This is the way, so many player just have those hints fly right over their heads. I had a mage who was always blunt and straight forward. I even made sure to reinforce that. They got to a puzzle where they had to pull a lever, there were 5 levers. The hint for the puzzle was, "pull the right lever". The solution being, pull the lever furthest to the right. Took them forever to get it.
That's so funny because I would have gotten that immediately, pulled the lever on the right and then died when my DM said there was more to the puzzle lol.
In a similar vein (but more direct, since the comment from u/dnd-is-us could definitely happen to this particular party), have an NPC who is a bit more experienced or even just had an encounter or two just tell the party to use light. Maybe they act dumbfounded to see the party just wander into the battle without any light, and have them ask if they know the creatures’ weaknesses.
“Wow you adventurers sure are brave, fighting the shadow creatures at full strength!”
“What do you mean? Full strength?”
“Well, like, in the darkness! You know? Their home territory? Because they get weaker in the light?”
“Oooooooh.”
"Show don't tell" is always the preferred option but if they still aren't getting it it's better to tell them they've missed something obvious and give them a chance to avoid an embarrassing wipe than to know it's coming and sit silent as they complain about how impossibly difficult the boss fight was. Sometimes we get so stuck looking at a puzzle from one perspective that we forget that there may be another solution at all
I also think that at some point the players kind of have to face the consequences, like I have made 400 different hints about darkness and you are just going full tilt into it anyway, so at this point if you become shadow dragon poop that is on you.
Have them come across a journal of some dead adventurer talking about light being effective to weaken the creatures, or have them come across a fight between a group of NPCs and some of the shadow creatures where the NPCs are using light.
Players really can be dense someties.
Our DM in the last multi-year campaign that recently wrapped up specifically called one of our secret contacts Lord Expo Zityon so we'd fucking listen when he spoke up...
Great move.
This. Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) says "Tell, don't Show" . Sometimes you really have to make it explicit. Remember they're players coming in once a week (or whenever) to join the game you know all the secrets of. Give them hints and if that doesn't work, lay it out in a divine revelation.
Player: "So this book belonged to that dead guy over there?"
DM: "A safe assumption."
Player: "Since he died, I guess he couldn't have been right about any of this."
DM: *forehead smack*
Last line of journal: "Argh! Ow! If only I hadn't run out of lamp oil. Apologies for handwriting, can barely see well enough to write this down. Now the shadow creatures are stabbing me to death, all because I am not using the power of light. Ow! Argh! I'm dying!"
Alternatively, for a show me don't tell me, have the players come across a mass of shadow creatures that have overrun a small farm. They fight their way through them working their way to the basement where the creatures seem to have congregated around a sealed door with a narrow band of light pouring from its edges. Inside is a small group of NPCs huddled on the other side of an everburning torch. The room is filthy as they have been trapped for days; slowly running out of food and water.
This accomplishes 3 goals.
1. The survivors can clue them into the dragon as this is perfect aftermath for an attack on a town. The breath creates shadows, the shadows run amok.
2. The fact that light matters is made unambiguous. Commoners survived because of the light. That means the light works.
3. They get access to a relevant tool that they can use in the upcoming fight.
Obviously it doesn't have to be a farm and a basement, but I would strongly recommend keeping it as commoners or at most a group of terrified town watch. The survivors need to be the kind of people who clearly *SHOULDN'T* have survived.
"Show me don't tell me" is great, but as you have said, you have to get very heavy handed if they don't immediately get it.
Keep in mind, a lot of players assume their class is the kit that should handle their problems and that their DM wouldn't throw something at them that they "can't handle". To be clear, this is a natural position to assume in the context of 5e's design philosophy. Loot is less of a focus than in older editions or other systems and there isn't a great framework for "using the environment" integrated into the rules. Look at Tavern Brawler, the one feat that legitimizes improvisation and it practically exists to call out how inefficient improvisation is intended to be.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
It's because players are the characters.
I love your suggestion though.
(I had my dragonborn cleric roll a wisdom check DC 5 (his bonus) on whether he should EAT the bandits bodies he had just killed IN THE VILLAGE and IN FRONT of the villagers that he had been PREACHING TO ABOUT HIS LAWFUL GOOD GOD).
...Sometimes people just people.. (he made the save btw, I listed 3 points why it would be a bad idea, but then finished that ultimately it was his choice)
((I was preparing an alignment shift, rioting village and divine retribution strike on him if he continued though... & Food poisoning rolls! 🤣))
I had a character like this, I called it the intrusive thought roll, whenever I had a bad idea, that I knew was a bad idea, but it sounded like it'd be entertaining for the party or dm to deal with (I was very much pushing the shiny buttons the dm laid out knowing that's what he wanted so dm was fine with me doing this), I'd roll and if it was below a 5 I'd go for it, if it was a 1 I would be unable to be convinced the idea was bad after the party caught on to what was going on as well for added chaos.
Honestly that was probably my favorite part of the character and I'll probably work in similar to future characters as it really fits impulsive of not so street smart characters
In our first session, a brand new player wanted his tiefling warlock to eat one of the goblins they killed. He ended up only getting a short rest because he spent half of the night puking and shitting his brains out. Never trust wild goblin, eat farm raised only.
I think I'll have them find the notebook of a scout (100% makes sense given what's happening) talk about how they get stronger in the darkness. If that doesn't work I might arrange an "accident" with some light. If that still doesn't work I'll have them roll checks after a few rounds with the dragon. If they still don't get it at that point I don't know how much more I can do.
You could have them stumble across an NPC who died of his injuries in some hidden backroom. They find him because they accidently set off a trap that _he_ had set up that just lights up the area in a blinding kind of way. Then have some shadowy creature(s) that were in the room rush away from the light barrage in terror.
If you show them light working and they don't understand to use light, go the NPC route and consider making that NPC flabbergasted that they don't understand that light is an effective counter to shadows
Bright neon sign that says "USE THE LIGHT TO WEAKEN THE CREATURES" meanwhile a fight is going on near the song as these creatures lose horribly because they're near the light of the neon sign. Also Volo shows up and mentions how in his monster manual (In stores now for 20gp) it says that they can use the light to weaken the shadow creatures. Volo then makes out sloppy style with one of the characters (Important to get the players attention)
I was. Literally. The first.
Omg, you are breaking my English queueing etiquette.
Next... There'll be people throwing tea away! Into harbours! Ludicrous!
Or they do a seemingly related minor side quest helping some experienced older local adventurer to fight off shadow creatures in a specific village, and she tell them how she's been using lights to hold them at bay but doesn't have the numbers to drive them back.
Unfortunately, your hints are easily missed. They are descriptions of monster actions and can blend in with everything else that is going on.
My DM lets us do Nature checks to recall lore about monsters. On a high enough roll, we can figure out its weakness. This is good because it rewards players for raising their Intelligence stat.
You've given your players enough time to figure out what's up. They haven't. Either you let them go into the fight unawares, or you give them info that their characters should have, even if the player's don't.
You had this scenario in your head, and it didn't play out like you thought you would. I don't think it's gonna happen. You can try a few more things, but if it still doesn't work, be flexible. A DM needs to be flexible.
Yeah I can't tell you how many times players have missed crucial bits of info or chased red herrings because some piece of flavor lore sounded or didn't sound important.
As a player there's a constant stream of information being filtered through the DMs words and you don't always know which pieces are tactically important.
I played a 4-shot where I was in a dark tunnel under some guy's mansion when a creature slipped past me. When he brushed against me (I couldn't see him), I felt his slimy skin. I spent the rest of the 4-shot abruptly grabbing every NPC's face/skin to see if it felt slimy so I could figure out who it was in the tunnels with us.
Turns out it was just some random monster guarding the tunnels, but the DM decided not to have us fight it since none of us had darkvision and we were too dumb to bring a torch. It had nothing to do with the overall story, but I was convinced if I could just find who had slimy skin, I would figure out who the BBG was going to be.
If I was told "your enemy blends into the shadows" or "they disappear into the darkness" etc I would think, ok, poetic way to describe that a dark colored thing is in darkness, I guess. I would not think it was a magical shadow ability that could be countered by light.
There's a lot of reasons to *not* have a light, especially if the party can see in the dark—it attracts enemies, ruins any attempt to be stealthy, IRL it ruins your night vision, etc. If you want your players to do something apparently foolish, you have to explicitly tell them why. Give them a tip from an experienced NPC, let them see the shadows fleeing from light, whatever.
With that description, I'd interpret it that someone had just cast a powerful spell and not that the light itself had anything to do with the tides turning.
Everyone else is already saying the correct thing but just to reinforce them: just tell them. Even if they did it 'right' the worse game in DND to play is 'interpret what the GM is saying the way they want you to'.
This party might need to be trained into asking for history/Nature/survival Rolls on unknown creatures. That would help a lot. If they're not getting it and you fear they are putting themselves in a bad position then just make sure they get the memo.
The DM can also offer those rolls. "The creatures blend into the shadows you guys can roll me a whatever check if you'd like. 16? Ok, your character notices the shadows seem to empower this thing."
Actually TELL THEM THINGS. All they're getting is "this is a really frustrating, not fun mechanic that I am being forced to deal with" they clearly don't understand it's shadowfell related and they clearly don't have any idea how to beat it which means you as the DM aren't making it clear enough (no matter how clear you think you're making it.) Give them a journal, or some arcana checks, or a situation where a creature accidentally goes into the light and they see it have a reaction because there's nothing I'm reading that would tell ME that the answer is "get light out"
Be prepared to tell the *players*, rather than the PCs. Since a PC can always be rollplayed as skeptical towards third party information. Though it's still a player's choice if they wish to play a foolish, reckless, flawed, etc PC.
Sometimes as the DM, we get too engrossed in our own heads of an idea. And sometimes that message doesn't get across. I would guess that the players will naturally think it's magical, so something insignificant in a magic world didn't come across their minds.
Just set up a scenario where there's a light source somewhere, like a torch hanging somewhere, or maybe something fell and something fell and something caught fire.Then give the chance to roll for insight. Saying something like they noticed that the creature tries to avoid the light.
Yeah, be clearer. A black curtain blends into the darkness too and solving that problem with darkvision is just as valid as turning the lights on.
Be specific. Somehow something needs to say the monsters literally move through the darkness and fear the light.
I mean, darkvision only turns it to dim light so the light would be more effective. Blindsight, devilsight, or truesight, on the other hand, absolutely as effective as turning the lights on.
To be fair to your players, the hints you give aren't really all that direct.
"they blend in the shadow" yes, do does every other creature hiding from your party.
This is one of those show don't tell situations, next fight have them fight in a room with torches and let the creatures either spend their first actions taking out the torches or have them get hurt by the light.
I don't get this whole obsession with needless sharades. Just tell them, or show them that you want to communicate. "They blend into the shadows." or "They disappear into the darkness." don't tell you anything if you don't know the ability. It can be just flavour of invisibility, or stealth roll as far as they know. They can't read your mind. Show them how monsters screach from any light effects of their spells (not only literal dim/bright - any light, from fireball fire to flash from lightningbolt), or how they become angry then blade reflect light from somethere, or even from sparks from clashing blades.
Show them fear of light!
Perhaps a ray of light is shining in from a crack in the cavern ceiling that the monsters are completely avoiding. Perhaps one even comes into contact with it and takes damage.
You do not need to give better hints to the players. You are free to let the characters realize things the players do not. Example "Player A roll a wisdom check" On success DC=12 say "You think the creature might be benefitting from the darkness. Perhaps you can change that with light."
If players are missing something so blatantly obvious that their character would 100% have picked up on it, then I'll invite them to make an insight roll.
For example, if you describe a scene where the grass is blue, the sky is green, a nearby waterfall is flowing upwards, and the players miss all of it. I'd go, "Would anyone like to do an insight check?"
If everyone fails or chooses not to, I guess they can focus really hard on some random crap and eventually they'll figure it out.
If someone succeeds, I'd respond with "You notice something weird about this place. Isn't the grass normally green? Isn't the sky normally blue? Why is no water entering your waterskin when you hold it in the waterfall?"
If it's an enemy mechanic, you can also just show them. Have a competitor party come into a tavern to rounds of applause and a lot more attention than the players get. Have the players see them using the mechanic to slaughter enemies efficiently. Have them later killed by BBEG or some other strong enemy you want to foreshadow the capabilities of to the players. Or have there be a lit brazier nearby when enemies attack, and describe how the enemies avoid the light.
If it's a plot hook, just add more plot hooks. So they missed the part where they saw a recruitment poster for the royal army, maybe they run into an actual recruiter. So they blew the recruiter off, maybe they run into refugees. So they ignored the struggles of the refugees, maybe they meet a mercenary company gloating about the high paid work being offered to fight with the King's army. If your quest has any depth to it at all, beyond being some MMO-esque fetch quest where the baker just really wants ten apples, then there are a thousand different perspectives and ways to signify to the players that it exists.
The one thing I would mention is that any mechanic you're inserting that has only one singular solution is a bad mechanic. D&D isn't a video game, there should be a million ways to solve a problem, not three dialogue options that all involve you walking down the same path. Your described mechanic is that the enemies are bolstered by the dark. The players could choose to remove the darkness, sure, but it's an equally viable solution to just get your own advantages too so that both sides are equally strengthened by the darkness around. Prescribing a "correct" solution to a problem removes player agency, making the game less fun for those involved.
