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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OK, I guess that means you're not going to change your point of view or reconsider your position.
So, I'm stepping away from this thread, but before I do, I'll leave some unofficial rulings from the Dev here for anyone who might be interested:
You are, like everyone else, bypassing the 'is it an obstacle?' decision. 'Obstacle' isn't a fixed unchanging identity. By definition, it is context dependent. And the rules never say otherwise - there's no term-of-art definition of 'obstacle' in the rules, so we are left with that context-dependent colloquial English definition.
And at the end of the day, if we sat here and tried to figure out what you thought was an obstacle and what was not, we'd discover you had some preconceived notion of what an attack was supposed to be for deciding obstacleness based upon. ie, you're implicitly using a context-dependent definition, you just want to use one context to decide obstacleness for all contexts, but that doesn't make any sense at all. Nor would everyone agree on what this one-true-obstacleness context is - everyone who thinks it works that way will have slightly different ideas about what the appropriate reference attack is, and thus slightly different ideas about what is or is not obstacle.
And the game never says there's some reference attack for universally deciding obstacles. That's something you're all making up and imposing on the rules without any textual justification.
Frankly, if Jeremy Crawford said it, I find it most likely the rules are best read to the contrary. He is just obviously wrong so often as to be completely unreliable - including here. And since he is no longer in an official capacity, his interpretations are only as good as his ability to justify them by reference to the text (which he never seems to do). He's definitely wrong about Wall of Force - it only says it blocks physical things, which means it cannot block non-physical things at all, and thus cannot be 'cover' against them.
Zero sense. Zero rules justification. Zero weight.
If you want me to reconsider my opinion, you're going to need to use actual text from the rules to do so. (For example, find a definition of 'obstacle' that actually requires the cover rules to be read that way).
Obstacle, in D&D, is a fixed unchanging identity.
You would be so kind as to quote where the rules say that?
The colloquial English definition of obstacle is context-dependent.
Right obstacle has no other definition in the rules so i'm not sure what you're trying to claim the rules say on this matter but you're out of rule territory here.
When an obstacle provide enought degree of cover, then it is Half Cover, Three-Quarters Cover or Total Cover. Otherwise it isn't. In other words, not all obstacle provide cover, but all covers are provided by an obstacle.
So when a feature provide cover, you're past the 'is it an obstacle?' decision, we know it's one since it provide cover. If for example a DM say a wondow provides cover, then that glass is an obstacle and any game effect said to be affected by cover will be, unless the DM rule otherwise.
It is only cover if it is an obstacle.
And since there is no game definition of obstacle, we are using colloquial English. And to be an obstacle in colloquial English, it must obstruct or impede whatever it is an obstacle to, which means it is inherently relative to the thing being obstructed or impeded. So if the thing in question is neither obstructed nor impeded by the intervening thing, that intervening thing is definitionally not an obstacle. And if it's not an obstacle, it does not provide cover.
You can't know its one because it provides cover. That gets the rules backwards. It provides cover because it is an obstacle. It is not an obstacle because it provides cover.
I accept the DM can decide what is and is not an obstacle, but he is supposed to be assessing obstacleness for the situation. (ie, the DM should conclude a window is no obstacle to light, because we all know light passes through a window).
The rules never say "cover against X", they just say "cover". This tells us that cover is a universal status.
The rules don't have that level of complexity, if an obstacle provide cover, it provide cover and other game features react to it accordingly. Neither the Cover rules nor the Light rules make any execption to this, nor is there any rules for obstacle that exist to make any further distinction.
Saying a obstacle can provide cover to some things and not to light isn't supported by the rules or else it would have been posted already. It's a take that may have merit, but when a spell AoE is blocked by Total Cover., if the glass obstacle provide Total Cover, then it will block it according to the rules.
That would only be a valid conclusion only if the rules were written in a technical manner, which they aren't. And indeed, no object has a 'Cover' feature in the game, which is where any such technical text would need to be located.
