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As the subject states only here's an example:
Two humans are in a cave. They are 80' from each other and each has a lit torch but otherwise there are no light sources. Each human can see 20' around them, and they can see through the darkness to see each other and the other's 20' radius of torch light. Seems easy, right?
Now, replace the humans with drow (darkvision 120'). Each has a lit torch. But this time somebody cast deeper darkness in the middle (60' radius - lowers light 2 levels). Their own torchlight gets reduced from normal light down two steps to regular darkness which doesn't bother the drow but they cannot see beyond the 20' radius of the torches which is now considered magical darkness. Can they see through the magical darkness to see each other?
In other words does magical darkness work like a silence spell where nothing passes through the affected area or more like the human example above?
Thanks in advance for your responses.
Can not, nothing can see through magical darkness, Tremor sense or such would help thou.
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No, it does not function like silence. If you read the spell description, the only affected items are the lighting levels of squares. The light sources themselves are not affected, just the light levels that are created by them.
Two drow 80 feet from each other, with a 40 foot diameter globe of darkness in the middle will have no problem seeing each other. They will not be able to see anything inside the globe.
Think of it as the darkness line of spells increasing the absorption quality (ie. reducing the ability to reflect light) of all substances inside the spell area, not as it intercepting and destroying the photons that go through it.
edit: changed the spell to darkness so that the paragraph worked. Deeper darkness makes the entire situation moot.
Two drow 80 feet from each other, with a 60 foot diameter globe of deeper darkness in the middle will have no problem seeing each other. They will not be able to see anything inside the globe.
Well, the deeper darkness spell has a radius of 60 feet (or a diameter of 120') so they both are in the globe. Does this change your answer?
Just trying to clarify.
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Whoops. Assume my response was for darkness (with the wrong radius). For deeper darkness, both drow are inside the globe, and, as such, can't see each other since their torches don't raise the lighting level inside the spell area.
Remember that nonmagical light sources can't raise the light level of squares inside darkness and deeper darkness spells.
Pathfinder rules have actually made light issues easier to understand if just remember that everything is relative to the being that is doing the viewing.
In the case with the drow they can still see in the 20 foot area of Darkness around them (torchlight makes Darkness of underground rise to Normal Light, but Deeper Darkness drops back two levels to Darkness). Darkvision can see through Darkness.
They cannot see through the 40 foot gap of Supernatural Darkness between them (torchlight makes Darkness of underground rise to Dim Light, but Deeper Darkness drops back two levels to Supernatural Darkness). Darkvision cannot see through Supernatural Darkness.
This is also true for beings using Stealth and such. A being cannot use Stealth while being observed so it is hard to sneak up on a character with Darkvision without some other means of Concealment or Cover.
Hide in Plain Sight also will usually not work against a character with Darkvision because of the relative nature of vision. Hide in Plain Sight usually requires the user to be within 10 feet of Dim Light or Darkness. However, a being with Darkvision ignores Dim Light or Darkness within the radius of the Darkvision. So, the HiPS character would have to be 110 feet away from a drow assuming that beyond their 120 foot darkvision is Dim Light or Darkness.
It seems confusing but you always need to look at both the target's circumstances and the viewer's perspective.
Trust me when I tell you, it has been ruled that Low Light Vision and Darkvision do NOTHING to stop a Shadowdancer from hiding from you even 5' away as long as he is within 10' of Dim Light as the base, not as the viewer perceives him.
Trust me when I tell you, it has been ruled that Low Light Vision and Darkvision do NOTHING to stop a Shadowdancer from hiding from you even 5' away as long as he is within 10' of Dim Light as the base, not as the viewer perceives him.
Oh I know and I trust you 100% as I have been in those conversations before. It breaks down to each side saying that the other is viewing RAW as RAI, etc.
I avoid those conversations and, when I DM, I give my players fair warning of how I view Light rules (no pun intended).
No, this time an official ruling was made.
As far as I can tell, the question basically boils down to "does magical darkness block line of sight" (setting aside the bit where darkness prevents nonmagical light from increasing the light level, and taking the question as I think it was intended)
I can find nothing indicating that it does. If a darkness spell is present, it will hamper your ability to see things within it but not things past it.
As far as I can tell, the question basically boils down to "does magical darkness block line of sight" (setting aside the bit where darkness prevents nonmagical light from increasing the light level, and taking the question as I think it was intended)
I can find nothing indicating that it does. If a darkness spell is present, it will hamper your ability to see things within it but not things past it.
