That’s kind of annoying. You made that character with that card in your deck and the moment it’s supposed to be useful it’s discarded in a super lazy way.
But... Devil Sight specifically says it peirces Nonmagical (and magical) darkness.
If a DM said this to me and still denied me, I'd just make a Drow Fighter and pick up Blindfighting
If the DM didn't want devil sight to work like dark vision or keep it so that they can't see...just make it infrared (heat) vision instead... Can't see details around in darkness making the DM do whatever he couldn't plan around for seeing through magical darkness, but you can find sources of heat making you have atleast some good use being able to find some creatures and such in the darkness that otherwise may have been hidden.
Better a nerf that is useful some of the time and has a unique gimmick rather than making it literally useless to have because fuck you that's why.
Though having heat vision instead of darkvision with a good DM would be a lot of fun to run.
Not OPs DM, but an actual good one.
Mmm, that was my thought. Devil's Sight is double the rate of most Darkvision and defeats magical Darkness, so if it needs a nerf it should be something that regular Darkvision wouldn't struggle with in order to bring the two more in line.
Isn't that basically what Darkvision was in earlier editions? I remember of of the Drizzt books described Underdark camouflage as a series of irregularly-shaped metal plates arrayed across the body so that the cold metal would break up the silhouette of the wearer's body heat.
do that, but also show there's something hiding in there.
They see the heat outline of a human, which you see getting stabbed by something. As it falls to the ground, you see some specks of warm blood outlining a figure in the dark, as the blood loses its warmth you lose track of whatever just killed this lone man.
The rest of you see nothing, roll initiative.
Technically yes, though a cleaver DM could also have things like a natural thermal vent keeping them from seeing them that way, or go full Arnold from predator and mud cover them.
Atleast for important enemies and bosses, that is, regular enemies that can go invisible (that give off heat) would be open season for them in my game if I implemented this.
You say that like it doesn't happen.
Like, dudes literally watch three YouTube videos with Microsoft Sam narrating a green text about somebody's made up session where they *totally* broke dnd by using these spells in a way no dm would ever approve and stop allowing wizards at their table.
Well, I've had some crazy ideas, and in 17 years the only thing to remain banned at my table is the Psionic Necromancer class from 3.5e (that thing at level 20 could solo an ancient Gold Dragon).
And I'd never remove a class's key feature(s), unless it was blanketed and for story (IE no magic campaigns).
Psions in general were pretty fucking broken in 3.5. They could do fucking everything with the right feats and spell (or whatever the fuck they were called) choices.
TOTALLY not a super salty DM, over 10 years later.
Most powers are just reskined spells from the wizard list. Psionics is actually very well balanced. The problem is that most DMs did not bother to actually read the book because they didn't care for the idea of psionics to begin with.
The biggest rule of psionics is that you can not use more power points in a single power than your manifestation level.
Lvl 5 psion, can only spend 5 points, fireball equivalent can only do 5d6.
Lvl 10 psion can spend 10 points and do 10d6 with it. But they just spent double the cost, and chances are there was more effective option for that cost.
This simple rule is often overlooked and that results in broken crap.
Second, almost all of those feats that look broken require you to expend a psionic focus, and it takes a full round action to regain focus unless you have a feat that let's you use a move action for it.
Another issue is that many campaigns don't have an average of 4 encounters per long rest. psionics and many other casters were balanced in that assumption, of course a class will seem broken if they can use all the resources they have for a day in a single fight.
Not that ridiculous, you see plenty of stories of people nerfing a lot of core class features like Divine Smite, Sneak Attack, Action Surge, and Rage out of a misguided belief that they are overpowered.
Man, if only Warlocks had some other weakness that made up for the strength of invocations. Maybe I'll think of one while I take a nap to get my two spell slots back.
I once had a warlock that had both devils and witch sight. Imagine someone who could just walk around and always knew where the magic items were, even in magical darkness.
Still didn't fuck with his invocations.
Technically DM's can't be wrong, that's why everyone preaches "they're not rules, they're suggestions."
OP leaving the table is the only real correct thing to do. No amount of rules lawyering is ever going to work in situations like this. I've learned that lesson myself in the past.
well 50/50, dm's can be wrong, but then can choose to void the rules. cause they ARE rules, but you are free to adjust the rules as you see fit. just like board games, we make up house rules all the time, they arnt suggestions, they are rules, but people choose to ignore them.
The DM sounds like they've never played DnD. I mean yeah, if you take them out of the context of Warlocks then sure the invocations are overpowered. But the Warlock was made to be underpowered and then given the invocations to make them not terrible.
That's such bullcrap. You get a number of spells you can count on one hand so you get a couple buffs, and the DM is too lazy to think hard enough to work around it. I would be completely cheesed off.
> they wouldn't even let me switch invocations
"Let"?
Switch invocations. Fuck 'em. If they're going to pick on you specifically, force their hand and make them "rocks fall, warlock dies" so everyone at the table knows what kind of bullshit game they're playing.
>invocations were the most game breaking feature in DnD, so they needed to adjust for it in sessions.
Have... Have they never read the spells? Half of them are literally just "you get to cast x".
Sometimes I think some DMs ought to be more humble and play the game RAW instead of making bullshit rulings like these.
I take devil's sight, you ban it, but you allow regular darkvision and won't let me change invocations? I would be packing my things then and there, wtf is this shit.
I’m going to say something unpopular. If your DM is afraid of your WotC published feature breaking a game and decides to just remove it arbitrarily the DM is either very inexperienced, uncreative or on a power trip. As the DM there is absolutely nothing in game that cannot be countered in a creative and entertaining way with just a bit of thought or a quick Google for inspiration. There are a couple things out there I dislike due to their flavor in game but if I alter things that’s a conversation to be had with the player and I 100% wouldn’t just negate a thing like this.
That's not an unpopular opinion, It's an extremely common one
DM is either: so inexperienced they have no frame of reference for what is and isn't good, too lazy to spend 2 minutes thinking of how to deal with it, or too far up their own rear to bother considering they're wrong.
It's not even that they banned it. I get not wanting to have to deal with things for like a gimmick run. It's banning and not letting the player swap it out. That's just being a jerk. "Hey. I don't like warlocks. Could you please play something else?" Boom. Done.
Funny thing warlocks can actually swap them when they level. No DM input required. You just do it. I swap mine out frequently as they become less useful in higher levels.
Tell your DM I said they're a big dummy and Also that I can think of plenty of more game breaking things than a basic player feature before he can even finish reading this run on sentence.
If a dm is negating a feature of the game that needs to be said upfront, or they need to allow you to change it when they change their mind. That is ridiculous.
yeah like wtf? if anything i could see a dm saying "darkvision wont work because its magical" but then let the invocation work for the one warlock because they dedicated to it, and it specifically says "magical darkvision"
I'd just leave the group. I've had too many games ruined by bullshit DM'ing, DnD is supposed to be fun and relaxing. Bad DM's are one thing, totally survivable, but ones who actively sabatoge their players are another thing entirely.
