Reference for Light and Darkness in PFS

[N N 959]

David Bowles wrote:

I do not understand this attitude at all. I prefer to be corrected as a GM on the spot to limit the impact of my mistake.

That's because you are one of those exceedingly rare individuals who GMs without ego and does not base his sense of self worth on whether he knows more than the next guy about PFS.

As I've told several newbie GM's, there is no shame in being wrong about a rule, it's when you refuse to acknowledge your mistake and attempt to cover it up that you dishonor yourself.

[Tim Vincent]

nosig wrote:

edit: and sometimes it's outright fear. I've had a judge scream at me for 4 hours in a game. Everytime I said anything, he yelled at me. and I was the closest player to him. I think the classic line in that game was "I'm not going to let you screw up my encounter! No, you don't detect anything with your perception check of 45!" delivered in a voice that would have put my Drill Insturctor in Basic to shame.

Sheesh! You sure have a lot of these persecuted nosig stories. I hope things get better for you in your PFS career.

[David Bowles]

nosig wrote:

David Bowles wrote:

Maybe. I've seen enough screw-ups of the basics by this point that I'm willing to sacrifice "flow" at this point.

and I'm past that. Flow is often the fun.

Mostly, I just want to have fun. If some rules get bent in the process, is often ok with me. Address it for next time. Works just as well after the game. But if the judge has someone shooting me thru deaper darkness, I'll ask him after the game if it was a Devil (who sees in magical darkness) or a demon (who doesn't). For his next game.

I do not want to be the guy that stops the fun for 5 other people to be sure the judge knows he might me doing the climbing rules wrong...

Is it really important? Interrupt now, do it fast move on. Is it not? wait till later... maybe games later.

Unfortunately, its often important. I've seen entire PC builds shut down because of the way a GM ran a certain mechanic. Interpretations that are often not supported by the RAW language, by the way. It may not impact *my* fun, but it's not fair for that player to be getting hosed. Some people are too timid to speak up in those cases.

If it is the case of some skill like climb or something very trivial, sure, let the game keep going. But light/darkness is NOT trivial. Nor is many other mechanics that might result in PC death or mission failure.

[N N 959]

nosig wrote:

Lab_Rat wrote:

Even when your correct and have a quick and efficient means of showing it, a lot of GMs will take it badly. I have seen GMs refuse to take 10 seconds and read a printed FAQ.

The biggest hurdle I run into at the table is the other players not knowing the rules...but thinking they do. I can see the GM about to acknowledge he might be wrong, or maybe doesn't remember it properly and then some other player chimes in with an incorrect statement and the GM decides he must know more than someone he's never seen before.

Inevitably I let it drop and then try to bring it up in a round-about fashion after the game. Fortunately I haven't seen a bad ruling be the difference between life and death for anyone's PC's at this point. But I've got a small sample size.

[nosig]

Tim Vincent wrote:

nosig wrote:

edit: and sometimes it's outright fear. I've had a judge scream at me for 4 hours in a game. Everytime I said anything, he yelled at me. and I was the closest player to him. I think the classic line in that game was "I'm not going to let you screw up my encounter! No, you don't detect anything with your perception check of 45!" delivered in a voice that would have put my Drill Insturctor in Basic to shame.

Sheesh! You sure have a lot of these persecuted nosig stories. I hope things get better for you in your PFS career.

LOL! nah, Tim, 99% of my games are great, and you should read some to the threads where I post the fun stories... it's just that I post often, and I've played often, and I've been playing a long time (over 35 years now) and the really bad games stick in memory (also the really good ones, but those are on different threads).

SO ... I'm still playing, so I guess the good out weighs the bad right?

and the reason I post about the bad times, is to save someone from a like experience.

The time I got stuck in the game with the screamer, I had never had something like that before. If it ever happened again, I'd just walk away. When it did happen, I was in the game with my wife at the table, with other friends there. She was playing her Boon race PC and we were low enough that a KIA would be a Perm Kill. so I felt kind of trapped. If it ever happens to anyone else, I hope they take the advice. Just walk away. "If it's not fun, don't play" is what I try to teach when I'm teaching this game of ours.

So, not to worry. Poor Nosig is just here for the fun. If it's not fun anymore, he's on to other games.

[nosig]

David Bowles wrote:

nosig wrote:

David Bowles wrote:

Maybe. I've seen enough screw-ups of the basics by this point that I'm willing to sacrifice "flow" at this point.

and I'm past that. Flow is often the fun.

