Certain spells require the target to be able to see the caster. Is a creature that uses blindsight considered able to "see" the caster? What about if they're seeing the caster via darkvision only, or truesight only, etc?
For example would a ranger be able to cast animal friendship on a purple worm, which only has blindsight & tremorsense, given that the spell requires the target creature to be able to "see and hear" you?
(I'm assuming that tremorsense is a vibration/sound ability, not sight.)
Best Answer
Truesight and Darkvision are explicitly seeing.
Truesight is what it says on the box: Sight. Specifically,
Similarly, Darkvision is vision, and is specifically stated to be seeing:
So there's no question about those two. If you can see something with truesight or darkvision, you're seeing it.
Blindsight counts as seeing, even though it isn't.
Blindsight is specifically not seeing:
The "Vision and Light" section of the rules (PHB p.183) repeats this information, and seems to be indicating that blindsight means you can ignore things like darkness and obscurement, but it isn't clear on that point.
However, the Sage Advice Compendium comes in to give us a specific, official answer to this:
So officially, blindsight counts as seeing for the purpose of abilities that depend on seeing an enemy. If it's good enough to count as seeing for opportunity attacks, it should also count as seeing for targeting a spell.
That said, this is going to require some DM guidance. Does blindsight make you more vulnerable to a medusa's gaze, which depends on whether you "can see the medusa's eyes"? It seems obvious that blindsight shouldn't count as sight for that purpose even if it counts as seeing for some other cases; it would be absurd to suggest that a bat's echolocation could cause it to be turned to stone! So, the DM will have to make some determinations. I would suggest that the DM should generally rule in favor of the creature with enhanced senses (that is to say, blindsight should count as seeing or not-seeing, whichever is more advantageous to the creature with blindsight in the situation at hand), but it's going to be somewhat ad-hoc, and that's okay. That's what the DM is there for.
Tremorsense probably isn't seeing.
Tremorsense is described as:
"Detect and pinpoint" is an interesting term to use. It sounds like tremorsense gives the creature your location, but not actual sight-equivalent (and thus would not, on its own, allow for attacks of opportunity or spellcasting that requires seeing).
Further evidence comes from the fact that Blindsight specifically notes
Tremorsense carries no such note, which suggests that tremorsense does not count as "perception" for an otherwise blind creature (for example, the purple worm, which has a short blindsight range and a much larger area of tremorsense).
Based on the evidence, I'd say Tremorsense tells you where something is, but not what it is or what it's doing. It is, perhaps, more analogous to hearing than to sight.
Blindsense
A 14th level Rogue has Blindsense, which specifies:
Clearly this is not sight; it's merely location-awareness. You're hard to hide from, but you still can't use it to make opportunity attacks against things you can't see.