To determine whether your target has concealment from your ranged attack, choose a corner of your square. If any line from this corner to any corner of the target's square passes through a square or border that provides concealment, the target has concealment.Read literally, that says that if darkness provides concealment, it provides concealment to things behind it.
With this reading you don't even have to be dealing with magical darkness. If its night time, and someone 100' away is walking around with a lit torch my character won't be able to see them. The squares in-between us provide him concealment. LOL
As far as I can tell, the question basically boils down to "does magical darkness block line of sight" (setting aside the bit where darkness prevents nonmagical light from increasing the light level, and taking the question as I think it was intended)
I can find nothing indicating that it does. If a darkness spell is present, it will hamper your ability to see things within it but not things past it.
To determine whether your target has concealment from your ranged attack, choose a corner of your square. If any line from this corner to any corner of the target's square passes through a square or border that provides concealment, the target has concealment.Read literally, that says that if darkness provides concealment, it provides concealment to things behind it.
I applaud your rules fu, sir, but counter with my own.
Dark squares do not actually provide concealment in their own right. Instead, a creature in an area of darkness has concealment. Compare:
Undergrowth: Vines, roots, and short bushes cover much of the ground in a forest. A space covered with light undergrowth costs 2 squares of movement to move into, and provides concealment.
In an area of dim light, a character can see somewhat. Creatures within this area have concealment (20% miss chance in combat) from those without darkvision or the ability to see in darkness.
No square that "provides concealment" in the second version. Thus, while an undergrowth square provides concealment to things behind it, a dark square does not provide concealment to lighted things behind it, because it does not actually "provide concealment" as a game rules term.
A subtler distinction, I know, moreso than I would usually like to draw when parsing rules text, but sometimes subtle distinctions must be drawn when the alternative would maintain that a human outside on a normal, nonmagical night cannot see a torch 50 ft away because the intervening darkness conceals it.
I don't know if that is enough Coriat, but I like your line of thinking. It makes a lot more sense.
In the 3.0 or 3.5 book Underdark (I think) it gave the rule that you could see in an area of a light source up to 10 times away from that source. So this meant that you could see someone standing next to a candle (dim light) if you were 50' away. I always thought that was a good rule of thumb.
Since the supernatural darkness emanates from where it is cast (because you can completely cover the source to negate it), it clearly is a magical effect so any real world comparisons will fail. Real world darkness is just an absence of light, after all. Because of this I'd say you cannot see what is on the other side of a deeper darkness sphere.
I would agree with Coriat in the case of natural darkness, where it would not provide concealment behind it.
Can not, nothing can see through magical darkness, Tremor sense or such would help thou.
See in Darkness(SU) can see through magical darkness, but it isn't likely for a PC to ever get it.
As at least a person has eluded to already: I think the OP's question is something which requires his hypothetical scenario to be modified.
Yes, I didn't realize that the spell negated the torches altogether so my bad on that. So back the drow outside the spell effect and then ask yourself if they can see each other.
The original question still puzzles me, though. I'm guessing there is no definitive answer - only various GM's interpretations.
I run it like how Serum describes it: Darkness only has an effect within it's area. You can see through it fine, you just can't see in it. It's how the spell is worded and it's simply easier to handle that way, as well.
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I run it like how Serum describes it: Darkness only has an effect within it's area. You can see through it fine, you just can't see things in it. It's how the spell is worded and it's simply easier to handle that way, as well.
Bolded my addition. You can see things that are outside of the darkness even when you are in it. You cannot see things that are within the darkness, even when you are outside it.
Right. Yes.
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[Warning: I'm not a rules expert]
Let me see if I understand what you all are saying.
A wizard flies up into the air on an overcast day (normal light, but not bright), casts Deeper Darkness, and suddenly she is surrounded by a sphere of darkness (-2 light levels). I don't have darkvision, so I can't see her anymore. So far so good. But a bird flies behind her, maybe 70' back, outside the sphere of darkness. You all are saying that, as an observer on the ground, the sphere of darkness never blocks my line of sight with the bird, even when it passes behind the wizard and her sphere?
How can I both not see into the darkness yet see through it? What you're describing is more like a light sensitive invisibility. I know we're talking about magic, but to be able to clearly see an object behind the darkness doesn't seem internally consistent.
Like I said, I'm not a rules expert, so by the rules, it may be so. It just seems so illogical that it leads to more paradoxes than just saying it's a big opaque sphere.
