A Darkness Party - fun, overpowered, any experience?

[Waazraath]

The PHB gave us the warlock invocation 'devil's sight', which was a nice combo with the Darkness spell, though often described as more theoretical optimization than practical, since it bothered the rest of the party. Then Xanathar's gave us the shadow sorcerer, which can see through magical darkness as well. Works nice together with the aforementioned warlock, but still aint a full party. But now Tasha's gives us the Astral Monk, which can see through magical darkness, the Blind Fighting fighting style which fighters, paladins and rangers can pick up, and anybody can pick up with a feat. Everybody can see (short range) through magical darkness.

What if you do some party optimization with this? It's pretty easy, pick (for instance) a Warlock (any) / Shadow Sorcerer / Astral Monk / BM Fighter with PAM/sentinel/Blindfighting (use it to prevent enemies leaving the area of magical darkness), and you have a major advantage in any encounter where enemies don't have blindsight or a similair feature (which is the vast majority of encounters).

I guess this will be overpowered in most purchased adventures, unless a DM specificly designs around it? Would it be fun? Or too much a one trick party and a gimmick, fun for a single session or short adventure but not for a campaigin?

Curious how the playground sees this. If anybody has experience with it, I'm curious how it played out!

[Kylar0990]

The PHB gave us the warlock invocation 'devil's sight', which was a nice combo with the Darkness spell, though often described as more theoretical optimization than practical, since it bothered the rest of the party. Then Xanathar's gave us the shadow sorcerer, which can see through magical darkness as well. Works nice together with the aforementioned warlock, but still aint a full party. But now Tasha's gives us the Astral Monk, which can see through magical darkness, the Blind Fighting fighting style which fighters, paladins and rangers can pick up, and anybody can pick up with a feat. Everybody can see (short range) through magical darkness.

What if you do some party optimization with this? It's pretty easy, pick (for instance) a Warlock (any) / Shadow Sorcerer / Astral Monk / BM Fighter with PAM/sentinel/Blindfighting (use it to prevent enemies leaving the area of magical darkness), and you have a major advantage in any encounter where enemies don't have blindsight or a similair feature (which is the vast majority of encounters).
I guess this will be overpowered in most purchased adventures, unless a DM specificly designs around it? Would it be fun? Or too much a one trick party and a gimmick, fun for a single session or short adventure but not for a campaigin?

Curious how the playground sees this. If anybody has experience with it, I'm curious how it played out!

Any character could also take Eldritch Adept and get Devil's Sight; it's one of the invocations with out a prerequisite so eligible for anyone to get from Eldritch Adept.

It my be kind of fun for the party to drop darkness on enemies then go to town. The lights comeback on and you walk away form a pile of bodies. You would probably want a few different players to have access to the Darkness spell for this.

[Waazraath]

Any character could also take Eldritch Adept and get Devil's Sight; it's one of the invocations with out a prerequisite so eligible for anyone to get from Eldritch Adept.


Ah, yeah, forgot to mention that, this is also an opportunity to gain the 'see through magical darkness' ability (requires spellcasting to take that feat though).

[Skylivedk]

It's bonkers. Especially for pre-written adventures.

I've tried it with:
Pure Hexblade
Barb 2/Druid X (Giant Scorpion) (former a revised ranger beast master).
Hexblade 2/Rogue X
Shadow sorcerer 2/Paladin X which later became a bard who didn't have any synergies.

The murder cloud was busted for both Tomb of Annihilation (our group apparently being the record on Reddit for completion at the time) and Rise of Tiamat.

The amount of encounters that went from dangerous to walk over meant that when the combo didn't work, we'd still have so many more resources than the scenario designers would have expected that it still turned out to be a walk in the park.

The Bard player often got bored though...

[J.C.]

Blindsight trumps. . . or am I missing something??

