yeah, all that makes sense. i think what i'm driving at is whether the rules say one way or the other whether a lit torch will be visible to enemy forces from further away than its illumination radius, and if not that seems like yet another dm's call sort of thing

i could turn this into question i reckon

ah yes here we go rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/62774/…

oh thank goodness, they fixed up the logic for seeing in darkness in 5e

in 3.5e, if you are in darkness, you are blinded. this means if i am standing in sunlight, and you're next to me in darkness, you are blinded and have trouble seeing me. (not because of the brightness, but because you're in darkness, which makes you blinded.)

you also have concealment from me, which is valid, but you shouldn't be blinded.

5e dips into old rules a lot, but they didn't keep that bit: in 5e you're “blinded for the purposes of looking at something in darkness”. which is intuitive: i have trouble seeing you, someone else in darkness will have trouble seeing you, you have no trouble seeing me.