Darkvision and Magical Darkness interaction

[Ravien999]

So, going on a debate on this, I've realized there's some fuzzy lines when it comes to Darkvision and Magical Darkness, and it causes some abilities to be confusing when dealing with the vast majority of creatures that have darkvision.

In the Core Rulebook, darkness is only described in one way:

CRB wrote:

Darkness In darkness, creatures without darkvision effectively have the blinded condition (see page 273). Areas of darkness include an unlit chamber within a structure, most caverns, outside on a moonless night, or the surface of planets with distant or nonexistent stars. Unlike low-light vision and in areas of dim light, darkvision does not work exactly like normal vision in areas of darkness; rather, darkvision works only to a specified range and is in black and white.

Darkvision Darkvision is the ability to see with no light source at all, out to a range specified in the creature’s description. Darkvision is black and white only (colors cannot be discerned). It does not allow characters to see anything that they could not see otherwise— when a creature has darkvision, invisible objects and creatures are still invisible, and illusions are still visible as what they seem to be. Likewise, darkvision subjects a creature to gaze attacks normally (see the Starfinder Alien Archive). The presence of light does not affect darkvision.

Nowhere is a distinction made between darkness and total darkness except in Alien Archive, where there is a small distinction between Darkvision and See in Darkness which implies that darkness is not the same as magical darkness.

AA wrote:

Darkvision The creature can see out to the listed range with no light source at all. See page 263 of the Starfinder Core Rulebook.

See in Darkness The creature can see perfectly in darkness of any kind, including magical darkness

For even further confusion in the distinctions, Gloom Mote mentions that it forces dim light on an area, while the Mystic's Shadow Shroud does the same, but specifically mentions that Darkvision does not help against this. But then we have the Darksight Goggles, which specifically call out in their flavor that they were made for penetrating magical darkness, but only give Darkvision. Notably, enshrouding gloom which forces magical darkness to cover an enemy, which sounds nice, becomes completely ineffective against a large percentage of creatures if magical darkness is the same as regular darkness.

It feels like the larger rule intent is that darkvision should not be effective against magical darkness, but that some rules were written by people who believed differently, but that's just my interpretation.

In short, it would be nice to have a formal FAQ ruling on if Darkvision is thwarted by general magical darkness, or if magical darkness is just plain old ordinary darkness with a flavor word added.

[Claxon]

The context your missing is that in PF1 deeper darkness will stop regular darkvision from working, while See in Darkness will still work.

However, it appears that Starfinder doesn't have the deeper darkness spell, though I assume something probably works the same way and has a different name.

I don't think regular magical darkness stops regular darkvision, but I can't find anything stronger than regular darkness.

[Ravien999]

Claxon wrote:

The context your missing is that in PF1 deeper darkness will stop regular darkvision from working, while See in Darkness will still work.

However, it appears that Starfinder doesn't have the deeper darkness spell, though I assume something probably works the same way and has a different name.

I don't think regular magical darkness stops regular darkvision, but I can't find anything stronger than regular darkness.

Yeah, I've never played PF but coming from a 3.5 history, I assumed there might be something more that might do something, but without there being any context, it appears that the key of "magical" darkness is just a flavor text with the ways the rules handle it right now. The closest we have is the Mystic's shadow Shroud at this point, but it'd be great to get some clarity, because the Witchwarper's Enshouding gloom really feels as if it was created with the opposite of this in mind.

[Claxon]

Shadow Shroud is an example of something that Darkvision would fail against, but See in Darkness would continue working as you note.

It's not as widely applicable as something like Deeper Darkness but at least we have something to provide context.

I don't think see in Darkness sets the rules for Darkvision and how it functions, so I think the wording here about magical darkness was more an attempt to say "this ability always allows you to see in darkness no matter what kind of darkness it is" than as a suggestion that Darkvision doesn't work through normally created magical darkness, unless the specific ability specifies otherwise.

[Nefreet]

One thing I never quite got is why creatures with exceptional visual senses sometimes also possess inferior senses.

Androids have both low-light vision, and darkvision, yet darkvision should always allow you to see in low-light conditions.

Devils have both darkvision, and see in darkness, yet see in darkness should always allow you to see in mundane darkness.

Just makes me feel like a rule got left out somewhere.

I understand that low-light doesn't have a distance limitation like darkvision does, so that could explain androids, but it doesn't explain devils.

[Claxon]

Yeah, that is a weird thing I also don't understand.

Darkvision also doesn't let you see in color, so again low light vision is explaining by comparison, but See in Darkness is strictly better than Darkvision as far as I can tell.

[Nefreet]

Futureproofing? Maybe Deeper Darkness will be released at some point?

[Takhisis]

One thing of note is that the Witchwarper has a paradigm shift called Enshrouding Gloom, which creates magical darkness around an enemy and which also is banned in SFS. The fact Paizo banned this shift in SFS implies that Darkvision should NOT pierce magical darkness, as if it can pierce magical darkness it becomes rather weak/underpowered....meaning there would be no logical reason for Paizo to ban it in SFS. Considering the only other paradigm shifts to get a SFS ban, Hobble Creature and Unveil Reality, both are hard lock powers (one of which is also an at-will lockdown), this would imply that Enshrouding Gloom was also banned for being a basicly at-will lockdown power. If Darkvision can pierce magical darkness however, it goes from being a fairly powerful at-will lockdown power to a fairly weak ability that’s normally not worth taking, due to how many things have Darkvision. So if Darkvision being able to pierce magical darkness was Paizo’s intent, then Enshrouding Gloom has ZERO logical reason to be banned in SFS, since they never ban things for being too underpowered.

Just though I’d toss this out there to add to the discussion...

[Nefreet]

Takhisis wrote:

since they never ban things for being too underpowered.

While that's possible, I want to point out that the perceived usefulness of an ability is not the only consideration for restriction. There have indeed been myriad "underpowered" abilities that were restricted across PFS1, SFS and PFS2.

Campaign Leadership rarely tells us why something is restricted (and they've never once said something was "too powerful"), but HERE is a long list of possible reasons why an option may be restricted (permanently or otherwise).