Topic: Darkness spells, vision, and light sources

[Jengada]

I had a(nother) "how did this never come up before" situation in my game yesterday. An NPC cast Darkness (20') on an area that included a campfire, at night. Darkness isn't Utterdark, but within the area it's supposed to be "equal to the darkest night".
I played it that the campfire still illuminated the nearby area, since it would do so on "the darkest" night. I let creatures with darkvision see, but the elf's nightvision was limited by the magical darkness.
How have others dealt with darkness spells, light sources, and dark- vs. night-vision?

[Peter R]

I treat it pretty much how you did. It is not actually much use at night and as you say, the campfire and torches allow people to see. It is then down to racial descriptions of the vision abilities.

[jdale]

Personally, I would treat it as reducing any light source in the area of affect to "equal to the darkest night". The campfire is brighter than the darkest night, so the campfire would become extremely dim and difficult to make out (although of course you would still feel the warmth normally).

Otherwise, you're basically changing the spell to be "dims the level of ambient light from the sun, stars, or moon to equal the darkest night, but leaves all other light sources unaffected." And the exception for Utterdark becomes pretty meaningless.

[technobabble66]

Apologies for taking the OP slightly off track, but what about this scenario:
You have a long corridor with a campfire at one end. A globe of darkness (that exceeds the height and width of the corridor) is placed a short distance from the campfire, but doesn’t encompass the fire.
What happens at the other end of the corridor?
I assume you won’t be able to see the fire, and there’d just be the blackness of the globe “visible” down the corridor. But would the ambient light of the fire illuminate the corridor on the other side of the globe from the fire?
I know physics-wise it can’t occur - if the light is providing illumination it would have to also be visible.
But we’re talking magic here, so it seems reasonable to see how it might work like this.
How do others deal with this?

[Spectre771]

Apologies for taking the OP slightly off track, but what about this scenario:
You have a long corridor with a campfire at one end. A globe of darkness (that exceeds the height and width of the corridor) is placed a short distance from the campfire, but doesn’t encompass the fire.
What happens at the other end of the corridor?
I assume you won’t be able to see the fire, and there’d just be the blackness of the globe “visible” down the corridor. But would the ambient light of the fire illuminate the corridor on the other side of the globe from the fire?
I know physics-wise it can’t occur - if the light is providing illumination it would have to also be visible.
But we’re talking magic here, so it seems reasonable to see how it might work like this.
How do others deal with this?

We would treat it as a long corridor where you can see details (based on the amount of light the torches of the party give off), a long section of darkness that reveals no detail at all, and the campfire at the end being fully visible and properly illuminating the walls/floor/ceiling.  Anything in the dark zone would be well hidden, the party couldn't see anything hiding in the zone. 

It would be like having tunnel vision (no pun intended, really).  The party only sees what's in front of their nose and what's at the end of the tunnel, nothing in between.  If you've ever been in a corridor or hallway when a bulb halfway down blows out, you can see your end of the hallway and any light at the other end of the hallway, but really not much of anything in the middle because it's dark there.  Now make that darkness in the middle 'magical' darkness and it's becomes even darker.

The timing of this topic is ironic.  The party I'm GMing is about to enter a zone of magical darkness.  One member has a lantern of elemental light, level 5.  The darkness zone is level 10+.  While the light elemental will be visible as a small sphere inside a lantern, the party will only see that sphere and the interior of the lantern.  There will be no other reflected light off the holder of the lantern, they won't be able to see their noses, the holder won't even see his arm holding the lantern, they won't be able to see outside the zone of darkness like the example I mentioned above with the campfire.  They are inside the dark zone and can't see out.

[technobabble66]

Thanks @Spectre771.
I think I was still imagining it like the old D&D globe of black, whereas your analogy of a long corridor with a light bulb out halfway along (but a bit darker) seems a good illustration of the effect.
Given the timing with respect to your own campaign, no wonder you’ve got a firm idea on the effect of Light & Darkness spells!

[Spectre771]

Thanks @Spectre771.
I think I was still imagining it like the old D&D globe of black, whereas your analogy of a long corridor with a light bulb out halfway along (but a bit darker) seems a good illustration of the effect.
Given the timing with respect to your own campaign, no wonder you’ve got a firm idea on the effect of Light & Darkness spells!

You're very welcome.  We will be gaming on Saturday and the group is going to encounter that situation.  I'm hoping I can describe it clearly enough so they don't realize that it is magical dark just that it seems like the hallway with the lights out halfway.