There are a number of DMs, influenced by older editions, who play heavy obscurement from Darkness as bidirectional, but by RAW at least you can see out of heavy obscurement but not in, which means you have advantage on ranged attacks against people outside the darkness. Your enemies don't get opportunity attacks against you because they can't see you (seeing is a requirement for opportunity attacks), so you hit them and now they have to take the Booming Blade damage or be useless this turn.Īnother application: gaining advantage in ranged combat. Consider one application: Darkness + Booming Blade. Really I think the spells are balanced around that invocation.I think you're underestimating the spells. The only really good garunteed use is to abuse the warlock invocation. If it buys you a round from 3 goblins it's decent but maybe not amazing. Depending on the DM breaking up the encounter could be very useful or a waste of a spell. See the thing about both of these spells is they are pretty useless aside from either running or possibly breaking up an encounter. I know there's potential abuse for Warlocks with Darkness+ Devil's Sight, but that's a fairly niche case. I'm struggling to think of anything that Darkness actually does better except be slightly more resistant to counters and even that's a stretch (I mean how often do you actually see Gust of Wind in a game? or anyone give a monkeys about the local wind speed?). This is one for Darkness, making it 4:1 in favour of Fog.Ħ-8) Range, Components, Duration: Fog Cloud, Fog Cloud, Fog Cloud wins with double the range, (V+S) vs. Fog Cloud dissipated by 10mph wind Gust of Wind is 2nd level. Darkness supercedes light spells of 2nd or lower, 3rd+ supercedes Darkness. 4:0.ĥ) Counters: Counterspell works equally well against either.unless you cast Fog Cloud in a lvl.4+ spell slot (arguably you cannot cast Darkness from a higher slot as it doesn't have an entry for it. Three : Nil.Ĥ) Scalability: Fog Cloud: Scales. 2 points to Zero.ģ) AoE: Fog Cloud: 20ft radius. Fog Cloud has the early lead.Ģ) Spell Level. Nothing can see through fog (to my knowledge). Darkness creates, uh, darkness, which counts as a heavily obscured area. Fog cloud creates a heavily obscured area. Still, for such a cheap slot and with the mechanics it offers, Fog Cloud is a great option for a lot of characters.Can someone tell me why I would ever bother using the lvl.2 Darkness spell instead of it's identically functioned but superior lvl.1 counterpart, Fog Cloud?ġ) Effect: Creates an area of restricted vision. That paired with how easily it can be dispersed makes it difficult to keep using in the upper tiers regularly. My biggest issue with Fog Cloud is its concentration requirement. Fog Clouds placed on ranged enemy combatants can force them into vulnerable positions for your melee buddies while being within an area prone to giant AOE damage effects like Fireball. Paired with blindsight, or other means of getting around the blindness effect, creatures can have advantage on all their attacks, while enemies will have disadvantage on their attacks. The second major use case is as a means of getting tactical combat advantages on enemies. At its worst here, though, they pick out your sound and can move through the cloud fast enough to keep pace. At its best, Fog Cloud can provide cover to bamboozle enemies, leaving them dumbfounded and fumbling trying to figure out which of the four possible directions you could have gone in. Sounds may still give them away, but with some coordinated planning or decent stealth checks, Fog Cloud can facilitate escape maneuvers or quick crimes. This breaks down into two major use cases, with the primary use case being as a tool to briefly obscure vision.īlinded creatures for even just a few seconds can give the party time to relocate, hide, or perform tasks with discretion. Blinded creatures can’t see, automatically failing ability checks that require sight, have disadvantage on attack rolls, and grant enemies advantage on attack rolls against them. Heavily obscured areas treat creatures within them as if they were blinded. It’s such a useful little tool to have in your back pocket that can get you out of sticky situations for just a single 1st level spell slot. Review by Sam West, Cloud has a special place in my heart.
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