Sunlight & Wall of Force

[Lammermoor]

Hi everyone,

I have a quick question that I'm asking here in an attempt to avoid a big argument in my Wednesday session. It's fairly simple. Does Wall of Force block sunlight?

I'll give two examples.

1. Wall of force captures a Vampire and the party's paladin approaches the hemisphere and turns on his Sun Blade. Does the vampire eventually die of sunlight damage?

2. At dusk, a giant wall of force is used to block the sun for the party's Duergar and Drow so they don't have disadvantage on their attacks. Is this possible?

Thank you for your time.

[TheFarReach]

Since the wall is invisible, I would assume it doesn't block light. Therefore, yes to the first question, and no to the second.

[Mellack]

Being invisible, it is like having a sheet of unbreakable glass. Sunlight should go right through it.

[Saeviomage]

You could state that whatever it is about sunlight that damages a vampire is blocked by the wall of force, while normal light isn't, leading to the answers of No and Yes.

Alternately you could state the exact opposite: that it's the light which damages the vampire, while there's some other thing blocked by the wall of force that negates the daylight penalties.

My personal choice would be the former: the intent of wall of force is to block harmful things, but let you see, and the daylight penalties of underdark races seem squarely positioned as "It's really bright here".

[Alejandro]

Sunlight should pass through it.

The argument I once witnessed was using Wall of Force to stop a big cloud of poison gas. Since it worked to stop that, the caster then wanted to kill targets by catching them in a Wall of Force sphere for ten minutes and suffocating them, arguing air did not pass through it, and resulting in a calculation of how much air was within the sphere, etc etc.

[Arial Black]

"An invisible wall of force springs into existence.....Nothing can physically pass through the wall"

'Invisible' means that light passes through it. Since we know light can pass through it, and nothing 'physical' can pass through it, then the game treats light as non-physical for this purpose.

'Sunlight' is 'light' that comes from a sun. All sunlight is light, but not all light is sunlight.

Light goes through the wall, therefore sunlight passes through the wall.

There is nothing in the spell description that suggests that light passing through the wall is changed in any way; that sunlight stops being sunlight.

[ThurlRavenscrof]

"An invisible wall of force springs into existence.....Nothing can physically pass through the wall"

'Invisible' means that light passes through it. Since we know light can pass through it, and nothing 'physical' can pass through it, then the game treats light as non-physical for this purpose.

'Sunlight' is 'light' that comes from a sun. All sunlight is light, but not all light is sunlight.

Light goes through the wall, therefore sunlight passes through the wall.

There is nothing in the spell description that suggests that light passing through the wall is changed in any way; that sunlight stops being sunlight.

Agree. If light couldn't pass through the wall, you wouldn't be able to see objects through the wall. Since seeing objects is nothing more than light being reflected off an object and into your eye

[sir_argo]

I think sunlight would pass through a wall of force, but any magical effect from light, such as the damage from a Sunburst spell, would get blocked. Note that the light from the Sunburst spell would still get through, just not the damage. This would mean that if I cast Daylight on one side of a Wall of Force, the light would extend through the wall of force for 60' bright +60' dim. However, if someone casts darkness on the other side of the Wall of Force, it would block the light. Normally, the Daylight spell would dispel the darkness, but that magical effect from the Daylight spell would be blocked by the Wall of Force.