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Runeclaw
2010-01-14, 01:27 AM
This spell seems to contradict itself. It seems to either negate all normal and magical darkness, or to do nothing at all. I assume its the first? But then it says that it doesn't...?


The subject of this spell gains the ability to see normally in natural and magical darkness, although it does not otherwise improve the subject’s ability to see in natural dark or shadowy conditions. The subject ignores the miss chance due to lack of illumination other than total darkness.

Kallisti
2010-01-14, 01:30 AM
It lets you see normally, but does not otherwise improve it. So you get normal vision and nothing else. It gives you no See Invisibility, no bonus to Spot, and does not make you see into the infrared spectrum. Of course, it wouldn't do that anyway, but now it's explicitly stated it doesn't.

Yeah, WotC needs better editors like that.

Zaq
2010-01-14, 01:33 AM
I, too, would be interested in knowing what this spell actually does, or at least hearing some other opinions on it.

The closest I've been able to guess is that if you already have darkvision, it lets that darkvision work in magical darkness, but frankly, that doesn't seem right, so I've always ignored it.

Also, it's a first level spell. Darkvision is a second level spell. Aside from the duration, this seems to be a better spell, if we just interpret it as letting you see in whatever darkness you please. That, too, seems unlikely.

I really have no idea.

Soterion
2010-01-14, 01:37 AM
The last line seems to imply that you still have to make a spot check against darkness when your surroundings are in total darkness, while Darkvision allows you to see in total darkness up to sixty feet. That's my reading, anyway.

SethFahad
2010-01-14, 02:16 AM
The last line seems to imply that you still have to make a spot check against darkness when your surroundings are in total darkness, while Darkvision allows you to see in total darkness up to sixty feet. That's my reading, anyway.

I'd second that.

Dimers
2010-01-14, 10:01 PM
I can't imagine a meaning for that paragraph that saves it from "horribly badly worded" status. My best guess, based on the last sentence and the fact that it's only level 1, is that it's intended to negate any level of darkness other than "total". The spell darkness only provides a shadowy area, as of 3.5, so you can see through that, but you can't see any better than normal in nonmagical complete darkness.

Foryn Gilnith
2010-01-14, 10:10 PM
You can see perfectly in shadowy illumination (edge of a torch, a Darkness spell) but cannot see in complete darkness (anything outside the torch's 60'-ish light radius).

It might also add color to Darkvision.

Runeclaw
2010-01-15, 07:19 PM
Many people seem to be saying it lets you see in "dim lighting" or "shadows" but not in total darkness.

My only complaint is that while that might be a pretty good stab at what they meant (hard to know), its not at all what they said (and it would have been easy to say that). But what they said made no sense, so I suppose there's a limit to how much weight I can give that.

Looking at the text, however, and interpreting it as literally as possible...

The subject of this spell gains the ability to see normally in natural and magical darkness [clear - and awesome. Explicilty refers to darkness rather than shadows or dim light and explicitly mentions both magical and natural darkness.], although it does not otherwise improve the subject’s ability to see in natural dark or shadowy conditions [adds no new meaning to the first half of the sentence. Seems to indicate that other than letting you see "normally" it doesn't improve your ability to see in darkness. i.e. your vision in darkness is equal to, but no greater than, your normal vision. There would, of course, have been no reason to assume anything else. A very odd clause but, interpreted literally, doesn't actually limit, reduce, or restrict the impact of the first half of the sentence.]. The subject ignores the miss chance due to lack of illumination [redundant, as this could have been assumed based on being able to "see normally", but not an entirely unreasonable clarification] other than total darkness [an out-of-the blue limitation that makes little sense juxtaposed with the core mechanic from the first sentence. This is obviously the source of the idea that it counters "shadowy" or "dim" illumination but not total darkness. This idea is still really not consistent, however, with the first half of the first sentence (which clearly allows you to "see normally in darkness") Note that at least in Pathfinder, lighting conditions better than total darkness are referred to as "dim light" and not any kind of "darkness" - so therefore there is no category of darkness other than "total darkness" - I'm not sure if the same is true in 3.5, I'm away from my PHB and I'm having trouble locating the relevant section of d20srd.org)].

Taken literally, then, I read it as "subject gains the ability to see normally in natural and magical darkness, except that they still suffer a 50% miss chance in total darkness" (but can otherwise see normally - so I guess you'd be able to target squares okay).

The idea of suffering a 50% miss chance despite being able to see normally seems contradictory, but that's what the crunchy mechanical bits of the description (first half of first sentence and last half of second sentence) seems to say when I really analyze it. And, you know, I'd take it at that point, despite having trouble wrapping my head around what it was actually doing.