[Eldariel]

Moon Druid also works great. Also Wizards have always worked pretty well without vision if built for it: many of their good AOE CC and damage effects don't require sight so gaining second hand information on positioning (e.g. Bat familiar or teammate communicating it) suffices to hit your abilities (though this means you need to use something like Chill Touch or Firebolt as your attack cantrip, but due to range you'd have one anyways).

[Contrast]

Then Xanathar's gave us the shadow sorcerer, which can see through magical darkness as well.

Note that shadow sorcs can specifically only see through the magical darkness created when they cast the Darkness spell using their sorc points. If someone else casts Darkness, they cast Darkness using a spell slot or the magical darkness has some other source, they can't see through it.

[Unoriginal]

An All-Darkness party will be powerful, but only against opponents who:

-Can't retreat and change tactics

-Can't get help

-Can't figure the PCs' tactics

Most sapient enemies and a good share of non-sapient ones are not going to engage with people in the magic dark zone unless they don't have any other option. Which turns "fighting that group of enemies" into "that group of enemies stay out of range and blocks the group in other way, or call for reinforcement".

Remember that one of the main advantagesof adventurers is that they can dispatch groups of enemies in a couple dozen seconds, preventing the enemies from confronting them all at once. This is not going to happen if you announce your presence then gives the foes incentives to wait and regroup.

[Gignere]

I am surprised it was that effective doesn’t the enemies have any magical light source that are not spells.

Dispel magic or even an upcasted continual flame will counter the darkness strategy so not sure why the DMs didn’t adapt.

[someguy]

An All-Darkness party will be powerful, but only against opponents who:

-Can't retreat and change tactics

-Can't get help

-Can't figure the PCs' tactics

Most sapient enemies and a good share of non-sapient ones are not going to engage with people in the magic dark zone unless they don't have any other option. Which turns "fighting that group of enemies" into "that group of enemies stay out of range and blocks the group in other way, or call for reinforcement".

Remember that one of the main advantagesof adventurers is that they can dispatch groups of enemies in a couple dozen seconds, preventing the enemies from confronting them all at once. This is not going to happen if you announce your presence then gives the foes incentives to wait and regroup.

Yeah that could matter sometimes, but not much. The party casts darkness where and when they want, and enemies generally don’t know about their abilities. So enemies learn about darkness when they are suddenly inside of it. If they run, the party can harass them with advantage from inside the darkness.

It’s not like you casts darkness in the distance and holler “come over here and die”.

[Eldariel]

Darkness is easy to hide when active. Simply keeping the darkness-projecting item in a container such as a pouch and closing it when not fighting works, for instance.

[Bobthewizard]

Any character could also take Eldritch Adept and get Devil's Sight; it's one of the invocations with out a prerequisite so eligible for anyone to get from Eldritch Adept.

It my be kind of fun for the party to drop darkness on enemies then go to town. The lights comeback on and you walk away form a pile of bodies. You would probably want a few different players to have access to the Darkness spell for this.

The feat itself still has the "Prerequisite: Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature" so not everyone can take it, but most people can. Sadly, it doesn't work on shadow monks, who can cast darkness with Ki but don't have the spellcasting feature. They are stuck with the blindfighting feat.

[Thunderous Mojo]

The salient question I have is what does Devil's Sights:
You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.
.......truly mean?

A creature that lacks Darkvision, normally can't see through darkness be it magical or natural darkness. Now many groups run Devil's Sight as if it read:
"You can see normally in darkness , both magical and nonmagical, as if there was a source of bright light, to a distance of 120'"....of course the actual rule doesn't actually have that verbiage.

Parties reliant on Darkvision also have Disadvantage on sight based perception checks, due to dim light and likely can't see colors, due to the limitations of Darkvision. Back in 1e, when it was quite common to have infravision based parties, it was not uncommon to have DMs include critical information that was conveyed through color.

