D&D 5E Eliminating darkvision from most races

Cap'n Kobold said:

Just pointing out to Cyrinishad that darkvision-using races are still going to want to use light sources for the same reasons as, say humans outdoors at night will. Using Darkvision alone still gives penalties, so while they aren't going to have scouting patrols waving torches around all the time, they're still going to use light around their buildings, or when tracking for example.

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You bet. Rolling perception at disadvantage is a pretty big deal. I'm playing in a campaign and even though all of us (but one) have darkvision, I'm still tempted to have my bladesinger learn the light cantrip at 4th level. Tough decision...light for utility or firebolt for better ranged combat (especially at 5th level when damage die is increased). If I'm lucky, the cleric in the group will learn the light cantrip and I can go for the firebolt. hehe.

Uller said:

I'm sorry. Maybe I'm miss reading what you are saying. Are you claiming that a party with all darkvision characters wouldn't have a fundamentally different experience exploring an underground complex than one with no or few characters with darkvision?

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I think that they're pointing out that the actual description and ambience probably won't change that much: its still a world of obscured figures and shadowy shapes, with the possible flash of movement on the edge of vision that leaves your sight before you can make it out. It just means that there is no circle of brighter light within which the party can actually see properly and make out details.
I'd guess that the biggest difference in the experience would be in the other creatures having less capability to spot you when you decide to go stealthy. - Potentially less hostile encounters.

This thread is about a DM that wants to reduce the prevalence of darkvision available to his players for his game. Presumably his players are on board with that because they want to feel the fear that. I don't understand the need to argue against it.

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The OP asked about potential issues and for people's thoughts on the changes that they were thinking of making.
I think that Cyrinishad is probably correct to bring up the point that I've seen a lot of people miss: darkvision in 5e isn't like darkvision in 3.5 where you could see just fine out to your range. A lot of people forget that using darkvision in 5e is like trying to see in dim light, with all the associated descriptions and penalties.

secondhander said:

When I DM, one of the things I really like to establish is mood and setting for my players. I want to play up the dread and unknown when they venture into a dark, damp dungeon. I want them to almost hear the scraping of the flint and the crackling fire as they light their torch. I want them to see the light dance upon the cavern walls, or light an ancient underground tomb that hasn't seen light in hundreds of years. I want them to wonder what else lurks out in the darkness just beyond where their light reaches.

I also want their light spells to be meaningful and useful. I want magical potions of darkvision, or goggles of night, to be coveted items.

But the fact that most all the races have darkvision simply ruins things. Sure it makes it easier of DMs that want to forget about running lighting and vision rules anyway, but I want to run those rules. That's a big part of the ambiance of dungeon crawling, in the way I run my games.

So in my own homebrew universe, I am thinking about getting rid of darkvision for all but Drow and Snirvneblin. Are there some potential game-breaking problems if I do that? Have any thoughts on running a game without racial darkvision?

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I did this for one of my games. I removed Darkvision from the players all together, so they have to use light sources, etc...

In lou of that, I decided to let any race that had Darkvision choose either 1 skill, 1 tool, or 1 language of their choice. That seemed fine enough among my players.

Cap'n Kobold said:

I think that they're pointing out that the actual description and ambience probably won't change that much: its still a world of obscured figures and shadowy shapes, with the possible flash of movement on the edge of vision that leaves your sight before you can make it out. It just means that there is no circle of brighter light within which the party can actually see properly and make out details.
I'd guess that the biggest difference in the experience would be in the other creatures having less capability to spot you when you decide to go stealthy. - Potentially less hostile encounters.

The OP asked about potential issues and for people's thoughts on the changes that they were thinking of making.
I think that Cyrinishad is probably correct to bring up the point that I've seen a lot of people miss: darkvision in 5e isn't like darkvision in 3.5 where you could see just fine out to your range. A lot of people forget that using darkvision in 5e is like trying to see in dim light, with all the associated descriptions and penalties.

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I was in the infantry. I've used nightvision while entering dark places that potentially contained people that wanted to kill me or my brothers. Having the ability to see at least something without relying no lights vs having to go in with lights that everyone can see are two very very different propositions.

