy it that way, that's great.
I just wanted to quickly revisit this point because I really do not think that this is the best way to interpret the terminology that is used in these rules in the context of the concepts that they describe -- particularly when it comes to the terms "opaque" and "illuminate".
We have to remember that the lighting model that is used in D&D 5e is vastly simplified from how it works in real life. In real life there is a gradual and continuous gradient in the change in illumination of an area as you move farther and farther away from the light source. In 5e, there is only Bright Light, Dim Light and Darkness (lack of illumination), and these provide discrete (not continuous) levels of illumination as we move farther away from the light source, with stark borders between adjacent areas with different levels of illumination.
In game terms, by default an area is in darkness. When there is a light source, the immediately surrounding area is changed or "overwritten" into Dim Light or into Bright Light with a ring around that Bright Light which is in Dim Light. That's ALL that the word "illuminate" means in the game. This doesn't have anything to do with whether or not light can reach your eyes or not.
For example, in real life you can look up into the night sky and see a bright star very clearly. However, the light from a single star does not meaningfully illuminate the earth -- certainly not enough for the earth to move into that middle 5e category of Dim Light. Basically, the star is too far away. The earth is outside of the radius that is illuminated by this star. But, we can still see the star because this light is not actually blocked by anything. These are two different concepts. A light source illuminating a nearby area vs Line of Sight. As long as the area that actually is illuminated is not physically blocked from view we can see within that area from somewhere else. A 60-foot area surrounding a campfire that is a quarter-mile away, perhaps. In our star/earth example, we are likely seeing an area around the star that is illuminated by that star (but don't quote me on that -- it's just an example!) even though we are located far away from that illuminated area. That's because there is nothing physically blocking our line of sight to that area and/or blocking the path of the light from that area to reach our eyes.
This brings us back to Darkness as a Heavily Obscured area. Such an area is not illuminated and therefore you cannot see anything within that area. In that context, the area itself is opaque. This word was not meant to imply that line of sight through that area is necessarily physically blocked. It is only saying that the area itself is obscured from view. Heavily obscured, in fact. It's a heavily obscured . . . area. Probably a different word should have been chosen instead of "opaque", since this word makes it hard for people to separate the two concepts. But this rule is just saying that the area is obscured. Most of the time the actual phenomenon which is causing this obscurement will also block our line of sight -- but Darkness does not. Darkness is just a lack of illumination, and the darkness itself is indeed opaque, but there is nothing about darkness that blocks our line of sight.
This brings us back to Darkness as a Heavily Obscured area. Such an area is not illuminated and therefore you cannot see anything within that area. In that context, the area itself is opaque. This word was not meant to imply that line of sight through that area is necessarily physically blocked. It is only saying that the area itself is obscured from view. Heavily obscured, in fact. It's a heavily obscured . . . area. Probably a different word should have been chosen instead of "opaque", since this word makes it hard for people to separate the two concepts. But this rule is just saying that the area is obscured. Most of the time the actual phenomenon which is causing this obscurement will also block our line of sight -- but Darkness does not. Darkness is just a lack of illumination, and the darkness itself is indeed opaque, but there is nothing about darkness that blocks our line of sight.
In my opinion, in the Jeremy Crawford tweet that TarodNet quoted (snipped for brevity), the answer was written with magical darkness in mind, turning it from an absence of illumination into a subtraction of illumination. I would never rule it in the way he proposes in any other scenario. There may be non-magical scenarios where darkness would behave in such a black hole-esque manner, but I can't think of any, perhaps a planar trait.
IMHO while Designer's intents only they can really tell i often question wether they deliberately wrote some rules to allow multiple interpretations such as Vision & Light, Hide etc...as they could have very well wrote them in such a way that leave place for no ambiguity.
Really? I doubt it. There is no simple rule that captures all the complexity of such situations, they would have to have multiple different conditions to cover all the possibilities:
Can be seen out of and through, but not within - e.g. darkness - you can see areas of light on the far side of darkness regardless of whether you are in the darkness or on the near side of it, but can't see things that are within the darkness.
Can be seen out of, but not through nor within - e.g. foliage and vegetation, swarms of bugs - if you hide inside a hedge you can see out of that hedge reasonably well but others outside of the hedge cannot see you nor can they see things on the other side of the hedge.
Cannot be seen out of, nor through, nor within - e.g. dense fog / smoke / murky water / blinding light - acts like a wall you can walk through.
But again, I come back to "who cares?" Why would anyone waste several paragraphs explaining that "light, fog, vegetation, and shadows do indeed work like they do in the real world when it comes to what can/cannot be seen." and why would any DM waste their time reading those rules? TBH, they could just throw out the whole "lightly obscured" and "heavily obscured" sections and replace it with that sentence.
