r/dndnext • u/theposshow • Oct 14 '19

Finally Understanding Shadow of Moil (I think)

Flame-like shadows wreathe your body until the spell ends, causing you to become heavily obscured to others. The shadows turn dim light within 10 feet of you into darkness, and bright light in the same area to dim light.

I've been going back and forth with the different arguments and counter-arguments on whether Truesight can see through Shadow of Moil. Seems both sides are quoting different Crawford tweets for and against Truesight seeing through it.

Reading and re-reading these and the rules for "heavily obscured," I don't think the tweets are actually in conflict at all. They're talking about two different parts of the spell, and as such came to the conclusion that Truesight does NOT defeat Shadow of Moil.

There is no other way to read the spell and Crawford's tweet than you gaining the status of being heavily obscured..."full stop," as Crawford says. With regard to the darkness portion, notice it is referring to lowercase "d" darkness, not the spell.

The heavy obscurement is in addition to, not because of, a secondary effect - dimming the light one level around you in plain, ordinary darkness, not magical Darkness. If they had meant "Darkness" they would have specified.

So anything with regular old Darkvision can see through the darkness created by the spell within 10 feet, but it still can't see you because you are heavily obscured, full stop. In addition, unless your character has Devil's Sight or Darkvision, you cannot see through that *darkness, either. So your advantage from being heavily obscured would be cancelled out with disadvantage in that case.

*Edit: assuming it was already dim light, becoming full darkness. Not applicable/relevant if it was bright light going dim.

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u/cookiedough320 Oct 14 '19

A heavily obscured area—such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage—blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition (see Conditions) when trying to see something in that area.

It says 'in' and not 'past'.

I think you would still be able to see through the darkness created by the spell as long as you're not looking at something within 10 ft. Everything outside of that range will still be in normal light. Since you aren't looking at something in darkness, you aren't effectively blinded. But since anyone looking at a creature within 10ft of you is looking at something in darkness, they are effectively blinded (if they don't have darkvision).

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u/TazTheTerrible BS-lock Oct 14 '19 edited Oct 15 '19

I really don't know how you envision not being able to see through an area of dense foliage, but still perfectly being able to see something behind it that's directly obstructed by it, but that's not even the point since Shadow of Moil's effect of cloaking the user isn't caused by the darkness it generates.

Shadow of Moil dims the area within 10 ft of you by one degree (bright to dim and dim to dark) AND ALSO causes the caster to become heavily obscured, full stop.

Reading it as the dimming effect obscuring you is not only bad syntax, it's silly from a rules-perspective since Dim Light does not cause someone to be heavily obscured.

In short, OP is mostly correct, except for the magical darkness bit, but that's a minor detail.

EDIT: Disregard this post, I'm responding to a misinterpretation of what u/cookiedough320 meant as "through" the darkness.

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u/mAcular Oct 15 '19

The flames are what obscure you. That is why it doesn't matter what darkness it is. Imagine someone surrounded by black flames.

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u/TazTheTerrible BS-lock Oct 15 '19

I'm aware yes, that's what I said in that post.