Instead, the rules are written in colloquial English. And one of those words in the cover rules, the thing that makes something cover at all, is 'obstacle'. And obstacle's colloquial English usage is context-dependent. That means the rules are not claiming cover is a universal status, but is necessarily context dependent. It inherits the same context dependency as the word which defines what is and is not cover.
And we do have an example of something telling us it only impedes a certain kind of thing: Wall of Force, which says "Nothing can physically pass through the wall." That means non-physical things can pass through the wall. And indeed, it is invisible, which means light explicitly passes through the wall.
Further, the rules use 'obstacle' in other places in context-specific ways. Caltrops, for example: "...and create obstacles for pursuers with Caltrops." What do caltrops obstruct? Someone moving through the square. Certainly not an obstacle for a bow shot. Teleportation blocks arriving in a "solid obstacle", the qualifier implying sometimes non-solid things can be obstacles for other purposes. And under interacting with things, it says that a utilize action might be required "when it needs special care or when it presents an unusual obstacle."
In short, the rules routinely use the word obstacle in a context-dependent colloquial English sense.
The word 'obstacle' has that level of complexity in colloquial English, so the rule which uses that word in its colloquial English sense necessarily also has that level of complexity. They don't need to call it out, because it is not an exception. This is the way the word functions.
And I am not saying an obstacle is cover to some things and not to others. I am saying a thing is an obstacle to some things, and not to others. And if it is an obstacle, then it provides cover. It is not even an obstacle if it does not impede the thing in question.
If you don't want that kind of complexity in the rule, you need a technical term-of-art definition of the word obstacle, and that does not exist in the rules.
(Honestly, it would be more complex if it were otherwise, because now you need to define this standardized 'attack' or circumstance by which we class things as obstacles or non-obstacles in reference to. That's a really complicated endeavour).
How do you even know what is or is not an obstacle, in the rules, if it is not dependent on the context of the thing to be impeded?
When an obstacle to some things, and not to others provide Total Cover whatsoever, things behind it are subject to these rules:
Your reasoning is backwards. You can only determine it is behind Total Cover by determining that the thing it is behind is an obstacle. if it is not an obstacle, it is not behind Total Cover at all, by definition of Total Cover.
Note that word blocked. If it doesn't block the thing (ie, clear glass does not block light), then it doesn't stop it from including that area in its area of effect.
(This is seriously not that complicated. Will this intervening thing do anything to effectively impede this other thing - yes or no. If yes, it is an obstacle, and therefore provides cover. if no, it is not an obstacle, and therefore does not provide cover).
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Tangent: I'd note the area of effect of Light is a touched object, and when Darkness is cast on an object, the area of effect is that object. The light/darkness radiated are not part of the spell's AoE, but an effect produced after the casting from that object. So the Clear Path rule doesn't even apply except between the caster and the object.
It is seriously that complicated, because for a vast number of cases we have no basis for knowing, so the only straightforward answer is that intervening objects are always obstacles (there's no logical reason why a wall will stop synaptic static, walls have no interaction with psychic damage, but RAW it does).
No, that's simple. Walls don't interfere with psychic things because they're psychic - which isn't at all physical, so walls aren't obstacles to it. Therefore, a wall is not an obstacle to synaptic static.
The least obvious things are actually some of the things you probably think are obvious. ie, a hanging sheet is absolutely an obstacle to a sword, because a sword cannot cut a hanging sheet. Similarly, a hanging sheet is nearly a perfect foil to an arrow - which is why feudal japanese samurai used horo cloaks to protect them from arrows fired from behind them. It is not, however, an obstacle to a thrust spear or pike. Figuring out how regular weapons navigate objects requires some actual knowledge of how those weapons perform in real situations (and I expect most DMs will get these wrong, and that's okay).
Assessing how a psychic attack works is trivial, by contrast. To be close enough to right for 'cinematic versimillitude' generally only requires us to discriminate between three classes of things: physical, non-physical, and wave/particle effects. The first two can be treated uniformly. The last one we have real world experience or knowledge of the most common (such as light), and even some uncommon ones. (Almost every modern person who will be running a D+D game knows how something as esoteric as radioactivity works generally enough to figure out what would provide 'cover' from a lump of Uranium, should such a thing ever appear in a game). And as a practical matter, light is the only one of the third category that really comes up in games, and we all have a good mental model of how light works at these scales.