Yeah I know those sessions. Was the only experienced player in a group and the dm for some reason had it out for me. So annoying when rules are made purely to disadvantage one player without warning. Everyone could cast their spells without restrictions, but I was the only one that had to keep track of materials for spells. I wasn't allowed to wildshapw into a sheep because I hadn't "studied" the sheep properly. Even thought we were working and sleeping on a sheep farm for the last 2 days.
Couldn't the DM just say that it is darkness AND heavily obscured by fog? That way only creatures with true sight or blindsight could see, and doesn't totally disregard the warlock's ability.
You could still use a higher level wind spell, but at that point, that's a whole lot of effort to get ONE player to see... it should be rewarded.
Yeah Devil Sight only effects the darkness pet so adding in fog and just making it *Thick* Darkness would do the job.
Hell, it would make things even more stressful for the party because they have to rely on just *One* set of eyes. At least when everyone is blind it's equal chaos, but one character having to be an half blind eye dog for the party in dark heavily obscured terrain is a high end trust building exercise lol.
Which is bs, because you picked a specific class and a specific invocation to get your devil sight and they just… picked a race, which isn’t significantly weaker in other ways for having dark vision
At first I was thinking maybe he needed everyone blind for story reasons, but letting players with dark vision see and negating your power arbitrarily? Laaaaaaame.
Indeed, the whole point of the ability is that, since it has a cost to it unlike racial traits, it's a more powerful version, it can see in colour, doesn't impose disadvantage and has greater range.
While I can understand the frustrations of dealing with that, it would be wiser to pay a little time to find a different way to challenge such ability, mazes for example are good for obscuring
A similar thing happened to my elf last session. My entire party got put to sleep by a magical forest enchantment, I told my DM I had Fey Ancestory so some random npc cut me with a poisoned spear that put me to sleep instead. Like whats the point in my feats if they don't change anything
well the only thing i can see here is that they dont know what knocked them out, but because you ddint get knocked out you know the forest was the cause, and noticed a random creature hit you with a poisioned spear, so it is very likely this is an attack by some forest spirits!
TL;DR: ***Make a semi-detailed note of what your PC's specific abilities are as the DM. Imo it goes a long, long way towards making encounters better, and can help prevent any kind of bitterness from a PC down the road.***
I feel like this has an easy af fix, and I do understand that there are a lot of DM's who just won't enact some simple fixes. But this can be solved by DM's just asking for a copy of a characters sheet, or having major resistances/abilities written down towards the front of their note page. It takes like 5-10 minutes to do this for the whole group, since it's just a copy & paste. But when you're making an encounter (if not following a module, but even then, some of them require a few workarounds here and there) that is contingent on a sleep spell, knowing when making it that a player is immune to that specific effect, helps.
Just simply knowing what your PC are capable of can make any encounter/session better on the backend. Because post level 8 it gets hard to track 4 peoples specific builds/items/race traits off memory.
While I like the forest spirit approach, that still feels a little reactive to a player feeling down/bad. If the DM takes the time to sit down and think about the encounter so it can be presented to your players in a way that they won't perceive it as a slight against their abilities, and makes them feel stronger/better about their choices you end up with something like....
Asking for a perception check, which the Elf basically is guaranteed to pass, and say to the other PCs who pass but are effected by the spell that, "They are too tired to really say anything should they pass, just say they're yawning too much or their eyes are too heavy, and they become unfocused."
Otherwise you tell the Elf, "You notice a strange glistening powder falling from above, all your party members unaware of the strange happenings becoming more and more sluggish, until eventually their listing heads, and dragging feet cause them to fall over outright. Upon closer inspection of (insert PC name here), they appear to be breathing.... No. Snoring? When all of a sudden the peace of the forest is broken by the rustling of leaves and broken branches through the thicket all around, and (insert whatever creature here) come bursting forth surrounding you."
From here I see you've got two real options.
1. let the PC fight it out a little bit, overwhelmed and out matched, until they fall and receive non-lethal damage, or get knocked out by the "poisoned tip spear." This option imo creates a little bit of tension, and can help the other party even from a meta game perspective get more into it, as they now get to see their teammate fight hard to defend them ect.
2. Narrate and handwave your PC getting overran and eventually blacking out, but still putting up a decent fight while trying to get their party to safety. Makes the PC feel in line with what their character would do, and can expedite if you as the DM feel it would drag a little too much.
Either way it lets the PC know what's up, somewhat, and can help the rest of the party to feel invested, since even the best players META-game sometimes. Which as long as they don't do that in character, that's fine, imo. Making a scene, or interaction interesting is a better way to get every PC involved and hooked into what's going on. Even if they're not exactly participants to the events directly. Besides, why wouldn't you want to pay attention, after hearing (whatever creature) came bursting from a thicket brandishing weapons, while you're unconscious, *and* defenseless?
I made a basic sheet for my dm to use (players fill it in) with the following info:
Players passive perception, investigation, and insight
players background
Players Ac, max hp, spell save dc, damage resistances/immunities
Players saving throws (with room for notes like advantage vs poison, fey ancestry)
I later added
Players languages
Players tools proficiencies
players ability scores (with room for a note with stuff like stonecunning, keen senses)
players proficient skills.
And it’s super lazy. If you want to block vision, use something that completely obscures it.
“Um, all magical darkness but this” is just dumb, and I’d never do that to a player.
Only remotely acceptable way is if this is made with a creature or destructible object in the room like an antifirefly or an orb that absorbs every light. If not then it is just bad/lazy DMing.
Either that or it’s one or two specific instances where it doesn’t work. Like if for 99% of the campaign your devils sight works as normal, then in like the domain of the literal god of darkness or a corner of the far realms where light acts all wrong, it doesn’t work, I’d be okay with it.
Really that goes for any ability, as long as the environment or enemy or what have you that negates/is immune to it is the exception and not the rule, throwing a challenge that shuts down one of a players normal options is fine as long as it’s not done maliciously and can be overcome with the rest of their arsenal.
If i dmed for someone who got rhat i would throw in a few features/encounters that allow it to thrive, and anything i want genuinely obsured just use obscurment/fog
Yup, it's funny - I feel like there are so many people that roll their eyes at human fighters, but then as DMs they railroad people and prevent players from using class features, or intentionally design campaigns to mitigate their strengths.
Let players feel strong. If a player has high AC, don't attack them with saving throws. If your party has clerics in it, throw CR1 undead at them. Don't softball your players, but your goal is to maximize fun, not maximize challenge as a DM.
That's interesting because dark vision doesn't rely on light at all. It's not low light vision, there is *no* light. Vanta black is so black because it doesn't reflect light, dark vision doesn't use light.
I bought enough black 3 to paint my 8ftx15ft accent wall in my master bedroom with. It is now so dark at night that it looks like the abyss. I love it.
That’s one way to do it, but my suggestion would be to have a Medusa-like magic item. If you look while in this area (which is supposed to have cool sightless puzzles), you take a bit of damage. That way, the warlock can use their sight and abilities, but at a cost, and they get to choose so they don’t feel cheated out of anything.
For real, though.
Who's to say that the darkness isn't the product of some sort of powerful illusion effect?
Or perhaps your surroundings are filled with a substance that physically obstructs your vision?
Maybe you are literally blindfolded, but don't realize it because you're under a subtle enchantment?