Trust me when I tell you, it has been ruled that Low Light Vision and Darkvision do NOTHING to stop a Shadowdancer from hiding from you even 5' away as long as he is within 10' of Dim Light as the base, not as the viewer perceives him.Yeah, let's not go through that again.
Yes, pretty please. I was just an observer in that last thread, and even I feel like I got beat up in it.
Let me see if I understand what you all are saying.
A wizard flies up into the air on an overcast day (normal light, but not bright), casts Deeper Darkness, and suddenly she is surrounded by a sphere of darkness (-2 light levels). I don't have darkvision, so I can't see her anymore. So far so good. But a bird flies behind her, maybe 70' back, outside the sphere of darkness. You all are saying that, as an observer on the ground, the sphere of darkness never blocks my line of sight with the bird, even when it passes behind the wizard and her sphere?
How can I both not see into the darkness yet see through it?
You can see into the darkness. You just cannot see what is in the darkness. How you can do this is that that is how darkness works. You can see the bird past the darkness because it is illuminated, just as if something were shining a spotlight on a bird at night. In fact, something is shining a spotlight on it at night, there's just a ton of spotlights shining down through the night all around (these spotlights are collectively called daylight), except on the spell area.
It is complicating to imagine this because in our real life environment, a daytime shadow is always diluted by light bouncing off nearby objects and into the shadowy area. Especially for someone flying in midair, where even if something cast a shadow between the flyer and the sun he's getting hit by reflected light from all directions, so one's imagination expects such a flyer to still be visible.
However, for an example of a flyer (or more properly orbiter) which can avoid some of that problems... (if only because it's far enough away that the reflected light is less significant) I wonder if it would be helpful to imagine a total lunar eclipse.
Does the Earth's shadow block line of sight? No... there's no actual visible opaque shadow interceding between you and the Moon. You just can't see the Moon, because it's dark.
Neither is there some opaque shadow interceding between you and the wizard high in the sky. You just can't see him, because he's dark. He doesn't need an eclipse to deilluminate himself, magic does so instead, but otherwise it's basically similar.
And much like you could see the stars around an eclipsed celestial body even though they are behind a shadow, you can see the bird even though it is behind a shadow, as long as the bird is itself illuminated.
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Imagine a football field at night with both ends light up like bright light. You are standing at one end and can see someone standing at the other end. He or she starts walking towards you. He or she disappears when they leave the light. He or she can still see you just fine.
After a minute or so, as he or she enters your light, you can see them again.
You could not see into the darkness in the middle of the field, but you could see through it.
Batman does this all the time.
As the spells only change the level of light, I am inclined to believe they can still be seen through. If not, you could not see out of shadows without a penalty unless you had special vision.
Batman would be pissed.
If someone is standing in a dark area, and there is a bright area behind them, you can see them as a silhouette.
I would rule that the magical darkness destroys all photons entering the area, so you can't see anything on the far side.
I know we try and use real life scenarios to understand these issues, but please remember that it is a game mechanic and that is all. That means that if there is an area of darkness between you and I on the battlemap in Pathfinder, we each have concealment to each other as any attack or spell will have to pass through that area of concealment. That is how it is explained in game mechanic terms, however, I see how it could be argues the other way as neither of the characters are actually standing inside the concealment.
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You could only not see through it if the darkness had a 'physical' element to it, like smoke. Example -
A stream of smoke billows out from the fire, forming a choking cloud that spreads 20 feet in all directions and lasts for 1 round per caster level. All sight, even darkvision, is ineffective in or through the cloud.
Darkness and Deeper Darkness would be more akin to a shadow swallowing up the area. It does not create a 'wall' of darkness and block line of sight to things on the other side.
I know we try and use real life scenarios to understand these issues, but please remember that it is a game mechanic and that is all. That means that if there is an area of darkness between you and I on the battlemap in Pathfinder, we each have concealment to each other as any attack or spell will have to pass through that area of concealment. That is how it is explained in game mechanic terms,
No, this line of reasoning was summarily dismissed earlier in the thread.
however, I see how it could be argues the other way as neither of the characters are actually standing inside the concealment.
This is the correct way to think about it.
[Warning: I'm not a rules expert]
Let me see if I understand what you all are saying.
A wizard flies up into the air on an overcast day (normal light, but not bright), casts Deeper Darkness, and suddenly she is surrounded by a sphere of darkness (-2 light levels). I don't have darkvision, so I can't see her anymore. So far so good. But a bird flies behind her, maybe 70' back, outside the sphere of darkness. You all are saying that, as an observer on the ground, the sphere of darkness never blocks my line of sight with the bird, even when it passes behind the wizard and her sphere?
