Links:
- Mystic
- Shadow Connection
My question is about the Mystic's Shadow connection, specifically its Harmony effect, and whether or not the concealment applies to low-light vision, darkvision, and/or greater darkvision. The harmony description is quoted below, with the pertinent text in bold:
When you Transfer Vitality, the target's shadow darkens and swells, reducing bright light within a 10-foot emanation of the target to dim light. This is a form of magical darkness and can overcome non-magical light sources or attempt to counteract magical light as described on page 299. The target becomes concealed while in this dim light and can use the concealed condition to Hide. This lasts until the end of your next turn.
The RAW seems clear enough: if you are in the dim light created by the harmony, you are concealed. Period. I just want to check, are the RAW the RAI?
Links:
- Darkvision and Greater Darkvision
- Darkness (spell)
- Shadow Connection
Thank you for the quick reply, I think what you suggested goes a long way toward clearing things up.
A creature with darkvision or greater darkvision can see perfectly well in areas of darkness and dim light, though such vision is in black and white only. Some forms of magical darkness, such as a 4th-rank darkness spell, block normal darkvision. A creature with greater darkvision, however, can see through even these forms of magical darkness.
The bold text suggests:
- There is a possibility that magical darkness behaves differently than mundane darkness
- Magical darkness behaves the same as mundane darkness unless an exception is specifically defined in the source text
- Greater Darkvision ignores the effects of magical darkness by default
Assuming RAI is that the concealment is a normal effect of the dim light, it is possible that the shadow harmony effect could behave differently than mundane dim light. However, since no exception is specifically mentioned in the source text, the default effect is the same as if the dim light were non-magical (i.e. it is ignored by low-light vision, darkvision, and greater darkvision).
The playtest version Justnobodyfqwl mentioned is from the third errata:
Add the following sentence to shadow connection's harmony: “Even creatures with darkvision (but not greater darkvision) can barely see through the darkness and they treat targets seen through the darkness as concealed.”
It's possible that the errata made it too strong, but I worry that not having the errata makes it too weak. 89%* of creatures listed in AoN have low-light vision or darkvision. Some portion of the other 11% have some other sense which makes concealment redundant anyhow. If Starfinder 2e ends up with anything like that same distribution, then the shadow harmony seems like it would be fairly underwhelming. I hope they do add some errata later to bring it up to something reasonable.
* I got this number by searching the total list of monsters on AoN, filtering once by darkvision, then by low-light vision, and dividing the sum by the total number of monsters
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
No, the perception and detection rules starting on p.424 go into more detail about dim light and darkness. Shadow connection doesn't say it works against darkvision, so we have to assume it functions as usual
I don't agree.
Darkvision defeats the normal effects of dim light, but the Shadow connection explicitly gives concealed as an additional effect, which Darkvision doesn't interact with at all.
If the intent is for someone with darkvision to bypass the concealment that sentence should be removed because that's just how dim light works normally.
I agree with Squiggit, dim light already grants concealment (unless darkvision or low light vision). I interpret the language as giving (1) dim light within 10' (which may or may not provide concealment to any and all creatures within that area, depending on opposing senses) and (2) independent concealment for the specific target of Transfer Vitality.