It is hard to exit the Dungeon of Deathtraps through the red door,(as Acererak's riddle stated), when everyone in the party sees only in greyscale.
Touch the wrong door and a wraith is released. There are 12 doors.
The room is a permanent zone of Darkness.

This is a real example, from "back in the day".

[Willie the Duck]

Blindsight trumps. . . or am I missing something??
That this was noted:

and you have a major advantage in any encounter where enemies don't have blindsight or a similair feature (which is the vast majority of encounters).

Anyways, the ability is powerful, right up until it is not. As noted, plenty of monsters can 'see' through it, and also plenty of encounters are structured that a 15' radius sphere of double-direction-vantage (players have advantage, opponents disadvantage) is simply not that big a threat (because the opponents can move, place total cover between them and the emplaced warlock, etc.). The issue (if there is one) is that there are a certain number of encounter setups where it is probably more devastating than perhaps were initially intended (or at least, I think things like Devil's Sight were design-balanced around the assumption that the entire party wasn't going to be able to get in on the fun). That said, it is merely a small-area sometime-optimal setup for double-direction advantage that requires the regular expenditure of second level spells and for everyone in the party to construct their characters around it in some way. Getting advantage on an opponent in a small area is normally a 1st level spell (Faerie Fire, which has additional benefits) that allows a save. This doesn't allow a save, and gets advantage both ways, but costs a more valuable slot, requires everyone designing around it, and has more creatures immune. It's good, perhaps even a little over-tuned, but not, IMO, 'broken' or the like.

[ProsecutorGodot]

The salient question I have is what does Devil's Sights:
You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.
.......truly mean?

A creature that lacks Darkvision, normally can't see through darkness be it magical or natural darkness. Now many groups run Devil's Sight as if it read:
"You can see normally in darkness , both magical and nonmagical, as if there was a source of bright light, to a distance of 120'"....of course the actual rule doesn't actually have that verbiage.

The issue with that is that the "normal" conditions that you can see in darkness are "you can't without darkvision" so would you really want to open the suggestion that Devil's Sight does nothing for any race without Darkvision? Actually, if we read it in this way it doesn't do anything for a creature with Darkvision beyond extending their sight range.

A creature with Darkvision can't "normally" see through magical darkness either, so it does nothing on that front either.

It doesn't seem reasonable for it to function in that way.

On topic: I've never had a full party attempt to adopt the strategy but I have had a Hexblade player use it once and he was quickly put off from doing it again because the rest of the party couldn't keep track of him during the encounter to realize he was being surrounded in the darkness.

It's powerful, sure, but it can be a hindrance to allies and has overstated effectiveness at hampering enemies that are already at close range. The largest strength, in my opinion, is against ranged combatants but even then there are other ways to deal with them.

[LudicSavant]

It's good, but there are certainly effective counters to it. For example, the discerning evil overlord could just start equipping their henchmen with cheap upcast Continual Flame items when she learns that the plucky heroes are fond of Darkness.

Or if they're anything like me, they would have just done that anyways as soon as they hit level 5. *Shrug*

[Unoriginal]

Yeah that could matter sometimes, but not much. The party casts darkness where and when they want, and enemies generally don’t know about their abilities. So enemies learn about darkness when they are suddenly inside of it. If they run, the party can harass them with advantage from inside the darkness.

Until they run out of range, regroup, and punish.

It matters a lot in any dungeon environment. In an open field that's a different matter.


It's good, but there are certainly effective counters to it. For example, the discerning evil overlord could just start equipping their henchmen with cheap upcast Continual Flame items when she learns that the plucky heroes are fond of Darkness.

That's not really cheap, it's 50gp of gem just for the material. Certainly doable though.

[MaxWilson]

The PHB gave us the warlock invocation 'devil's sight', which was a nice combo with the Darkness spell, though often described as more theoretical optimization than practical, since it bothered the rest of the party. Then Xanathar's gave us the shadow sorcerer, which can see through magical darkness as well. Works nice together with the aforementioned warlock, but still aint a full party. But now Tasha's gives us the Astral Monk, which can see through magical darkness, the Blind Fighting fighting style which fighters, paladins and rangers can pick up, and anybody can pick up with a feat. Everybody can see (short range) through magical darkness.

