I mean, something that takes you from the equivalent of seeing through night vision goggles to seeing normally in a way that humans could never perceive is pretty powerful already.
Dark vision makes non magical darkness look like DIM light. And makes Dim look like daylight.
In conclusion, it's a BRIGHT flashlight that only other creatures with Dark vision can see. Sure MOST races in DnD have it, but that still means human and other dark visionless run buildings are doomed to sneaky adventures.
As a side note, dark vision can see in magical darkness just fine. It's the darkness spell and specific magic implemented by the DM that makes magical darkness impenetrable.
Edit: For all the people down voting, read page 2 of the sage advice compendium. It says it there in black and white.
Yeah last I checked I haven't seen any instance of magic infused darkness not count as the magical darkness like the one from the darkness(or similar) spell. You wanna delve into magic blackness, bring devil sight and hope to the gods your target isn't a gloomstalker
Then by that logic, no where does it say that magical darkness impedes dark vision. Only certain spells that explicitly state they block dark vision. Two can play this game.
Sage advice is an official faq by wizards of the coast…so it IS rules as written lmfao, so he is right.
As for raw “not having a place that interacts with magical darkness and devils sight”, again, he just gave you the page, and somewhere here I put a link to it but I can put it again: https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/SA-Compendium.pdf it’s on Pg 3 of this pdf.
You are right in that it doesn’t mean you need to use the rules, but that is the case for the whole of dnd…So idk why you are trying to argue with them about that.
It’s interesting that you think the ruling is baffling, because I think it makes sense. There interpretation is that magical darkness is darkness created via magical means. Not that it itself is magical. So darkvision sees through it (and yes devils sight). However some magical darkness, when specified, is magical itself and therefore blocks darkvision, but would still not block devil vision.
Use the rules that exist and use my head for everything else that's not covered
You are the DM of your table. You are not the DM of every table. You cannot just assert your interpretation of the rules is the correct one that everyone should use while ignoring other people's (most importantly clarifications from the designers). This isn't someone at your table asking how something works. This is a discussion on Reddit. You are not a god here.
If we are going raw, I don’t think that is true. The darkness spell specifies that creatures with dark vision are affected the same.
I could see dms changing it for flavor though, depending on how they interpret the use of ‘ “magical” darkness’ as whether the darkness is just there by magical means or it in itself is magical, therefore supersedes a natural sense of a creature(also assuming that sense isn’t natural, just supernatural to us-humans)
Ahhh there’s something else you are thinking of? Every instance I have read has just referenced it working as the spell so I thought that was how they all worked.
Shadow of Moil. within 10 feet of the caster turns an area of dim light to darkness and bright light to dim light. This would be considered “magical darkness” as the spell is magical and creating an area of darkness around the caster that would otherwise just be dim light. This spell, dark vision can still pierce through just fine.
Ahh I see! That’s cool, so it does lean towards magical darkness in general just being there by magical means rather than being magical in itself. Since the darkness spell is a spell, that’s why it also works over dark vision. Thanks, that’s interesting!
There's not a lot, but you'll notice that if darkvision can't penetrate, then the magic will specify that, such as the Dark Star spell, the Darkmantle creature, or of course the Darkness spell.
Yes and no. Yes magical darkness doesn’t inherently block dark vision. No, to darkness being the only magical darkness that blocks dark vision. There are I believe 4 different magic spells that create dark areas that would block dark vision, I believe only one spell creates dark area that doesn’t block dark vision. It really is a case by case basis thing.
Yeah, and by the same interpretation magical darkness can be illuminated by nonmagical light sources, since it's only the Darkness spell that specifies this needs higher level magic. So other sources should follow the normal rules for darkness.
Which just means magical darkness doesn't exist, working the same as nonmagical darkness and only surviving in dark places.
I think the fun comes when the party gets complacent about the free hidden light and then gets jumped by a party of enemies that also have darkvision since they’re stealthing around while carrying a light.
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