I'd be curious to see the full context from that tweet. I have a feeling that the original question was somewhat unrelated, perhaps asking about various spell effects where the answer was, yes, you can see through it -- such as Wall of Force or something. Then, this guy asks this question about magical darkness, not realizing that darkness is generally categorized as a heavily obscured area.
JC was just quoting the old wording for the rule for a Heavily Obscured area there. It used to introduce the concept with an initial sentence which said . . . "A heavily obscured area . . . blocks vision entirely" before going on to clarify that this means that you were "effectively" blinded when trying to see something in that area.
In 2024, they tried to fix this by changing up the wording a little bit, starting off with . . . "A heavily obscured area . . . is opaque" which of course means that "You have the Blinded condition (see the rules glossary) when trying to see something there". But, unfortunately, this attempt to fix this wording seems to have failed since most people still seem to interpret this as meaning that the phenomenon in question blocks vision entirely instead of merely obscuring your view of the area as it is intended to mean.
It's reasonable for a DM to treat magical darkness differently than mundane darkness in their games since that's how many people think of magical darkness anyway -- but strictly speaking, in terms of the RAW that would be a house rule to do that. As written, the Darkness spell is a buff for the creature who is within that Darkness -- you would cast it on yourself so that others cannot see you, but you can still see them. If people don't like that functionality, then they have to come up with their own version of the spell, which is what most people do.
So Jeremy Crawford responded to a tweet in response to something from @seanbonney. If you can find that tweet, you may find additional context. However, Jeremy Crawford appears to be answering generically in response to a question about magical darkness.
I think the 2014 and 2024 rules are basically equivalent. What if it is a false assumption to think in terms of cubes? Rather than thinking the area is a cube of darkness, think of unlit areas as having a collection of unlit objects and creatures which are opaque and will block line of sight beyond them, but a shadow (the non-creature variety) cast on the ground isn't going to block vision to something on the other side of it unless line of sight literally passes through the shadow itself (in which case, LOS is probably blocked because you are trying to view something on the other side of a brick wall or pavement).
Even without miniatures being explicitly involved, I can default to thinking in terms of the area being the state for the entire 5'x5'x5' cube, but that's not valid. Particularly, with the move away from miniatures and the grid (square or hex), the assessment of the rules should be independent of an arbitrary division of space.
Sure, if there is a solid object that we cannot see within the Darkness then that object will block Line of Sight. But that's not the same as the Darkness itself blocking Line of Sight.
In the frequently used long hallway with a lit torch at the end example, if there was a creature standing in the darkness halfway down the hallway then our view of the space that is lit by the torch on the far side would be partially blocked -- the creature would appear as a silhouette in the darkness in front of a lit backdrop. In this case, our view of the torchlight is blocked by a creature, not by the Darkness itself. We also still cannot actually see the creature either, so all of the penalties associated with not being able to see the creature would still apply, even though we have this silhouette in our view.
About the Tweet, if I got it right, this is the conversation:
@seanbonney Cast Darkness on dragon's neck, head w/in the 15' radius. Does 60' blindsight allow it to see a tower 500 ft away? @JeremyECrawfordBlindsight works only within its radius. @skullmandible does this apply to magical darkness as well? can you see things on the other side of it? @JeremyECrawford A heavily obscured area, like darkness, blocks vision entirely (see PH, 183).
But again, I come back to "who cares?" Why would anyone waste several paragraphs explaining that "light, fog, vegetation, and shadows do indeed work like they do in the real world when it comes to what can/cannot be seen." and why would any DM waste their time reading those rules? TBH, they could just throw out the whole "lightly obscured" and "heavily obscured" sections and replace it with that sentence.
Exactly! And that would be a lot better than what they have actually in PHB 2024 (as mentioned) which is make the rules *look* precise, like you're Blinded with a capital B see page somethingorother for stuff you must then ignore or overrule. It reminds me of poor coding that has yet to be debugged. But why code when you have the power of language and interpretation.
They could also use simile. For example "magical darkness is like an opaque sphere of black fog that you can't see through without magical sight". (I'm not saying that- or trying to debate whether- that's correct btw!)
So my plan is to ignore a lot of the false precision introduced in PHB 2024, and explain that to players or argue for least astonishment, except when it's cool and fun to be astonished.