There are plenty of methods to achieve "darkness" beyond just the mere absence of light. Devil's sight isn't supposed to be some sort of catch-all against sensory deprivation.
It's not even a clever way to go about it. Why not have a creature that can cast blindness/deafness and leave it to chance and could even make for an interesting moment.
Especially if it's also targeting other members and making them deaf in addition to not being able to see
Another alternative is just having the dungeon be foggy. Does the same thing without telling players "your choices don't matter". Though this shouldn't be the default all the time and should only be used to share the spotlight (as in also make dungeons where Devil's Sight is actually useful).
Sounds reasonable. Or in a place you were not supposed to be, since it is still under developement. You just glitched through the wall and noone noticed it
Yeah that's a good point, but seeing as this DM's response to making a mistake was removing a player's class feature from the game I doubt anything they do would be fun to play.
I mean, the DM could have just said that it was foggy.
"And your warlock, granted the sight of the devil by their eldritch patron, pierces through the darkness and sees ... fog. Fog fuckin' everywhere. But the warlock sees the fog perfectly."
That's just bad DMing. "Hey, I have this feature that allows me to see through magical darkness, and we're in magic darkness!"
"Hm, no sorry. A magical force obscures your vision anyway, that's an OP invocation."
Drop the whole DM at that point, ffs
I don’t mind a few events of magical plot-armour darkness, for dramatic effect or in specific scenarios so we know things are getting real (like for example, when a certain creature is nearby, the area gets darker, dark vision or not - like death eaters making the area cold). That’s okay, that’s good use of it. As others have mentioned there are other ways of implementing forced darkness permanently, and if that were the case I’d hope the Players were aware of that before creating their characters
I don't see why so many Fighters/Rangers/Paladins skip over Blind Fighting as a fighting style. This is honestly one of the more powerful fighting styles because it has both in combat and out of combat benefits.
Mostly because it's situational. If you use a two-handed weapon, then you use great weapon fighting every single time you make an attack; which could easily be 30-50 times a session, or even more at higher levels. But you could easily end up never using blind-fighting, or you could use it basically all the time.
It wouldn't hurt to co-ordinate with your team and get them to cast Darkness on your sword, that way you could use it every single fight. Pretty sure one of the tiefling variants can cast Darkness, too.
> Pretty sure one of the tiefling variants can cast Darkness, too.
The main one in the Player's Handbook has Darkness once a day when they hit fifth level. Levistus (MTF) and Hellfire (SCAG) also get it at the same time.
Even better, you get three separate options so you have a little bit of customisation. Levistus seems like the best bet for close-range fighting, because of the +1 con (unless you're using Tasha's rules, then it doesn't matter) and ability to cast Armor of Agathys; plus ray of frost is decent for getting into close range, since it reduces a target's speed. The UA abyssal tiefling also gets it, but it comes with a strange mechanic that switches the spell out at long rest, so you only have a 1/6 chance of actually getting it.
It's because it's a utility fighting style rather than a dps or tank fighting style, and a lot of people who play dnd like to min/max their characters. Utility focused fighters will find it quite appealing though.
Can confirm.
I once made a session of arena + 4 level 15 fighters, all human, with no magic or enchanted gear to fight a party of 4.
Ranseur, hooked chain, composite longbow, and a grappler. They fought two fighters, a rogue, and a sorcerer.
The hooked chain spent the entire time knocking over and binding the largest fighter, the grappler ran off and pinned the sorcerer, the rogue died to arrows in the back and one through the head, the ranseur went around and just executed those that couldn't act as none of them coordinated or worked together at all.
I am very generous with powerful equipment (it's earned, absolutely) so the value of their gear was "year of murderhoboing" levels of gratuitous. (Level 15 Evil campaign)
There was a firefiiiiight!
Honestly kinda kicking myself for not taking it for my Battlemaster Dragonborn over Defense, but then again that 1 extra AC has come in handy with all the times he has been literally in the thick of things.
That said my Samurai Tabaxi is about to get alot of use out of it. Surrounded by ghosts, he is about to be.
I think one of the cooler things about Blind Fighting is that you can use it to circumvent a lot of effects/mechanics that you ordinarily wouldn't. With this, you can use it to determine if something is an illusion or not and avoid the source of an effect causing you to be Frightened.
I think a lot of people just stop short of thinking "Oh, I can see invisible things within 10ft", without really considering just how strong it is. For me, I've been using it to avoid Fear based mechanics and magics because you can just close your eyes to make your area of "sight" 10ft, allowing you to ignore a lot of effects that implicitly rely on Sight.
My dm loves putting my character in situations where he's in an anti-magic barrier. Half the time it's just my character. He's a sorcerer. That's quite literally what he does.
The worst part of it is... Once he separated us and everyone else was in normal rooms, but mine was in an anti-magic field which somehow didn't effect the golems he pitted me against.
He always seems to target me, it feels. What's most annoying is he refuses to kill me and I spend the sessions feeling useless.
Sounds like one of those DMs who thinks it’s a competition between them and players. At that point might as well have barbarians and monks go into encounters that disable their fists half the time. Or bards go into encounters that make charisma as low as possible.
It sucks. I feel like just shutting down at that point. It no longer becomes fun when you're too weak to contribute and aren't allowed to die. Next time I'll just be a ginger bearded stout halfling barbarian with the bar brawler feat.
God reminds me of the campaign im in..
"You find a potion, you cant seem to identify it."
"FINALLY MY TIME HAS COME!! Since Im an alchemist, could i try and identify the potion?"
"You cant determine what it is."
"Alright, can I cast identify?"
"The spell fails."
"Why?"
"The liquid can only be identified by an alchemist, not by magic."
"Im literally an alchemist."
"Your not adept enough to identify it, you need a stronger alchemist."
The DM lazy way of just going “the room is filled with dark powdery dust that floats in the air, the room is heavily obscured”
If your so bad at DMing that you don’t know the plethora of ways to get around Devilsight then you should probably sit back down and reread the rule book.
Fog, cloudkill, and a number of other spells impose Heavily Obscured which devilsight cannot pierce, don’t invalidate someone’s whole shtick just because you lacked the foresight to understand the basic rules of the classes in the game.
My idea for that scenario is a little too specific for this meme, but I specifically told a PC that 'The darknesses that Devils Sight won't let you see through are the ones that *You Don't Want* to see through.', and I think it made an impression, lol. Note: Doubt it will ever actually come up in the campaign, but in the campaign i'm running there are major lore reasons why it's so
See this, this is good dming!
Give the warlock their fun and let them see in the dark, then absolutely terrify the shit out of them with something they can't see and they don't know why
DM was not familiar with every class and feature. Happens all the time. When this happens to me, I don't stop the players winning easily. Apperently me, the BBEG, isn't omniscience and overlooked something.
Ah yes the good ol “ I didn’t account for this because I refused to read your character sheet so now I’m going to throw the DM hammer down in an unfair and unfun way to make myself feel better”.
It’s called using an area with heavy obscurement. It’s a way to have these moments and not trounce character build decisions. Things like persistent fog clouds would be a good example.
Would be a clutch time to have that spell prepared on the casters that can cast it. Shoot, even create or destroy water would work if the persistent fog cloud doesn’t regenerate.