What if you do some party optimization with this? It's pretty easy, pick (for instance) a Warlock (any) / Shadow Sorcerer / Astral Monk / BM Fighter with PAM/sentinel/Blindfighting (use it to prevent enemies leaving the area of magical darkness), and you have a major advantage in any encounter where enemies don't have blindsight or a similair feature (which is the vast majority of encounters).

I guess this will be overpowered in most purchased adventures, unless a DM specificly designs around it? Would it be fun? Or too much a one trick party and a gimmick, fun for a single session or short adventure but not for a campaigin?

Curious how the playground sees this. If anybody has experience with it, I'm curious how it played out!

From experience running Darkness-based monsters and some PCs (Alert EKs, Moon Druids in certain forms, Devil's Sight warlocks, Alert Shadow Monks, bardlocks with True Seeing, fiend-summoning wizards) yes it is generally powerful when multiple characters work together to all benefit from heavy obscurement. Easily countered by special monsters if the DM is trying to mess with you, but they should avoid that (better to just give you enough rope to hang yourself by letting you take on greater challenges and get overconfident). Shadow Sorc is a weak point because can only see through its own Darkness, must spend sorc's own concentration--it's better to be able to benefit from someone else's Darkness/Fog Cloud/Stinking Cloud/etc. so the sorc can cast Hypnotic Pattern/etc., especially since more monsters can penetrate Darkness than heavy obscurement.

But in general blinding the enemy w/rt is good in four ways: it hard counters sight-based abilities like beholder Disintegration and many spells; it prevents opportunity attacks; it compounds the effect of high AC and also grants advantage on melee attacks (on ranged attacks too if playing by RAW, although I don't allow that because it's too easy to become unseen at range); it enables Hiding as an efficient defense.

Yes, it's good to have a whole blindfighting/Alert/Darkness-immune party, in the same way it's good to have a whole Mobile party, or a ranged attacks + summoners party. It's just hard to have them all at the same time.

[Contrast]

The issue with that is that the "normal" conditions that you can see in darkness are "you can't without darkvision" so would you really want to open the suggestion that Devil's Sight does nothing for any race without Darkvision? Actually, if we read it in this way it doesn't do anything for a creature with Darkvision beyond extending their sight range.

A creature with Darkvision can't "normally" see through magical darkness either, so it does nothing on that front either.

It doesn't seem reasonable for it to function in that way.

A creature with darkvision also wouldn't 'normally' be able to see beyond its 'normal' darvision range. So this interpretation would make the ability completely non-functional in all circumstances which I think we can safely assume is not how it is meant to be read when the sentence has another perfectly legible reading that does, in fact, make sense.

This does remind me of an amusing thing about Eagle Totem barbarians though - they have the following ability 'You can see up to 1 mile away with no difficulty, able to discern even fine details as though looking at something no more than 100 feet away from you'. If you have darkvision of 100+ft and kinda squint at the rules a little you have 1 mile of darkvision!

[LudicSavant]

That's not really cheap, it's 50gp of gem just for the material. Certainly doable though.

Cheap's a relative term. Depends on what you're comparing it to.

[Thunderous Mojo]

The issue with that is that the "normal" conditions that you can see in darkness are "you can't without darkvision" so would you really want to open the suggestion that Devil's Sight does nothing for any race without Darkvision? Actually, if we read it in this way it doesn't do anything for a creature with Darkvision beyond extending their sight range.

A creature with Darkvision can't "normally" see through magical darkness either, so it does nothing on that front either.

It doesn't seem reasonable for it to function in that way.