About the Tweet, if I got it right, this is the conversation:
@seanbonney Cast Darkness on dragon's neck, head w/in the 15' radius. Does 60' blindsight allow it to see a tower 500 ft away? @JeremyECrawfordBlindsight works only within its radius. @skullmandible does this apply to magical darkness as well? can you see things on the other side of it? @JeremyECrawford A heavily obscured area, like darkness, blocks vision entirely (see PH, 183).
That could be it. Perhaps Cohen is a Ghost (@skullmandible) was tagging @seanbonney because they asked the original question.
In that case, Jeremy Crawford's response was in the context of magical Darkness created by the Darkness spell and might not be intended to apply to areas of Darkness in general.
About the Tweet, if I got it right, this is the conversation:
@seanbonney Cast Darkness on dragon's neck, head w/in the 15' radius. Does 60' blindsight allow it to see a tower 500 ft away? @JeremyECrawfordBlindsight works only within its radius. @skullmandible does this apply to magical darkness as well? can you see things on the other side of it? @JeremyECrawford A heavily obscured area, like darkness, blocks vision entirely (see PH, 183).
That could be it. Perhaps Cohen is a Ghost (@skullmandible) was tagging @seanbonney because they asked the original question.
Yeah, it seems so.
In that case, Jeremy Crawford's response was in the context of magical Darkness created by the Darkness spell and might not be intended to apply to areas of Darkness in general.
I have the same feeling. Only in the magical Darkness context.
As I mentioned earlier, I understand that not all DMs will rule based on a difference between these two types of Darkness. This was well demonstrated in this long thread :D
No that is incorrect, the rules about "Darkness" (from the vision and light entry) mentions both normal and magical darkness and it makes no difference between them (except from one being magical).
Also, shadows are mentioned in the "Dim Light" section and it explicitly not defined as being darkness but rather as being what's in-between bright light and darkness.
Vision and Light provides zero distinction between mundane and magical Darkness.
Vision and Light provides three examples of Darkness, outdoors at night (non-magical), with the confines of an unlit dungeon (non-magical), and an area of magical Darkness (magical). All of them create the same area of Darkness and that creates the same Heavily Obscured area.
The rules clearly do not. I think you are holding over assumptions from an earlier edition.
Even in 3.5 Darkvision did not work in the area of the Darkness Spell because the Darkness spell said so. This is the standard for decades, not what you are proposing.
How to add Tooltips.
Quote Sage Advice all you want, the rules have to stand alone on context without the intent of the designer.
so effectively the context is darkness has two distinct and different mechanics that force certain elements that rely on that distinction to address the Issue by including context that distinguishes the mechanics.
Might want to look back and reread that darkness part again as it clearly reiterates the same wording as magical darkness does, meaning that feature is magical and darkvision is useless within.
Attempting to use wording that is clearly intended to convey the same meaning as another feature, minus the extra fluff that should be common knowledge is a indication of just how rushed the production of the new rules was handled.
Your example only reinforces the context that two very different types of “darkness” can exist, and that using “darkness” as a term that describes both without a qualifying descriptor of which version is being addressed is the primary reason for the confusion.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
The same information about Darkness is published in print and digital and has no difference for mundane or magical ones. If you claim it clearly state a difference, please quote it as no one else here can clearly see such statement.
In the meantime you should avoid insinuating others are debating in bad faith because of disagreement.
At this point in the discussion all rules pertaining to Vision & Light have been quoted multiple times. Role of Rules as written when looking at how text stand on its own is one thing but DMs can always rule how they see fit.
I'm the OP and have just come back to this after a few days.
Thank you to everyone who contributed, especially references to previous discussions.
To be clear, my question was attempting to find out if the game designers intended something interesting and weird. There's a lot of consensus (in those other threads too) that it's just poor writing.
It looks to me like someone has tried to reduce the number of words in the PHB with a kind of programmer's idea of making the conditions neat and modular, but have introduced all sorts of stuff that now requires the DM to overrule RAW. (Another example: hiding technically makes you "Invisible" -- with a capital I and a link -- and "See Invisible" lets you see creatures with "Invisible", even if they hid inside an opaque container -- obvious nonsense.)
In other words, the PHB is *precise* in the way it talks about conditions, but is in fact horribly *inaccurate*. That's a failure of technical writing. It would be better to leave the wording more clearly open to interpretation.
How much this matters depends on who you're playing with. Some places I've played (especially online Westmarches) rely on a kind of nearly-RAW consensus. This stuff is going to mean a lot more house rules work for them (to overrule the precise nonsense).
At a real table with your friends, not so much.
IMHO while Designer's intents only they can really tell i often question wether they deliberately wrote some rules to allow multiple interpretations such as Vision & Light, Hide etc...as they could have very well wrote them in such a way that leave place for no ambiguity.