Mostly, I just want to have fun. If some rules get bent in the process, is often ok with me. Address it for next time. Works just as well after the game. But if the judge has someone shooting me thru deaper darkness, I'll ask him after the game if it was a Devil (who sees in magical darkness) or a demon (who doesn't). For his next game.

I do not want to be the guy that stops the fun for 5 other people to be sure the judge knows he might me doing the climbing rules wrong...

Is it really important? Interrupt now, do it fast move on. Is it not? wait till later... maybe games later.

Unfortunately, its often important. I've seen entire PC builds shut down because of the way a GM ran a certain mechanic. Interpretations that are often not supported by the RAW language, by the way. It may not impact *my* fun, but it's not fair for that player to be getting hosed. Some people are too timid to speak up in those cases.

If it is the case of some skill like climb or something very trivial, sure, let the game keep going. But light/darkness is NOT trivial. Nor is many other mechanics that might result in PC death or mission failure.

at some point, in some games, light/darkness IS trivial... but that's very situational. Like getting the Climb rules wrong. A fail means a fall, a fall of far enough kills a PC.

Back in LG days, I had a PC fall into a deep (dark) pit. He had a light though, and a feather fall prepared, so I said to the judge "I'll cast feather fall when I see the ground"... to which the judge said "roll a spot check".
Huh? Wouldn't you guess - I failed to see the ground coming up fast and died.
I appealed that ruling by the way, and the event organizer came to the table and had me roll a spell craft check... which I failed (being a Druid with one level of wizard). Not sure if this is a Falling story, or a Light story (or a Spellcraft story).

But I guess that's another "persecuted nosig story" for Tim... It did happen in a different campaign though, about 10 years ago, so there have been LOTS of fun games sense then. But I still remember not to say "I cast the spell when I see the ground..." when my PC falls now. Just in case.

[David Bowles]

Just for the record, I'm not in some kind of oneupmanship pissing contest when I GM. If some guy has feather fall memorized and chooses to use it, he's not taking falling damage in my game.

[Matthew Morris]

David Bowles wrote:

Just for the record, I'm not in some kind of oneupmanship pissing contest when I GM. If some guy has feather fall memorized and chooses to use it, he's not taking falling damage in my game.

You're not? I seem to remember a reddywipple seaking fireball...

(Seriously, I'm just teasing him, Dave's a good guy and a calm GM. He's let me back in his house just as proof of it. :P)

[David Bowles]

Nah, I know that familiars get evasion. When I target reddywipple with horrid wilting, then I'm being a douche :)

Seriously, though, I GM as if I'm just an avatar for the author. I assume the authors intended the encounters to go by RAW. So that's what I do. I know some scenarios are cakewalks and others are a bit like horror shows.

[Millefune]

Thanks again, Jiggy. I just wanted to be sure and have a thread/post to reference. It came up during a scenario we played earlier in the week, and I was using the Daylight ability of Awesome-mar to counter the Dark Stalker, and people started getting all crazy on how everything worked. Much appreciation to everyone else as well.

[Millefune]

OK... sorry to dredge it back up... again. Need another clarification for a ruling I had to adjudicate.

From what I got in the thread many pages back when I first read through it, the overlapping areas don't "stack" when it comes to the whole counter-effects and whatnot. For example:

Two Darkstalkers have their Deeper Darkness up, and one Aasimar blows a Daylight usage. The areas where the Daylight and the Deeper Darkness from both the Darkstalkers overlap have the effects of all three of the abilities negated, correct?

[Jiggy]

That's my understanding, at least.

[Paz]

A lot of commentary and FAQs have been posted since the original post; is there an up-to-date reference anywhere as to how darkness and deeper darkness work? In particular how they interact with prevailing light conditions and spells (of different spell levels and caster levels) that provide illumination.

I'm due to GM a scenario soon, with a creature that has darkness as a spell-like ability (CL 5th), and I want to make sure I get it right e.g. what the party can legitimately do to light up the area.

[David Bowles]

Well we partially have an answer.

1) Mundane light will do nothing

2) Level one light will do nothing.

3) Darkvision works fine, because darkness bottoms out at plain old darkness and doesn't stack

4) Daylight will revert its area of overlap with darkness back to ambient conditions, but often times, this is still darkness. This effect may or may not allow mundane sources to function in the overlap area. We don't know. I allow it as a GM because I think the darkness spells are already grossly overpowered, making darkvision also grossly overpowered. However, daylight combined with darkvision will do the trick. Unless, of course, your GM arbitrarily rules otherwise. In that case, you are hosed.

