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Curmudgeon
2008-01-11, 05:00 AM
Here's an idea:

A Favored Soul can cast Deeper Darkness, which lasts 1 day/caster level, with no material cost. As a spontaneous caster they could dump their unused spell slots into this spell and accumulate quite a few items with Deeper Darkness on them. The same caster could go to a cemetery and create a lot of zombies or skeletons with Animate Dead. Give the animated dead these Deeper Darkness trinkets and you've got a bunch of wimpy undead that are very hard to target with magic (because no line of sight), or even to turn (because you've got to present your holy symbol to the undead, and again no line of sight).

You can shuffle through the shadowy illumination until you find such skeletons and zombies and kill them face-to-face. But is there any easy way to take them out with magic? (I'm assuming they're pretty thinly spaced, as Deeper Darkness has a 120' diameter spread.)

I think I've discovered a way to change what would be inconsequential at mid-high levels into a significant annoyance.

Bag_of_Holding
2008-01-11, 05:04 AM
Dispel it, counter it with Daylight etc etc.

Curmudgeon
2008-01-11, 05:14 AM
Dispel it, counter it with Daylight etc etc. Yes, but you'd need to expend resources to do this. Plus if the Favored Soul is turning unused spell slots each night to create the Deeper Darkness doodads, there's no reason for him/her not to use Heighten Spell to make some of those DDs at higher level -- and put out the Daylight.

lord_khaine
2008-01-11, 05:28 AM
i have a better solution to that problem, ignore it...

its really not like the shadowy illumination is more than a minor annoyance for those who dont have blind-fighting, and it wont prevent targeting of the undeads unless they are smart enough to hide themself.

actualy since it wont prevent targeting, but only gives a 20% miss chance then i dont see the idea behind this.

Curmudgeon
2008-01-11, 05:41 AM
Deeper Darkness radiates shadowy illumination out to 60'. If you're beyond that 60' the shadowy illumination doesn't reach to you. Since there's total concealment from outside the spell radius, you have to be inside an individual Deeper Darkness area to be able to target the undead at its center.

This is more than just annoying; it's a good way to force an enemy to use up their own resources by clever use of a resource that you might just let slip away: unused spell slots.

vegetalss4
2008-01-11, 05:45 AM
but of course you make yourself vunarable if you are attacked while you has used all your spell slots

mostlyharmful
2008-01-11, 07:30 AM
In order to do this the undead would have to be spaced out.. very spaced out. and it would cost a bomb. The obvious solution is just to send in a deathwarded fighter. Since he can take them one at a time and they can't see it happening and gang up he's got a reasonable chance of capping the lot of them without taking a hit while the party has a nice picnic.:smallsmile: At mid levels most undead are speedbumps, those that aren't don't need this trick to make them scarey. Their only hope of being an inconvinience is to dogpile the party. preferrably from ambush. in a desecrated area. with cleric backing. None of which matches with this. Sorry.

tyckspoon
2008-01-11, 03:54 PM
Deeper Darkness radiates shadowy illumination out to 60'. If you're beyond that 60' the shadowy illumination doesn't reach to you. Since there's total concealment from outside the spell radius, you have to be inside an individual Deeper Darkness area to be able to target the undead at its center.

This is more than just annoying; it's a good way to force an enemy to use up their own resources by clever use of a resource that you might just let slip away: unused spell slots.

Ne? Maybe I'm forgetting something from the standard illumination rules. Where are you drawing total concealment from outside the spell from? It's shadowy illumination; you can see through it. That doesn't change just because you're standing outside the spell instead of in it. It *is* annoying and a neat way to extend the usefulness of otherwise unusably weak undead, but to completely block line of sight you'd need them to be carrying around Fog Cloud spells or similar.

Curmudgeon
2008-01-11, 05:43 PM
It's shadowy illumination; you can see through it. That doesn't change just because you're standing outside the spell instead of in it. I don't see where you get the idea that you can "see through Darkness". Darkness/Deeper Darkness suppresses illumination.
In an area of shadowy illumination, a character can see dimly.
Normal lights (torches, candles, lanterns, and so forth) are incapable of brightening the area, as are light spells of lower level. So light from outside is automatically dimmed down to candlelight level when it enters into an area of magical Darkness, and the shadowy illumination from inside the spell only radiates out to its radius.

Put these together and I see no way that you can discern anything at all from outside an area of Darkness. You need to be in an area of shadowy illumination just to see what's there dimly.

Jothki
2008-01-11, 06:12 PM
Any particular reason that undead are being used for this?

NEO|Phyte
2008-01-11, 06:19 PM
Any particular reason that undead are being used for this?

