With Blind Fighting style from Tasha's Cauldron Of Everything, can you cast spells that require a target you can see?

Question

Blind Fighting, as phrased in Tasha's Cauldron Of Everything, contains additional wording beyond the description of mere Blindsight. The entry for Blind Fighting reads:

You have blindsight with a range of 10 feet. Within that range, you can effectively see anything that isn’t behind total cover, even if you’re blinded or in darkness. Moreover, you can see an invisible creature within that range, unless the creature successfully hides from you.

Using the optional Class Features for the Fighter class which are presented in TCoE, this Blind Fighting fighting style offers not only 10ft of Blindsight, but the wording above, which by my reading at least heavily implies that you should be able to cast spells which target a space, object, or creature "you can see", within the 10ft range of this ability.

You can explicitly "see an invisible creature", but does "you can effectively see anything that isn't behind total cover" mean that you can cast sighted spells on targets within that 10ft range?

Answer 1

Yes, if the target is within the range of your blindsight

Blindsight functions the same regardless of how you have access to it. The rules given in Tasha do not give any restriction on how you can use it so can use it to target creatures using abilities that require you to be able to see the target. As long as the stated restrictions don't apply in order to prevent you from seeing it, you can target a creature with a sight requiring spell.

As to whether blindsight lets you "See" your target. Firstly, there is a tweet from Jeremy Crawford stating as much here:

Blindsight qualifies for anything in the D&D rules that requires you to see something, provided that thing is within your blindsight's radius.

However, his tweets are not official rules. So let us look at what the rules actually state. First, the rule on attacking something you can't see:

When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn't in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target's location correctly.

Now the rule on blindsight:

A creature with blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius. Creatures without eyes, such as oozes, and creatures with echolocation or heightened senses, such as bats and true dragons, have this sense.

Note that the blindsight rule doesn't say anything about removing the disadvantage part of the attack roll. Does that mean blindsight doesn't remove the disadvantage from attacks? Of course not, otherwise it would be no different than blindsense.

As such, it must provide the ability to see the target within range.

Answer 2

Yes

As you cite, Blind Fighting (TCE) gives you (emphasis mine):

You have blindsight with a range of 10 feet. Within that range, you can effectively see anything that isn't behind total cover, even if you're blinded or in darkness. Moreover, you can see an invisible creature within that range

Comparing this with Blindsight from the PHB section on Vision and Light (emphasis mine):

Blindsight
A creature with blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius.

We could split hairs and debate whether 'effective sight' is better than 'perceiving without sight'. Fortunately, we don't have to because either of these abilities permit you to target with sight-based spells.

A ruling in Sage Advice Compendium shows that RAI is that both of them permit targeting:

Can a blinded creature make an opportunity attack? An opportunity attack is triggered by “a hostile creature you can see” (PH, 195). If you can’t see an enemy, you can’t make an opportunity attack against it. Creatures with blindsight are an exception to this rule, because that ability lets those creatures “see” within a certain radius.

Apparently blindsight is supposed to be treated as sight for its interactions with other sight-based rules, and thus can be used to allow the casting of spells that rely on sight. As Darth Pseudonym says, "Blindsight counts as seeing, even though it isn't." And if 'perceiving without sight' permits this, surely 'effectively seeing' does as well.

Blind Fighting also appears superior in that it explicitly allows you to see invisible creatures, meaning not only can you target them with sight-based spells, but you will not be at disadvantage, right? Unfortunately not. There is an interesting overlap between the rules for invisibility and the rules for being unseen, both of which means attacks on you are at disadvantage. Normally, when you are invisible, you are also unseen - but even though both apply, they don't stack. You can also be unseen without being invisible (such as if you are obscured by darkness) and you can be invisible without being unseen (such as if you are under an invisibility spell but your observer has see invisibility or Blind Fighting). But note that the disadvantage invisibility brings is not contingent on being unseen, nor does it go away if you are seen. The Invisible condition says only:

Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage, and the creature's attack rolls have advantage.

And, RAI, this disadvantage persists even if your attacker can see you. To summarize the linked video, Jeremy Crawford says that if you're invisible and a creature has Blindsight, Truesight, or See Invisibility, they can see you, but you still have advantage to attack and they still have disadvantage to attack you. The support for this argument can be found in spells like Faerie Fire which specify that they remove the benefits of invisibility.

Answer 3

Blindsense is a lesser ability that lets the creature notice things it cannot see, but

without the precision

of blindsight, using nonvisual senses, such as acute smell or hearing.

Blindsight is better than normal sight in that you can even see invisible creatures, that with normal sight you can not. Also it is precise, as per the reference in blind sense. Therefore casting a spell or attacking a creature within the area is never at a disadvantage.