Darkness spell and true sight.

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

Quote from Bombzy74 >>

Not so. Light sources remove darkness within their range apart from when otherwise stated like in the darkness spell 

 
Is that based on a specific RAW passage, or is it a common sense interpretation of how things work? Not denigrating the latter, just emphasizing the point that for fundamental “how the world works” stuff not everything is going to be explicitly spelled out in text.

 I mean, the specific RAW would be the wording of every light source.  Let's take a torch: "A Torch burns for 1 hour, casting Bright Light in a 20-foot radius and Dim Light for an additional 20 feet." So the torch turns the area around it into bright and dim light to the radii specified.  As they are bright and dim light, they cannot be in darkness unless something forces them to be darkness and overrides the lighting.  (Being in bright light is incompatible with being in darkness, and the torch is more specific than general conditions, and specifically overridden by something like the Darkness spell).

But if any heavily obscured area is opaque, then by definition light cannot pass through it. Ergo either that must be interpolated to create logical outcomes, or RAW creates mutually contradictory conditions.

Quote from Bombzy74 >>

The rules glossary explicitly notes that a heavily obscured area "blocks vision entirely." It behaves like a solid, opaque object to sight—you cannot see through it, whether you are on the inside looking out or the outside looking in

All of this is false.  The 2024 rules do not make any use of the phrase "blocks vision entirely".  Not in the main text, nor in the Rules Glossary.  These areas behave nothing like solid objects.

Quote from Bombzy74 >>

Heavily Obscured Means "Opaque":

 

This is true.  The main text makes it clear that "A Heavily Obscured area . . . is opaque" because that's what the text says.

However,

It's also true that: 

Opaque means you have the Blinded condition when trying to see something there because that's what the text says.

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

But if any heavily obscured area is opaque, then by definition light cannot pass through it. Ergo either that must be interpolated to create logical outcomes, or RAW creates mutually contradictory conditions.

 Yeah, but it stops being opaque the moment it stops being dark.

I mean, the whole rules are written poorly here.  And part of it is that the rules poorly describe normal darkness entirely, in a way that makes it impossible to run anything like our intuitive understanding of how these things work.  With normal darkness, if there's light between us and something, we see that something, because we can see its outline, even though its in darkness.  The rules have no concept of this, and that's a problem.

People arguing Darkness (the spell) is mass invisibility is simply ridiculous, and disconnects what they argue it does game mechanically and what the description says.  I've pointed this out in another thread, but no one can describe what it looks like to look 'through' magical darkness when there's something in it, in a way that doesn't involve 'seeing' that thing.  

Quote from Squirrelloid >>

The rules have no concept of this, and that's a problem.

The rules use a simplified model which describes three categories of light instead of the gradual gradient of all possible levels of light that we are used to from the real world.  However, this doesn't mean that there isn't still such a gradient in the game world -- it's just that at some point a certain level of light crosses from one category into another.  

For example, the "darkness" category is not necessarily a total absence of light -- it's never described that way anywhere.  Instead, it represents an area that is "dark enough" such that it creates a heavily obscured area, which means that you have the blinded condition when trying to see something there.  Likewise, the blinded condition does not necessarily have to refer to Total Blindness.  Mechanically, the condition carries Advantage / Disadvantage consequences and the auto-failure of sight-based ability checks (attempts to see things that are not obvious) as well as the phrase "you can't see".  It might be up to a DM to adjudicate what exactly it means that you can't see in certain situations.  Generally, that might just mean that you cannot functionally notice, recognize, identify or accurately locate things in the world.  Mechanically, it certainly means that any rule, such as a spell effect, which says something like "a target that you can see" will be affected by the fact that you can't see.  But cosmetically, this might refer to a spectrum of blindness which could range from somewhere that's perhaps noticeably worse than "Legally Blind" all the way out to "Totally Blind" which would parallel the effects of looking into the darkness "category" of light, depending on how dark that area actually is.  

Quote from Squirrelloid >>

no one can describe what it looks like to look 'through' magical darkness when there's something in it, in a way that doesn't involve 'seeing' that thing.  