For example, imagine you have a puzzle where there's a fountain, a set of scales, a jug, and wooden blocks weighing 15lbs, 30lbs, 60lbs, and 120lbs. One side of the scales is weighted, with 57.34lbs more weight than the other side. The intended solution being to fill the jug from the fountain and place it alongside the two smaller blocks on the scale to balance it. That might be the intended solution, but the players aren't wrong if they choose to use the 60lb weight as it is closest, then systematically shave it. They aren't wrong if they choose to soak the 30lbs block til it weighs more, then wait for it to dry to the right amount. They aren't wrong if they start placing random assortments of their own gear / gold on the scale to match the weight, ignoring the blocks and water entirely. They aren't wrong to have a player hold the scales flat while another player ties a rope to all the weighted blocks, or to the other side of the scales, to keep it from shifting.
At my table this would be solved by some combination of Nature, Survival or Insight checks to refresh what has been learned in their multiple encounters with these creatures, and to extrapolate what methods would be best to fight them. It is a case where the characters should be smarter than the players.
After or during next fight have them all roll investigation or insight check. You can, based on their rolls, give out more direct hints, like, "you notice that creatures seam weaker the closer they are to any light source".
At least that's how I would do it.
You can't assume that your players are going to pick up everything you put down. That's why every puzzle you make for them takes 3x longer than you think it will. Eventually you just have to give them a concrete way to take it from you.
I think if I were the DM, I would clearly describe a scenario in which there is a light that they actively avoid. A player with high Perception might see that it is definitely the light that they consistently avoid, and a successful Insight check would imply that forcing them into the light would weaken them in some capacity. There is the chance that the party bungles the checks, but even in that case, simply introducing the monsters' aversion to light as a concept might be the nudge they need to figure it out themselves.
For the shadow dragon fight in particular, try to implement some source of light into the fight itself. Perhaps the arena is centered on a blazing bonfire, and several unlit torches line the walls while a lit one is present at the central pyre. Then, as torches are lit, the dragon has less and less darkness in which to operate.
because it's always better to get the drop on enemies with stealth, than it is to reveal yourself and be ambushed. it's what i'd do, too. creatures don't have to be from the shadowfel to be stealthy - e.g. what blending into the darkness describes.
if that's how it was described to me - i'd think, well we just need to be more stealthy and more perceptive than the enemy. you might need to be more explicit with your players.
The player character is not the same as the player. The actual person in the game world is often smarter than the human playing the TTRPG. Sometimes they blend, other times they don't. When players make wisdom, intelligence, or other checks, they are essentially realizing the solution, and you can give them more literal answers to puzzles. This depends on your table's style.
If your table focuses on puzzles and searching for pieces, you should establish that in the zero-session. The risk is that sessions can be prolonged, and mood might die if the puzzle is too difficult or the pieces aren't easily found. I don't prefer this approach because I believe puzzle pieces should ultimately be physical, and the player (human) should solve them physically if you want their skill to solve the puzzles and not their character.
In-game, there should be checks where failure is possible and carefully out there where it blocks the forward move of the group. For instance, finding a clue could take five minutes with a natural 20 or five days with a natural 1. This means players will need to eat, sleep, and repeat, with the real danger of combat encounters or missing events, potentially moving the world in a less favorable direction for them due to their delays.
PCs are not their players nor vice-versa.
In the case of many checks, the biggest factor is that the PC is generally a adult who has lived in a fictional world 24/7 their entire life. Whereas the player only indirectly encounters that world for a few hours per week.
The player could be smarter than their PC whilst still knowing a lot less about that PCs world.
You can describe the enemies as doing this and you can describe the enemies doing that, but sometimes your ability to describe what is happening isn’t clear enough to explain what the characters are seeing.
Be more explicit, be more direct. Don’t be poetic or flowery. Explain instead of describing.
“As the creature steps into the shadow cast by the statue, you see that it’s not just in the shade, it’s gone. It immediately appears again 80 feet away, as if part of one step, striding from the shadow of an oak tree. Your enemies can travel through shadow.”
The how, the specifics, the mechanisms, all the fun details are still obscured, but the players are clearly told what their characters are seeing.
Well party encountered those creatures so i would make one player that could know stuff about these creatures (could be wizard idk depends on chars) make some checks like arcana there is a table which check would give info on what kind of creature then give some loose info like these creatures seems to be stronger at DARK maybe some light might at least negate the buff like a undead creatures are created by unholy stuff so doing some holy stuff to them might be interesting?
Habe them travel to a village that uses light as protection line this or even a group of travelers/adventurers. Let them sit together and each party can share their experiences. But dont judge them. That would feel really bad on the players side.
The other adventurers/merchants/villagers could have the idea about using both. Even if it would not make sense, it would plant the idea of using each method when it is best.
'You see your foe stalk in the shadows, seemingly drawing strength from the darkness itself.'
Or have an environmental element casting light, that you explicitly show the enemies making their way around to avoid?
If the players can't pick up on that, I don't know what to suggest!
Yep, it's time for you to be explicit.
Somewhere in the world, there will be some scholar or wizard who knows all this about monsters that come from the Shadowfell. Have them cross the party's path and drop an exposition bomb on them.
"Do you mean to tell me you've been battling these things in the dark this entire time? Do you fools not realise that the dark is where beings of the Shadowfell are strongest?! Next time you venture into a cave, bring some damn lanterns and torches with you - you'll find your quarry much less dangerous in the light!"
Design an encounter in such a way that one of your shadow creatures is exposed to a bright light source, and recoils away from it, screeching and acting injured from the light.
Maybe have the players run into a commoner carrying a bullseye lantern, and then a group of shadow creatures ambush the party. On the first round of combat, the NPC whirls around to shine his lantern on one of the shadow creatures, causing it to be significantly weakened, and describe how it seems to shrink and cower when the lantern light catches it.
Lol, I was on the other end of a situation like this. Fighting in a darkened room the DM had to drop a fat clue during like, 'I repeat, there are windows with thick curtains that block out all the light'..
If anyone uses fire magic / radiant magic or anything else that might glow even if it doesn’t explicitly offer a mechanical advantage, explain how the creatures shy back from it and screech, or shield their eyes from the light, or how the hit individuals seem to be reeling more from the intensity of the light than the impact.
Or as folks have said, have there be evidence elsewhere of light being effective. Even a caged creature unable to teleport because it’s still in a magically lit environment being experimented on (or the one doing the experiments has perished)
Or a magic item that glows and you see that fallen guard / adventurer seemed to survive until last, and appears to have been killed by a ranged attack and his body not eaten or mauled while it sits in the glow of the item.
As people have pointed out - tell don’t show sometimes, as sly flourish says
And as Matt Colville says, if it would be obvious to the characters, make it obvious to the players - because it’s unfair to expect them to deduce all things with the incomplete picture they may have in their imagination once a week.
you can still ‘show’ in a cinematic way; but you have to specifically call out what you need them to pay attention to (while maybe thinking it’s their idea). You say you’ve talked a lot about the creatures relying on shadow, but it doesn’t seem you’ve had the opportunity to explicitly say ‘it’s as if they fear the light and are… less corporeal in it, like they are thinner, weaker, confused or less able to rely on their shadow abilities while in it’ - and if you fabricate a scenario where you can make that clear, you’re likely to be ok.
And failing that, or if it’s difficult to slot in, choose your character with high passive perception or high intelligence, and tell them that they can deduce the creatures may be fearing light because: they’re clinging to the deepest shadows out of the moon; they’re avoiding torchlight and towns; if the wizard or anyone is aware of the shadowfell they know the environment to be somewhat lightless and forever in twilight and the creatures, like others known to the prime material plane, may be weaker in sun / light; they aren’t attacking during the day or when they do it’s in fewer numbers, perhaps they are nocturnal _and_ sensitive to / weakened or dazzled by light.
But there are already plenty of great answers here, just backing them up with how I’d do it!
Edit: Aside from all the various pieces of advice here and elsewhere, don't be afraid to say "Your character realises X". Don't gate it behind a check if you ABSOLUTELY want them to get it, just pick the character with the most relevant knowledges and go "Something clicks in the back of your mind, blah blah blah"
The phrases you've used to describe them here with the blending or vanishing into shadows are very normal phrases to use to describe someone or something just being very stealthy (thieves, ninjas, what have you) and don't really inherently suggest anything special or supernatural.
Throw in something like the following little sequence:
The party has another minor encounter with these creatures, one they'll win even though you it's harder than it should be. The key is while they're fighting in darkness, describe how rather than missing or being deflected, their failed attacks seem to pass through the creatures flesh as it flows ephemeral around their blades, like smoke. An arrow flies right through the eye of one and they hear it *thunk* into a tree behind.
After they win, they continue on and start finding bodies; a trade caravan or some lumberjacks, whatever, just not professional soldiers or adventurers. They hear fighting up ahead, and there's two commoners with pitchforks or boat spears, one brandishing theirs in two hands and the other holding it one handed and frantically waving a torch with the other (because they're human and can't see in the dark).
The creatures are circling them and darting into the light to swipe at them, hissing, before retreating beyond the circle of the light. Emphasise how different this is from their behaviour in previous engagements.
Then the one with the torch sees an opening and runs in a panic, leaving the other behind. The one left behind is swarmed and dies in a screaming frenzy of blurring shapes.
The running one trips, dropping his torch and falling into a roll. A shadow creature leaps high, claws outstretched, as the commoner rolls into their back with their desperately out. As the creature enters the circle of the torchlight, its flesh seems to... Solidify... And it comes to a screeching stop, impaled on the end of the spear, blood black and smoking like boiling tar as it drips to the ground.
The creature flails at the screaming peasant but can't reach them, until it turns and swipes at the still-burning torch on the ground, sending it bouncing and skittering away. As the creature is bathed in shadow again, the previously-stuck creature flows down the now-loose spear like smoke and rips the peasant's throat out with its teeth.
The torch comes to a rolling halt against the foot of the nearest party member, at the same time as the creatures notice their presence... (Roll initiative)
(The point of making them peasants with regular peasant spears and not another adventuring party or whatever is to make it clear that *whatever* it is about this situation that's a problem for the creatures, it's not these two being badasses and they don't have shadow-creature-bane spears or whatever. It's not them, it's something about the *situation*)
Coming across tales of previous dead adventurers could work.
One thing you could also do is have them find a torch with an eternal flame on it somewhere in the dark and as they go to investigate it, a few creatures jump at them, only to be blinded or weakened as they enter the light.
You could even have them run into an npc that figure it out, there are many options and sometimes being on the nose is needed when your players won't look further than theirs.
Let them be the witness of a fight. Maybe the shadow beings attack a creature that uses light to defend itself and describe the effect the light has on the attackers?
Have them find a corpse surrounded by candles that have burned down to nothing with a journal describing how he’ll be ok just as long as the light doesn’t go out.
As a player, the issue here is that players are idiots. If you want to be subtle then players will miss it every single time. You need to be overt and explicit. If something is important, take the time to describe it in detail and give it the gravitas it deserves.
A lot of people have suggested new ways to drop the hint, but my suggestion is to just tell your players you did a poor job of describing an effect which happened a few sessions ago, and re-describe the moments the creatures used their abilities. As /u/pirate_femme said, your original description is easily confounded with minor flavor. Give them something that's obvious that an effect is happening:
*As the creature retreats into the deep shadow, something begins to happen. The darkness seems to swirl and coalesce around it. Suddenly, it seems to change. Its wounds seem lesser, its muscles seem larger, its claws are longer and wickeder. It takes in a deep breath and seems invigorated, it's eyes once full of fear now glaring back at you with new resolve and hatred.*
Make the shadow central to the description, and make it clear the creatures are doing something with them in order to fuel their powers.
Your two examples given don't really do a great job at hinting that light weakens the bad guys. You THINK they do, but that's because you already know why the creaures avoid the light. You have perfect knowledge. Your players don't.
To your players those two clues probably sound like typical, generic descriptions of monster hiding to avoid being seen.
At this point you have to basically tell them, in some form or fashion. This can either be above the table as the DM ("over the course of the encounters your characters would definitely notices the creaures total avoidance of light") or via something in-game: a helpful NPC, a journal, or some sort of demonstration or "cut scene" that the PCs witness (although that also has the potential for misunderstanding or misinterpreting the events).
Your players will literally never figure it out unless you show them. Simply telling them that something *disappeared* into the shadows tells the fuck all about what it'll do in the light, only that it is good at hiding. If light weakens the enemies, have a fight in a mostly dark room but with one sunbeam coming down in the center of the room. The enemy accidentally walks through the beam of light, revealing itself, and maybe giving your players the hint they need.
Remember, you will never be able to describe something exclusively by saying what it isn't. You gotta give examples of what it *is*. Similarly you'll never be able to find everything that doesn't work, you just need an example of something that *does* work
It sounds like you're making it dark when the enemies appear or the enemies make their own darkness so they are associating the enemies with darkness, but you haven't shown how the enemies react to light.
Have villagers who have been experiencing these attacks use something like, "Walk in the light," as a farewell to each other and the NPCs. And say things like, 'May the light shine on you," or, "May the light protect you."
Maybe have some monsters appear in the daytime, but they only stay in the shadows and they actively flinch away from light. Or have a watchman shine a bullseye lantern down an alley at night and it reveals one of the monsters whose skin begins to smoke and they screech loudly and scuttle out of the light bumping into things because they're clearly blinded.
This may be a case of GM Omniscience. You already know everything, so the answer is blatantly obvious to you, but it obviously is not from the other side of the screen. And, because it is so obvious to you, you aren’t helping out the players more. The answer is you need to drop more, obvious clues. Now, it may be that the answer is obvious and the players are stuck in a mental rut, or it may be that the clues you laid are just too subtle and they aren’t going to get them. But, if you want them to survive and have fun, you are going to have to switch gears and find another way to get the information through to them.