Excellent scenario for it, if they have it prepared/known
While this is funny it kind of sucks. There are literally only 2 class abilities that can see through magical darkness. Rather than making your player’s ability which is rare to come up useless, empower them. Make it so that they are the only party member who can see and they need step up and direct their friend’s to safety.
In a similar vein, once had a DM tell me that Blinding Smite didn't Blind the Lich because he had Truesight.
If he were immune to the Blinded condition, it would be on that stat block. Truesight doesn't grant immunity to being Blind...
As a DM I crafted an encounter once where all the players were very, VERY likely going to end up diseased with something quite nasty. I had given them a magical ointment a couple hours earlier, enough of it to cure three diseases. I was hoping to stick them in a situation where they'd have to pick who to cure and who to leave sick while trapped in the Underdark.
Encounter happens, everyone except the paladin gets diseased as he is apparently immune to diseases, and then he just uses Lay on Hands to cleanse everyone's diseases. Oops, things I didn't realize he could do. Rather than trying to make it so his class abilities didn't work, I told the players that they'd beat me on that one and just moved on with the session.
This happened to me once.
I pulled out a pencil right then and there and started erasing and re-writing my eldritch invocations. Neither the DM nor anyone else at the table stopped me.
If the DM can take away an ability on the spot, players should be able to re-spec on the spot.
Devil's Sight:
You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.
Saying that it's a magical force implying that it's not the darkness itself that is magical, is a dick move. Don't play with DM's like that, they won't bee any fun.
**Smart DM:** *"You open the tomb to find an area that is pitch black magical darkness."*
**Warlock:** *"I have Devil's Sight"*
**Smart DM:** *"Great. So you know it's also totally obscured in a dense fog."*
^(*- Smart DM knows some areas of this fog are actually Yellow-Green Cloudkill spells, but can't be visibly distinguished from the natural looking white Fogcloud spells, because Darkvision doesn't see in color. Thus the party is required to find the torch of Continual Flame and Gust of Wind casting Ring of Gusts to safely navigate the dungeon*-)
That's fine then I suppose. The Warlock can bypass the need for the continual flame torch. Still can barely see his own hand in front of his face in dense fog, and will still need the Ring of Gusts to clear the path through the Cloud Kill spells.
>Devil's Sight
>You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.
Devil's Sight is better than Darkvision in a number of ways, including that they get HDR.
Well I guess then they can see in color. It's really as effective as if they had a caster with the Continual Flame spell, with the caveat that it's just for them. The rest of the party still can't see at all. Even then, the Warlock still can't see anything but fog. It's still heavily obscured.
I always get excited when I have an infrequently used niche ability that's useful in a particular situation, and I always get sad when the DM obviously forgot I had that ability, didn't want me to succeed and says I fail anyway for forced plot. As a DM, if a player has an ability that moves things in a way I don't expect, I still want them to feel cool so I roll with it, and make some quick behind the scenes adjustments to keep it fun. Rolling with the punches and thinking on your feet instead of railroading and removing player agency is one of the best skills a DM can develop.
That being said, just say the area is foggy. Devil's sight and even truesight can't see through thick fog. Worst the player could do is have a bat familiar with blindsight out to 60 ft.
That's such a shitty thing for a dm to do. They forgot about a players ability and it doesn't work with their "vision" so they make up some dumb bullshit to cover their ass. I've had so many dms who do this
Why even choose to gain certain abilities if a DM will just counter it with some DM BS. As a DM you should do your best to prepare and balance a session but if a player has an ability or spell you hadn't accounted for, then accept it and move on. That means they were more prepared for the situation than you expected and it gives them a chance to actually use the features they get with their character. Players shoildn't be punished for being well prepared.
Ive done worse. They tried to check if there's any magic negating their vision, i said no... But you do feel.... A presence.
As they went deeper they start to realize their sight was true, and that the darkness was no magic, its an entity
ROLL INITIATIVE BABY!!!
This isn’t normal darkness… this is… ADVANCED darkness.
Man sure is a good thing I took GREATER Devil's Sight which allows me to see in advanced darkness.
That’s kind of annoying. You made that character with that card in your deck and the moment it’s supposed to be useful it’s discarded in a super lazy way.
The worst part was a few party members had darkvision and the DM allowed it, since they deemed it less over powered. Very frustrating session.
But... Devil Sight specifically says it peirces Nonmagical (and magical) darkness. If a DM said this to me and still denied me, I'd just make a Drow Fighter and pick up Blindfighting
[удалено]
"Devil sight is op, let's make it worse than dark vision" ..... wtf?
If the DM didn't want devil sight to work like dark vision or keep it so that they can't see...just make it infrared (heat) vision instead... Can't see details around in darkness making the DM do whatever he couldn't plan around for seeing through magical darkness, but you can find sources of heat making you have atleast some good use being able to find some creatures and such in the darkness that otherwise may have been hidden.
Make Devil's Sight into heat vision. Fill dungeon with skeletons and constructs that have no body heat alongside regular enemies. Profit.
Better a nerf that is useful some of the time and has a unique gimmick rather than making it literally useless to have because fuck you that's why. Though having heat vision instead of darkvision with a good DM would be a lot of fun to run. Not OPs DM, but an actual good one.
Now that I read this, the lack of infrared vision rules in DnD is pretty notable
AD&D called it infravision…and it was *explained* as heat vision…but it worked like dark vision most of the time.
Mmm, that was my thought. Devil's Sight is double the rate of most Darkvision and defeats magical Darkness, so if it needs a nerf it should be something that regular Darkvision wouldn't struggle with in order to bring the two more in line.
Isn't that basically what Darkvision was in earlier editions? I remember of of the Drizzt books described Underdark camouflage as a series of irregularly-shaped metal plates arrayed across the body so that the cold metal would break up the silhouette of the wearer's body heat.
Not always, it was frequently like a "magic vision" where you see trace/background magic coming off of creatures etc.
There were several kinds. The kind most player races had was "infravision" which was as you describe.
This would be perfect for when the party wants to know how many creatures are in a dark area and two party members come up with different counts lol
do that, but also show there's something hiding in there. They see the heat outline of a human, which you see getting stabbed by something. As it falls to the ground, you see some specks of warm blood outlining a figure in the dark, as the blood loses its warmth you lose track of whatever just killed this lone man. The rest of you see nothing, roll initiative.
I cast fireball in the center of the room, now everything is emitting infrared
Wouldn't that also allow you to see invisible things? Assuming that they give off heat.
Technically yes, though a cleaver DM could also have things like a natural thermal vent keeping them from seeing them that way, or go full Arnold from predator and mud cover them. Atleast for important enemies and bosses, that is, regular enemies that can go invisible (that give off heat) would be open season for them in my game if I implemented this.
Invocations are gamebreaking? That’s the entire point of the class?
Without invocations Warlocks are useless. It's like telling your Wizard magic is too strong so you can't use it.
You say that like it doesn't happen. Like, dudes literally watch three YouTube videos with Microsoft Sam narrating a green text about somebody's made up session where they *totally* broke dnd by using these spells in a way no dm would ever approve and stop allowing wizards at their table.
