by DM the DM | Sep 3, 2022
Darkness is a core design feature for Warlocks, but for a player to effectively leverage their class advantage both the player and DM must know, understand and implement the RAW surrounding darkness properly. What follows is a summary of the relevant RAW and a brief discussion of the implications of that RAW as relates to Warlocks in particular.
Darkness Spell:
Magical darkness spreads from a point you choose within range to fill a 15-foot radius Sphere for the Duration. The darkness spreads around corners. A creature with Darkvision can’t see through this darkness, and nonmagical light can’t illuminate it. If the point you choose is on an object you are holding or one that isn’t being worn or carried, the darkness emanates from the object and moves with it.
Devil’s Sight:
You can see normally in Darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.
PHB pg 183 “Vision and Light”:
“A heavily obscured area—such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage—blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition (see appendix A) when trying to see something in that area.”
Blinded Condition:
– A blinded creature can’t SEE and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight.
– Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s Attack rolls have disadvantage.
Unseen Attackers and Targets:
– When you attack a target that you can’t SEE, you have disadvantage on the attack roll.
– When a creature can’t SEE you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it.
Opportunity Attacks:
You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can SEE moves out of your reach.
Ranged Attacks in Close Combat:
When you make a ranged attack with a weapon, a spell, or some other means, you have disadvantage on the attack roll if you are within 5 feet of a hostile creature who can SEE you and who isn’t Incapacitated.
PHB p. 177 for Passive Perception penalty in dim light. PHB 183 for disadvantage on active Perception checks when in dim light
So to summarize….
A warlock with Devil Sight could cast darkness on himself, and then just walk up to people and:
-gain advantage on all attacks since no one can see him, and if he has rogue levels, also triggering sneak attack once per TURN.
-all attacks against him would have disadvantage, and if hidden would have to guess his actual location or fail automatically.
-can hide anywhere at any time, even while moving in the open.
-immunity to attacks of opportunity.
-may make range attacks in close combat without suffering disadvantage.
by DM the DM | Aug 30, 2022
by DM the DM
Playing D&D Rules as Written (RAW) just means sticking to the rules to the best of your ability. No different than if you were playing Monopoly. That’s it.
Playing RAW is EASIER, not harder than the alternatives. Many are daunted by the size of the rulebooks and afraid to play RAW because of it. This is an understandable error, but an error none-the-less.
The 5e D&D rules are challenging. They are long, complex, and not always well explained or laid out. Playing RAW does not mean you can’t make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes.
When playing RAW we seek out mistakes. It is a chance for us to learn and improve going forward, just as you would playing any other complex tabletop game.
The expectation that the DM must have an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules is absurd. The very best way for a DM to learn the rules is to play RAW with a group of players who all know the rules and can correct the DM when they make a mistake. The disposition between DM and players should always be a collaboration to follow the rules as best as possible, no different than a board game.
Sadly, the tone often becomes adversarial. This culture can be traced back to 1st edition and the prevalent attitude of “DM is God.” Known as Rule 0, it frequently tainted the play environment at the table. This toxic culture must be resoundingly rejected when DMing RAW, and a new culture of DM-Player collaboration explicitly adopted. (See sidebar “RAW Table Etiquette”)
For players and DMs alike, playing by RAW is far better than a DM trying to “wing it” or make up house rules, sometimes called “homebrew.”
Playing RAW allows everyone at the table to let the professional game designers do their job. Changing rules through homebrew, DM fiat or Rule 0 implies that the DM “knows better” than the game developers.
Let’s think about that.
The 5e rules have been carefully designed and play-tested by a very large, very smart professional development team. Crack open the first page of the Player’s Handbook and casually peruse the list of credits. Game design professionals working 40 hours per week, for years! Think about the thousands of hours of play testing and focus groups that have gone into the development of the 5e system.
Rarely do I encounter tabletop gamers who take it upon themselves to make house-rule changes to Settlers of Catan, Warhammer or Magic: The Gathering. Yet time and again I come across DMs that decide to toss out or change entire swaths of the D&D rules. For goodness sakes, WHY!?
I did not spend hundreds (thousands?) of dollars to buy all these books full of finely balanced and professionally tested rules, only to have some rank amateur DM with a shaky grasp of game design toss them out on an ill-considered whim. It is the Dunning-Kruger effect in overdrive. What hubris!
Having played D&D since the Red Box Basic in 1982, I can say with exuberance that the 5e rule-set is the best balanced and designed edition in D&D’s 40 year history. Like any complex system, 5e is a carefully tuned web of connections. A seemingly innocuous change in one area can trigger far reaching, unintended consequences elsewhere.
Here is a real-life example from one of our groups: A skilled player crafted an optimized paladin that fielded a very high AC. The novice DM became frustrated by “his” inability to hit the character (notice the DM’s creeping toxic adversariality). In a misguided attempt to increase the challenge he targeted the character with a lightening bolt but denied them a saving throw, asserting by DM fiat that it was a “touch attack” because… reasons.
It should go without saying that none of this was according to the rules. At first glance this may seem minor, but it actually has far reaching and unintended consequences for game balance.
Denying a saving throw to a lightning bolt is a massive rule change that fundamentally alters the nature of the spell, and the nature of spell casting in general. Observe:
A level 20 wizard with max int of 22 (including a +2 tome) wearing a Robe of the Archmagi up-casting Lightening Bolt as a 9th-level spell would have a spell save DC of 22 (8base+6prof+6int+2robe). An ancient blue dragon’s lightening breath has a dex save DC of 23.
Even the most powerful lightening bolt in the game, from Tiamat’s blue dragon head, has a DC 27 dex save. Removing a save all together effectively makes the save DC higher than 30, higher than 300, in fact the DC becomes infinite. Upon analysis, this innocuous little 5th level homebrew lightening bolt is more difficult to dodge than Tiamat’s herself, which is an absurd outcome.
But the unintended consequences to game balance are even more far reaching: removing the saving throw completely eliminates the ability of a level 20 rogue to use Evasion, which is a core feature of that class. Without even realizing it this DM has fundamentally crippled all tank and evasion character builds.
Thus, the casual hubris of a DM breaking RAW with a seemingly minor homebrew can have dramatic unintended consequences, rippling across the game, completely shattering the delicate play balance between the character classes and monster CR. Professional game designers are keenly equipped to detect and balance these effects. Everyone else… not so much.
The final lesson is resoundingly clear: if you are not a professional game designer with decades of experience, gobs of development money to pay for focus groups and a team of professional support staff to rival Wizards of the Coast, then YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS BREAKING THE RULES AS WRITTEN.
For the love of Goodness,
PLEASE. PLAY. RAW!