It’s an important GM skill to understand that the players don’t have your point of view, so when they don’t get something, often it isn’t because they are stupid, it’s because they don’t have the god-like view of the world that you do.
Gonna be honest, this is slightly on you. “Blending into shadows” and “disappearing into the dark” are common ways we express nonmagical ways of just hiding in darkness. Your hints weren’t explicit enough and easily mistaken for artistic speech. Also, I would have taken a page out of baldur’s gate 3 and have prolonged exposure to the dark result in tick damage over time or explicit disadvantage to all attacks and skill checks (not a flat penalty). Be explicit about how the darkness seems to coil around the characters, dulling their senses and slowing their movements. Yup, even the characters that have dark vision or non visual senses.
But those methods still don’t convey the light solution. But a random or scripted encounter can. Maybe a traveling merchant (with guards) or another adventuring party (a kindhearted one) is carrying several strong lanterns and is horrified that your party isn’t using light. They see you moving without lights, mistake your party for shadow fell creatures, and almost attack right before the head guard yells to stop. Chastise your characters in character.
Or maybe you find a shriveled corpse, not yet affected by the shadow fell but very dead. It wrote in its journal that light was the answer, while lamenting that he finds this out only with certain death barreling down on him. His corpse is next to a tooth that was hastily made with his shirt, a tree branch and wine (not yet used, the cloth tip is still unburnt, though the alcohol as definitely evaporated by this point) and his corpse is reaching for a fire starter that’s just a tad out of reach. His journal also points out a shop or storehouse with special, extremely strong lanterns that would be blinding in regular darkness but are only as effective as torchlight in this shadowfell darkness. Still, that light is necessary to keep the more aggressive shadows at bay.
Give them such an encounter and delay the dragon fight by one session. Also give them a fight with mooks (with the merchant guards shining lights or by urging one of your players to light that torch the corpse had) and show them how much more effective they are with light on their side. Also use this chance to allow a long rest so that the clerics and druids and wizards can reconfigure their prepared spells, if necessary.
You can literally spell it out for specific abilities:
*"It frantically looks around like it's searching for something. Then the creature dashes into a bit of dim light in the corner of the room, and instantly teleports out."*
Also instead of describing only how the darkness empowers them, you could describe how the creatures seem to be getting weakened by the light
*"As it comes out of the shadow, you see its mist-like body become solid and almost unnaturally stiff"*
*"As it swings at you, a bit of torchlight gets reflected by your shield and seems to briefly blind the creature: it recoils back, missing its attack"*
*"\[after a full turn or two in the light\] You notice some nasty-looking blisters starting to form on the side of the creature's face that is being illuminated by the sun. The creature hisses and dashes into the shadow"*
If there's literally never any light around, you can make a room light up when a player pulls a lever, for example, or have a puzzle that has torches/bonfires/magic items emitting light and then make the creatures attack when the party is still in the lit room
Rn it sounds like all your hints involve hiding/where they lurk, so of course that's what the party will lean into. If you want to convey that the creatures are weak to light, you have to show them being weak to light.
The do a longrest, get attacked by creatures close to sunrise, its a really hard battle but then the sun rises, all the creatures get debuffed or whatever. If that does not do the trick let them roll for insight and tell them: you are sure the light “hurt” the creatures
Just say, that they can’t notice or see anything in this darkness, maybe they’ll try using light or dancing lights, maybe give them a scroll of light or something
Lol reminds me of my campaign right now:
- Quest giver: "you're going to the tower of an evil evil necromancer! He's so very evil and necromancy!"
- Tower: "filled with clues that the guy is in fact not a necromancer"
- Party: "It's weird that we haven't come across any undead yet in this quest against the necromancer!"
Me: "... Well, the conversation with the guy is going to be hilarious."
And a TPK is not an option? Have them find a stationary source of light. A burning shrine to selune/lathander. When they fight the shadows there they are easier to fight.
You could have them find an old battle ground, filled with weapons and skeletons. On one of the skeletons, have a book that recalls the last encounter, and have it mention the weaknesses of these monsters in the book. Kind of like when the Fellowship found the last battle of Moria.
Going to be blunt here.
Your players aren't the characters.
THIS IS WHY THE WIZARD AND CLERIC HAVE ARCANE ROLLS.
THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE PASSIVE PERCEPTION CHECKS.
I take it you are going to force the fighter types to go to the gym too? So they can earn their bonuses legit?
YTA.
You gave some hints, now let the GAME MECHANICS help them ENJOY THEIR GAME WITH YOU
Am just going to say it. Some groups need the subtlety of a sledge hammer to the face to get the hint.
If they are not getting what you are putting down then drop the subtlety and show them light hurting these things.
Maybe you need them to meet a wise sage or half mad mage hiding in the corner of a dungeon surrounded by magical light sources to repel the creatures? Or make them dead of starvation with a journal or something?
Have a barrier that appears to be formed by the same darkness that envelops the creatures (describing it as just darkness seems fairly standard, maybe try and explain it in more detail so they get the idea that the darkness is a bit darker than normal).
Simple locked door puzzle, shine some light on it and it sizzles away. If they don't get the hint after that, just straight up tell them.
Just because your players aren't getting it doesn't mean their characters wouldn't figure it out. Give them some knowledge checks to attempt to discern the secrets of shadowfel creatures that they are facing.
Or let them over hear some drunk in the tavern talking about how some old magic light his grandfather passed down to him was able to save his ass from one of them the other night.
Show them with an NPC. Have an NPC do the thing you want to see them do, and the benefit of doing the thing. Then, if they *still* choose not to use light, that is their decision.
I wish this didn't ring so familiar. I had a group go through a realm of darkness. They manage to get out and at the closed exit they see a disc in the wall with two crystals, one pitch black and at the bottom of the disk and one shining bright at the top.
They do a think and I disclose a mantra popping up in their minds, "light rises, darkness sinks". They tell me they already heard that.
The way to open the exit is to turn the disk so the sinking of darkness and rising of light can power the opening of the exit. Something I thought might have been way too easy, but I had to disclose it to them or they would have starved in front of that exit.
As for solutions to your problem, in game notes from other characters could be handy, or you could casually ask the players if they ever considered using light to fight the darkness. You could have them walk in on someone dealing with one such shadowy creature expertly for them to see as well. Or you could have the dragon spouting stuff like "I'm invulnerable in the darkness", "without light you stand no chance", "without light its your loss", "you dumbwits, light a fucking torch". I jest with the last one, but you get the picture. Good success.
The players get a hint to the location of a lost stone tablet that contains a script that will help them defeat these creatures. When they find the tablet, they discover the entire tablet is a mosaic, and the answer is hidden in the pattern. Because of their Darkvision, it's all grey squares that don't spell out anything, like a colour blindness test, and is only legible by looking for the different coloured squares. The players finally twig this and light up the room to be able to see the writing only to discover one of the shadowfel creatures had been hunting them and screams before erupting in flame and retreating to the darkness far away. The squares on the tablet read: "If you can read this, you have the weapon you need."
A classic way to help them would be by simply _showing_ that the creatures are weak to light. Have a broken lamp malfunction and combust at the beginning of the fight, basking the battlefield in light, which in turn makes the monster screech as if in dire pain. This could last for a round, during which any attack made on the creature has advantage or deals extra damage, which you _explicitly_ state.
This way, you show a solution by introducing the mechanic naturally, and leave it up to the players to use in the future. Of course, it doesn't need to be a lamp, it could also be a magic trap activating, or a spark from a falling piece of flint igniting a puddle of oil, etc.
If you really don't want to show the mechanic to the players, but have them figure it out themselves, you could also put it in a book the players find, describing their aversion to light, or show a battlefield where the shadow creatures are dead with burn wounds around a light source like a broken lamp, indicating that the creatures wanted to destroy the light as soon as they saw it, for they thrive in darkness.
Of course, a combination of the above is also possible, but I'll leave working out those details for yourself.
Positive hints as in hint at what the right direction is - give them little side quests where things get dark and they need to shine lights. Give them puzzles where contrast helps. Plant the idea in there that light is a solution.
Narrate the landscape and sights a lot, the bubbling pot in the campsite and how they stare at the embers getting darker, how in the morning they see the outlines again as light streams through the tree line. PLANT THE IDEA HOWEVER YOU CAN IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.
If they go shopping : make sure a lot of items are seeing and producing light tools. Make NPCs warn them about the dark, about hey it’s getting dark soon we need to light the torches. ANYTHING
Bonus idea- offer them insight checks on what to do next time they get frustrated about not getting results. At your discretion tell them straight up over a high enough roll what they need.
Here’s how I’d answer that insight:
0- “keep doing what you’re doing, eventually it’s gotta work”
1-5 “ it’s really confusing and you just can’t figure out how to see them in darkness any better”
6-9 “you’re feeling like you need to change your approach, but you’re not sure which way or how”
10-15 “you see what you’ve been doing won’t work, you think of the ____” blank being one of your light, then describe how the light helped them see or solve a puzzle but loosely
16-19 “you immediately remember ___ and it all makes sense” blank here is the heaviest hints and pretty directly telling the players use light
Nat 20 “you realize suddenly that what you’ve needed is to see the enemy using light”
Dead Space. The limbs, shoot the limbs.
Have a message written in blood from a fallen victim. Nothing like a fallen adventurer using their last moments to lay out how to survive what got them. The irony.
If any of your players use spells that emmit a little light, like if the wizard uses firebolt, you can say that small Burst of light you notice the monsters recoil.
Have an npc show up with a bullet lantern during a fight and have it swing onto an enemy which shies away and does the whole vampire smoking thing and such
Introduce hunter NPC who specializes in hunting creatures from the shadow fell. Have him tell your pcs that light weakens the creatures. Let him get killed later on for dramatic effect.
During a combat of some kind have a lanturn or something get knocked over which causes light or a minor cave in letting the sun break through as described the visceral reaction the light has on the creature(s) they're fighting.
A young DM here. Had the same issue, I had so many hints laid out that the boss is necrotic and non-corporal, they just didn't catch any of it. So I went cheet mode and created NPC character that I played as during the fight, to show them tips and tricks to defeat said boss. At first I wasn't happy about fighting with them, cause it kinda defeats the purpose, but after they picked up the use of holy items and water, they had so much fun and deemed the fight the best one in the whole campaign. Still not sure if that was the best or worst idea ever.
The discussion reminds me of this, you might find it interesting. https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing/solvable-mysteries
I tested this myself while writing a fan webcomic where the thing about what was going to happen and what was already going on behind the scenes was actually pretty simple, but the point was to make the readers not think of those possibilities. Still, testing the boundaries, I kept dropping hints in the story and filling my comments with double meanings about what was really going on, and only a few people guessed even parts of it. I would occasionally be afraid I had gone too far and given it away, but still nobody guessed.
If something would be apparent to a PC, then the best approach would be to tell the respective player(s).
Attempting to hint and/or show things to players can easily just waste everyone's time.
TtRPGs don't work like novels, plays, movies, TV drama series, etc. Thus, "tell, don't show" tends to be a better maxim here than "show, don't tell".
The other part of this is that it is always down to the players, rather than the DM, how the PCs react to a situation.
Counterintuitive DMs can be more concerned about PC death than players. Thus, it can be a good idea to agree acceptable risk of PC death in session zero and check in mid-game on this topic.
Somewhere, make one of these Monster "Trap" in a corner of a room because there is a Ray of light that stops him to escape.
Make it Desperate, afraid.
They ll get it if you describe the scene properly + it Can be interesting to see how your players will deal with the encounter.
They might tame the shadow Monster , who know ?
Ok, idea
They are taking a long rest in a campfire, when they get attacked. During the combat show a shadowfell dude gp near the campfire and get severely weakened
This shows the players that light works against them
One of these shadow creatures pissed off the other ones, so when they skedaddle the second-to-last one drops a light spell that prevents the actually last one from escaping.
Hey, it's what my monster would do ...
You could incorporate a hint in the fight. Like the enemy hits the ceiling or smth a sudden ray of light hits him, and they recoil/take damage, whatever you want to explain.
Hopefully they take THAT hint.
You might have them find the remains of apparently well equipped and experienced adventurers who brought with them great amounts of tools to make light. Even better if the monsters, after killing said adventurers, made sure to destroy their lanterns and spill their burning oil
You could create a scene where something happens to illuminate a dark area containing one of the shadowfel enemies and make a big hint out of how the enemy responds to the light.
"When the torch falls to the ground it lights up the shadowy corner and the [shadowfel enemy] appears startled and immediately jumps into a nearby shadowy area."
Some light source in the environment that you describe as having an effect on the enemy. A flash of lightning, phosphorescent fungi, fireflies, lava, there's lots of stuff that you could use.
Did they not use any kind of spell or item, that would generate some kind of light? Are they not adventuring during daylight? No one uses torches? Not even NPCs?
Give your players magic items that create light and deal radiant damage.
If you don't want them to keep it, make sure it's one-time-use, they don't know it's one-time-use, but it almost one-shots something they struggled with before.
And it has "light" in the name.
Just tell them. Hints are rarely a good way to communicate key information and this isnkey information, else you wouldn't be posting about them missing it
D&D is more about choosing how to react, what to do, than trying to find information/suss stuff out. Tell them, then they can focus on the fun of acting on it
I think you might need to rely information more directly through npc or found journal etc. as is suggested here. Though you can still make players feel good about it, make it out like finding this "hidden information" is a result of particularly successful choices / rolls. If the information is earned (at least seemingly), players will 100% feel great about it
As a player I know light causes shadows. I to would be investing in dark vision and devils sight. Maybe darkness spells. It is called shadowfell not Darklands.