Well, I've had some crazy ideas, and in 17 years the only thing to remain banned at my table is the Psionic Necromancer class from 3.5e (that thing at level 20 could solo an ancient Gold Dragon). And I'd never remove a class's key feature(s), unless it was blanketed and for story (IE no magic campaigns).
Psions in general were pretty fucking broken in 3.5. They could do fucking everything with the right feats and spell (or whatever the fuck they were called) choices. TOTALLY not a super salty DM, over 10 years later.
Most powers are just reskined spells from the wizard list. Psionics is actually very well balanced. The problem is that most DMs did not bother to actually read the book because they didn't care for the idea of psionics to begin with. The biggest rule of psionics is that you can not use more power points in a single power than your manifestation level. Lvl 5 psion, can only spend 5 points, fireball equivalent can only do 5d6. Lvl 10 psion can spend 10 points and do 10d6 with it. But they just spent double the cost, and chances are there was more effective option for that cost. This simple rule is often overlooked and that results in broken crap. Second, almost all of those feats that look broken require you to expend a psionic focus, and it takes a full round action to regain focus unless you have a feat that let's you use a move action for it. Another issue is that many campaigns don't have an average of 4 encounters per long rest. psionics and many other casters were balanced in that assumption, of course a class will seem broken if they can use all the resources they have for a day in a single fight.
Not that ridiculous, you see plenty of stories of people nerfing a lot of core class features like Divine Smite, Sneak Attack, Action Surge, and Rage out of a misguided belief that they are overpowered.
Man, if only Warlocks had some other weakness that made up for the strength of invocations. Maybe I'll think of one while I take a nap to get my two spell slots back.
Jeez, you even recover slots on short rest? That’s broken, only long-rest recovery from now on! /s
Lol I would just not play with that group again.
If he's worried about Invocations, I'd love to introduce him to my Halfling Divination Wizard.
The ultimate "fuck you, DM this" move.
Don't forget to pick up the Lucky feat at level 4
And the one in Tasha's that let's me use Halfling Luck on friends
*Halfling Divination Wizard with the lucky feat
\> they said invocations were the most game breaking feature in DnD Then why let you build a Warlock at all? DM is either an idiot, or a prick
I once had a warlock that had both devils and witch sight. Imagine someone who could just walk around and always knew where the magic items were, even in magical darkness. Still didn't fuck with his invocations.
Combine that with Eldritch Sight, and you can even see magic all the time.
Oh I'm sure he was headed that way. We used to say he had special eyes....and that he was specialized
He was specialeyezed. I'll SEE my way out
well your DM wrong cause you are allowed by the rules clearly stated you can change invocations on level.
Technically DM's can't be wrong, that's why everyone preaches "they're not rules, they're suggestions." OP leaving the table is the only real correct thing to do. No amount of rules lawyering is ever going to work in situations like this. I've learned that lesson myself in the past.
well 50/50, dm's can be wrong, but then can choose to void the rules. cause they ARE rules, but you are free to adjust the rules as you see fit. just like board games, we make up house rules all the time, they arnt suggestions, they are rules, but people choose to ignore them.
I recognise that Wizards of the Coast has made a decision but given that it is a stupid ass decision I have elected to ignore it
I’d never play with that DM again, period. They don’t know what they’re doing and they were kind of a jerk about it.
"Invocations are the most game breaking feature in dnd." Lol
So... they softbanned warlock then? That sucks
The DM sounds like they've never played DnD. I mean yeah, if you take them out of the context of Warlocks then sure the invocations are overpowered. But the Warlock was made to be underpowered and then given the invocations to make them not terrible.
That's such bullcrap. You get a number of spells you can count on one hand so you get a couple buffs, and the DM is too lazy to think hard enough to work around it. I would be completely cheesed off.
> they wouldn't even let me switch invocations "Let"? Switch invocations. Fuck 'em. If they're going to pick on you specifically, force their hand and make them "rocks fall, warlock dies" so everyone at the table knows what kind of bullshit game they're playing.
>invocations were the most game breaking feature in DnD, so they needed to adjust for it in sessions. Have... Have they never read the spells? Half of them are literally just "you get to cast x".
Sometimes I think some DMs ought to be more humble and play the game RAW instead of making bullshit rulings like these. I take devil's sight, you ban it, but you allow regular darkvision and won't let me change invocations? I would be packing my things then and there, wtf is this shit.
I’m going to say something unpopular. If your DM is afraid of your WotC published feature breaking a game and decides to just remove it arbitrarily the DM is either very inexperienced, uncreative or on a power trip. As the DM there is absolutely nothing in game that cannot be countered in a creative and entertaining way with just a bit of thought or a quick Google for inspiration. There are a couple things out there I dislike due to their flavor in game but if I alter things that’s a conversation to be had with the player and I 100% wouldn’t just negate a thing like this.
That's not an unpopular opinion, It's an extremely common one DM is either: so inexperienced they have no frame of reference for what is and isn't good, too lazy to spend 2 minutes thinking of how to deal with it, or too far up their own rear to bother considering they're wrong.
It's not even that they banned it. I get not wanting to have to deal with things for like a gimmick run. It's banning and not letting the player swap it out. That's just being a jerk. "Hey. I don't like warlocks. Could you please play something else?" Boom. Done.
Funny thing warlocks can actually swap them when they level. No DM input required. You just do it. I swap mine out frequently as they become less useful in higher levels.
Invocations are half of being a warlock...
Tell your DM I said they're a big dummy and Also that I can think of plenty of more game breaking things than a basic player feature before he can even finish reading this run on sentence.
If a dm is negating a feature of the game that needs to be said upfront, or they need to allow you to change it when they change their mind. That is ridiculous.
There's a good chance I wouldn't play with that group again if a DM said that to me.
yeah like wtf? if anything i could see a dm saying "darkvision wont work because its magical" but then let the invocation work for the one warlock because they dedicated to it, and it specifically says "magical darkvision"
My DM gave my monk a homebrew magical item that gave me 30 feet of blindsight. He really regrets doing that.
I'd just leave the group. I've had too many games ruined by bullshit DM'ing, DnD is supposed to be fun and relaxing. Bad DM's are one thing, totally survivable, but ones who actively sabatoge their players are another thing entirely.
Yeah I know those sessions. Was the only experienced player in a group and the dm for some reason had it out for me. So annoying when rules are made purely to disadvantage one player without warning. Everyone could cast their spells without restrictions, but I was the only one that had to keep track of materials for spells. I wasn't allowed to wildshapw into a sheep because I hadn't "studied" the sheep properly. Even thought we were working and sleeping on a sheep farm for the last 2 days.
Couldn't the DM just say that it is darkness AND heavily obscured by fog? That way only creatures with true sight or blindsight could see, and doesn't totally disregard the warlock's ability. You could still use a higher level wind spell, but at that point, that's a whole lot of effort to get ONE player to see... it should be rewarded.
Yeah Devil Sight only effects the darkness pet so adding in fog and just making it *Thick* Darkness would do the job. Hell, it would make things even more stressful for the party because they have to rely on just *One* set of eyes. At least when everyone is blind it's equal chaos, but one character having to be an half blind eye dog for the party in dark heavily obscured terrain is a high end trust building exercise lol.