It doesn't seem "reasonable" that a Vampire's Spider Climb ability does not grant a climb speed, but it doesn't. Unlike Lionel Ritchie, Strahd is prohibited from "Dancing on the Ceiling" at a full movement rate.

5e has never held "reasonable" rules as it design mantra. Thompson, Mearls, and Crawford openly disparage their reader's ability to read the rules in an unbiased fashion. As such, the rules are not written to promote clarity. The rules are written to be ambiguous, so a DM has room to control the determination of what RAW means, at their table.

That is what is implied by the "Rulings not Rules" mantra.
(That, or 5e was written by a bunch of hacks, whom got lucky and accidentally designed a fun system).

A DM that doesn't want to deal with Heavy Obscurement shenanigans, can take the strictest interpretation of Devil's Sight possible, and thus effectively ban the power, without appearing to be outright banning it.

I'm not saying, I agree with this...but it is the most charitable interpretation for why the power was written in such a horrible fashion.

[JonBeowulf]

Fun? Doesn't really sound like it to me. Everybody does the same thing every encounter as they stroll through published campaigns. As a DM, I'd let them do it and after a few encounters I'd narrate how they successfully completed the campaign, beat the BBEG, and congratulate them on winning D&D.

Overpowered? Absolutely for published campaigns. Homebrew often has more flexibility than it can use, so the DM has plenty of space to play to make things fun and challenging again. It'd take some work to avoid triggering the players into "You're just doing this because you hate our strategy", but it can be done.

Experience? No, I've never played it and thankfully never seen it.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I'm not saying, I agree with this...but it is the most charitable interpretation for why the power was written in such a horrible fashion.

Except it's not charitable, it requires a deliberately bad faith reading.

I don't understand your vampire complaint either, nothing in the rules says you need hands to climb and they have explicit permission to climb upside down on the ceiling without any check.

[MaxWilson]

I don't understand your vampire complaint either, nothing in the rules says you need hands to climb and they have explicit permission to climb upside down on the ceiling without any check.

The vampire complaint is about only getting to move 15' while climbing, since creatures without a climb speed must spend double movement to climb. Most creatures with Spider Climb or something like it (including the Spider Climb spell) have a climb speed, so they can move at full speed while climbing. Is this an oversight for the vampire or intentional? It's hard to tell. IMO it's unclear.

[ProsecutorGodot]

The vampire complaint is about only getting to move 15' while climbing, since creatures without a climb speed must spend double movement to climb. Most creatures with Spider Climb or something like it (including the Spider Climb spell) have a climb speed, so they can move at full speed while climbing. Is this an oversight for the vampire or intentional? It's hard to tell. IMO it's unclear.
From that perspective, it does make more sense. I was a little too focused on the "can they dance on the ceiling" rather than how will they could.

We can't exactly verify whether the monster ability Spider Climb is why they have a climbing speed or if it's a coincidence that a majority of them do.

Whether or not it is an oversight though, I don't see how it translates to the reading of Devil's Sight he was suggesting.

[Unoriginal]

From that perspective, it does make more sense. I was a little too focused on the "can they dance on the ceiling" rather than how will they could.

We can't exactly verify whether the monster ability Spider Climb is why they have a climbing speed or if it's a coincidence that a majority of them do.

Whether or not it is an oversight though, I don't see how it translates to the reading of Devil's Sight he was suggesting.

An argument could be made that the Vampire having Spider Climb despite not having a climb speed is an example that possessing an ability does not mean you possess a related ability that may seem a prerequisite of it.

That argument doesn't apply to Devil's Sight and Darkvision, IMO, because to me Devil's Sight "you can see normally through regular and magical darkness" is both different and superior to Darkvision's "you can see in black-and-white as if you were in dim light".

