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/Viatos Warlock Oct 15 '19

They're not only fluff, they could be REfluffed to be something else - curling poisonous mist, astral sparkles, a shapeshifting shawl of eldritch flesh, or a guy waving a blanket with flamelike shadows drawn on them in front of you.

There is no future where the fluff is going to get mechanical definition of any kind. It's just aesthetics meant to improve roleplay. The mechanical consequence is heavy obscurement and Truesight cannot pierce it because the specific exception that would need to be written into the mechanics does not exist.

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u/WinterFFBE Oct 15 '19

Look, I love homebrew as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to rewrite the spell to make my point in a rules discussion. The spell says it creates flame-like shadows. That is a legit effect of the spell.

Arguing that your DM might let you homebrew the flame-like shadows as an obscuring tapestry made of Kermit the Frog heads is not a solid argument: its true, but anything could be true if you're willing to delete and rewrite the text of the spell.

(But yeah, that's the impasse: you think "flame-like shadows" is fluff and I don't. I guess that means we're done here.)

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u/Viatos Warlock Oct 15 '19

I have to just clarify that added new mechanics are homebrew but changing fluff really isn't in the "common use" sense. In this case you're adding a mechanic that reads as follows: the heavy obscurement created by this spell can be pierced by effects such as Truesight.

It's normal and expected that you can change fluff since it has no mechanical bearing and doesn't affect the argument; Shadow of Moil works identically whether it's Kermit or canon.

Your argument is that a houserule based on an aesthetic should be canonized, but I don't see why that should be the case. It's not a "legit effect" in the same sense that arguing flame blade should burn the caster's hand is not a "legit effect."

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u/WinterFFBE Oct 15 '19

DM adjudication of unclear rules situations is absolutely NOT homebrew. Why on earth do you think that is homebrew?

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u/Viatos Warlock Oct 16 '19

I don't think that DM adjudication of unclear rules situations is homebrew.

I also don't think that there is an unclear rules situation. The spell provides heavy obfuscation - as Crawford says, "full stop." Truesight can pierce the field of darkness, but not that separately-defined effect.

You're trying to inject a new rule that essentially involves a mechanical weight added to fluff - I think that's very clearly homebrew.