12-01-2019, 06:16 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: London, U.K.
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
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Your story reminds me: I'm assuming that the Dark Vision advantage works as well as the Dark Vision spell, but I'd like to know if others agree with that assessment, or indeed whether it has been expressly stated somewhere?
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Blog: After the Ogre - Notes from a DFRPG / GURPS Dungeon Fantasy campaign. Formerly known as Unwitting Pawn |
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12-01-2019, 06:22 PM | #22 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
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And other non-visual spectrum based senses. Always the best choice. |
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12-01-2019, 06:50 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
So you can cast it covering a wall to see through the wall?
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12-01-2019, 08:49 PM | #24 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
"Basically" doesn't mean "actually". So in this case no. It would just be a dark patch they couldn't see through.
Actually, I tend to have silhouettes of non-stealthable things now I think about it. For simplicity it ought to just be Blackout and drop Blackout off the spell lists. |
12-02-2019, 12:31 AM | #25 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
Agreed. The spell isn't what people expect it to be, and what it actually is is confusing.
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12-02-2019, 06:23 AM | #26 |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Poland
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
Maybe Darkness should actually be higher on the spell tree, requiring Blackout and Dark Vision? It's good to shroud yourself or the scout in darkness to fling missiles from a hard to hit position.
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My irregular blog: d8 hit location table |
12-02-2019, 07:22 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Trondheim, Norway
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
The problem with magic, in general, is that it by definition breaks the laws of nature. When scrutinized, there will always be some aspect of a spell that contradicts science, and so the game rules (or the GM) must make a decision about how the spell works. Using the forum to try to reach an agreement is sensible, in my opinion, but for any solution that is presented, someone can object reasonably, pointing out a flaw in the solution, when applied to reality. So the best we can hope for is that everyone can draw inspiration from each other and find a model that resonates with them and their gaming groups.
Please don't let my pessimism be a party pooper to the discussion, but realize that this is a topic that we may never come to complete agreement on.
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12-02-2019, 08:40 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Ottawa, ON, CA
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
The best analogy I've seen for the Darkness spell is to imagine three people: one is in a well-lit room looking out a window; one is in the neighboring house, in an equally well-lit room, looking out their window; the third is in the dark yard between them, outside the light cast from both windows, on a cloudy, moonless night.
The person in the yard can clearly see both watchers in the windows: they're well-lit. Each of the watchers can clearly see each other, for that matter. But the person in the yard can't see someone a couple of feet away (it's too dark), and the people standing at the windows can't see anyone in the yard. That's how Darkness works.
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M2: Everything is true. GP: Even false things? M2: Even false things are true. GP: How can that be? M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it. |
12-02-2019, 09:32 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
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Unless the person in the yard stands between the two lit areas, being silhouetted... |
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12-02-2019, 05:26 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
[QUOTE=Unwitting Pawn;2298196]I'm assuming that the Dark Vision advantage works as well as the Dark Vision spell, but I'd like to know if others agree with that assessment, or indeed whether it has been expressly stated somewhere?[/QUOTE]
As far as I know, this hasn't been stated unequivocally in DFRPG. The Dark Vision advantage, however, only appears in Monsters (p. 10) where it is described "as if under a permanent Dark Vision spell." This suggests that monsters with the trait can ignore magically created darkness. In GURPS (shhh!), this interpretation is explicitly stated in the text of both the Dark Vision advantage (B47) and in the Darkness and Blackout spell descriptions (Magic, pp. 111-112). |
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darkness, dfrpg |
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