I was surprised to see the TCE Summon Fey spell got reworked for the new PHB. I was very surprised to see they realized the Tricksy Fey needed the darkness buffed. I was even more surprised to see they did not understand why the darkness needed to be buffed. 🤦♂️
Wait does magical darkness not block anything like line of site?
Magical darkness behaves exactly like normal darkness in 2014 5e and 2024 5e, unless other rules modify its behavior. By default, it doesn’t block line of sight, darkvision, magical light, or even non-magical light unless something specifically says it does, like in the darkness spell for instance.
Darkness creates a heavily obscured area.
It never actually specifies where the heavily obscured area is. But I think it makes more sense to interpret it as only the area in darkness is heavily obscured. After all, the area behind it depends on the observer, and there’s nothing about that what’s heavily obscured by darkness depends on where you’re standing.
On the other hand, if this just makes everything in that area dark, but still lets light pass through it, you’d still be able to see silhouettes of anyone standing in it, which really doesn’t seem like it’s heavily obscuring them.
Maybe they just wanted to improve it for Gloom Stalker Rangers?
But Umbral Sight works with normal darkness too, and if it doesn’t prevent magical or non-magical light from illuminating it, people don’t have to rely on darkvision to see them in that magical darkness (if it’s illuminated by anything). At least the Hallow darkness effect prevents illumination, so that does work for Gloom stalkers, but this is quite literally useless.
If you have normal darkness everywhere, there isn’t a reason to use it, but you don’t always have darkness everywhere. In fact, you generally don’t.
Not all monsters with darkvision have access to light sources. Even if they do, they may need an action to use it or may be out of range. A torch or the light cantrip only has a 40’ range. If you collaborate on positioning with the caster, you can basically set yourself up to have advantage every turn thanks to the darkness, since as a ranged attacker you don’t have to stay within 40’ of your enemies.
Also, Gloom Stalkers can’t see through Darkness like Warlocks can, so this effect is useful to them in a way that the Darkness spell isn’t.
That all said, Tricksy wouldn’t do anything if it didn’t block nonmagical illumination, so it’s reasonable to run it as though it does. Sure, it still wouldn’t block even a cantrip, but it would block torches, lanterns, the sun, etc…
And running it as though it doesn’t block nonmagical darkness results in nonsensical behavior. You’re in a torchlit chamber and use the ability - now there’s a cube of darkness, blocking the light of all four nonmagical torches. If you move one of those torches away and back, why would it suddenly pierce the magical darkness? If it wouldn’t, why would a new nonmagical light source?
That all said, Tricksy wouldn’t do anything if it didn’t block nonmagical illumination, so it’s reasonable to run it as though it does.
That’s my point. It never says it blocks even non-magical illumination, so therefore, does functionally nothing.
And running it as though it doesn’t block nonmagical darkness results in nonsensical behavior. You’re in a torchlit chamber and use the ability - now there’s a cube of darkness, blocking the light of all four nonmagical torches.
You’re in a torchlit chamber and use the ability - now there’s a cube of darkness, blocking the light of all four nonmagical torches nothing. Just illuminated by torchlight until a rule update does something other than make it bigger to fix the issue.
WotC and failing to understand their own game, name a more iconic duo