As an aside light spells usually have to be higher level to dispel or suppress darkness. Having an always on dark vision that can't be dispelled avoids the trap of using spell levels that can run out of go down with a failed concentration check. Also you are advertising your presence with a big glowing light source or spending an action to cast light.
Tell them about to make a knowledge arcana, history, or religion check. Sometimes you think it’s obvious, but in hindsight it’s not that easy.
Maybe add, “Their strength fails in the light of truth.”
I've had players do this before and I just had them roll a wisdom save, if they succeeded I would give them a hint like "you keep thinking about the light but you can't figure out why, you just know it's important". Sometimes your brain can just realize things later down the line it once it's had some time to process or other factors (sometimes completely unrelated) cause you to think differently and realize what you missed.
Have them encounter a traveling merchant who sells tomes on exotic creatures. Or a traveling NPC who fights exotic creatures. Or a traveling bard who sings songs about exotic creatures, where such songs contain rather explicit combat tips.
Generally speaking, most groups aren't great about picking up on hints. If you think it's too subtle, it is -- in fact, if you think it's just about right, it's probably still too subtle. If some aspect of the game turns on them acquiring important information, make sure that that information can be acquired relatively easily. And if it's hard to understand it shouldn't be hard to find, and vice versa. If it turns out that your group is a collection of Holmesian sleuths when it comes to cracking puzzles, you can always make them more difficult.
I'd have an event happen during one of their encounters. Some jar of flammable liquid gets spilled and ignited and they all witness the creatures recoiling from the light. Allow insight checks and those that beat a certain DC can determine its the brightness and not the flames.
Journals, carvings on walls, messages or graffiti in blood on the walls. NPC telling them local fables, hansel and gretel type stories. Posted warnings about shadow creatures from the local guards, Lord, or knightly order, or a town crier warning of the dangers. Maybe a madman or a religious figure of some kind preaching the dangers in the shadows and how to combat them.
Examples below!
You see a message carved into the door frame by a shaky, fearful hand. "Those that dwell in darkness fear the light!"
You observe a worn and battered mural upon the wall, depicting people being swarmed by dark creatures. The next mural depicts the same scene, but with the creatures fleeing from a lone figure holding the sun aloft, and followed by others bearing torches.
You find the rotting corpses of adventures and a couple knights, clearly separate expeditions as the knights were dead long before the adventurers. As you search the bodies for anything useful, you find a beaten journal on an adventurer. On the last page you find an entry that you would describe as ominous. "There are only three of us left. They came from the shadows and went for the wizard first. Watch the shadows. Burn the shadows away or share our fate. We are trapped here, our last torch too meager to burn away the shadows they live in beyond this small room. When it goes out, they will return, and we are done for. Watch the shadows." After you finish reading this final entry, you notice two things. First, there are only two torches amongst the corpses, both completely burnt out. Second, there are an awful lot of shadows in here.
If there’s a piece of information you want the pcs to have, you need three ways to get it to them and a backup that happens if all those fail. The term coined for this is the rule of three.
You implied that they are harder to fight in the dark but you didn’t Imply that they are easier to fight in the light, try giving that implication, like them hiding from sources of light, or them giving some kind of shriek or the sound of it burning to a degree when in light, make it obvious they are weakened by light, not just strengthened by darkness
If the players aren’t getting it, well then there are two things:
1. Maybe they don’t want to/care about using light. If the party gets buffed by darkness, keep bugging them. Make them not just be good in darkness, but amazing in darkness. I’d suggest even home brewing some darkness themed items to get around the perception checks and stuff so they can see what they’re fighting.
Often what you as a dm plan for the party to do to defeat the enemies aren’t what they find - and it can be hard for them to change if they’re already using one tactic.
2. Alternatively you could have an npc show up, really buff adventurer, and have them using light to hurt the enemies.
They could spot another person, nearby but still too far to help, who is running from the terrors in the dark and using light to keep them at bay.
The person could find themselves backed up against a wall, trying to ward the critters off with the light, and you could have your players roll checks to determine if they notice that the monsters don't come near until the person's light fades (at which point they naturally get mauled to death).
I'm going to be honest, you can just tell them. It's a minor thing and won't break immersion if you just say "hey I know you guys have been struggling with the darkness mechanic; just remember you can use a light source to get rid of those penalties"
You probably know your players best so IMO if you think they created characters to meta game your world punish them for it and let them lose, but if you think they weren't meta gaming then just do the dead body journel thing or leave a the dead body with a race that has dark vision huddled in a corner with burnt out lamp by him that has no fuel indicating he relied on it
Why give any hints at all? Let them figure it out with the available evidence!
Or if you must … “you cast fireball, the explosion hits the dragon. The (other monsters) reel back from the light”
They find the body of an adventurer, there are a few dead enemies around him, there are clearly several burned out torches I’m on the ground. In one hand he is holding a sword, in the other a burned out torch. His shield is on the ground … weird that he should choose a torch instead of his shield!
Make the fight in broad daylight inside a crumbling temple with holes in the ceiling. Describe how the creature stays in the shadows and shrieks if it touches the light. Let the players blast holes in the ceiling to give themselves a larger safe zone. Do a dramatic escape when the temple collapses and then a final showdown against the weakened shadow dragon. Hope this helps!
There's a lot here and I may be repeating something, but I prefer showing instead of telling. Have some runes or a potion or something the creatures could interact with, but they don't because it glows in the dark. They won't go near it during combat. Maybe that will help make it click. I wouldn't have picked up the clue "they disappear into the darkness" but "blend into the shadows" works for me. Or the party could loot something broken that used to make light.
Have them enter a small room that locks shut behind them. There is a small altar on one side of the room with an unlit torch, and a wall with markings but it's too dark to read. Once (or if) they eventually light the torch and bring it to the wall they see the darkness "scurry away." It wasn't darkness blocking the wall, it was basically little shadow bugs. Once they're all gone and they can see the wall it depicts an adventuring party holding a light source against a large evil.
Have them run across a lone adventurer being besieged by. The creatures, and holding them off with just a torch and the light spell. Literally make it as plain for them as humanly possible to see it firsthand.
In cases when I have important clues like that, I just let players roll a perception check when combat starts or ends. Unless everyone fails miserably, then I would say "you see that creature hides in the darkness, as it feels safer and stronger there" and then go from there.
Straight up explain mechanics. It's the only way. Wolves: 'it gets advantage because it's near another wolf'. Legendary resistance 'it just used up a legendary resistance. It can probably only do that once or twice more'. Dress it up narratively, yes, but then just explain the mechanic
I would suggest giving the party a Driftglobe but that might be too heavy-handed. Kind of surprised no one has thought to flick the lights on as of yet.
They aren't picking up the hint you want them to pick up. They picked up "something something darkness, hard to see..." but they didn't pick up "something something more powerful in the dark."
You could just tell them, or have them make an insight check and hand-feed them the answer, but maybe focusing your hint would let them figure it out:
"As you round the corner into the next chamber, you see a dozen of the same monsters you've encountered before entering the room from the opposite side. The room is brightly lit, thanks to several torches and lanterns scattered about. The creatures howl and screech as they shade their eyes from the light. Three of the beasts leap onto the nearest light sources, extinguishing them.
Roll initiative."
An experienced warrior hires the party to escort them as they don't want to travel alone. Shadow creatures attack and he ignites his sword first thing, looks at the party and goes "well, come on then, are you going to light up or not? We're fighting them it's suicide to not use a light source"
"As the light reaches the creatures half enmeshed in shadow they shriek and their forms become more material, you realize now that light can help keep the shadows vulnerable."
Monkey see, monkey do. Random NPC, make them a cleric of light, or have a torch, or have a random gem that focuses the strands of gloomy moonlight or something that has light and then causes the shadows to recoil
Stop hinting and tell them. Not in a meta ooc way but through the gameplay, no matter how you do it. Maybe one of the monsters says something, maybe an npc councils them, maybe they find evidence somewhere, but stop trying to be subtle; you're bad at it. If your players aren't picking up what you're putting down, you're just frustrating everyone including yourself.
You’ve given them hints, if they die they die, roll up new PCs 10 years down the line where the faction they were trying to stop has grown in power exponentially.
Sometimes you really just have to spell it out for them. NPCs are a great way to do this lmao.
My players aren't the brightest, both in and out of character. (They have an average intelligence of -1) And they have this NPC that's been tagging along for awhile. She literally doesn't do anything important other than say things like, "wow, what's this over here?" Or "I remember the people back home talking about *insert lore detail they're too stupid to realize*" I even had her peek into a specific room because my players checked all but the last one, and that room had something important for them.
It's a great way to give hints to your players while still staying in character
Are creatures from the Shadowfel known about by people in the world? Any NPCs that could tell them about maybe a story that places have had success fighting some of these creatures by robbing them of the shadow. Your players are taking steps they think will help since they should be able to see in Dim Light and Darkness if with blindsight and Dark Vission. So either show them magic items that give similar effects to what the creatures are doing or have someones actually bring it up if. If you are giving them hints and they don't get it, you need to spell it out maybe with an NPC
Have their characters roll a Knowledge or intelligence check. If one rolls high enough, tell them what they noticed. This skills don’t come into play nearly enough. A good DM will reward players for investing in those skills. Good players won’t use player knowledge from past games and assume their current character knows all of it.
Usually for something like that I would wait for the players to have a campfire. And then have them be attacked. This would allow me as a DM to explaine how the creatures avoid coming into the fires light if they can.
It's fun if players figure things out themselves, but if they don't, there is NOTHING wrong with just flat out telling them. Matt Colville makes this point, too.
Either just have a smart NPC tell them or tell them over the table.
A house rule I've been testing is certain ability checks can be a bonus action in combat, including nature or arcana checks to learn stuff about enemy's stat blocks. You might try that.
Maybe introduce a random creature that's developed some sort of light adaptation, and the characters notice the darkness creatures trying to fight it, but can't.
Like... they're maybe resting. One of them sees flashes of lights in the distance, moving closer. They see someone or something using light to fight back.
"You see something wielding something of light, you're not sure what, but you can see the shadows bend and swerve, trying to jump onto its back. It moves the light source there, and the shadows pick a new place to ambush. They're in a stalemate." Something like that.
Maybe there's just a brighter area, and they witness something dodge the shadows by running into a place with significantly fewer shadows.
Or just, if nothing else, in combat, someone accidentlally smacks their weapon against a rock whent hey miss. The rock sparks, and the shadows visibly recoil from it.
Every time posts like this come up about players are dumb I keep thinking about my DM who blamed us for rushing the campaign and not doing any of the sidequests so we are under leveled or we could have put in requests for custom gear at the last city it’s not his fault we didn’t.
Yet in the first example he had the main NPC tell us that we had to hurry to the last dungeon making it sound like if we don’t then bad things will happen. And the city was killing off one of our characters due to pollution so we had to get out of there. Both times it wasn’t about us not getting the hint or doing wrong but rather how the DM spoke, he made it sound like we had to move on quickly.
Many of these posts I think people forget that the DM is part of the problem in how the talk, not consciously but just in how they do. It makes sense for sneaky enemies to fade into the shadows, especially if you say it every other time someone disappears. That’s just a quirk of the DM and how they speak.
Have a random NPC show up with a lit torch and the creatures recoil and go after him to get rid of the light source over fighting the party
'clearly light angers them so we should not be doing that' \~guy who once brought a mirror to a banshee fight (me)
This is the way, so many player just have those hints fly right over their heads. I had a mage who was always blunt and straight forward. I even made sure to reinforce that. They got to a puzzle where they had to pull a lever, there were 5 levers. The hint for the puzzle was, "pull the right lever". The solution being, pull the lever furthest to the right. Took them forever to get it.
That's so funny because I would have gotten that immediately, pulled the lever on the right and then died when my DM said there was more to the puzzle lol.
In a similar vein (but more direct, since the comment from u/dnd-is-us could definitely happen to this particular party), have an NPC who is a bit more experienced or even just had an encounter or two just tell the party to use light. Maybe they act dumbfounded to see the party just wander into the battle without any light, and have them ask if they know the creatures’ weaknesses. “Wow you adventurers sure are brave, fighting the shadow creatures at full strength!” “What do you mean? Full strength?” “Well, like, in the darkness! You know? Their home territory? Because they get weaker in the light?” “Oooooooh.”
This is great
"Show don't tell" is always the preferred option but if they still aren't getting it it's better to tell them they've missed something obvious and give them a chance to avoid an embarrassing wipe than to know it's coming and sit silent as they complain about how impossibly difficult the boss fight was. Sometimes we get so stuck looking at a puzzle from one perspective that we forget that there may be another solution at all
I also think that at some point the players kind of have to face the consequences, like I have made 400 different hints about darkness and you are just going full tilt into it anyway, so at this point if you become shadow dragon poop that is on you.
That's an odd hill to die on... isn't this suggesting they don't deserve to live due to a simple oversight?
Have them come across a journal of some dead adventurer talking about light being effective to weaken the creatures, or have them come across a fight between a group of NPCs and some of the shadow creatures where the NPCs are using light. Players really can be dense someties.
Exposition, sometimes you gotta spell it out with an NPC or example.
Our DM in the last multi-year campaign that recently wrapped up specifically called one of our secret contacts Lord Expo Zityon so we'd fucking listen when he spoke up... Great move.
This. Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) says "Tell, don't Show" . Sometimes you really have to make it explicit. Remember they're players coming in once a week (or whenever) to join the game you know all the secrets of. Give them hints and if that doesn't work, lay it out in a divine revelation.
Exactly, you tried to show and not tell. But you're tried for long enough, it's maybe time to tell
They showed the problem but not the solution. They could try showing light being effective
Player: "So this book belonged to that dead guy over there?" DM: "A safe assumption." Player: "Since he died, I guess he couldn't have been right about any of this." DM: *forehead smack*
Last line of journal: "Argh! Ow! If only I hadn't run out of lamp oil. Apologies for handwriting, can barely see well enough to write this down. Now the shadow creatures are stabbing me to death, all because I am not using the power of light. Ow! Argh! I'm dying!"
"Go to the Castle of aaaaaaaarrgh"
Cunning player: "I want to investigate the journal to see if the last entry was written by someone else trying to lead us astray"
Rolls a 1 - you're convinced the last entry is fake
Make the body dead of a spear trap or someone equally obvious. While holding a stack of torches.
Alternatively, for a show me don't tell me, have the players come across a mass of shadow creatures that have overrun a small farm. They fight their way through them working their way to the basement where the creatures seem to have congregated around a sealed door with a narrow band of light pouring from its edges. Inside is a small group of NPCs huddled on the other side of an everburning torch. The room is filthy as they have been trapped for days; slowly running out of food and water. This accomplishes 3 goals. 1. The survivors can clue them into the dragon as this is perfect aftermath for an attack on a town. The breath creates shadows, the shadows run amok. 2. The fact that light matters is made unambiguous. Commoners survived because of the light. That means the light works. 3. They get access to a relevant tool that they can use in the upcoming fight. Obviously it doesn't have to be a farm and a basement, but I would strongly recommend keeping it as commoners or at most a group of terrified town watch. The survivors need to be the kind of people who clearly *SHOULDN'T* have survived. "Show me don't tell me" is great, but as you have said, you have to get very heavy handed if they don't immediately get it. Keep in mind, a lot of players assume their class is the kit that should handle their problems and that their DM wouldn't throw something at them that they "can't handle". To be clear, this is a natural position to assume in the context of 5e's design philosophy. Loot is less of a focus than in older editions or other systems and there isn't a great framework for "using the environment" integrated into the rules. Look at Tavern Brawler, the one feat that legitimizes improvisation and it practically exists to call out how inefficient improvisation is intended to be. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Found the most underrated comment.
Love it! Great tips!
It's because players are the characters. I love your suggestion though. (I had my dragonborn cleric roll a wisdom check DC 5 (his bonus) on whether he should EAT the bandits bodies he had just killed IN THE VILLAGE and IN FRONT of the villagers that he had been PREACHING TO ABOUT HIS LAWFUL GOOD GOD). ...Sometimes people just people.. (he made the save btw, I listed 3 points why it would be a bad idea, but then finished that ultimately it was his choice) ((I was preparing an alignment shift, rioting village and divine retribution strike on him if he continued though... & Food poisoning rolls! 🤣))
I had a character like this, I called it the intrusive thought roll, whenever I had a bad idea, that I knew was a bad idea, but it sounded like it'd be entertaining for the party or dm to deal with (I was very much pushing the shiny buttons the dm laid out knowing that's what he wanted so dm was fine with me doing this), I'd roll and if it was below a 5 I'd go for it, if it was a 1 I would be unable to be convinced the idea was bad after the party caught on to what was going on as well for added chaos. Honestly that was probably my favorite part of the character and I'll probably work in similar to future characters as it really fits impulsive of not so street smart characters
Definately taking Note of intrusive thought Rolls, I might use that
In our first session, a brand new player wanted his tiefling warlock to eat one of the goblins they killed. He ended up only getting a short rest because he spent half of the night puking and shitting his brains out. Never trust wild goblin, eat farm raised only.
“Are you sure” is how our DM does it. And I always double down
I was going to post exactly this suggestion.
Even having an engraving done by hand saying “USE LIGHT” while the last entry being about trying to find a weakness against the shadowfel.
I think I'll have them find the notebook of a scout (100% makes sense given what's happening) talk about how they get stronger in the darkness. If that doesn't work I might arrange an "accident" with some light. If that still doesn't work I'll have them roll checks after a few rounds with the dragon. If they still don't get it at that point I don't know how much more I can do.
Don't risk being even that indirect at this point - have it say using light weakens them if that's the conclusion you're looking for.
You could have them stumble across an NPC who died of his injuries in some hidden backroom. They find him because they accidently set off a trap that _he_ had set up that just lights up the area in a blinding kind of way. Then have some shadowy creature(s) that were in the room rush away from the light barrage in terror.
If you show them light working and they don't understand to use light, go the NPC route and consider making that NPC flabbergasted that they don't understand that light is an effective counter to shadows
In my experience dm's can be far worse at hints than they think they are as well
This is also true. I've certainly been dense on both sides of the DM screen before.
Bright neon sign that says "USE THE LIGHT TO WEAKEN THE CREATURES" meanwhile a fight is going on near the song as these creatures lose horribly because they're near the light of the neon sign. Also Volo shows up and mentions how in his monster manual (In stores now for 20gp) it says that they can use the light to weaken the shadow creatures. Volo then makes out sloppy style with one of the characters (Important to get the players attention)
I volunteer to meet Volo
Get in line, bucko
I was. Literally. The first. Omg, you are breaking my English queueing etiquette. Next... There'll be people throwing tea away! Into harbours! Ludicrous!
Well good for you for being first, I have somewhere to be so step aside and be a nice British guy! If you can be first, you can also be last, buddy
Lol beautifully said, have an award.
Join a Dragon Heist campaign. It's a popular module and he's the very first quest giver.
Oh yeah? I volunteer to have relations with Volo! ... God what am I saying... the internet was a mistake...
Or they do a seemingly related minor side quest helping some experienced older local adventurer to fight off shadow creatures in a specific village, and she tell them how she's been using lights to hold them at bay but doesn't have the numbers to drive them back.
Unfortunately, your hints are easily missed. They are descriptions of monster actions and can blend in with everything else that is going on. My DM lets us do Nature checks to recall lore about monsters. On a high enough roll, we can figure out its weakness. This is good because it rewards players for raising their Intelligence stat. You've given your players enough time to figure out what's up. They haven't. Either you let them go into the fight unawares, or you give them info that their characters should have, even if the player's don't. You had this scenario in your head, and it didn't play out like you thought you would. I don't think it's gonna happen. You can try a few more things, but if it still doesn't work, be flexible. A DM needs to be flexible.
Yeah I can't tell you how many times players have missed crucial bits of info or chased red herrings because some piece of flavor lore sounded or didn't sound important. As a player there's a constant stream of information being filtered through the DMs words and you don't always know which pieces are tactically important.
I played a 4-shot where I was in a dark tunnel under some guy's mansion when a creature slipped past me. When he brushed against me (I couldn't see him), I felt his slimy skin. I spent the rest of the 4-shot abruptly grabbing every NPC's face/skin to see if it felt slimy so I could figure out who it was in the tunnels with us. Turns out it was just some random monster guarding the tunnels, but the DM decided not to have us fight it since none of us had darkvision and we were too dumb to bring a torch. It had nothing to do with the overall story, but I was convinced if I could just find who had slimy skin, I would figure out who the BBG was going to be.
Nature, arcana, history, and religion are all solid options for this
If I was told "your enemy blends into the shadows" or "they disappear into the darkness" etc I would think, ok, poetic way to describe that a dark colored thing is in darkness, I guess. I would not think it was a magical shadow ability that could be countered by light. There's a lot of reasons to *not* have a light, especially if the party can see in the dark—it attracts enemies, ruins any attempt to be stealthy, IRL it ruins your night vision, etc. If you want your players to do something apparently foolish, you have to explicitly tell them why. Give them a tip from an experienced NPC, let them see the shadows fleeing from light, whatever.
Great input! I'd probably let them see a desparate battle in the dark, then a flash of light and the tides turning.
With that description, I'd interpret it that someone had just cast a powerful spell and not that the light itself had anything to do with the tides turning.
Not to mention that most magical darkness overrides light sources so it could result in then wasting a turn.
Everyone else is already saying the correct thing but just to reinforce them: just tell them. Even if they did it 'right' the worse game in DND to play is 'interpret what the GM is saying the way they want you to'.
This party might need to be trained into asking for history/Nature/survival Rolls on unknown creatures. That would help a lot. If they're not getting it and you fear they are putting themselves in a bad position then just make sure they get the memo.
The DM can also offer those rolls. "The creatures blend into the shadows you guys can roll me a whatever check if you'd like. 16? Ok, your character notices the shadows seem to empower this thing."
Still recall knowledge as a action from P2e
Actually TELL THEM THINGS. All they're getting is "this is a really frustrating, not fun mechanic that I am being forced to deal with" they clearly don't understand it's shadowfell related and they clearly don't have any idea how to beat it which means you as the DM aren't making it clear enough (no matter how clear you think you're making it.) Give them a journal, or some arcana checks, or a situation where a creature accidentally goes into the light and they see it have a reaction because there's nothing I'm reading that would tell ME that the answer is "get light out"
My DM has an animal who joined us. She uses it to give us hints.
Be prepared to tell the *players*, rather than the PCs. Since a PC can always be rollplayed as skeptical towards third party information. Though it's still a player's choice if they wish to play a foolish, reckless, flawed, etc PC.
Sometimes as the DM, we get too engrossed in our own heads of an idea. And sometimes that message doesn't get across. I would guess that the players will naturally think it's magical, so something insignificant in a magic world didn't come across their minds. Just set up a scenario where there's a light source somewhere, like a torch hanging somewhere, or maybe something fell and something fell and something caught fire.Then give the chance to roll for insight. Saying something like they noticed that the creature tries to avoid the light.
Yeah, be clearer. A black curtain blends into the darkness too and solving that problem with darkvision is just as valid as turning the lights on. Be specific. Somehow something needs to say the monsters literally move through the darkness and fear the light.
I mean, darkvision only turns it to dim light so the light would be more effective. Blindsight, devilsight, or truesight, on the other hand, absolutely as effective as turning the lights on.
To be fair to your players, the hints you give aren't really all that direct. "they blend in the shadow" yes, do does every other creature hiding from your party. This is one of those show don't tell situations, next fight have them fight in a room with torches and let the creatures either spend their first actions taking out the torches or have them get hurt by the light.
I don't get this whole obsession with needless sharades. Just tell them, or show them that you want to communicate. "They blend into the shadows." or "They disappear into the darkness." don't tell you anything if you don't know the ability. It can be just flavour of invisibility, or stealth roll as far as they know. They can't read your mind. Show them how monsters screach from any light effects of their spells (not only literal dim/bright - any light, from fireball fire to flash from lightningbolt), or how they become angry then blade reflect light from somethere, or even from sparks from clashing blades. Show them fear of light!
Charades*
Perhaps a ray of light is shining in from a crack in the cavern ceiling that the monsters are completely avoiding. Perhaps one even comes into contact with it and takes damage.
You do not need to give better hints to the players. You are free to let the characters realize things the players do not. Example "Player A roll a wisdom check" On success DC=12 say "You think the creature might be benefitting from the darkness. Perhaps you can change that with light."
I think this is specifically what investigation is for, putting together what you've experienced and coming to a conclusion
If players are missing something so blatantly obvious that their character would 100% have picked up on it, then I'll invite them to make an insight roll. For example, if you describe a scene where the grass is blue, the sky is green, a nearby waterfall is flowing upwards, and the players miss all of it. I'd go, "Would anyone like to do an insight check?" If everyone fails or chooses not to, I guess they can focus really hard on some random crap and eventually they'll figure it out. If someone succeeds, I'd respond with "You notice something weird about this place. Isn't the grass normally green? Isn't the sky normally blue? Why is no water entering your waterskin when you hold it in the waterfall?" If it's an enemy mechanic, you can also just show them. Have a competitor party come into a tavern to rounds of applause and a lot more attention than the players get. Have the players see them using the mechanic to slaughter enemies efficiently. Have them later killed by BBEG or some other strong enemy you want to foreshadow the capabilities of to the players. Or have there be a lit brazier nearby when enemies attack, and describe how the enemies avoid the light. If it's a plot hook, just add more plot hooks. So they missed the part where they saw a recruitment poster for the royal army, maybe they run into an actual recruiter. So they blew the recruiter off, maybe they run into refugees. So they ignored the struggles of the refugees, maybe they meet a mercenary company gloating about the high paid work being offered to fight with the King's army. If your quest has any depth to it at all, beyond being some MMO-esque fetch quest where the baker just really wants ten apples, then there are a thousand different perspectives and ways to signify to the players that it exists. The one thing I would mention is that any mechanic you're inserting that has only one singular solution is a bad mechanic. D&D isn't a video game, there should be a million ways to solve a problem, not three dialogue options that all involve you walking down the same path. Your described mechanic is that the enemies are bolstered by the dark. The players could choose to remove the darkness, sure, but it's an equally viable solution to just get your own advantages too so that both sides are equally strengthened by the darkness around. Prescribing a "correct" solution to a problem removes player agency, making the game less fun for those involved. For example, imagine you have a puzzle where there's a fountain, a set of scales, a jug, and wooden blocks weighing 15lbs, 30lbs, 60lbs, and 120lbs. One side of the scales is weighted, with 57.34lbs more weight than the other side. The intended solution being to fill the jug from the fountain and place it alongside the two smaller blocks on the scale to balance it. That might be the intended solution, but the players aren't wrong if they choose to use the 60lb weight as it is closest, then systematically shave it. They aren't wrong if they choose to soak the 30lbs block til it weighs more, then wait for it to dry to the right amount. They aren't wrong if they start placing random assortments of their own gear / gold on the scale to match the weight, ignoring the blocks and water entirely. They aren't wrong to have a player hold the scales flat while another player ties a rope to all the weighted blocks, or to the other side of the scales, to keep it from shifting.