In general, this would likely result in seeing some sort of silhouette, which I would argue is not actually functionally seeing the thing in question at all.  You might not have any sense of how far away the obstruction actually is nor be able to recognize it as a distinct creature or object at all rather than just varied terrain elevations or composite objects like buildings or walls or even just some sort of shadow being cast over the distant landscape.  Even if you did recognize it as a potentially threatening creature (a DM would have to decide if this is possible without actually "seeing" it), you still cannot actually see that creature well enough to be able to overcome the mechanical disadvantage associated with attacking something while blinded and you might even still have to guess the square if you can't narrow down exactly where it is (mainly a depth perception issue).  Some portion of your Line of Sight (covered under a different rule) to the visible area beyond might certainly be blocked by something that is classified as "an object or effect that blocks vision" as determined by the DM.  This would allow you to see less of the visible area beyond than you would have if that thing were not there.  

Quote from up2ng >>

Quote from Squirrelloid >>

The rules have no concept of this, and that's a problem.

 

The rules use a simplified model which describes three categories of light instead of the gradual gradient of all possible levels of light that we are used to from the real world.  However, this doesn't mean that there isn't still such a gradient in the game world -- it's just that at some point a certain level of light crosses from one category into another.  

For example, the "darkness" category is not necessarily a total absence of light -- it's never described that way anywhere.  Instead, it represents an area that is "dark enough" such that it creates a heavily obscured area, which means that you have the blinded condition when trying to see something there.  Likewise, the blinded condition does not necessarily have to refer to Total Blindness.  Mechanically, the condition carries Advantage / Disadvantage consequences and the auto-failure of sight-based ability checks (attempts to see things that are not obvious) as well as the phrase "you can't see".  It might be up to a DM to adjudicate what exactly it means that you can't see in certain situations.  Generally, that might just mean that you cannot functionally notice, recognize, identify or accurately locate things in the world.  Mechanically, it certainly means that any rule, such as a spell effect, which says something like "a target that you can see" will be affected by the fact that you can't see.  But cosmetically, this might refer to a spectrum of blindness which could range from somewhere that's perhaps noticeably worse than "Legally Blind" all the way out to "Totally Blind" which would parallel the effects of looking into the darkness "category" of light, depending on how dark that area actually is.  

Quote from Squirrelloid >>

no one can describe what it looks like to look 'through' magical darkness when there's something in it, in a way that doesn't involve 'seeing' that thing.  

 

In general, this would likely result in seeing some sort of silhouette, which I would argue is not actually functionally seeing the thing in question at all.  You might not have any sense of how far away the obstruction actually is nor be able to recognize it as a distinct creature or object at all rather than just varied terrain elevations or composite objects like buildings or walls or even just some sort of shadow being cast over the distant landscape.  Even if you did recognize it as a potentially threatening creature (a DM would have to decide if this is possible without actually "seeing" it), you still cannot actually see that creature well enough to be able to overcome the mechanical disadvantage associated with attacking something while blinded and you might even still have to guess the square if you can't narrow down exactly where it is (mainly a depth perception issue).  Some portion of your Line of Sight (covered under a different rule) to the visible area beyond might certainly be blocked by something that is classified as "an object or effect that blocks vision" as determined by the DM.  This would allow you to see less of the visible area beyond than you would have if that thing were not there.  

 Well, unless they're Hidden, they have no stealth check, so you automatically know which square they're in and that they're a creature, and even which creature.  (Dumb, but RAW).

And if you can see their silhouette, you know where they are well enough to target them.  We're not talking super long distances here.  Human depth perception is really good, and the Darkness spell isn't that big.  Certainly well enough to target a spell at them.  Seeing the silhouette would be the same thing as seeing them, because you have a defined line of sight to them.  if you can see a silhouette, you're not 'blinded'.

The rules are not a physics simulator.  When they say something dumb (like you can't see someone in normal darkness even though there's a campfire on the other side of them), the rules are just wrong, and you replace it with something sensible to our experience with reality.  (For exactly the same reason you don't allow peasant railguns).  (This is the proper invocation of the 'the rules are not a physics simulator' invocation - for when the rules would lead to a situation where mundane things obviously contradict how we know the world works).  So i reject the rules description for non-magical darkness when it contradicts how we know non-magical darkness works, with full RAW justification for doing so.

Darkness (the spell) is different.  The spell description is the physics of the Darkness spell, because we don't have anything real we can reference, as magic isn't real.  And it's different from normal darkness in material ways.  It says it spreads out, meaning that it is a 'physical' (in the same way light is) thing that occupies the whole sphere.  And it says you can block it with something opaque, meaning it spreads in the same way light spreads, including through things that light shines through, like glass.  It says light cannot illuminate it, the Darkness - that means light cannot pass through it, because the whole sphere is incapable of being illuminated, as magical Darkness occupies the whole sphere.  There's no seeing a silhouette through that.  It's literally a black sphere - the description says as much.