As one ponders obscurement - seek ye the "vision and light" rules.

Thanks! 

This is literally a smoke bomb spell, nice! This seems awesome for a ninja campaign, at least until you get some sort of better spell.

>A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.

>Blinded

• A blinded creature can't see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight.
• Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature's attack rolls have disadvantage.

Wait so would the caster be able to see through the fog, or does it mess with their vision too?

I know it's a late response but it messes with vision too. You can see in dark areas, but not heavily obscured areas. 

Thanks, and yeah I kind of figured that out after I posted the comment because it's only a level one spell

Its actually better in some situations than a darkness spell as devils sight and even true sight can not peirce the cloud, but mainly  say your surrounded by a wolf pack, the fog cloud by granting both disadvantage and advantage negates the wolves pack tactics feature, or in any situation where the monster lacks blindsight  removes advantage and levels the odds.

That's a fair point. You could observe your surroundings then use a fog cloud so that you can escape from someone easier

or place a cloud with your caster at range stepping out to fire an attack before stepping back in and vanishing.

Am I missing something, or is this better than Darkness outside of a few scenarios?

Longer duration, longer casting range, larger radius, lower spell slot, and can't be bypassed by devil's sight.

Only upsides to darkness that I can see would be that it can be cast by warlocks, it can be cast on and move with an object, and that warlocks can see through it with devil's sight.

Casting word is:

Disaperium Valedictus

Quote from WillJewwel >>

Am I missing something, or is this better than Darkness outside of a few scenarios?

Longer duration, longer casting range, larger radius, lower spell slot, and can't be bypassed by devil's sight.

Only upsides to darkness that I can see would be that it can be cast by warlocks, it can be cast on and move with an object, and that warlocks can see through it with devil's sight.

 Darkness can be cast on an object and moved, fewer ways to dispel it, and can be used in any weather. Other than that, yeah, better than Darkness.

Quote from JTOnCa >>

Quote from WillJewwel >>

Am I missing something, or is this better than Darkness outside of a few scenarios?

Longer duration, longer casting range, larger radius, lower spell slot, and can't be bypassed by devil's sight.

Only upsides to darkness that I can see would be that it can be cast by warlocks, it can be cast on and move with an object, and that warlocks can see through it with devil's sight.

 Darkness can be cast on an object and moved, fewer ways to dispel it, and can be used in any weather. Other than that, yeah, better than Darkness.

 Not quite though. If you are inside the Darkness, you can still see outside. Imagine a long dark corridor where one of the lights is out and you're standing in the dark spot – that's my interpretation of it.

“creature with darkvision can't see through this darkness, and nonmagical light can't illuminate it.” One cannot see outside the magical darkness because in order to do so one would have to see through it

This can easily be dispersed by wind (either crazy weather or Gust of Wind, 2nd level) where Darkness either requires a different form of vision, or a higher level source of magical light.

With my DM's approval, i wiped 9/12 cultists with dire wolf keen senses

U da man

With the new fighting Style "Blind Fighting" this spell just became a must for martial spell casters. You could lay this down on round and then start fishing for crits the next. Such a good spell

I was thinking this would be a cool tactic too but you'd need to work with the rest of the party to pick up blind fighter to see as well(unless they're ok with not landing attacks/spells) Darkness might be better as warlocks can get devils sight.

Also interesting party encounter: a ranger(group) using blind fighting and fog cloud to ambush the party.