How can I both not see into the darkness yet see through it? What you're describing is more like a light sensitive invisibility. I know we're talking about magic, but to be able to clearly see an object behind the darkness doesn't seem internally consistent.
Like I said, I'm not a rules expert, so by the rules, it may be so. It just seems so illogical that it leads to more paradoxes than just saying it's a big opaque sphere.
My position on how the darkness line of spells works is that every sentence that describes the function of the spell includes the qualifier phrase, "in the area". Everything about the spell darkness indicates it only affects within its area of effect. It also doesn't state anything like it "obscures sight" like how obscuring mist does. The spell doesn't say that it blocks light, even. It simply states that it "causes the illumination level in the area to drop".
Imagine three rooms, all arranged in a line, separated by doorways. The first and the last room are lit but the middle room is dark. You can't see things in the dark room but you can certainly see through the darkness into the lit room just fine.
In the case of your sphere of deeper darkness and the bird flying behind it, yes... It would look pretty surreal. It would look like there was a shadow being cast by... Nothing. It'd be troubling to look at--possibly unsettling. Not only would you see the bird flying behind the sphere of darkness, you'd see the sky and the trees and the mountains way in the distance. But that wizard who was only moments earlier clearly visible, has disappeared into the shadows not but a stones throw away.
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My trouble with this is backlighting.
If there is a sphere of darkness between two lit rooms, and you rule that the darkness is transparent (you can see things on the other side), then I actually can logically outline the creatures inside the darkness effect.
The reasoning is this: I cannot see the creatures inside the darkness, sure. If I look down at them from the ceiling, all I'll see is the textureless and colorless black of the creatures, the floor, and the rest of the room's contents, all indistinguishable from each other.
However, if I look from a lit room across the darkness effect and toward the other lit room, we have a nice backlight. Now, I still can't see the creatures -- they're still dark and colorless -- they ARE standing directly between me and, say, a well-lit white wall. Essentially, by prowling around a darkness spell and looking to see where creatures interrupt my view of another lit area, I can start crudely picking out where creatures are and targeting attacks.
In case that's unclear, let's go back to the football field example. Suppose there are big lights lighting either side of a football field, but they've left a completely dark area in the middle.
A person sitting in the benches at the side can clearly see football players clustered around each goalpost. If a player walks into the middle of the field, they completely disappear into the darkness.
However, suppose you're one of the players at a goalpost, and a player from the other side walks into the middle of the field. You'd lose all ability to distinguish his jersey, its colors, his fine dimensions -- but he's still obstruct your view if you walked across your end of the field. You could totally target a crossbow in his direction if you had one.
And maybe that's okay with some people. I don't like it. I like more of a solid~, cloying darkness
And I meant to include -- this is even more egregious with the flying mage in a darkness effect. He's the only thing that would be obscured, so ... you see a perfect black cut-out of the mage backlit by a blue sky? I dunno. Just kind of weird to me.
Rules wise, you can no longer pinpoint the target. The player would say, "I target the creature I last saw in that *points* square." and the GM then rolls for 50% concealment. (Edit: The player, if they're good about not metagaming, might even be wrong as the intended target may have moved to a different square.)
Regarding verisimilitude, if a player balked and really really really wanted some sort of "real-life" description of what was actually occurring (as if that really mattered in a magical fantasy world) is the 2-D silhouette stymies your 3-D spatial reasoning. It's really best to not think about things too hard since you're trying to play a game here.
You can't pinpoint the target between you and the light. All you could hope to do is locate the absense of light between you and the light. You would not be able to tell distance either. For instance, if you were reading a sign on the other side of the field and someone stepped in front of it, you would know that they are between you because you can not read the sign, but you still could not see them. The two are distinctly different.
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If an ogre is standing in the middle of darkness, and you can see things on the other side of darkness, and there is a well-lit white wall on the other side of darkness, then I have a really hard time imagining that have nothing in the way of pinpointing the creature. Maybe it makes sense for crossbows, which I aim up or down depending on distance to the target -- after all, in this darkness I don't know if the creature is a human standing 10 feet away, or a horrible giant standing 60 feet away -- but with rays, which presumably travel as a ray, just aiming directly at the target could work.