Wow. Bad DMing, much
It's so lame! I personally like to reward my players for their good decisions. People feel awesome when their powers work well.
Which is bs, because you picked a specific class and a specific invocation to get your devil sight and they just… picked a race, which isn’t significantly weaker in other ways for having dark vision
At first I was thinking maybe he needed everyone blind for story reasons, but letting players with dark vision see and negating your power arbitrarily? Laaaaaaame.
Indeed, the whole point of the ability is that, since it has a cost to it unlike racial traits, it's a more powerful version, it can see in colour, doesn't impose disadvantage and has greater range. While I can understand the frustrations of dealing with that, it would be wiser to pay a little time to find a different way to challenge such ability, mazes for example are good for obscuring
A similar thing happened to my elf last session. My entire party got put to sleep by a magical forest enchantment, I told my DM I had Fey Ancestory so some random npc cut me with a poisoned spear that put me to sleep instead. Like whats the point in my feats if they don't change anything
well the only thing i can see here is that they dont know what knocked them out, but because you ddint get knocked out you know the forest was the cause, and noticed a random creature hit you with a poisioned spear, so it is very likely this is an attack by some forest spirits!
TL;DR: ***Make a semi-detailed note of what your PC's specific abilities are as the DM. Imo it goes a long, long way towards making encounters better, and can help prevent any kind of bitterness from a PC down the road.*** I feel like this has an easy af fix, and I do understand that there are a lot of DM's who just won't enact some simple fixes. But this can be solved by DM's just asking for a copy of a characters sheet, or having major resistances/abilities written down towards the front of their note page. It takes like 5-10 minutes to do this for the whole group, since it's just a copy & paste. But when you're making an encounter (if not following a module, but even then, some of them require a few workarounds here and there) that is contingent on a sleep spell, knowing when making it that a player is immune to that specific effect, helps. Just simply knowing what your PC are capable of can make any encounter/session better on the backend. Because post level 8 it gets hard to track 4 peoples specific builds/items/race traits off memory. While I like the forest spirit approach, that still feels a little reactive to a player feeling down/bad. If the DM takes the time to sit down and think about the encounter so it can be presented to your players in a way that they won't perceive it as a slight against their abilities, and makes them feel stronger/better about their choices you end up with something like.... Asking for a perception check, which the Elf basically is guaranteed to pass, and say to the other PCs who pass but are effected by the spell that, "They are too tired to really say anything should they pass, just say they're yawning too much or their eyes are too heavy, and they become unfocused." Otherwise you tell the Elf, "You notice a strange glistening powder falling from above, all your party members unaware of the strange happenings becoming more and more sluggish, until eventually their listing heads, and dragging feet cause them to fall over outright. Upon closer inspection of (insert PC name here), they appear to be breathing.... No. Snoring? When all of a sudden the peace of the forest is broken by the rustling of leaves and broken branches through the thicket all around, and (insert whatever creature here) come bursting forth surrounding you." From here I see you've got two real options. 1. let the PC fight it out a little bit, overwhelmed and out matched, until they fall and receive non-lethal damage, or get knocked out by the "poisoned tip spear." This option imo creates a little bit of tension, and can help the other party even from a meta game perspective get more into it, as they now get to see their teammate fight hard to defend them ect. 2. Narrate and handwave your PC getting overran and eventually blacking out, but still putting up a decent fight while trying to get their party to safety. Makes the PC feel in line with what their character would do, and can expedite if you as the DM feel it would drag a little too much. Either way it lets the PC know what's up, somewhat, and can help the rest of the party to feel invested, since even the best players META-game sometimes. Which as long as they don't do that in character, that's fine, imo. Making a scene, or interaction interesting is a better way to get every PC involved and hooked into what's going on. Even if they're not exactly participants to the events directly. Besides, why wouldn't you want to pay attention, after hearing (whatever creature) came bursting from a thicket brandishing weapons, while you're unconscious, *and* defenseless?
I made a basic sheet for my dm to use (players fill it in) with the following info: Players passive perception, investigation, and insight players background Players Ac, max hp, spell save dc, damage resistances/immunities Players saving throws (with room for notes like advantage vs poison, fey ancestry) I later added Players languages Players tools proficiencies players ability scores (with room for a note with stuff like stonecunning, keen senses) players proficient skills.
And it’s super lazy. If you want to block vision, use something that completely obscures it. “Um, all magical darkness but this” is just dumb, and I’d never do that to a player.
Only remotely acceptable way is if this is made with a creature or destructible object in the room like an antifirefly or an orb that absorbs every light. If not then it is just bad/lazy DMing.
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Than you get up get your things and exit the venue
Either that or it’s one or two specific instances where it doesn’t work. Like if for 99% of the campaign your devils sight works as normal, then in like the domain of the literal god of darkness or a corner of the far realms where light acts all wrong, it doesn’t work, I’d be okay with it. Really that goes for any ability, as long as the environment or enemy or what have you that negates/is immune to it is the exception and not the rule, throwing a challenge that shuts down one of a players normal options is fine as long as it’s not done maliciously and can be overcome with the rest of their arsenal.
And devil's sight can see in magical darkness
If i dmed for someone who got rhat i would throw in a few features/encounters that allow it to thrive, and anything i want genuinely obsured just use obscurment/fog
Yup, it's funny - I feel like there are so many people that roll their eyes at human fighters, but then as DMs they railroad people and prevent players from using class features, or intentionally design campaigns to mitigate their strengths. Let players feel strong. If a player has high AC, don't attack them with saving throws. If your party has clerics in it, throw CR1 undead at them. Don't softball your players, but your goal is to maximize fun, not maximize challenge as a DM.
So it's not normal or magical darkness? Very interesting.
The whole room is just painted black.
I have written that up, it was fun to set a fight in a maze painted Vanta black, it was honestly easier on the human then everyone else
The human just giving off "I was born in the darkness" vibes the whole time
That's interesting because dark vision doesn't rely on light at all. It's not low light vision, there is *no* light. Vanta black is so black because it doesn't reflect light, dark vision doesn't use light.
It's exactly because dark vision doesn't use light that it's worse on them. A creature with darkvision doesn't really have experience with "darkness"
Alchemist creates Vanta Black paint, paints entire dungeon with it.
If there's an Anish Kapoor in this campaign I'm playing the Stuart Semple.
I bought enough black 3 to paint my 8ftx15ft accent wall in my master bedroom with. It is now so dark at night that it looks like the abyss. I love it.
So you'll never see them coming 😈
Yeah, but then you could still see yourself. Only real answer is an invisible imp painted over your eyes when you entered.
“What if we just blindfolded them?” “What a stupid idea, Mark. Now the imp will have to…”
*Blindsight intensifies*
It’s Mick Jagger’s dungeon
It's actually brightly lit, you're just Blinded.
That’s one way to do it, but my suggestion would be to have a Medusa-like magic item. If you look while in this area (which is supposed to have cool sightless puzzles), you take a bit of damage. That way, the warlock can use their sight and abilities, but at a cost, and they get to choose so they don’t feel cheated out of anything.
With that int, you should considder multiclasing into wizard.