In my opinion, it's true we need some clarification on Hiding and Invisibility, as the number of threads below demonstrate, but also in my opinion it's difficult to say you can see a creature using See Invisibility even if the creature is behind Total Cover because you don't have line of sight to it.
Welcome back. Sorry for the mess. :)
Historically that precision and accuracy are a trade-off with accessibility.
3.0 and 3.5 (3.x) were very precise (and accurate) versions of the game that used keywords very well but sometimes was weird with "crossbow rules" (if I remember correctly, reloading a crossbow was explained in the Heavy Crossbow entry instead of a general section of the Equipment chapter). Some people enjoyed it (like me) and there were wonderful discussions regarding the rules. I didn't delve much into 4e, but 5e has taken a hybrid approach which is fine as long as you acknowledge it as such. I think it's done a pretty good job and is more accessible than the more technical 3.x editions.
I personally would really enjoy an updated 3.x version of the game, but I would also rather keep the accessibility of 5e.
However, that's off-topic. Did you reach a conclusion for your own purposes or do you still have questions?
How to add Tooltips.
I also love a geeky rules discussion, but not as much a roleplay. But I recognize that the *huge* gain in popularity (and therefore the number of games I can play with all kinds of friends) is due to the accessibility of 5e. I don't want to return to the days of 3.x, no matter how much I might personally enjoy constructing a huge mind palace of detail. Keep it simple, I say, or the hobby might end up back in a niche.
As for conclusion, yes. This has been a very useful probe that has helped me assess the 2024 changes as a whole and decide what I should do about it all. It's likely I'm starting a 2024-based campaign this month.
I just wanted to quickly revisit this point because I really do not think that this is the best way to interpret the terminology that is used in these rules in the context of the concepts that they describe -- particularly when it comes to the terms "opaque" and "illuminate".
We have to remember that the lighting model that is used in D&D 5e is vastly simplified from how it works in real life. In real life there is a gradual and continuous gradient in the change in illumination of an area as you move farther and farther away from the light source. In 5e, there is only Bright Light, Dim Light and Darkness (lack of illumination), and these provide discrete (not continuous) levels of illumination as we move farther away from the light source, with stark borders between adjacent areas with different levels of illumination.
In game terms, by default an area is in darkness. When there is a light source, the immediately surrounding area is changed or "overwritten" into Dim Light or into Bright Light with a ring around that Bright Light which is in Dim Light. That's ALL that the word "illuminate" means in the game. This doesn't have anything to do with whether or not light can reach your eyes or not.
For example, in real life you can look up into the night sky and see a bright star very clearly. However, the light from a single star does not meaningfully illuminate the earth -- certainly not enough for the earth to move into that middle 5e category of Dim Light. Basically, the star is too far away. The earth is outside of the radius that is illuminated by this star. But, we can still see the star because this light is not actually blocked by anything. These are two different concepts. A light source illuminating a nearby area vs Line of Sight. As long as the area that actually is illuminated is not physically blocked from view we can see within that area from somewhere else. A 60-foot area surrounding a campfire that is a quarter-mile away, perhaps. In our star/earth example, we are likely seeing an area around the star that is illuminated by that star (but don't quote me on that -- it's just an example!) even though we are located far away from that illuminated area. That's because there is nothing physically blocking our line of sight to that area and/or blocking the path of the light from that area to reach our eyes.
This brings us back to Darkness as a Heavily Obscured area. Such an area is not illuminated and therefore you cannot see anything within that area. In that context, the area itself is opaque. This word was not meant to imply that line of sight through that area is necessarily physically blocked. It is only saying that the area itself is obscured from view. Heavily obscured, in fact. It's a heavily obscured . . . area. Probably a different word should have been chosen instead of "opaque", since this word makes it hard for people to separate the two concepts. But this rule is just saying that the area is obscured. Most of the time the actual phenomenon which is causing this obscurement will also block our line of sight -- but Darkness does not. Darkness is just a lack of illumination, and the darkness itself is indeed opaque, but there is nothing about darkness that blocks our line of sight.
In my opinion, in the Jeremy Crawford tweet that TarodNet quoted (snipped for brevity), the answer was written with magical darkness in mind, turning it from an absence of illumination into a subtraction of illumination. I would never rule it in the way he proposes in any other scenario. There may be non-magical scenarios where darkness would behave in such a black hole-esque manner, but I can't think of any, perhaps a planar trait.