Now that I think about this, I don't think my problem is specifically with darkness ... I think it's targeting a square with ranged attacks instead of a direction. Logically, if there is a 5' wide and 5'tall dark hallway and I know somebody is in it, all I'd have to do is fire down the middle and I'd have a chance of hitting them. But RAW, you have to choose the right square to have even the 50% chance.
Hmmm. Maybe this is part of why I like the tangible darkness spheres. But another reason is that sound doesn't pass through silence, and I do so love consistency with my magical effects.
If an ogre is standing in the middle of darkness, and you can see things on the other side of darkness, and there is a well-lit white wall on the other side of darkness, then I have a really hard time imagining that have nothing in the way of pinpointing the creature. Maybe it makes sense for crossbows, which I aim up or down depending on distance to the target -- after all, in this darkness I don't know if the creature is a human standing 10 feet away, or a horrible giant standing 60 feet away -- but with rays, which presumably travel as a ray, just aiming directly at the target could work.
Now that I think about this, I don't think my problem is specifically with darkness ... I think it's targeting a square with ranged attacks instead of a direction. Logically, if there is a 5' wide and 5'tall dark hallway and I know somebody is in it, all I'd have to do is fire down the middle and I'd have a chance of hitting them. But RAW, you have to choose the right square to have even the 50% chance.
Precisely. But them's the rules.
Hmmm. Maybe this is part of why I like the tangible darkness spheres. But another reason is that sound doesn't pass through silence, and I do so love consistency with my magical effects.
Feel free to run it in a way that makes sense for your players in your games, but be prepared for fun questions like, "If darkness blocks sight, then does it block light? Doesn't that mean the darkness casts a shadow?"
How to start an argument at our table: "How does darkness work?". GM fiat when it happens. Everything else is a waste of time (though some really fun arguments).
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If an ogre is standing in the middle of darkness, and you can see things on the other side of darkness, and there is a well-lit white wall on the other side of darkness, then I have a really hard time imagining that have nothing in the way of pinpointing the creature. Maybe it makes sense for crossbows, which I aim up or down depending on distance to the target -- after all, in this darkness I don't know if the creature is a human standing 10 feet away, or a horrible giant standing 60 feet away -- but with rays, which presumably travel as a ray, just aiming directly at the target could work.
Now that I think about this, I don't think my problem is specifically with darkness ... I think it's targeting a square with ranged attacks instead of a direction. Logically, if there is a 5' wide and 5'tall dark hallway and I know somebody is in it, all I'd have to do is fire down the middle and I'd have a chance of hitting them. But RAW, you have to choose the right square to have even the 50% chance.
Hmmm. Maybe this is part of why I like the tangible darkness spheres. But another reason is that sound doesn't pass through silence, and I do so love consistency with my magical effects.
Your situation isn't limited to darkness spells, though. This will happen in nonmagical pathfinder situations as well, if set up similar to your football example. Areas of nonmagical darkness don't destroy photons to remove any back-lighting, either, and yet characters still don't see silhouettes.
The Pathfinder system doesn't deal with the specifics of photon pathing at all. It just has lighting levels for individual squares, and light sources that affect said lighting levels. It's an abstraction.
I gotta question: Can the person who cast the spell see through a darkness or deeper darkness radius?
I gotta question: Can the person who cast the spell see through a darkness or deeper darkness radius?
Nope.
Kinda makes that spell useless, doesn't it?
I'd be very curious to see developer input on this question. I can *sort of* see the argument that it doesn't block line of sight, but not really (perhaps there's a ball of darkness in my view?)
I can't get past the backlighting of obstructions within the darkness (and no - "it makes them invisible" is entirely outside the effects of the spell). Imagine a 200' room, normal lighting, white walls, and deeper darkness in the middle. Then a Great Wyrm Red Dragon appears in the center of the room. You can't see *that*? You can't get an outline of huge wings, craning neck?
It would be immensely cinematic if you could. But on the other side, two PC's halfway around the sphere of darkness could pinpoint any creature inside just by pointing where they see its shadow. Has heavy implications for how blind a creature would be inside darkness as well.
Bravo to those arguing for this, for providing very clear examples. I'd never even considered that full or supernatural darkness could be "see-through".
Kinda makes that spell useless, doesn't it?
Its situationally useful.
If you have darkvision and you cast regular darkness, you can see and they can't. If you have darkvision and they have daylight , they cancel each other out and (underground) it goes dark without being able to be lit up again.
Some creatures can see through magical darkness ( a pfs favorite tactic)
Some tactics don't need to see: ie fireball.