So that the cleric can have fun. Turn Undead doesn't require LoS.

tyckspoon
2008-01-11, 06:21 PM
I don't see where you get the idea that you can "see through Darkness". Darkness/Deeper Darkness suppresses illumination. So light from outside is automatically dimmed down to candlelight level when it enters into an area of magical Darkness, and the shadowy illumination from inside the spell only radiates out to its radius.

Put these together and I see no way that you can discern anything at all from outside an area of Darkness. You need to be in an area of shadowy illumination just to see what's there dimly.

Wait, what? So the fact that it's shadowy *illumination*, which you can explicitly see in because it's LIGHT, albeit sufficiently obscured to grant concealment, means you cannot in fact see into it? Would you also claim that a person carrying a torch cannot see anything in the 20-40 foot range of shadowy illumination that light source provides? A candle *cannot be seen* by anybody except people who are standing in its square?

TheBlackDog
2008-01-11, 06:22 PM
Any particular reason that undead are being used for this?

I see no reason this wouldn't work just as well with another monster, and probably much better with some. Hmmm...ideas?

Rowanomicon
2008-01-11, 06:22 PM
If you used something that could see through it's own darkness and has a touch attack with some debilitating effect then this would be very good.

Curmudgeon
2008-01-11, 06:26 PM
Any particular reason that undead are being used for this? Just because they're easy to whip up if you find a convenient cemetery and have Animate Dead. Unlike the various Summon spells, Animate Dead will give you creatures that stay around long enough so that you can tie the Deeper Darkness trinkets to them, and space them out properly before marching them into wherever you want them.

The reduced visibility makes these creatures tougher than average to deal with, bumping them up from trivial to a real annoyance. Having dozens of independent Deeper Darkness spells also makes it much easier for you to remain unnoticed while this undead assault is underway.

TheBlackDog
2008-01-11, 06:31 PM
If you used something that could see through it's own darkness and has a touch attack with some debilitating effect then this would be very good.

Oozes have Blindsight. But it might be difficult to find an ooze that will fight for you.
I think the Warlock invocation Devil's Sight lets you see normally in magical darkness.

Rowanomicon
2008-01-11, 06:42 PM
I think the Warlock invocation Devil's Sight lets you see normally in magical darkness.

Yes it does, but it's somewhat harder to find an army of Warlocks than it is to get some sort of undead or construct that has blindsight.

TheBlackDog
2008-01-11, 06:50 PM
Yes it does, but it's somewhat harder to find an army of Warlocks than it is to get some sort of undead or construct that has blindsight.

Thats true. If a Warlock and Favored Soul were in a party together, it might work, but, yes, its extremely situational. Oh well. I still like the OP's idea though.

Tyger
2008-01-11, 11:19 PM
I have to chime in on the "don't think it works that way. By this reasoning, if a creaure is standing 60' away from someone holind a torch, they can't see the torch wielder, nor target them with spells, due to the 20' of "shadowy illumination" that the torch sheds outside of its normal 20' radius.

Sorry, I don't see anywhere in the description of the spell or in the description of lighting effects where it says anything about losing line of sight. As a matter of fact, what it does say is:


In an area of shadowy illumination, a character can see dimly. Creatures within this area have concealment relative to that character. A creature in an area of shadowy illumination can make a Hide check to conceal itself.

So, sorry, while an interesting plan, it just doesn't work that way.

Edit: In addition, Line of Effect states that spells would still work as well. Again:


Line of Effect
A line of effect is a straight, unblocked path that indicates what a spell can affect. A line of effect is canceled by a solid barrier. It’s like line of sight for ranged weapons, except that it’s not blocked by fog, darkness, and other factors that limit normal sight.emphasis added

SofS
2008-01-12, 01:50 AM
The darkened undead on their own might not be as effective as one might think, but there are lots of ways to give this trick an effective twist. Sure, the undead can still be targeted fairly reliably in a number of ways, but that doesn't mean that anybody can necessarily see what they're holding, wearing, or doing (or precisely what they are, for that matter).

Briefly off-topic: does anybody else think that it's pretty lame to have a spell called Deeper Darkness that reduces an area to "shadowy illumination"? What a powerful feat of mystical might, summoning forth such awesome power as to make an area as dark as it would be if someone had a candle lit nearby. Seems somewhat at odds with the other stuff any caster can do at the same level.

tyckspoon
2008-01-12, 02:07 AM
Briefly off-topic: does anybody else think that it's pretty lame to have a spell called Deeper Darkness that reduces an area to "shadowy illumination"? What a powerful feat of mystical might, summoning forth such awesome power as to make an area as dark as it would be if someone had a candle lit nearby. Seems somewhat at odds with the other stuff any caster can do at the same level.

Yeah, it's one of the weirder things 3.x did with any of the spells. There's a 3rd level spell in the Spell Compendium called Blacklight that does give proper fully-blinding darkness, except it acts as bright light for the caster. All around a better approach to making stuff dark, although a little harder to make work with the rest of the party.