And now stealth is basically useless. Plus, in absence of exhaustive and clear rules regarding what a creature can and cannot do when they're blinded, there's clearly some bias in the way DMs handle blindness. If a PC is blinded, it's like: "you can't just get out of the fog cloud, you can't orient yourself, roll a d8 to determine which direction you're going, and also make a DEX check to see if you trip and fall prone". When enemies are blinded: "the enemies leave the fog cloud".
The're no rules specifically for orientation that requires you to see and the Blindedcondition doesn't have any effect on it per se, unless a DM assume it's an ability check that requires sight. I never did as DM or player.
And now stealth is basically useless. Plus, in absence of exhaustive and clear rules regarding what a creature can and cannot do when they're blinded, there's clearly some bias in the way DMs handle blindness. If a PC is blinded, it's like: "you can't just get out of the fog cloud, you can't orient yourself, roll a d8 to determine which direction you're going, and also make a DEX check to see if you trip and fall prone". When enemies are blinded: "the enemies leave the fog cloud".
In 5e, conditions do what they say they do, they don't have additional hidden effects -- no, you aren't disoriented, you don't have to roll for a direction to walk, you don't have to roll to keep standing unless some other effect applies such as walking into a grease spell. However, those details don't really matter -- even if a DM wants blindness to do something other than what RAW, it should work the same way on PCs and monsters.
In 5e, conditions do what they say they do, they don't have additional hidden effects.
This is a good way of looking at it. The condition itself represents the bare minimum that every instance of what that condition includes. Every time you are blinded, it means those specific bullet points happen to you. But you also aren't generally blinded without something causing it, so it's reasonable for the DM to apply additional situational circumstances depending on how you became blinded, who blinded you, what's going on around you, etc. There's no need to apply these directly to the condition itself because many things can blind you in different ways for different reasons. The condition lists what all those instances have in common. The other stuff is for the DM to decide.
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"Not all those who wander are lost"
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And now stealth is basically useless. Plus, in absence of exhaustive and clear rules regarding what a creature can and cannot do when they're blinded, there's clearly some bias in the way DMs handle blindness.
If a PC is blinded, it's like: "you can't just get out of the fog cloud, you can't orient yourself, roll a d8 to determine which direction you're going, and also make a DEX check to see if you trip and fall prone".
When enemies are blinded: "the enemies leave the fog cloud".
The're no rules specifically for orientation that requires you to see and the Blinded condition doesn't have any effect on it per se, unless a DM assume it's an ability check that requires sight. I never did as DM or player.
In 5e, conditions do what they say they do, they don't have additional hidden effects -- no, you aren't disoriented, you don't have to roll for a direction to walk, you don't have to roll to keep standing unless some other effect applies such as walking into a grease spell. However, those details don't really matter -- even if a DM wants blindness to do something other than what RAW, it should work the same way on PCs and monsters.
This is a good way of looking at it. The condition itself represents the bare minimum that every instance of what that condition includes. Every time you are blinded, it means those specific bullet points happen to you. But you also aren't generally blinded without something causing it, so it's reasonable for the DM to apply additional situational circumstances depending on how you became blinded, who blinded you, what's going on around you, etc. There's no need to apply these directly to the condition itself because many things can blind you in different ways for different reasons. The condition lists what all those instances have in common. The other stuff is for the DM to decide.
"Not all those who wander are lost"