11-28-2019, 11:26 AM | #11 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
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11-28-2019, 03:00 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Poland
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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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My irregular blog: d8 hit location table |
11-28-2019, 08:57 PM | #13 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
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Whereas if you allow light to pass across the Darkness there is at least that as a second difference. |
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11-29-2019, 04:03 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Poland
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
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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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11-29-2019, 02:05 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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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? |
11-29-2019, 02:10 PM | #16 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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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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11-29-2019, 02:19 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
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11-29-2019, 02:35 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
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Honestly, the darkness spell has never made a lot of sense to me:
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12-01-2019, 03:54 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: London, U.K.
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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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Blog: After the Ogre - Notes from a DFRPG / GURPS Dungeon Fantasy campaign. Formerly known as Unwitting Pawn |
12-01-2019, 04:21 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Re: Darkness, visibility and to hit penalties
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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darkness, dfrpg |
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