[5eNeedsDarksun]

The next character I had in mind is an EK with Blind Fighting and GWM that uses Fog Cloud and Darkness to get advantage. So I'm finding the thread interesting. Seems like you are either OP if the whole group goes that way, or excluding some party members and kind of niche if you don't; this was the case the one time we had a Warlock who had devil sight. The Blasters were able to functionally attack, but the martials were just unhappy some of the time.
I'm thinking one solution would be to have the ability to reduce the AOE of spells like darkness as a caster option. This would enable someone like an EK to create a small zone, but in many battles some of the fight would be happening outside the darkness, thus reducing the need for the all or none approach. The rest of the party wouldn't feel the need to all have the OP tactic.

[Unoriginal]

this was the case the one time we had a Warlock who had devil sight. The Blasters were able to functionally attack, but the martials were just unhappy some of the time.

I'm not sure I understand that. Darkness generally hurts ranged attacks more than melee ones, from what I know.

[MaxWilson]

I'm not sure I understand that. Darkness generally hurts ranged attacks more than melee ones, from what I know.

Presumably in this case the "blasters" were hurling saving throw-based spells, like Fireball and Evard's Black Tentacles, not making attack rolls.

However, by strict RAW Darkness is actually FANTASTIC for ranged attackers, since it grants you advantage for being unseen by your targets, whereas you can see them just fine (especially if you don't have darkvision--if you do have darkvision it's controversial whether or not Darkness prevents you from seeing creatures not heavily obscured by the darkness, but if you don't have darkvision it's absolutely straightforward RAW). This is one of the reasons I don't grant advantage to unseen ranged attackers: there are too many ways to become unseen at range, whether it's Darkness spells or being outside of your target's darkvision range or Minor Illusion or whatnot. Vision manipulation is an incredibly easy way by RAW to gain advantage, and I think ranged attackers already have enough advantages, they don't need yet another.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Except it's not charitable, it requires a deliberately bad faith reading.
Bad Faith? In this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdz_lMt-nLw

(MaxWilson also has a link in their signature line)

Mike Mearls states, (and I am paraphrasing here), "players never read the rules correctly". Now I am only paraphrasing because I do not remember the exact verbiage, but Mearls says something very nigh exactly that, mate.

Rodney Thompson is the co-presenter, and says nary a peep, about what Mearls states openly.

How is it "Bad Faith" to believe what the initial design team states in a publicly released video that specifically discusses the motivation and design guidelines for 5e, is what the design team actually meant?



Whether or not it is an oversight though, I don't see how it translates to the reading of Devil's Sight he was suggesting.

This is the write up from Devil Sight in the PHB:
DEVIL'S SIGHT
You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.

This is the write up from Devil's Sight from the Monster Manual:
Devil's Sight: Magical darkness doesn't impede the devil's darkvision
Every Devil in the Monster Manual that has Devil's Sight also has Darkvision. The only Devils in the Monster that lack Devil's Sight are the Erinyes and Pit Fiend that have Truesight, instead.

So when the Devil's Sight Invocation in the PHB states you "see normally...", it could potentially mean:

A) The advantages and limitations of your normal vision still apply.
B) Seeing "normally" means you see as if there was bright light in darkness,(This is even better than what actual Devils receive).
C) Seeing "normally" actually grants the character Darkvision.

Option A is essentially the actual text. Options B and C require the reader to mentally insert text that is not present.

We are on the 10th printing of the PHB. The confusion inherent in the Devil's Sight Invocation could have been rectified in any reprint, by the insertion of a few words.

So why haven't the designers clarified their intent?

Either the designers have neglected to clarify the shoddy wording of the Invocation, or the ambiguity is Intended. I don't realistically see a viable third option, for why in PHB printings 2 through 10 this was not addressed.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Bad Faith? In this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdz_lMt-nLw

(MaxWilson also has a link in their signature line)

Mike Mearls states, (and I am paraphrasing here), "players never read the rules correctly". Now I am only paraphrasing because I do not remember the exact verbiage, but Mearls says something very nigh exactly that, mate.

