Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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How do people typically rule magical darkness in their games? Do you treat it as sort of a cloud of smoke that darkvision cant see through? Do you treat it as normal darkness but darkvision just doesn't work in it?
Rules for it are pretty clear for creatures outside magic darkness trying to see inside magic darkness and for creatures inside magic darkness trying to see inside magic darkness, but they're not clear for creatures inside magic darkness trying to see outside of magic darkness. Likewise for if magic darkness obscures visions for creatures not in the darkness but on opposite sides of the area trying to see each other.
If a player is standing inside of a 30 ft sphere of magic darkness, and they're trying to see an enemy standing outside of that sphere, are they able to see that creature and attack it without issue?
I've personally always seen magic darkness in my head as a sphere of darkness acting more like a cloud of smoke, but someone recently suggested to me the idea that it's not like that, that it's just like normal darkness but darkvision doesn't work in it.
My way of thinking, if you're inside of it, your vision is obscured so of course you cant see outside of the darkness.
Their way of thinking, if you're inside it, it's no different than standing in darkness IRL, and if there's a light in the distance while you're in darkness irl, you dont have any problem seeing things in that field of light.
I've always ruled it like the cloud of smoke, so a player in it trying to see out of it has just as much of a hard time seeing an enemy as an enemy outside trying to see a player inside of it.
The other way though would vastly increase the effectiveness of it but it feels weird to me because then you run in to the question of if you can see silhouettes in the darkness if there's a light source on the opposite side.
And then another ruling question came to mind when we started discussing this that I never really thought of before. If you treat it like a cloud of smoke, how do different vision types interact in that case? Like if a player has 30 ft of truesight and that truesight lets them see to the outer edge of the area of darkness, can their normal vision or darkvision continue past that point?
How does everyone else treat it?
An important thing to keep in mind here is that "magical darkness" is not a general game concept that has its own defined rules. A magical source of darkness follows the general rules for darkness unless its description explicitly overrides them; there's nothing special about magical sources of darkness in general.
This means, for instance, that "a cloud of smoke that darkvision can't see through" isn't an accurate description of magical darkness, because not every magical source of darkness has that property about darkvision not being able to see through it. That's a feature of the Darkness spell, but not of magical darkness in general; some magical sources of darkness, like Hunger of Hadar, don't have that property.
pronouns: he/she/they
Yes, when I say "Magical Darkness" I am referring specifically to the numerous spells, magic items, features, etc that create some type of area of darkness that darkvision is not able to see through.
As opposed to an area of normal darkness created by a magic spell/effect.
That being said, I am fairly certain I have always seen the first one referred to specifically as "Magical Darkness" while the second is referred to just as "Darkness".
Darkness (e.g. night or a windowless room) we experience outside the game is just an absence of light. You can't use this to explain magical darkness.
Light as we see is just several wave lengths (light spectrum) that our eyes can process. There are other wavelengths our eyes cannot process, but some animals can see using them. This would be a better example of what magical darkness does. It blocks those wavelengths from traveling, so dark vision does not work.
If something blocks your ability to see, you can't just start seeing normal again after that blockage stops. Vision has no 30 foot gaps.
Magical Darkness doesn't mean "blocks Darkvision". It's a common misconception.
There are only 2 official spells that block Darkvision: Darkness and Maddening Darkness. That's it.
If you include Partnered Content, you have a few more, like the Candle of Anti-Light from the Griffon’s Saddlebag. And again, that's because it explicitly says so, not because it's magical.