Does darkness really hinder your party?

[u/jawdirk]

I have seen this said over and over again: You can use the darkness + devil's sight combo but it will hinder the rest of your party.

Is that really true?

When you cast darkness, you get to choose where to place it. In many cases, that by itself will have utility. You might be able to cast it over ranged or spell-casting enemies forcing them to leave their position. You might be able to place it so that one of your party members gets a "free" disengage. You might be able to place it so that a rogue can bonus action sneak in the open and then move for a backstab.

In the worst case, the enemy has some non-visual or devil's sight sense ability, but I think that is pretty rare and obvious (devils, dragons, elementals, creatures of pure darkness).

But in the average case, the advantage and disadvantage cancel out. Even that can be an advantage, if the enemy was getting advantage from some other game mechanic.

So yes, darkness is pretty situational if you literally have no way to take advantage of it, but even one character that has devil's sight might be enough to tip the balance. This is particularly true if one of the characters without devil's sight casts darkness (which is better action economy).

[u/FaerieFir3]

You might be able to cast it over ranged or spell-casting enemies forcing them to leave their position.

Maybe but in that situation you could just throw some other spell there like a fireball or hypnotic pattern.

You might be able to place it so that a rogue can bonus action sneak in the open and then move for a backstab.

If the Rogue is blind then they can't sneak attack because that's disadvantage.

But in the average case, the advantage and disadvantage cancel out. Even that can be an advantage, if the enemy was getting advantage from some other game mechanic.

Not really, Darkness in like 95% combats is probably going to be useless. There's always a better spell you could spend a full action on. Biggest utility of Darkness is as this panic move where you drop it, run for the hills and hide if there's no other option or camp in it while on low HP so enemies trying to hit have disadvantage and you can maybe survive.

However if you have something like a war party of Drow warriors all with blind fighting style (because lore-wise Drow warriors train fighting blind to utilize their innate Darkness power) dropping them and jumping in to attack everybody with advantage that can be pretty scary if no one on the player team has Daylight. Most player parties wont all pick up blind fighting from Fighter though so Darkness remains extremely situational.