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Really? I doubt it. There is no simple rule that captures all the complexity of such situations, they would have to have multiple different conditions to cover all the possibilities:
But again, I come back to "who cares?" Why would anyone waste several paragraphs explaining that "light, fog, vegetation, and shadows do indeed work like they do in the real world when it comes to what can/cannot be seen." and why would any DM waste their time reading those rules? TBH, they could just throw out the whole "lightly obscured" and "heavily obscured" sections and replace it with that sentence.
I'd be curious to see the full context from that tweet. I have a feeling that the original question was somewhat unrelated, perhaps asking about various spell effects where the answer was, yes, you can see through it -- such as Wall of Force or something. Then, this guy asks this question about magical darkness, not realizing that darkness is generally categorized as a heavily obscured area.
JC was just quoting the old wording for the rule for a Heavily Obscured area there. It used to introduce the concept with an initial sentence which said . . . "A heavily obscured area . . . blocks vision entirely" before going on to clarify that this means that you were "effectively" blinded when trying to see something in that area.
In 2024, they tried to fix this by changing up the wording a little bit, starting off with . . . "A heavily obscured area . . . is opaque" which of course means that "You have the Blinded condition (see the rules glossary) when trying to see something there". But, unfortunately, this attempt to fix this wording seems to have failed since most people still seem to interpret this as meaning that the phenomenon in question blocks vision entirely instead of merely obscuring your view of the area as it is intended to mean.
It's reasonable for a DM to treat magical darkness differently than mundane darkness in their games since that's how many people think of magical darkness anyway -- but strictly speaking, in terms of the RAW that would be a house rule to do that. As written, the Darkness spell is a buff for the creature who is within that Darkness -- you would cast it on yourself so that others cannot see you, but you can still see them. If people don't like that functionality, then they have to come up with their own version of the spell, which is what most people do.
The full that I can see is mostly what TarodNet quoted and I am not making a Twitter account to research it more.
Cue Crime Scene Reconstruction Montage!
So Jeremy Crawford responded to a tweet in response to something from @seanbonney. If you can find that tweet, you may find additional context. However, Jeremy Crawford appears to be answering generically in response to a question about magical darkness.
I think the 2014 and 2024 rules are basically equivalent. What if it is a false assumption to think in terms of cubes? Rather than thinking the area is a cube of darkness, think of unlit areas as having a collection of unlit objects and creatures which are opaque and will block line of sight beyond them, but a shadow (the non-creature variety) cast on the ground isn't going to block vision to something on the other side of it unless line of sight literally passes through the shadow itself (in which case, LOS is probably blocked because you are trying to view something on the other side of a brick wall or pavement).
Even without miniatures being explicitly involved, I can default to thinking in terms of the area being the state for the entire 5'x5'x5' cube, but that's not valid. Particularly, with the move away from miniatures and the grid (square or hex), the assessment of the rules should be independent of an arbitrary division of space.
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Sure, if there is a solid object that we cannot see within the Darkness then that object will block Line of Sight. But that's not the same as the Darkness itself blocking Line of Sight.
In the frequently used long hallway with a lit torch at the end example, if there was a creature standing in the darkness halfway down the hallway then our view of the space that is lit by the torch on the far side would be partially blocked -- the creature would appear as a silhouette in the darkness in front of a lit backdrop. In this case, our view of the torchlight is blocked by a creature, not by the Darkness itself. We also still cannot actually see the creature either, so all of the penalties associated with not being able to see the creature would still apply, even though we have this silhouette in our view.
About the Tweet, if I got it right, this is the conversation:
Exactly! And that would be a lot better than what they have actually in PHB 2024 (as mentioned) which is make the rules *look* precise, like you're Blinded with a capital B see page somethingorother for stuff you must then ignore or overrule. It reminds me of poor coding that has yet to be debugged. But why code when you have the power of language and interpretation.
They could also use simile. For example "magical darkness is like an opaque sphere of black fog that you can't see through without magical sight". (I'm not saying that- or trying to debate whether- that's correct btw!)
So my plan is to ignore a lot of the false precision introduced in PHB 2024, and explain that to players or argue for least astonishment, except when it's cool and fun to be astonished.
That could be it. Perhaps Cohen is a Ghost (@skullmandible) was tagging @seanbonney because they asked the original question.
In that case, Jeremy Crawford's response was in the context of magical Darkness created by the Darkness spell and might not be intended to apply to areas of Darkness in general.
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Yeah, it seems so.
I have the same feeling. Only in the magical Darkness context.
As I mentioned earlier, I understand that not all DMs will rule based on a difference between these two types of Darkness. This was well demonstrated in this long thread :D
I totally get it. How looking at someone can give them advantage. Real lift Experience Below:
I looked at my "now" wife long ago.......and ever since shes always had advantage. So I get it.