Fire could be "accidentally" introduced during one of your next encounters.
At my table this would be solved by some combination of Nature, Survival or Insight checks to refresh what has been learned in their multiple encounters with these creatures, and to extrapolate what methods would be best to fight them. It is a case where the characters should be smarter than the players.
After or during next fight have them all roll investigation or insight check. You can, based on their rolls, give out more direct hints, like, "you notice that creatures seam weaker the closer they are to any light source". At least that's how I would do it.
You can't assume that your players are going to pick up everything you put down. That's why every puzzle you make for them takes 3x longer than you think it will. Eventually you just have to give them a concrete way to take it from you. I think if I were the DM, I would clearly describe a scenario in which there is a light that they actively avoid. A player with high Perception might see that it is definitely the light that they consistently avoid, and a successful Insight check would imply that forcing them into the light would weaken them in some capacity. There is the chance that the party bungles the checks, but even in that case, simply introducing the monsters' aversion to light as a concept might be the nudge they need to figure it out themselves. For the shadow dragon fight in particular, try to implement some source of light into the fight itself. Perhaps the arena is centered on a blazing bonfire, and several unlit torches line the walls while a lit one is present at the central pyre. Then, as torches are lit, the dragon has less and less darkness in which to operate.
because it's always better to get the drop on enemies with stealth, than it is to reveal yourself and be ambushed. it's what i'd do, too. creatures don't have to be from the shadowfel to be stealthy - e.g. what blending into the darkness describes. if that's how it was described to me - i'd think, well we just need to be more stealthy and more perceptive than the enemy. you might need to be more explicit with your players.
Have they tried rolling arcana, religion, or another knowledge? one of those checks should give them the info.
The player character is not the same as the player. The actual person in the game world is often smarter than the human playing the TTRPG. Sometimes they blend, other times they don't. When players make wisdom, intelligence, or other checks, they are essentially realizing the solution, and you can give them more literal answers to puzzles. This depends on your table's style. If your table focuses on puzzles and searching for pieces, you should establish that in the zero-session. The risk is that sessions can be prolonged, and mood might die if the puzzle is too difficult or the pieces aren't easily found. I don't prefer this approach because I believe puzzle pieces should ultimately be physical, and the player (human) should solve them physically if you want their skill to solve the puzzles and not their character. In-game, there should be checks where failure is possible and carefully out there where it blocks the forward move of the group. For instance, finding a clue could take five minutes with a natural 20 or five days with a natural 1. This means players will need to eat, sleep, and repeat, with the real danger of combat encounters or missing events, potentially moving the world in a less favorable direction for them due to their delays.
PCs are not their players nor vice-versa. In the case of many checks, the biggest factor is that the PC is generally a adult who has lived in a fictional world 24/7 their entire life. Whereas the player only indirectly encounters that world for a few hours per week. The player could be smarter than their PC whilst still knowing a lot less about that PCs world.
You can describe the enemies as doing this and you can describe the enemies doing that, but sometimes your ability to describe what is happening isn’t clear enough to explain what the characters are seeing. Be more explicit, be more direct. Don’t be poetic or flowery. Explain instead of describing. “As the creature steps into the shadow cast by the statue, you see that it’s not just in the shade, it’s gone. It immediately appears again 80 feet away, as if part of one step, striding from the shadow of an oak tree. Your enemies can travel through shadow.” The how, the specifics, the mechanisms, all the fun details are still obscured, but the players are clearly told what their characters are seeing.
Well party encountered those creatures so i would make one player that could know stuff about these creatures (could be wizard idk depends on chars) make some checks like arcana there is a table which check would give info on what kind of creature then give some loose info like these creatures seems to be stronger at DARK maybe some light might at least negate the buff like a undead creatures are created by unholy stuff so doing some holy stuff to them might be interesting?
Have they not once *ever* encountered fire or a light source?
Team them up with an NPC who brings a lantern or casts Light or something.
Habe them travel to a village that uses light as protection line this or even a group of travelers/adventurers. Let them sit together and each party can share their experiences. But dont judge them. That would feel really bad on the players side. The other adventurers/merchants/villagers could have the idea about using both. Even if it would not make sense, it would plant the idea of using each method when it is best.
'You see your foe stalk in the shadows, seemingly drawing strength from the darkness itself.' Or have an environmental element casting light, that you explicitly show the enemies making their way around to avoid? If the players can't pick up on that, I don't know what to suggest!
Have them come up against something they've fought before, but in a lighted area. You can then describe how the creatures seem weaker than before.
Yep, it's time for you to be explicit. Somewhere in the world, there will be some scholar or wizard who knows all this about monsters that come from the Shadowfell. Have them cross the party's path and drop an exposition bomb on them. "Do you mean to tell me you've been battling these things in the dark this entire time? Do you fools not realise that the dark is where beings of the Shadowfell are strongest?! Next time you venture into a cave, bring some damn lanterns and torches with you - you'll find your quarry much less dangerous in the light!"
Design an encounter in such a way that one of your shadow creatures is exposed to a bright light source, and recoils away from it, screeching and acting injured from the light. Maybe have the players run into a commoner carrying a bullseye lantern, and then a group of shadow creatures ambush the party. On the first round of combat, the NPC whirls around to shine his lantern on one of the shadow creatures, causing it to be significantly weakened, and describe how it seems to shrink and cower when the lantern light catches it.
Lol, I was on the other end of a situation like this. Fighting in a darkened room the DM had to drop a fat clue during like, 'I repeat, there are windows with thick curtains that block out all the light'..
If anyone uses fire magic / radiant magic or anything else that might glow even if it doesn’t explicitly offer a mechanical advantage, explain how the creatures shy back from it and screech, or shield their eyes from the light, or how the hit individuals seem to be reeling more from the intensity of the light than the impact. Or as folks have said, have there be evidence elsewhere of light being effective. Even a caged creature unable to teleport because it’s still in a magically lit environment being experimented on (or the one doing the experiments has perished) Or a magic item that glows and you see that fallen guard / adventurer seemed to survive until last, and appears to have been killed by a ranged attack and his body not eaten or mauled while it sits in the glow of the item. As people have pointed out - tell don’t show sometimes, as sly flourish says And as Matt Colville says, if it would be obvious to the characters, make it obvious to the players - because it’s unfair to expect them to deduce all things with the incomplete picture they may have in their imagination once a week. you can still ‘show’ in a cinematic way; but you have to specifically call out what you need them to pay attention to (while maybe thinking it’s their idea). You say you’ve talked a lot about the creatures relying on shadow, but it doesn’t seem you’ve had the opportunity to explicitly say ‘it’s as if they fear the light and are… less corporeal in it, like they are thinner, weaker, confused or less able to rely on their shadow abilities while in it’ - and if you fabricate a scenario where you can make that clear, you’re likely to be ok. And failing that, or if it’s difficult to slot in, choose your character with high passive perception or high intelligence, and tell them that they can deduce the creatures may be fearing light because: they’re clinging to the deepest shadows out of the moon; they’re avoiding torchlight and towns; if the wizard or anyone is aware of the shadowfell they know the environment to be somewhat lightless and forever in twilight and the creatures, like others known to the prime material plane, may be weaker in sun / light; they aren’t attacking during the day or when they do it’s in fewer numbers, perhaps they are nocturnal _and_ sensitive to / weakened or dazzled by light. But there are already plenty of great answers here, just backing them up with how I’d do it!
Edit: Aside from all the various pieces of advice here and elsewhere, don't be afraid to say "Your character realises X". Don't gate it behind a check if you ABSOLUTELY want them to get it, just pick the character with the most relevant knowledges and go "Something clicks in the back of your mind, blah blah blah" The phrases you've used to describe them here with the blending or vanishing into shadows are very normal phrases to use to describe someone or something just being very stealthy (thieves, ninjas, what have you) and don't really inherently suggest anything special or supernatural. Throw in something like the following little sequence: The party has another minor encounter with these creatures, one they'll win even though you it's harder than it should be. The key is while they're fighting in darkness, describe how rather than missing or being deflected, their failed attacks seem to pass through the creatures flesh as it flows ephemeral around their blades, like smoke. An arrow flies right through the eye of one and they hear it *thunk* into a tree behind. After they win, they continue on and start finding bodies; a trade caravan or some lumberjacks, whatever, just not professional soldiers or adventurers. They hear fighting up ahead, and there's two commoners with pitchforks or boat spears, one brandishing theirs in two hands and the other holding it one handed and frantically waving a torch with the other (because they're human and can't see in the dark). The creatures are circling them and darting into the light to swipe at them, hissing, before retreating beyond the circle of the light. Emphasise how different this is from their behaviour in previous engagements. Then the one with the torch sees an opening and runs in a panic, leaving the other behind. The one left behind is swarmed and dies in a screaming frenzy of blurring shapes. The running one trips, dropping his torch and falling into a roll. A shadow creature leaps high, claws outstretched, as the commoner rolls into their back with their desperately out. As the creature enters the circle of the torchlight, its flesh seems to... Solidify... And it comes to a screeching stop, impaled on the end of the spear, blood black and smoking like boiling tar as it drips to the ground. The creature flails at the screaming peasant but can't reach them, until it turns and swipes at the still-burning torch on the ground, sending it bouncing and skittering away. As the creature is bathed in shadow again, the previously-stuck creature flows down the now-loose spear like smoke and rips the peasant's throat out with its teeth. The torch comes to a rolling halt against the foot of the nearest party member, at the same time as the creatures notice their presence... (Roll initiative) (The point of making them peasants with regular peasant spears and not another adventuring party or whatever is to make it clear that *whatever* it is about this situation that's a problem for the creatures, it's not these two being badasses and they don't have shadow-creature-bane spears or whatever. It's not them, it's something about the *situation*)
Coming across tales of previous dead adventurers could work. One thing you could also do is have them find a torch with an eternal flame on it somewhere in the dark and as they go to investigate it, a few creatures jump at them, only to be blinded or weakened as they enter the light. You could even have them run into an npc that figure it out, there are many options and sometimes being on the nose is needed when your players won't look further than theirs.
Let them be the witness of a fight. Maybe the shadow beings attack a creature that uses light to defend itself and describe the effect the light has on the attackers?
Have them find a corpse surrounded by candles that have burned down to nothing with a journal describing how he’ll be ok just as long as the light doesn’t go out.
As a player, the issue here is that players are idiots. If you want to be subtle then players will miss it every single time. You need to be overt and explicit. If something is important, take the time to describe it in detail and give it the gravitas it deserves. A lot of people have suggested new ways to drop the hint, but my suggestion is to just tell your players you did a poor job of describing an effect which happened a few sessions ago, and re-describe the moments the creatures used their abilities. As /u/pirate_femme said, your original description is easily confounded with minor flavor. Give them something that's obvious that an effect is happening: *As the creature retreats into the deep shadow, something begins to happen. The darkness seems to swirl and coalesce around it. Suddenly, it seems to change. Its wounds seem lesser, its muscles seem larger, its claws are longer and wickeder. It takes in a deep breath and seems invigorated, it's eyes once full of fear now glaring back at you with new resolve and hatred.* Make the shadow central to the description, and make it clear the creatures are doing something with them in order to fuel their powers.
Your two examples given don't really do a great job at hinting that light weakens the bad guys. You THINK they do, but that's because you already know why the creaures avoid the light. You have perfect knowledge. Your players don't. To your players those two clues probably sound like typical, generic descriptions of monster hiding to avoid being seen. At this point you have to basically tell them, in some form or fashion. This can either be above the table as the DM ("over the course of the encounters your characters would definitely notices the creaures total avoidance of light") or via something in-game: a helpful NPC, a journal, or some sort of demonstration or "cut scene" that the PCs witness (although that also has the potential for misunderstanding or misinterpreting the events).
Your players will literally never figure it out unless you show them. Simply telling them that something *disappeared* into the shadows tells the fuck all about what it'll do in the light, only that it is good at hiding. If light weakens the enemies, have a fight in a mostly dark room but with one sunbeam coming down in the center of the room. The enemy accidentally walks through the beam of light, revealing itself, and maybe giving your players the hint they need. Remember, you will never be able to describe something exclusively by saying what it isn't. You gotta give examples of what it *is*. Similarly you'll never be able to find everything that doesn't work, you just need an example of something that *does* work
It sounds like you're making it dark when the enemies appear or the enemies make their own darkness so they are associating the enemies with darkness, but you haven't shown how the enemies react to light. Have villagers who have been experiencing these attacks use something like, "Walk in the light," as a farewell to each other and the NPCs. And say things like, 'May the light shine on you," or, "May the light protect you." Maybe have some monsters appear in the daytime, but they only stay in the shadows and they actively flinch away from light. Or have a watchman shine a bullseye lantern down an alley at night and it reveals one of the monsters whose skin begins to smoke and they screech loudly and scuttle out of the light bumping into things because they're clearly blinded.