5)Higher level light spells function in darkness, but it is unclear in which order one should apply the effects. I also apply the magical light last, because again, I think that doing it the other way makes darkness effects even more broken than they already are.

There is still too much table variation in this mechanic for society play. Therefore, I explain how this is going to work before the scenario starts, because half of all TPKs I've seen have involved lighting problems. Too many GMs don't understand the text on these spells and how they interact with what FAQs we already have. The was demonstrably true, as I saw "4 star GMs" mangling the lighting rules as they are currently written.

[Mekkis]

My answer is as explained as much as possible in the document I wrote here. There is still clarification required for two of the assumptions listed on the back page, but it seems fully consistent with all the printed and FAQed rulings.

That being said, comments, corrections and feedback are appreciated. (and a fix-up of the two remaining assumptions)

[Jiggy]

Paz wrote:

A lot of commentary and FAQs have been posted since the original post; is there an up-to-date reference anywhere as to how darkness and deeper darkness work? In particular how they interact with prevailing light conditions and spells (of different spell levels and caster levels) that provide illumination.

I'm due to GM a scenario soon, with a creature that has darkness as a spell-like ability (CL 5th), and I want to make sure I get it right e.g. what the party can legitimately do to light up the area.

Okay, so the baddy uses darkness. The spell says that it drops the light level by one step, but also says that mundane light sources don't increase the light level in the area, and that neither do magical light sources unless they're higher level than darkness (as per another FAQ, this is the case even if the light source itself is outside the radius). The FAQ clarifies this to mean that when darkness is activated, you first remove all non-contributing light sources from the equation in the area, defaulting to "ambient natural light", which the FAQ identifies as things like the sun, moon, stars, etc. Then you take that light level and drop it by one step (to a minimum of "dark", not "supernaturally dark".

So if the lighting conditions without any torches or fires or anything would be dim or lower, then the area of darkness will be dark.

The PCs' options, then, are these:
1) Have/acquire darkvision, or
2) Have a light source of a higher level than darkness.
Note that *caster* level never matters.

Daylight is 3rd-level, but has a special clause that, regardless of level, anywhere that it overlaps with magical darkness results in mutual negation in the area such that the "otherwise prevailing" light conditions (note: not the same "ambient natural light" as in the FAQ - this is different) are restored. This means - at the least - that darkness' effects of suppressing light sources and dropping levels by 1 are negated (otherwise, you wouldn't be returning to "otherwise prevailing" lighting conditions). You'll have to decide for yourself whether "darkness doesn't stack" is also negated by an overlap with daylight.

You'll also have to decide for yourself whether daylight's reference to overlapping with "magical darkness" refers to any magically-generated area of darkness, or rather to a level of darkness that is magical (i.e., "supernaturally dark" conditions generated by deeper darkness).

Finally, you'll have to decide for yourself what happens when they have a higher-level light source (whether that's a heightened light spell of some sort, or daylight if you rule that its overlappy thing only applies to supernaturally-dark areas). You either:
A) Finish applying darkness (including the 1-step drop) and THEN apply the light source (for a final light level equal to what the light source provides), or
B) Add the light source to the equation first, and THEN drop the light level by one step (for a final light level one step lower than what the light source provides).

Oh, one last thing: make sure you understand what "counters and dispels" means, or more importantly, what it doesn't mean. It does not mean anything that has to do with the spells' areas, ever. It has to do with counterspelling or casting to dispel, both of which are restricted to the spell's range of "touch".

[thejeff]

Jiggy, does that mean that mundane sources of light work within the overlap of Darkness and Daylight? Darkness + Daylight + torch = Normal Light?

Also, a second Darkness spell in the same area would still be negated by Daylight, correct?

All assuming that "magical darkness" does not just mean "supernaturally dark".

[Jiggy]

thejeff wrote:

Jiggy, does that mean that mundane sources of light work within the overlap of Darkness and Daylight? Darkness + Daylight + torch = Normal Light?

As I understand it, yes.

Quote:

Also, a second Darkness spell in the same area would still be negated by Daylight, correct?

That's one of those things I listed that the GM needs to decide on, but my stance is that additional darkness effects would still be negated in the overlap with daylight.

[David Bowles]

And, yes, its a bit scary that GMs have to rule on all that. Especially when many GMs don't even understand the stuff that they *shouldn't* be ruling on with the lighting question.