Rodney Thompson is the co-presenter, and says nary a peep, about what Mearls states openly.

How is it "Bad Faith" to believe what the initial design team states in a publicly released video that specifically discuss the motivation and design guidelines for 5e, is what the design team actually meant?
I'm quite sure that you'd be taking Mearls out of context to say that he was making a general statement that all players are wrong. If you genuinely believe that, you're as incorrect as I am.

That is, unless this specific video also makes mention that Devil's Sight functions exactly as you claim. If it did say that, I doubt we'd be having this conversation in the first place.


We are on the 10th printing of the PHB. The confusion inherent in the Devil's Sight Invocation could have been rectified in any reprint, by the insertion of a few words.

So why haven't the designers clarified their intent?

Either the designers have neglected to clarify the shoddy wording of the Invocation, or the ambiguity is Intended. I don't realistically see a viable third option, for why in PHB printings 2 through 10 this was not addressed.
There's no confusion here, Warlocks invocation functions one way and the version that many Devil's have functions another. There are plenty of features with the same names that function differently so it's not really a point for or against whether one is more consistent than the other.

Also because you seem to be ignoring it, regarding your original post here:

A creature that lacks Darkvision, normally can't see through darkness be it magical or natural darkness. Now many groups run Devil's Sight as if it read:
"You can see normally in darkness , both magical and nonmagical, as if there was a source of bright light, to a distance of 120'"....of course the actual rule doesn't actually have that verbiage.

Let me direct you to the Vision and Lighting rules:

Bright light lets most creatures see normally. Even gloomy days provide bright light, as do torches, lanterns, fires, and other sources of illumination within a specific radius.
The general rule, stated clearly is that most creatures see normally in areas of bright light. If Devil's Sight allows you to see normally, that means you treat the radius of vision as bright light.

EDIT:I think I've found the portion of the video you paraphrase from at 11:50. The irony, is that the phrase he uses is that players selectively read the rules, making assumptions that of course they know how this works. Your selective reading of only the Devil's Sight features led you to conclude that there was no supporting rules for what constitutes "normal sight".

[Blood of Gaea]

The most fundamental tasks of adventuring--noticing danger, finding hidden objects, hitting an enemy in combat, and targeting a spell, to name just a few--rely heavily on a character's ability to see. Darkness and other effects that obscure vision can prove a significant hindrance.
Note how obscurement and low-light are called a hindrance. I argue that the ability to see "normally" in darkness means not being hindered by it, meaning you'd see equally as well as if you were in bright light.

Additionally, if Devil's Sight required normal Darkvision, it seems odd that it specifies working on nonmagical darkness.

So by my reading, you can see through any type of darkness without issue, but has no effect on dim light.

[Thunderous Mojo]

I'm quite sure that you'd be taking Mearls out of context to say that he was making a general statement that all players are wrong. If you genuinely believe that, you're as incorrect as I am.

{Scrubbed} I used to interact with Mike Mearls on Enworld, before he was hired by Malhavoc Press and later by WotC.

My interpretation of his statement, was Mearls did not intend to say "all players are wrong"...but rather was stating that his experience as a designer, leads him to believe that players are motivated to interpret rules in a fashion that supports the desired outcome they wish the rule to have.

One can argue this is a jaded view, but it is not necessary an incorrect view.

{Scrubbed}

As for the rest of your post...mate: within the context of the rules again, there are 3 possible interpretations. You use the word "clearly"...but the text is not clear.

Darkvision:
Darkvision
A monster with darkvision can see in the dark within a specific radius. The monster can see in dim light within the radius as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. The monster can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Based off the text of Darkvision, it is not even clear that an actual Devil can see through magical darkness as if it were Bright Light...why would the Invocation grant a Human or a Halfling, or something else better vision than an actual Devil?

You are making an inference from the text. The inference itself is not "clear".