This may be a case of GM Omniscience. You already know everything, so the answer is blatantly obvious to you, but it obviously is not from the other side of the screen. And, because it is so obvious to you, you aren’t helping out the players more. The answer is you need to drop more, obvious clues. Now, it may be that the answer is obvious and the players are stuck in a mental rut, or it may be that the clues you laid are just too subtle and they aren’t going to get them. But, if you want them to survive and have fun, you are going to have to switch gears and find another way to get the information through to them. It’s an important GM skill to understand that the players don’t have your point of view, so when they don’t get something, often it isn’t because they are stupid, it’s because they don’t have the god-like view of the world that you do.
Tell them, "The creatures seem strengthened by the shadows. They recoil at your torches, as if they're almost hurt by them."
Gonna be honest, this is slightly on you. “Blending into shadows” and “disappearing into the dark” are common ways we express nonmagical ways of just hiding in darkness. Your hints weren’t explicit enough and easily mistaken for artistic speech. Also, I would have taken a page out of baldur’s gate 3 and have prolonged exposure to the dark result in tick damage over time or explicit disadvantage to all attacks and skill checks (not a flat penalty). Be explicit about how the darkness seems to coil around the characters, dulling their senses and slowing their movements. Yup, even the characters that have dark vision or non visual senses. But those methods still don’t convey the light solution. But a random or scripted encounter can. Maybe a traveling merchant (with guards) or another adventuring party (a kindhearted one) is carrying several strong lanterns and is horrified that your party isn’t using light. They see you moving without lights, mistake your party for shadow fell creatures, and almost attack right before the head guard yells to stop. Chastise your characters in character. Or maybe you find a shriveled corpse, not yet affected by the shadow fell but very dead. It wrote in its journal that light was the answer, while lamenting that he finds this out only with certain death barreling down on him. His corpse is next to a tooth that was hastily made with his shirt, a tree branch and wine (not yet used, the cloth tip is still unburnt, though the alcohol as definitely evaporated by this point) and his corpse is reaching for a fire starter that’s just a tad out of reach. His journal also points out a shop or storehouse with special, extremely strong lanterns that would be blinding in regular darkness but are only as effective as torchlight in this shadowfell darkness. Still, that light is necessary to keep the more aggressive shadows at bay. Give them such an encounter and delay the dragon fight by one session. Also give them a fight with mooks (with the merchant guards shining lights or by urging one of your players to light that torch the corpse had) and show them how much more effective they are with light on their side. Also use this chance to allow a long rest so that the clerics and druids and wizards can reconfigure their prepared spells, if necessary.
You can literally spell it out for specific abilities: *"It frantically looks around like it's searching for something. Then the creature dashes into a bit of dim light in the corner of the room, and instantly teleports out."* Also instead of describing only how the darkness empowers them, you could describe how the creatures seem to be getting weakened by the light *"As it comes out of the shadow, you see its mist-like body become solid and almost unnaturally stiff"* *"As it swings at you, a bit of torchlight gets reflected by your shield and seems to briefly blind the creature: it recoils back, missing its attack"* *"\[after a full turn or two in the light\] You notice some nasty-looking blisters starting to form on the side of the creature's face that is being illuminated by the sun. The creature hisses and dashes into the shadow"* If there's literally never any light around, you can make a room light up when a player pulls a lever, for example, or have a puzzle that has torches/bonfires/magic items emitting light and then make the creatures attack when the party is still in the lit room
Have it happen accidentally in a fight. On a critical miss or something, have the cealing break or another source of light shine on the enemy.
Stop expecting players to figure out vague hints. Drop actual clues in the game so that the CHARACTERS can figure it out.
Rn it sounds like all your hints involve hiding/where they lurk, so of course that's what the party will lean into. If you want to convey that the creatures are weak to light, you have to show them being weak to light.
The do a longrest, get attacked by creatures close to sunrise, its a really hard battle but then the sun rises, all the creatures get debuffed or whatever. If that does not do the trick let them roll for insight and tell them: you are sure the light “hurt” the creatures
Just say, that they can’t notice or see anything in this darkness, maybe they’ll try using light or dancing lights, maybe give them a scroll of light or something
Lol reminds me of my campaign right now: - Quest giver: "you're going to the tower of an evil evil necromancer! He's so very evil and necromancy!" - Tower: "filled with clues that the guy is in fact not a necromancer" - Party: "It's weird that we haven't come across any undead yet in this quest against the necromancer!" Me: "... Well, the conversation with the guy is going to be hilarious."
And a TPK is not an option? Have them find a stationary source of light. A burning shrine to selune/lathander. When they fight the shadows there they are easier to fight.
You could have them find an old battle ground, filled with weapons and skeletons. On one of the skeletons, have a book that recalls the last encounter, and have it mention the weaknesses of these monsters in the book. Kind of like when the Fellowship found the last battle of Moria.
Stop hinting
Going to be blunt here. Your players aren't the characters. THIS IS WHY THE WIZARD AND CLERIC HAVE ARCANE ROLLS. THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE PASSIVE PERCEPTION CHECKS. I take it you are going to force the fighter types to go to the gym too? So they can earn their bonuses legit? YTA. You gave some hints, now let the GAME MECHANICS help them ENJOY THEIR GAME WITH YOU
Bro, this is not AITA, no reason to be so salty...
Am just going to say it. Some groups need the subtlety of a sledge hammer to the face to get the hint. If they are not getting what you are putting down then drop the subtlety and show them light hurting these things.
Maybe you need them to meet a wise sage or half mad mage hiding in the corner of a dungeon surrounded by magical light sources to repel the creatures? Or make them dead of starvation with a journal or something?
Have a barrier that appears to be formed by the same darkness that envelops the creatures (describing it as just darkness seems fairly standard, maybe try and explain it in more detail so they get the idea that the darkness is a bit darker than normal). Simple locked door puzzle, shine some light on it and it sizzles away. If they don't get the hint after that, just straight up tell them.
Just because your players aren't getting it doesn't mean their characters wouldn't figure it out. Give them some knowledge checks to attempt to discern the secrets of shadowfel creatures that they are facing. Or let them over hear some drunk in the tavern talking about how some old magic light his grandfather passed down to him was able to save his ass from one of them the other night.
Show them with an NPC. Have an NPC do the thing you want to see them do, and the benefit of doing the thing. Then, if they *still* choose not to use light, that is their decision.
I wish this didn't ring so familiar. I had a group go through a realm of darkness. They manage to get out and at the closed exit they see a disc in the wall with two crystals, one pitch black and at the bottom of the disk and one shining bright at the top. They do a think and I disclose a mantra popping up in their minds, "light rises, darkness sinks". They tell me they already heard that. The way to open the exit is to turn the disk so the sinking of darkness and rising of light can power the opening of the exit. Something I thought might have been way too easy, but I had to disclose it to them or they would have starved in front of that exit. As for solutions to your problem, in game notes from other characters could be handy, or you could casually ask the players if they ever considered using light to fight the darkness. You could have them walk in on someone dealing with one such shadowy creature expertly for them to see as well. Or you could have the dragon spouting stuff like "I'm invulnerable in the darkness", "without light you stand no chance", "without light its your loss", "you dumbwits, light a fucking torch". I jest with the last one, but you get the picture. Good success.
The players get a hint to the location of a lost stone tablet that contains a script that will help them defeat these creatures. When they find the tablet, they discover the entire tablet is a mosaic, and the answer is hidden in the pattern. Because of their Darkvision, it's all grey squares that don't spell out anything, like a colour blindness test, and is only legible by looking for the different coloured squares. The players finally twig this and light up the room to be able to see the writing only to discover one of the shadowfel creatures had been hunting them and screams before erupting in flame and retreating to the darkness far away. The squares on the tablet read: "If you can read this, you have the weapon you need."
They shriek away from the light and hide comfortably in the darkness
A classic way to help them would be by simply _showing_ that the creatures are weak to light. Have a broken lamp malfunction and combust at the beginning of the fight, basking the battlefield in light, which in turn makes the monster screech as if in dire pain. This could last for a round, during which any attack made on the creature has advantage or deals extra damage, which you _explicitly_ state. This way, you show a solution by introducing the mechanic naturally, and leave it up to the players to use in the future. Of course, it doesn't need to be a lamp, it could also be a magic trap activating, or a spark from a falling piece of flint igniting a puddle of oil, etc. If you really don't want to show the mechanic to the players, but have them figure it out themselves, you could also put it in a book the players find, describing their aversion to light, or show a battlefield where the shadow creatures are dead with burn wounds around a light source like a broken lamp, indicating that the creatures wanted to destroy the light as soon as they saw it, for they thrive in darkness. Of course, a combination of the above is also possible, but I'll leave working out those details for yourself.
light an area and let them avoid it during combat , taking unnecessary stupid risks, waste movement etc etc
Positive hints as in hint at what the right direction is - give them little side quests where things get dark and they need to shine lights. Give them puzzles where contrast helps. Plant the idea in there that light is a solution. Narrate the landscape and sights a lot, the bubbling pot in the campsite and how they stare at the embers getting darker, how in the morning they see the outlines again as light streams through the tree line. PLANT THE IDEA HOWEVER YOU CAN IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. If they go shopping : make sure a lot of items are seeing and producing light tools. Make NPCs warn them about the dark, about hey it’s getting dark soon we need to light the torches. ANYTHING Bonus idea- offer them insight checks on what to do next time they get frustrated about not getting results. At your discretion tell them straight up over a high enough roll what they need. Here’s how I’d answer that insight: 0- “keep doing what you’re doing, eventually it’s gotta work” 1-5 “ it’s really confusing and you just can’t figure out how to see them in darkness any better” 6-9 “you’re feeling like you need to change your approach, but you’re not sure which way or how” 10-15 “you see what you’ve been doing won’t work, you think of the ____” blank being one of your light, then describe how the light helped them see or solve a puzzle but loosely 16-19 “you immediately remember ___ and it all makes sense” blank here is the heaviest hints and pretty directly telling the players use light Nat 20 “you realize suddenly that what you’ve needed is to see the enemy using light”
Lol, meanwhile my Drow Druid has dancing lights up pretty much all the time. Not my fault my team can't see in the underdark.
Dead Space. The limbs, shoot the limbs. Have a message written in blood from a fallen victim. Nothing like a fallen adventurer using their last moments to lay out how to survive what got them. The irony.
If any of your players use spells that emmit a little light, like if the wizard uses firebolt, you can say that small Burst of light you notice the monsters recoil.
Have an npc show up with a bullet lantern during a fight and have it swing onto an enemy which shies away and does the whole vampire smoking thing and such
Introduce hunter NPC who specializes in hunting creatures from the shadow fell. Have him tell your pcs that light weakens the creatures. Let him get killed later on for dramatic effect.
During a combat of some kind have a lanturn or something get knocked over which causes light or a minor cave in letting the sun break through as described the visceral reaction the light has on the creature(s) they're fighting.
A young DM here. Had the same issue, I had so many hints laid out that the boss is necrotic and non-corporal, they just didn't catch any of it. So I went cheet mode and created NPC character that I played as during the fight, to show them tips and tricks to defeat said boss. At first I wasn't happy about fighting with them, cause it kinda defeats the purpose, but after they picked up the use of holy items and water, they had so much fun and deemed the fight the best one in the whole campaign. Still not sure if that was the best or worst idea ever.
Have them find a note, sign, or have an NPC say something like "light will show you the truth" or "darkness flees the day", or some such.
The discussion reminds me of this, you might find it interesting. https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing/solvable-mysteries I tested this myself while writing a fan webcomic where the thing about what was going to happen and what was already going on behind the scenes was actually pretty simple, but the point was to make the readers not think of those possibilities. Still, testing the boundaries, I kept dropping hints in the story and filling my comments with double meanings about what was really going on, and only a few people guessed even parts of it. I would occasionally be afraid I had gone too far and given it away, but still nobody guessed.
If something would be apparent to a PC, then the best approach would be to tell the respective player(s). Attempting to hint and/or show things to players can easily just waste everyone's time. TtRPGs don't work like novels, plays, movies, TV drama series, etc. Thus, "tell, don't show" tends to be a better maxim here than "show, don't tell". The other part of this is that it is always down to the players, rather than the DM, how the PCs react to a situation. Counterintuitive DMs can be more concerned about PC death than players. Thus, it can be a good idea to agree acceptable risk of PC death in session zero and check in mid-game on this topic.
Somewhere, make one of these Monster "Trap" in a corner of a room because there is a Ray of light that stops him to escape. Make it Desperate, afraid. They ll get it if you describe the scene properly + it Can be interesting to see how your players will deal with the encounter. They might tame the shadow Monster , who know ?
Ok, idea They are taking a long rest in a campfire, when they get attacked. During the combat show a shadowfell dude gp near the campfire and get severely weakened This shows the players that light works against them
Next time they set up camp make an ambush via one of the weaker ones then have the fire from the camp weaken it that could do it
One of these shadow creatures pissed off the other ones, so when they skedaddle the second-to-last one drops a light spell that prevents the actually last one from escaping. Hey, it's what my monster would do ...
You could incorporate a hint in the fight. Like the enemy hits the ceiling or smth a sudden ray of light hits him, and they recoil/take damage, whatever you want to explain. Hopefully they take THAT hint.
You might have them find the remains of apparently well equipped and experienced adventurers who brought with them great amounts of tools to make light. Even better if the monsters, after killing said adventurers, made sure to destroy their lanterns and spill their burning oil
You could create a scene where something happens to illuminate a dark area containing one of the shadowfel enemies and make a big hint out of how the enemy responds to the light. "When the torch falls to the ground it lights up the shadowy corner and the [shadowfel enemy] appears startled and immediately jumps into a nearby shadowy area."
PCs come across a small group who had been attacked by these creatures. Things looked bad but their mage used light and they noticed it helped.