You can imagine some other unusual cases. But anyone running a Star Wars game knows how a lightsaber works, and a stone wall is no cover from a lightsaber (and any player would be right to be upset if the DM said otherwise).
This isn't supported by the text. This aspect of the Darkness spell just behaves like ordinary darkness, which is not an object or effect that blocks vision; thus, we are able to look up and see the moon and the stars at night.
I disagree with this detail. I always rule that a creature standing behind a thin curtain or a thin pane of glass does not enjoy Total Cover.
Whether or not something counts as an obstacle for the purpose of Cover is a DM call. Also, the bits about "offered by: Another creature or an object that covers at least half of the target" should not be read as that being the only way that Half Cover can be achieved. For example, we should be confident that a wall, which is not classified as a creature or an object, can indeed provide Half Cover. Thus, so might other things, such as a thin pane of glass.
I personally like the idea that a DM can rule that something such as a thin pane of glass can provide Half Cover (affecting accuracy) as well as Resistance to certain types of damage (affecting the amount of damage that can be dealt). Whether or not such a ruling might be straying into homebrew territory or not is probably beyond the scope for this discussion.
No, it doesn't.
Notice that in the Line of Sight rule, fog is listed as an example, but darkness is not. Now, technically it is up to the DM to determine if a particular phenomenon blocks Line of Sight, but in my opinion, it would be silly to rule that darkness blocks Line of Sight since we know that it doesn't in the real world and it would cause all sorts of problems such as being unable to look up and see the moon and the stars at night.
It looks like a lot of emphasis is being placed on the Darkness spell description using the words "spreads" and "fills". Those aren't very good arguments. None of that makes this Darkness different from ordinary darkness -- this is just flavor text which describes where the magical effect itself (no matter what is actually created by that effect) ends up being located according to the rules for how AoE effects begin at an origin point and then extend outward from there to fill the area within a particular shape. This aspect of the spell occurs more or less instantaneously. This "spreading" of the darkness might be observable to a creature nearby, but it's not a slow thing that's happening over the course of the 10 minutes or anything like that -- it's pretty much like if you blink you'll miss it.
This is probably getting beyond the scope again, but just as a quick clarification, Wall of Force is generally accepted to provide Total Cover. Therefore, it creates an obstacle for the purposes of the Clear Path rule and the AoE affected area rules.
No, it isn't.
You are confusing the capability of the actual effect that's created (the darkness) with the magical effect itself which fills the AoE. By rule, an AoE magical effect cannot spread through Total Cover. Therefore, the magical darkness that's created by this magical effect will not be located there. The magical darkness only exists where the magical effect exists. It's the same issue with the Light spells and the Psychic Lance spell.
It's unclear how the discussion then veered into a discussion about Antimagic Field, but it's the same concept there. It doesn't matter what the effect is creating -- the magical effect itself is restricted by the Field: "Areas of effect created by spells or other magic can’t extend into the aura". This prevents all of the spells discussed so far from working there.
I disagree with this logic. Opaqueness and Cover are two different and unrelated concepts.
No. This is the beginning of logic that is going down the wrong path. Two totally different dictionary definitions of the same word, "opaque", are used in the rules unfortunately. For a heavily obscured area, it is referring to the fact that things within that area cannot be seen. In the darkness spell, it is referring to the fact that the object in question is not translucent. There is nothing about ordinary darkness which actually blocks your ability to see through it. Otherwise, we would not be able to look up at night and see the moon and the stars.
No, this is totally false. The Clear Path rule has to do with the casting of the spell. A spellcaster tries to cast a spell such that the spell effect originates at a particular place. There must be a clear path to it so it cannot be behind Total Cover. It doesn't matter at all what is actually being created by the spell effect. An AoE magical effect which spreads from a point of origin has similar restrictions. Total Cover can prevent the effect from spreading to a particular portion of an area -- again, it doesn't matter at all what is actually being created by the spell effect.
