Magical Darkness vs Vision

TBH i find D&D 5E always struggled with the concept of Darkness & Vision, even 4E did IIRC, mainly because they always insisted in handling mundane and magical darkness the same way with heavily obscured. 

Darkness that can be illuminated by light shouldn't be opaque to it so i make an exception for logic reasons.

Quote from RegentCorreon >>

That's fine if you want to interpret it that way. But you better be consistent. 

If your party is standing outside at night, surrounded by an area of Darkness (as the books declare) then your party cannot see the crescent moon and the stars. They cannot see the light from the bustling tavern on the hill. They cannot see each other's torches if they stand more than a few feet away.

All is inky opaque darkness.

All is heavy obscurement.

All hope is lost... 

 
I mean... yeah. I rule that any area that has any kind of illumination is in Dim Light, not Darkness. If the moon illuminates the night, or if you are near a bustling tavern, you are not in Darkness, you are in Dim Light. 
I reserve Darkness for caves, or closed rooms with no windows or source of light. If I say an area is in Darkness, it's pitch-black Darkness.
Is it consistent with real world physics? No, but most of the mechanical rules of this game aren't...

Realistically, if you stand in Darkness and you look at a target standing in the light, you can see them, but they can't see you.
But the game simply isn't designed to handle such a case.

Quote from Natrel >>

Quote from RegentCorreon >>

That's fine if you want to interpret it that way. But you better be consistent. 

If your party is standing outside at night, surrounded by an area of Darkness (as the books declare) then your party cannot see the crescent moon and the stars. They cannot see the light from the bustling tavern on the hill. They cannot see each other's torches if they stand more than a few feet away.

All is inky opaque darkness.

All is heavy obscurement.

All hope is lost... 

 
I mean... yeah. I rule that any area that has any kind of illumination is in Dim Light, not Darkness. If the moon illuminates the night, or if you are near a bustling tavern, you are not in Darkness, you are in Dim Light. 
I reserve Darkness for caves, or closed rooms with no windows or source of light. If I say an area is in Darkness, it's pitch-black Darkness.
Is it consistent with real world physics? No, but most of the mechanical rules of this game aren't...

Realistically, if you stand in Darkness and you look at a target standing in the light, you can see them, but they can't see you.
But the game simply isn't designed to handle such a case.

Then you disobey those rules which are, by definition, correct.

The PHB says quite clearly: "Characters face Darkness outdoors at night (even most moonlit nights)". Darkness. Heavily Obscured. Opaque.

Realistically, darkness isn't opaque because darkness has no surface or volume.

Nothing in the rules of the game imply that magical darkness behaves differently in general to natural darkness, beyond any differences described in each magical effect. If your magical darkness is an opaque inky volume, then so should your natural darkness, and therefore the night is completely dark with no visible anything.

It's still better than making up an entirely new set of rules like you do, which unnecessarily complicate the game just to add more realism. This game is not meant to be realistic. It's meant to be simple to grasp. If you want to overcomplicate things for the sake of realism, you can play AD&D 2e, I guess.

Quote from Natrel >>

It's still better than making up an entirely new set of rules...

Strictly mechanically speaking, all the rules for Heavily Obscured (including Darkness) say is that you have the Blinded condition when trying to see something inside. They don't say anything, either way, about seeing out of or through darkness. It's left to the judgment of the DM (there are hints, and people like to read those hints in either direction).

You don't need an entirely new set of rules to decide that you can see the moon or stars on a full-dark night, or that you can see torches in the distance, or... Same for A being able to see D or (C or E) being able to see (A or D) in that diagram. It's the DM's call, and probably the only important thing is to be consistent at the table (and consistency between tables doesn't matter to any individual game). It's eminently fine to to be able to see out of / through Darkness and not out of / through heavy fog, and not even that complicated.

Quote from kenclary >>

Quote from Natrel >>

It's still better than making up an entirely new set of rules...

Strictly mechanically speaking, all the rules for Heavily Obscured (including Darkness) say is that you have the Blinded condition when trying to see something inside. They don't say anything, either way, about seeing out of or through darkness. It's left to the judgment of the DM (there are hints, and people like to read those hints in either direction).

You don't need an entirely new set of rules to decide that you can see the moon or stars on a full-dark night, or that you can see torches in the distance, or... Same for A being able to see D or (C or E) being able to see (A or D) in that diagram. It's the DM's call, and probably the only important thing is to be consistent at the table (and consistency between tables doesn't matter to any individual game). It's eminently fine to to be able to see out of / through Darkness and not out of / through heavy fog, and not even that complicated.

I know you're generally agreeing with me, but I wouldn't let the rule books off so lightly. There is a fundamental conflict in the way they have drafted this set of rules.

1. Heavily Obscured areas give the blinded condition when looking into.

2. Heavily Obscured areas are opaque.

3. An area of darkness is a Heavily Obscured area.

4. Outside at night is darkness.

All agree on point one and its mechanical effect.

The conflict is in 2-4.

An illustration: how do we know that you cannot see through to the other side of the Fog Cloud spell? The spell description doesn't say that, it just says the area is Heavily Obscured. We look up that rule and know that a Heavily Obscured area is opaque and thus the fog effect is fully defined.

What about the Darkness spell? The description says it creates an area of darkness. The rule for darkness links to the rules for a Heavily Obscured area - so people would not be wrong for assuming the area is opaque.

A problem: the rules for non-magical darkness lead to the same place, and natural darkness is not restricted to only the darkest of pitch black caves - it is standard night time. 

So people come up with an assortment of "solutions":

A. Magical darkness and natural darkness are just different somehow. 

B. Night isn't Darkness. 

C. Darkness isn't an area. 

D. Heavily Obscured areas aren't all opaque. 

None agree fully with the rules as written. There is no RAW that works.

It is important to pick an interpretation, communicate with players as early as it might be important, and be considerate of others who might have read these same rules, come to another perfectly logical conclusion and then made assumptions about how their character was going to work under that logic. 

Quote from RegentCorreon>>

2. Heavily Obscured areas are opaque.
...
4. Outside at night is darkness.
...
The conflict is in 2-4.

Yes, that is exacly where the conflict lies, and is the only source of the conflict. That one word, "opaque," which isn't a strict mechanical term, nor is anything keyed off it. It's just language. (I mean, all rules are just language, which is why RAW is always interpretive, but usually writers go out of their way when they want things to mean special things.)

An illustration: how do we know that you cannot see through to the other side of the Fog Cloud spell? The spell description doesn't say that, it just says the area is Heavily Obscured. We look up that rule and know that a Heavily Obscured area is opaque and thus the fog effect is fully defined.
What about the Darkness spell? The description says it creates an area of darkness. The rule for darkness links to the rules for a Heavily Obscured area - so people would not be wrong for assuming the area is opaque.

People (usually) have lived experience of being in fog, or looking through fog, and being in darkness, looking across darkness, etc. You can't see the other side of the fog; you can see the other side of the darkness. This isn't RAW being "broken" (clearly it's usable); it's RAW being messy and unclear (hah).