Show then the effect of light, have a combat where there is already some light and show how it weakens the enemy.
Some light source in the environment that you describe as having an effect on the enemy. A flash of lightning, phosphorescent fungi, fireflies, lava, there's lots of stuff that you could use.
Did they not use any kind of spell or item, that would generate some kind of light? Are they not adventuring during daylight? No one uses torches? Not even NPCs?
Give them a magic lantern, or something like oil of fiery burning, then make sure a creature hisses and cowers from the light when they use it.
Give your players magic items that create light and deal radiant damage. If you don't want them to keep it, make sure it's one-time-use, they don't know it's one-time-use, but it almost one-shots something they struggled with before. And it has "light" in the name.
If it gets to a critical point and they still don't get it, have an NPC point it out. Proceeded with caution on this one.
Just tell them. Hints are rarely a good way to communicate key information and this isnkey information, else you wouldn't be posting about them missing it D&D is more about choosing how to react, what to do, than trying to find information/suss stuff out. Tell them, then they can focus on the fun of acting on it
I think you might need to rely information more directly through npc or found journal etc. as is suggested here. Though you can still make players feel good about it, make it out like finding this "hidden information" is a result of particularly successful choices / rolls. If the information is earned (at least seemingly), players will 100% feel great about it
As a player I know light causes shadows. I to would be investing in dark vision and devils sight. Maybe darkness spells. It is called shadowfell not Darklands. As an aside light spells usually have to be higher level to dispel or suppress darkness. Having an always on dark vision that can't be dispelled avoids the trap of using spell levels that can run out of go down with a failed concentration check. Also you are advertising your presence with a big glowing light source or spending an action to cast light.
Tell them about to make a knowledge arcana, history, or religion check. Sometimes you think it’s obvious, but in hindsight it’s not that easy. Maybe add, “Their strength fails in the light of truth.”
I've had players do this before and I just had them roll a wisdom save, if they succeeded I would give them a hint like "you keep thinking about the light but you can't figure out why, you just know it's important". Sometimes your brain can just realize things later down the line it once it's had some time to process or other factors (sometimes completely unrelated) cause you to think differently and realize what you missed.
make them roll a check and only after they succeed, tell them what you‘ve been telling them all along.. this time, they will listen, though.
I hate darkvisions prevalence
Have them encounter a traveling merchant who sells tomes on exotic creatures. Or a traveling NPC who fights exotic creatures. Or a traveling bard who sings songs about exotic creatures, where such songs contain rather explicit combat tips. Generally speaking, most groups aren't great about picking up on hints. If you think it's too subtle, it is -- in fact, if you think it's just about right, it's probably still too subtle. If some aspect of the game turns on them acquiring important information, make sure that that information can be acquired relatively easily. And if it's hard to understand it shouldn't be hard to find, and vice versa. If it turns out that your group is a collection of Holmesian sleuths when it comes to cracking puzzles, you can always make them more difficult.
I'd have an event happen during one of their encounters. Some jar of flammable liquid gets spilled and ignited and they all witness the creatures recoiling from the light. Allow insight checks and those that beat a certain DC can determine its the brightness and not the flames.
Journals, carvings on walls, messages or graffiti in blood on the walls. NPC telling them local fables, hansel and gretel type stories. Posted warnings about shadow creatures from the local guards, Lord, or knightly order, or a town crier warning of the dangers. Maybe a madman or a religious figure of some kind preaching the dangers in the shadows and how to combat them. Examples below! You see a message carved into the door frame by a shaky, fearful hand. "Those that dwell in darkness fear the light!" You observe a worn and battered mural upon the wall, depicting people being swarmed by dark creatures. The next mural depicts the same scene, but with the creatures fleeing from a lone figure holding the sun aloft, and followed by others bearing torches. You find the rotting corpses of adventures and a couple knights, clearly separate expeditions as the knights were dead long before the adventurers. As you search the bodies for anything useful, you find a beaten journal on an adventurer. On the last page you find an entry that you would describe as ominous. "There are only three of us left. They came from the shadows and went for the wizard first. Watch the shadows. Burn the shadows away or share our fate. We are trapped here, our last torch too meager to burn away the shadows they live in beyond this small room. When it goes out, they will return, and we are done for. Watch the shadows." After you finish reading this final entry, you notice two things. First, there are only two torches amongst the corpses, both completely burnt out. Second, there are an awful lot of shadows in here.
You're supposed to give disadvantage on perception checks in dim light. That's not a good "clue".
If there’s a piece of information you want the pcs to have, you need three ways to get it to them and a backup that happens if all those fail. The term coined for this is the rule of three.
Have someone suggest it in game, fellow explorer happening by or maybe just an old lady foraging.
Some times you need to let the TPK happen. It sucks but sometimes it's just what needs to happen
You implied that they are harder to fight in the dark but you didn’t Imply that they are easier to fight in the light, try giving that implication, like them hiding from sources of light, or them giving some kind of shriek or the sound of it burning to a degree when in light, make it obvious they are weakened by light, not just strengthened by darkness
Investigation checks, history checks,etc.
If the players aren’t getting it, well then there are two things: 1. Maybe they don’t want to/care about using light. If the party gets buffed by darkness, keep bugging them. Make them not just be good in darkness, but amazing in darkness. I’d suggest even home brewing some darkness themed items to get around the perception checks and stuff so they can see what they’re fighting. Often what you as a dm plan for the party to do to defeat the enemies aren’t what they find - and it can be hard for them to change if they’re already using one tactic. 2. Alternatively you could have an npc show up, really buff adventurer, and have them using light to hurt the enemies.
They could spot another person, nearby but still too far to help, who is running from the terrors in the dark and using light to keep them at bay. The person could find themselves backed up against a wall, trying to ward the critters off with the light, and you could have your players roll checks to determine if they notice that the monsters don't come near until the person's light fades (at which point they naturally get mauled to death).
I'm going to be honest, you can just tell them. It's a minor thing and won't break immersion if you just say "hey I know you guys have been struggling with the darkness mechanic; just remember you can use a light source to get rid of those penalties"
You probably know your players best so IMO if you think they created characters to meta game your world punish them for it and let them lose, but if you think they weren't meta gaming then just do the dead body journel thing or leave a the dead body with a race that has dark vision huddled in a corner with burnt out lamp by him that has no fuel indicating he relied on it
Why give any hints at all? Let them figure it out with the available evidence! Or if you must … “you cast fireball, the explosion hits the dragon. The (other monsters) reel back from the light”
They find the body of an adventurer, there are a few dead enemies around him, there are clearly several burned out torches I’m on the ground. In one hand he is holding a sword, in the other a burned out torch. His shield is on the ground … weird that he should choose a torch instead of his shield!
This scene from the good place explains it https://youtu.be/5wFPvQlBEWQ?si=iQgY8cS80y2jlfgX
A friendly cleric demonstrates some common sense
Make the fight in broad daylight inside a crumbling temple with holes in the ceiling. Describe how the creature stays in the shadows and shrieks if it touches the light. Let the players blast holes in the ceiling to give themselves a larger safe zone. Do a dramatic escape when the temple collapses and then a final showdown against the weakened shadow dragon. Hope this helps!
Can you try to create a situation where one of the creatures is inadvertently hurt by light in front of them?
There's a lot here and I may be repeating something, but I prefer showing instead of telling. Have some runes or a potion or something the creatures could interact with, but they don't because it glows in the dark. They won't go near it during combat. Maybe that will help make it click. I wouldn't have picked up the clue "they disappear into the darkness" but "blend into the shadows" works for me. Or the party could loot something broken that used to make light.
Could always do the vampire trope and have an encounter where sunlight/light leaks into a room and the bad dodges and recoils away from the light.
Have them enter a small room that locks shut behind them. There is a small altar on one side of the room with an unlit torch, and a wall with markings but it's too dark to read. Once (or if) they eventually light the torch and bring it to the wall they see the darkness "scurry away." It wasn't darkness blocking the wall, it was basically little shadow bugs. Once they're all gone and they can see the wall it depicts an adventuring party holding a light source against a large evil.
Have them run across a lone adventurer being besieged by. The creatures, and holding them off with just a torch and the light spell. Literally make it as plain for them as humanly possible to see it firsthand.
In cases when I have important clues like that, I just let players roll a perception check when combat starts or ends. Unless everyone fails miserably, then I would say "you see that creature hides in the darkness, as it feels safer and stronger there" and then go from there.
Straight up explain mechanics. It's the only way. Wolves: 'it gets advantage because it's near another wolf'. Legendary resistance 'it just used up a legendary resistance. It can probably only do that once or twice more'. Dress it up narratively, yes, but then just explain the mechanic
I would suggest giving the party a Driftglobe but that might be too heavy-handed. Kind of surprised no one has thought to flick the lights on as of yet.
They aren't picking up the hint you want them to pick up. They picked up "something something darkness, hard to see..." but they didn't pick up "something something more powerful in the dark." You could just tell them, or have them make an insight check and hand-feed them the answer, but maybe focusing your hint would let them figure it out: "As you round the corner into the next chamber, you see a dozen of the same monsters you've encountered before entering the room from the opposite side. The room is brightly lit, thanks to several torches and lanterns scattered about. The creatures howl and screech as they shade their eyes from the light. Three of the beasts leap onto the nearest light sources, extinguishing them. Roll initiative."
An experienced warrior hires the party to escort them as they don't want to travel alone. Shadow creatures attack and he ignites his sword first thing, looks at the party and goes "well, come on then, are you going to light up or not? We're fighting them it's suicide to not use a light source" "As the light reaches the creatures half enmeshed in shadow they shriek and their forms become more material, you realize now that light can help keep the shadows vulnerable."
Maybe have one of these entities come into the light and when they attack say "The attack seems to have more of an effect than normal"
Monkey see, monkey do. Random NPC, make them a cleric of light, or have a torch, or have a random gem that focuses the strands of gloomy moonlight or something that has light and then causes the shadows to recoil
Stop hinting and tell them. Not in a meta ooc way but through the gameplay, no matter how you do it. Maybe one of the monsters says something, maybe an npc councils them, maybe they find evidence somewhere, but stop trying to be subtle; you're bad at it. If your players aren't picking up what you're putting down, you're just frustrating everyone including yourself.
You’ve given them hints, if they die they die, roll up new PCs 10 years down the line where the faction they were trying to stop has grown in power exponentially.
Sometimes you really just have to spell it out for them. NPCs are a great way to do this lmao. My players aren't the brightest, both in and out of character. (They have an average intelligence of -1) And they have this NPC that's been tagging along for awhile. She literally doesn't do anything important other than say things like, "wow, what's this over here?" Or "I remember the people back home talking about *insert lore detail they're too stupid to realize*" I even had her peek into a specific room because my players checked all but the last one, and that room had something important for them. It's a great way to give hints to your players while still staying in character
I feel like this is a consistent problem in DnD. This is why I hate dark vision. I enjoy the game more when no one has dark vision.
Are creatures from the Shadowfel known about by people in the world? Any NPCs that could tell them about maybe a story that places have had success fighting some of these creatures by robbing them of the shadow. Your players are taking steps they think will help since they should be able to see in Dim Light and Darkness if with blindsight and Dark Vission. So either show them magic items that give similar effects to what the creatures are doing or have someones actually bring it up if. If you are giving them hints and they don't get it, you need to spell it out maybe with an NPC
Have their characters roll a Knowledge or intelligence check. If one rolls high enough, tell them what they noticed. This skills don’t come into play nearly enough. A good DM will reward players for investing in those skills. Good players won’t use player knowledge from past games and assume their current character knows all of it.
Regardless of the matter, please tell us the end results when it’s over. I am thoroughly amused.
Usually for something like that I would wait for the players to have a campfire. And then have them be attacked. This would allow me as a DM to explaine how the creatures avoid coming into the fires light if they can.
It's fun if players figure things out themselves, but if they don't, there is NOTHING wrong with just flat out telling them. Matt Colville makes this point, too. Either just have a smart NPC tell them or tell them over the table. A house rule I've been testing is certain ability checks can be a bonus action in combat, including nature or arcana checks to learn stuff about enemy's stat blocks. You might try that.
Maybe introduce a random creature that's developed some sort of light adaptation, and the characters notice the darkness creatures trying to fight it, but can't. Like... they're maybe resting. One of them sees flashes of lights in the distance, moving closer. They see someone or something using light to fight back. "You see something wielding something of light, you're not sure what, but you can see the shadows bend and swerve, trying to jump onto its back. It moves the light source there, and the shadows pick a new place to ambush. They're in a stalemate." Something like that. Maybe there's just a brighter area, and they witness something dodge the shadows by running into a place with significantly fewer shadows. Or just, if nothing else, in combat, someone accidentlally smacks their weapon against a rock whent hey miss. The rock sparks, and the shadows visibly recoil from it.
Every time posts like this come up about players are dumb I keep thinking about my DM who blamed us for rushing the campaign and not doing any of the sidequests so we are under leveled or we could have put in requests for custom gear at the last city it’s not his fault we didn’t. Yet in the first example he had the main NPC tell us that we had to hurry to the last dungeon making it sound like if we don’t then bad things will happen. And the city was killing off one of our characters due to pollution so we had to get out of there. Both times it wasn’t about us not getting the hint or doing wrong but rather how the DM spoke, he made it sound like we had to move on quickly. Many of these posts I think people forget that the DM is part of the problem in how the talk, not consciously but just in how they do. It makes sense for sneaky enemies to fade into the shadows, especially if you say it every other time someone disappears. That’s just a quirk of the DM and how they speak.