I'm on board with the opaque cylinder idea.
No, it doesn't.
A Heavily Obscured area—such as an area with Darkness, heavy fog, or dense foliage—is opaque.
Oh yes, I fully agree. My point was that people get very hung-up on the Heavily Obscured rules specifically using the word Opaque to describe a Heavily Obscured space. Darkness makes a space Heavily Obscured, therefore it is "opaque" (I disagree, because...well...reality. And if all Darkness were opaque, characters could basically never see anything more than 60 feet away at night, even a lighthouse). So my very silly point was that if Darkness is an opaque something, then technically it covers the enchanted object that had Darkness cast on it with an opaque something (as described in the spell, it doesn't need to be an object, just something opaque), and therefore it is a self-defeating spell. Or at the very least you could perhaps block one enchanted object emitting Darkness with another Darkness spell, or that Darkness flashlight pointed at the object. Would I even think that? No. It's just a dumb rules interaction that you could argue if you decided to apply a very strict and nonsensical version of RAW.
Strictly from a RAW perspective, 'obstacles' are not required to create cover.
So the only thing required to provide cover is an 'object'. Yes, obstacles provide cover, but that is because they are a subset of objects. The quoted statement 'Walls, trees, creatures, and other obstacles can provide cover' semantically means they can create cover, but it does not mean that only they can create cover. "Some fish can bite you," does not mean you cannot be bitten by something that is not a fish.
With that said, that is RAW and strictly following RAW can lead to very bad places. Strictly RAW would mean a person standing on the other side of a hanging piece of mosquito netting cannot be shot with a crossbow, despite the fact that they can be seen and the bolt will pass right through the cloth without slowing down. There is an object (mosquito netting) covering the entire target (as far as the crossbow shooter is concerned), so RAW they have Total Cover and can't be attacked.
Darkness says 'Covering that object with something opaque, such as a bowl or helm, blocks the Darkness' and that certainly seems to imply that non-opaque objects wouldn't, otherwise why bother writing that at all? It is simply redundant. So RAI would seem to be that Darkness is not blocked by transparent objects.
Does that mean Darkness automatically penetrates a Wall of Force since the WoF is transparent? Well, not so quick. It may be transparent, but it is also magical. Yes, I would rule that it goes through, but if someone else was DMing and they wanted to say it doesn't then I'm not fighting with them over it. We are dealing with make-believe worlds where something can somehow 'emanate' darkness, so physics and reality are already out on a lunch break.
Making decisions about things like this are why we have DMs.
The only time I would get on the DM's case is if they said 'oh, your Darkness if blocked by the wizard's Wall of Force', but then later on another Darkness spell (or similar effect) went through my own Wall of Force.
edit: Semantically we could get off into the weeds by arguing about the specific meaning of 'covers the target'. While there is the obvious meaning an argument could be made that 'covering the target' means 'provides protection to the target'. At that point the RAW hold up better, but you still have a very squishy area where the DM has to figure out what 'provides protection to the target' means. A single sheet of mosquito netting? No, it isn't providing any protection. 10000 sheets of mosquito netting? Oh, that absolutely is providing protection (at least against a crossbow bolt). Now we know that 'cover' comes in somewhere between 1 sheet and 10000 sheets.
I am fully onboard with the DM adjudicating what provides protection and what does not, so long as the DM's reasoning made sense.
Any player should rightly be annoyed at a DM who says light from a Light spell does not pass through a Wall of Force, because the Wall of Force is invisible. Light passing through it is what invisible means. (And if the light does not pass through it, that necessarily means it is visible).
Similarly, any player should be rightly annoyed by a DM who says stone provides cover against a lightsaber. It absolutely does not. (It might obscure the creature, but the lightsaber is going to pass right through it as if it wasn't even there. It would be like striking through an illusory wall with a normal sword).
But in edge cases where cinematic versimillitude could go either way, it is absolutely the DM's call on what qualifies as an obstacle.
BTW, that table follows the statement that declares obstacles are what provide cover, so it needs to be read in the context of that previous statement to see what is meant.