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Old 11-28-2019, 11:26 AM   #11
evileeyore
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

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Originally Posted by Dalin View Post
Like most magic, this can create some interesting edge cases. If you cast darkness around a large pillar, suddenly the light will pass through it and its shadow would vanish. Or, could you cast darkness on a hex of wall and then be able to see through to the room beyond? Maybe we say that inanimate objects don’t count? Or objects need to wholly contained to become effectively invisible? So a pedestal would vanish but a pillar (attached to floor and ceiling) would not.
That's where Rule Zero comes in, I agree.
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Old 11-28-2019, 03:00 PM   #12
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

I'd say you cannot see anything past the area affected by the spell.
The first sentence describes it as pitch darkness, and not "stuff inside is invisible". Further, "those outside can only see darkness within", and not "the things beyond".
I'd say people outside see it as a black intangible wall.
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Old 11-28-2019, 08:57 PM   #13
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

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I'd say you cannot see anything past the area affected by the spell.
The first sentence describes it as pitch darkness, and not "stuff inside is invisible". Further, "those outside can only see darkness within", and not "the things beyond".
I'd say people outside see it as a black intangible wall.
So.... the only difference between Darkness and Blackout is that those within a Blackout cannot see out? That's a very small difference for creating an entire extra spell.

Whereas if you allow light to pass across the Darkness there is at least that as a second difference.
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Old 11-29-2019, 04:03 AM   #14
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

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So.... the only difference between Darkness and Blackout is that those within a Blackout cannot see out? That's a very small difference for creating an entire extra spell.

Whereas if you allow light to pass across the Darkness there is at least that as a second difference.
Well, the cost is the same, so it shouldn't be very different in power. And multiple spells with very similar effects are generally a thing: see Blink and Blink Other, for example.
And as Dalin pointed out, if you could see past Darkness, you could hide a huge pillar, and I think that would be too powerful (compare Invisibility, with normal cost 4, which should be at least doubled for size in this case).
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Old 11-29-2019, 02:05 PM   #15
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

Yeah, I'm second-guessing myself here a bit. I'm imagining a one hex column of darkness in a typical dungeon room lit with torches around the perimeter. What would this look like? According to evileeyore's and my interpretation above, it should be hardly noticeable when you look across the room. The floor and ceiling would be pitch black and anybody stepping into the hex would vanish. That's interesting, but not exactly what I pictured in the swashbuckler/golem scene I mentioned upthread.

Now I'm leaning the other way so that it does appear as a column of darkness. If you're inside, you can see out, but you can't see through it. This still leaves the problem of multiple people in the darkness and their silhouettes. Could go with the idea that they are effectively invisible to each other. Though I'm not entirely against allowing silhouettes which might provide some interesting tactical options in terms of where you cast it and how you position yourself.

It would be kinda cool to explore some of these variations with a 3D rendering package. It should be possible to coat objects with a skin that reflects no light, right?
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Old 11-29-2019, 02:10 PM   #16
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

If darkness allows seeing through the darkness, the net effect is basically to render everything inside the darkness a perfect unreflecting black, which means people inside the darkness will be visible as silhouettes unless the darkness is large enough to also black out the background.
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Old 11-29-2019, 02:19 PM   #17
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

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If darkness allows seeing through the darkness, the net effect is basically to render everything inside the darkness a perfect unreflecting black, which means people inside the darkness will be visible as silhouettes unless the darkness is large enough to also black out the background.
Except for this pesky sentence in the spell description: "Those inside the area can see out normally but can see nothing else within the area." There are two ways to go here, either you accept that you can't see "nothing else" except for silhouettes, or you make everything inside invisible to each other. The latter seems like the simplest explanation to me, but I'm toying with the former.
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Old 11-29-2019, 02:35 PM   #18
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

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Except for this pesky sentence in the spell description: "Those inside the area can see out normally but can see nothing else within the area." There are two ways to go here, either you accept that you can't see "nothing else" except for silhouettes, or you make everything inside invisible to each other. The latter seems like the simplest explanation to me, but I'm toying with the former.
Being able to see silhouettes doesn't mean you can see anything inside the area. It means you are failing to see things outside the area.

Honestly, the darkness spell has never made a lot of sense to me:
  1. If it blocks light passing into or through the area, it would blind people inside the area and thus be a blackout spell.
  2. If it blocks light passing out of the area but allows it to come in, someone inside the area can see other things inside the area.
  3. If it merely prevents anything inside the area from reflecting or emitting light, things inside the area are silhouettes and you might not have combat penalties to hit them at all, depending on the backdrop and what else is in the darkness area.
  4. If it just renders everything in the area invisible, it's not darkness, it's invisibility.
If I were running a game, I'd probably just change Darkness to be Blackout, and delete the Blackout spell. If I were trying to interpret RAW, I'd probably go with (c) as the most consistent.
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Old 12-01-2019, 03:54 PM   #19
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

The spell Darkness hurts my brain. I always forget how it's supposed to work, and get it confused with Blackout.
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Old 12-01-2019, 04:21 PM   #20
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Default Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties

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The spell Darkness hurts my brain. I always forget how it's supposed to work, and get it confused with Blackout.
Yeah... this just happened to me this afternoon despite having actively participated in this thread all week. The darkness appeared around one of the PCs and I described it like he was blind. Luckily, I was the GM, so I just quietly added Blackout and Dark Vision to the enemy wizard's spell list.
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