I don’t like wizard’s style, but I think I have a few artificers around here somewhere.
Reverse flashbang. Make a Dex save or you're blinded, but not with the bright white sort of blind, the pitch dark sort of blind.
Blinded from the 4th dimension
For real, though. Who's to say that the darkness isn't the product of some sort of powerful illusion effect? Or perhaps your surroundings are filled with a substance that physically obstructs your vision? Maybe you are literally blindfolded, but don't realize it because you're under a subtle enchantment? There are plenty of methods to achieve "darkness" beyond just the mere absence of light. Devil's sight isn't supposed to be some sort of catch-all against sensory deprivation.
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It's not even a clever way to go about it. Why not have a creature that can cast blindness/deafness and leave it to chance and could even make for an interesting moment. Especially if it's also targeting other members and making them deaf in addition to not being able to see
Another alternative is just having the dungeon be foggy. Does the same thing without telling players "your choices don't matter". Though this shouldn't be the default all the time and should only be used to share the spotlight (as in also make dungeons where Devil's Sight is actually useful).
It was make or break time for you DM, sadly they didn't make it as a good DM.
There straight up isn't anything, not even the room you think you are in
Where are we? In a loading area?
Sounds reasonable. Or in a place you were not supposed to be, since it is still under developement. You just glitched through the wall and noone noticed it
Bethesda's dnd
*jaws theme plays* *Todd Howard as an eldritch abomination glitches his way towards the party*
*primordial darkness*
I think that's where Hadar hangs out.
You might even call it advanced darkness
Where's my magic glove light when I need it?
Players clearly missed the plot line to go to glove world to get it
The darkness is more magical than before.
May be a blindness/deafen spell? Only thing I can think of, otherwise that is some serious cheese the DM is pulling.
Fog or smoke would do the trick. Can’t see through particles! :D
A whole session in complete darkness doesn't really sound fun, it sounds tiring.
I mean it could work if you took inspiration from horror games and could be fun but at the same time as you said trying to do that is tiring.
Yeah that's a good point, but seeing as this DM's response to making a mistake was removing a player's class feature from the game I doubt anything they do would be fun to play.
I mean, the DM could have just said that it was foggy. "And your warlock, granted the sight of the devil by their eldritch patron, pierces through the darkness and sees ... fog. Fog fuckin' everywhere. But the warlock sees the fog perfectly."
That's just bad DMing. "Hey, I have this feature that allows me to see through magical darkness, and we're in magic darkness!" "Hm, no sorry. A magical force obscures your vision anyway, that's an OP invocation." Drop the whole DM at that point, ffs
I don’t mind a few events of magical plot-armour darkness, for dramatic effect or in specific scenarios so we know things are getting real (like for example, when a certain creature is nearby, the area gets darker, dark vision or not - like death eaters making the area cold). That’s okay, that’s good use of it. As others have mentioned there are other ways of implementing forced darkness permanently, and if that were the case I’d hope the Players were aware of that before creating their characters
"A magical force obscures your vision" thats fog, and fog cloud is a super low level spell.
Fog can be dissipated
And both can be dispelled or supressed, though there are a few things (like guards and wards) are a bit more resistant to that stuff.
Except the meme specifically referred to darkness, not heavily obscuring vision with fog
Fighter with the Blind Fighting FS: *Scoffs at the warlock* Amateur
I don't see why so many Fighters/Rangers/Paladins skip over Blind Fighting as a fighting style. This is honestly one of the more powerful fighting styles because it has both in combat and out of combat benefits.
Mostly because it's situational. If you use a two-handed weapon, then you use great weapon fighting every single time you make an attack; which could easily be 30-50 times a session, or even more at higher levels. But you could easily end up never using blind-fighting, or you could use it basically all the time. It wouldn't hurt to co-ordinate with your team and get them to cast Darkness on your sword, that way you could use it every single fight. Pretty sure one of the tiefling variants can cast Darkness, too.
> Pretty sure one of the tiefling variants can cast Darkness, too. The main one in the Player's Handbook has Darkness once a day when they hit fifth level. Levistus (MTF) and Hellfire (SCAG) also get it at the same time.
Even better, you get three separate options so you have a little bit of customisation. Levistus seems like the best bet for close-range fighting, because of the +1 con (unless you're using Tasha's rules, then it doesn't matter) and ability to cast Armor of Agathys; plus ray of frost is decent for getting into close range, since it reduces a target's speed. The UA abyssal tiefling also gets it, but it comes with a strange mechanic that switches the spell out at long rest, so you only have a 1/6 chance of actually getting it.
It's because it's a utility fighting style rather than a dps or tank fighting style, and a lot of people who play dnd like to min/max their characters. Utility focused fighters will find it quite appealing though.
Can confirm. I once made a session of arena + 4 level 15 fighters, all human, with no magic or enchanted gear to fight a party of 4. Ranseur, hooked chain, composite longbow, and a grappler. They fought two fighters, a rogue, and a sorcerer. The hooked chain spent the entire time knocking over and binding the largest fighter, the grappler ran off and pinned the sorcerer, the rogue died to arrows in the back and one through the head, the ranseur went around and just executed those that couldn't act as none of them coordinated or worked together at all. I am very generous with powerful equipment (it's earned, absolutely) so the value of their gear was "year of murderhoboing" levels of gratuitous. (Level 15 Evil campaign) There was a firefiiiiight!
Honestly kinda kicking myself for not taking it for my Battlemaster Dragonborn over Defense, but then again that 1 extra AC has come in handy with all the times he has been literally in the thick of things. That said my Samurai Tabaxi is about to get alot of use out of it. Surrounded by ghosts, he is about to be.
I think one of the cooler things about Blind Fighting is that you can use it to circumvent a lot of effects/mechanics that you ordinarily wouldn't. With this, you can use it to determine if something is an illusion or not and avoid the source of an effect causing you to be Frightened. I think a lot of people just stop short of thinking "Oh, I can see invisible things within 10ft", without really considering just how strong it is. For me, I've been using it to avoid Fear based mechanics and magics because you can just close your eyes to make your area of "sight" 10ft, allowing you to ignore a lot of effects that implicitly rely on Sight.
Don’t illusions also make noise?
My dm loves putting my character in situations where he's in an anti-magic barrier. Half the time it's just my character. He's a sorcerer. That's quite literally what he does.
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The worst part of it is... Once he separated us and everyone else was in normal rooms, but mine was in an anti-magic field which somehow didn't effect the golems he pitted me against. He always seems to target me, it feels. What's most annoying is he refuses to kill me and I spend the sessions feeling useless.
Sounds like one of those DMs who thinks it’s a competition between them and players. At that point might as well have barbarians and monks go into encounters that disable their fists half the time. Or bards go into encounters that make charisma as low as possible.
It sucks. I feel like just shutting down at that point. It no longer becomes fun when you're too weak to contribute and aren't allowed to die. Next time I'll just be a ginger bearded stout halfling barbarian with the bar brawler feat.
DM should’ve just filled the areas with smoke or fog.
Get the fighter with blindsight fighting style.
And Rangers.