{Scrubbed}

[MaxWilson]

An argument could be made that the Vampire having Spider Climb despite not having a climb speed is an example that possessing an ability does not mean you possess a related ability that may seem a prerequisite of it.

That argument doesn't apply to Devil's Sight and Darkvision, IMO, because to me Devil's Sight "you can see normally through regular and magical darkness" is both different and superior to Darkvision's "you can see in black-and-white as if you were in dim light".

Note: it's not just warlocks. Astral Monks in Tasha's use the same language about seeing normally in darkness, with no explicit mention of dim light per se.

My personal ruling: since dim light is partial darkness, as DM I don't think it's reasonable to differentiate between dim light and darkness in this case, and I impose no penalties no matter what the light level is if you have Devil's Sight (and if I allowed Astral Monks I would treat them the same).

[ProsecutorGodot]

Darkvision:
Darkvision
A monster with darkvision can see in the dark within a specific radius. The monster can see in dim light within the radius as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. The monster can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Based off the text of Darkvision, it is not even clear that an actual Devil can see through magical darkness as if it were Bright Light...why would the Invocation grant a Human or a Halfling, or something else better vision than an actual Devil?
There's no issue, they're different features.

We know what seeing normally means, we know that a Warlock with Devil's Sight can do so in both magical and nonmagical darkness. It doesn't matter even if it does function differently than what a Devil has.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Issues? Who said anything about issues? Pros. Godot, I am baffled at what your intent is, or what you think I am stating in my posts.

I've not endorsed a position, I have merely pointed out that the verbiage of the Devil's Sight Invocation lends itself to 3 likely interpretations.

Now, you are free to disagree and say there is only one true way to adjudicate the invocation. It seems you are advocating that Players see all Darkness as if it were bright light, Devil's see darkness as if it were dim light, due to their Darkvision.

Based off other posts in this thread, not everyone feels that Devils seeing Darkness as if it was Dim Light, is the one true way.

For the record, I will say, in my prior post where I listed interpretations labeled A through C.....I don't use option A at my table.

I'm off to bed, night all! 🖖

[ProsecutorGodot]

Issues? Who said anything about issues? Pros. Godot, I am baffled at what your intent is, or what you think I am stating in my posts.

I've not endorsed a position, I have merely pointed out that the verbiage of the Devil's Sight Invocation lends itself to 3 likely interpretations.
Except it doesn't, it certainly doesn't lend itself to position A in any reasonable way. B is the only interpretation you presented that has any actual support in the text. You want to suggest that I'm making inferences in the text but then you claim that C, which grants the character Darkvision, is in any way supported? Where does it say that the Warlock gains Darkvision?

You say you don't agree with the position, yet for some reason you advocate that it does exist with evidence that directly disproves it, and your argument against this proof is that you don't feel it is correct.

As far as "issues" you seem to have one with there being two functionally different versions of Devil's Sight... but I had a thought. All of the Devils that are powerful enough to grant a Warlock powers happen to have True Sight rather than Darkvision, meaning that a Devil granting this sight to their Warlock is giving them a lesser version of their sight, but a greater power than the lower ranking devil who have no power to give.

This is ignoring the fact that it being called Devils Sight is in itself misleading because you have access to the invocation regardless of your pact, an Archfey gives you Devil's Sight, a Celestial gives you Devil's Sight. There should be zero comparison to what Devil's have because it doesn't actually have anything to do with them.

[CMCC]

"Seeing normally" is about as clear as you can make it. It means that there is nothing impeding your vision. The darkness (whether magical or not) has no effect.

The wording would have to be something like "devil's sight turns magical darkness into non-magical darkness" to get those alternate readings out of it.

Now I could see there being an issue if the main character was blind AND had Devil's sight. Could they suddenly see without issue in all darkness?

But again, as mentioned above, the best way to treat Devil's sight is for that character to be able to see in any kind of darkness exactly as they can in bright light. So, if you're blind, you still cannot see in bright light.