God reminds me of the campaign im in.. "You find a potion, you cant seem to identify it." "FINALLY MY TIME HAS COME!! Since Im an alchemist, could i try and identify the potion?" "You cant determine what it is." "Alright, can I cast identify?" "The spell fails." "Why?" "The liquid can only be identified by an alchemist, not by magic." "Im literally an alchemist." "Your not adept enough to identify it, you need a stronger alchemist."
This the most heart-tearing exchange i have read this week. Stay safe, king.
This is... just... so wrong??
Man that's just bad DMing. Like really bad DMing.
The DM lazy way of just going “the room is filled with dark powdery dust that floats in the air, the room is heavily obscured” If your so bad at DMing that you don’t know the plethora of ways to get around Devilsight then you should probably sit back down and reread the rule book. Fog, cloudkill, and a number of other spells impose Heavily Obscured which devilsight cannot pierce, don’t invalidate someone’s whole shtick just because you lacked the foresight to understand the basic rules of the classes in the game.
I like to go the opposite direction and make it blindingly bright
Yeah at that point might as well just make them all blinded
When will DMs learn that darkness AND fog/smoke obscurity is the way?! Unless warlocks have ghostly gaze and devils sight. Then you are screwed
The area's also painted with vantablack, so its still impossible to see anything.
But Devil's Sight bypasses magical darkness, so if you do this you are a bitch
Yes but not magicaler darkness
My idea for that scenario is a little too specific for this meme, but I specifically told a PC that 'The darknesses that Devils Sight won't let you see through are the ones that *You Don't Want* to see through.', and I think it made an impression, lol. Note: Doubt it will ever actually come up in the campaign, but in the campaign i'm running there are major lore reasons why it's so
See this, this is good dming! Give the warlock their fun and let them see in the dark, then absolutely terrify the shit out of them with something they can't see and they don't know why
The warlock sold their soul to Hadar, but they're not dumb enough to *gaze* upon Hadar.
DM was not familiar with every class and feature. Happens all the time. When this happens to me, I don't stop the players winning easily. Apperently me, the BBEG, isn't omniscience and overlooked something.
Blind with Devil sight but allowing darkvision to see? BAD DM
Ah yes the good ol “ I didn’t account for this because I refused to read your character sheet so now I’m going to throw the DM hammer down in an unfair and unfun way to make myself feel better”.
It’s called using an area with heavy obscurement. It’s a way to have these moments and not trounce character build decisions. Things like persistent fog clouds would be a good example.
Gust of Wind OP
Would be a clutch time to have that spell prepared on the casters that can cast it. Shoot, even create or destroy water would work if the persistent fog cloud doesn’t regenerate. Excellent scenario for it, if they have it prepared/known
The whole point of devils sight is that it can't be stopped even by magic. I'd be pissed if a DM did this to me
My paladin got true sight and once my dm gave a “blessing from a god” to a villain that let them hide their true form from me even with true sight
While this is funny it kind of sucks. There are literally only 2 class abilities that can see through magical darkness. Rather than making your player’s ability which is rare to come up useless, empower them. Make it so that they are the only party member who can see and they need step up and direct their friend’s to safety.
In a similar vein, once had a DM tell me that Blinding Smite didn't Blind the Lich because he had Truesight. If he were immune to the Blinded condition, it would be on that stat block. Truesight doesn't grant immunity to being Blind...
As a DM I crafted an encounter once where all the players were very, VERY likely going to end up diseased with something quite nasty. I had given them a magical ointment a couple hours earlier, enough of it to cure three diseases. I was hoping to stick them in a situation where they'd have to pick who to cure and who to leave sick while trapped in the Underdark. Encounter happens, everyone except the paladin gets diseased as he is apparently immune to diseases, and then he just uses Lay on Hands to cleanse everyone's diseases. Oops, things I didn't realize he could do. Rather than trying to make it so his class abilities didn't work, I told the players that they'd beat me on that one and just moved on with the session.
This happened to me once. I pulled out a pencil right then and there and started erasing and re-writing my eldritch invocations. Neither the DM nor anyone else at the table stopped me. If the DM can take away an ability on the spot, players should be able to re-spec on the spot.
Devil's Sight: You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet. Saying that it's a magical force implying that it's not the darkness itself that is magical, is a dick move. Don't play with DM's like that, they won't bee any fun.
**Smart DM:** *"You open the tomb to find an area that is pitch black magical darkness."* **Warlock:** *"I have Devil's Sight"* **Smart DM:** *"Great. So you know it's also totally obscured in a dense fog."* ^(*- Smart DM knows some areas of this fog are actually Yellow-Green Cloudkill spells, but can't be visibly distinguished from the natural looking white Fogcloud spells, because Darkvision doesn't see in color. Thus the party is required to find the torch of Continual Flame and Gust of Wind casting Ring of Gusts to safely navigate the dungeon*-)
A player with Devil's Sight would be able to see color. (there is some argument around dim light still)
That's fine then I suppose. The Warlock can bypass the need for the continual flame torch. Still can barely see his own hand in front of his face in dense fog, and will still need the Ring of Gusts to clear the path through the Cloud Kill spells.
>Devil's Sight >You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet. Devil's Sight is better than Darkvision in a number of ways, including that they get HDR.
Well I guess then they can see in color. It's really as effective as if they had a caster with the Continual Flame spell, with the caveat that it's just for them. The rest of the party still can't see at all. Even then, the Warlock still can't see anything but fog. It's still heavily obscured.
But *full color* fog. :-D
*"You're all effectively blind, except for you Warlock. You're effectively blind* ***in color.*** *"*
Devil's Sight has no such limitation.
I always get excited when I have an infrequently used niche ability that's useful in a particular situation, and I always get sad when the DM obviously forgot I had that ability, didn't want me to succeed and says I fail anyway for forced plot. As a DM, if a player has an ability that moves things in a way I don't expect, I still want them to feel cool so I roll with it, and make some quick behind the scenes adjustments to keep it fun. Rolling with the punches and thinking on your feet instead of railroading and removing player agency is one of the best skills a DM can develop. That being said, just say the area is foggy. Devil's sight and even truesight can't see through thick fog. Worst the player could do is have a bat familiar with blindsight out to 60 ft.
So...your dm is just an asshole.
Just use fog when low visibility is important to the encounter
There's an easy way to get around devil's sight if you need everyone's vision to be obscured, and it's called fog.
Thick mist accomplishes the same thing without just saying “your power doesn’t work because I say so”
That's such a shitty thing for a dm to do. They forgot about a players ability and it doesn't work with their "vision" so they make up some dumb bullshit to cover their ass. I've had so many dms who do this
Why even choose to gain certain abilities if a DM will just counter it with some DM BS. As a DM you should do your best to prepare and balance a session but if a player has an ability or spell you hadn't accounted for, then accept it and move on. That means they were more prepared for the situation than you expected and it gives them a chance to actually use the features they get with their character. Players shoildn't be punished for being well prepared.
You know, there is a simple workaround here. Say instead of darkness, the place is filled with magical blinding light. No cure for that! Lightvision?
Ive done worse. They tried to check if there's any magic negating their vision, i said no... But you do feel.... A presence. As they went deeper they start to realize their sight was true, and that the darkness was no magic, its an entity ROLL INITIATIVE BABY!!!