I'm DMing OotA right now. We have one PC and one NPC without darkvision. They rely on a light spell and that substantially affects decisions the party makes while exploring dark places. Not trying to be derogatory here but it seems like that should be self evident.

In fact, when my players made their PCs, I strongly encouraged them toward surface dwellers without darkvision or at least with only 60' of it. This changed the nature of the game.

So, I'm sorry...trying to argue that the OP doesn't understand darkvision and is just playing it wrong seems a bit off to me.

Edit: And to clarify, I think pointing out what you pointed out above is fine. But the way dark vision works (darkness is like dim light) has been pointed out several times. What I think is off (or maybe I'm misunderstanding) is some folks seem (to me) to be arguing that you can still run a "scary" exploration of dark places with darkvision just the way it is. Experience and simple logic tells me otherwise. Going into a cave full of monsters and having to rely on a light source to even be able to move vs being able to go in and have the light source optional depending on circumstances are two vastly different experiences. Go into the darkest room you can find. Make it darker. Drop 5 dice on the floor from 3' off the ground then try to find them. Now allow just enough light that you can make out shapes and contrasts and repeat...no increase the light enough that you can read the dice. That's the difference between darkness, dim-light and bright light. The three are very different and require different approaches to solving the very simple and safe exercise of finding dice.

Uller said:

I was in the infantry. I've used nightvision while entering dark places that potentially contained people that wanted to kill me or my brothers. Having the ability to see at least something without relying no lights vs having to go in with lights that everyone can see are two very very different propositions.

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Indeed, but wasn't much of that difference due to the presence of those people who wanted to kill you, and the difference in their capability to see you between using NV and using lights?

I'm DMing OotA right now. We have one PC and one NPC without darkvision. They rely on a light spell and that substantially affects decisions the party makes while exploring dark places. Not trying to be derogatory here but it seems like that should be self evident.

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Given that that's one of the points that I've been making myself, I'm certainly not going to be offended by that.

So, I'm sorry...trying to argue that the OP doesn't understand darkvision and is just playing it wrong seems a bit off to me.

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It seems a bit off to me to, but I don't think that anyone is actually doing that. One of my primary guidelines when houseruling is to ensure that the houserule is actually going to change the game in the way that I want to change it. Given that in my personal experience many people might not be sure of how darkvision works, I didn't see an issue suggesting a way the OP can engender the ambiance they're after, both with and without the houserule that they're asking about implementing.

Yes, what it boils down to is that the notion "since darkvision only provides dim light, you need a torch" doesn't make any sense.

I completely agree with Uller: Of course if you can see in the dark you will want to stay dark. It's such a huge advantage it boggles the mind that anyone would ever want to give it up.

Having to make Perception rolls at disadvantage is a bummer, sure. But not being spotted automatically by everyone for as far as you can see (and sometimes even farther; ambient light spreads around corners) is much better than that. It's no contest.

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That changes nothing about how some campaigns will decorate the dungeons and caverns with plenty of light (allowing for surface dwellers to sneak too) while others will be hardcore realist and keep things pitch black (making scouts without darkvision a hopeless endeavor).

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But what it does is tell the OP that if you want the heroes to carry torches, the only real option is to make sure the entire party won't have darkvision. Since it's unreasonable to ask them to negate the huge advantage of walking around with no lights if that's an option.

You can still have excitement and fear of the unknown in an all-DV party.

But an all-DV party is much more at home in the darkness. It makes it much easier for them to turn the tables on the subterranean horrors. The hunted becomes the hunters.

And that's exactly what I gathered the OP doesn't want.

My best suggestion is to keep things simple, and stick with the idea to gently nudge the players away from creating characters with darkvision. Just enough for one or two of them to play something like a human or halfling.

Or elf

So, I haven't read all ten pages of this, but I too think darkvision is a bit too common, and here are my thoughts

1) one way to solve it would be to make darkvision have more of a penalty. Perhaps when suddenly exposed to bright light, they take disadvantage to all attack rolls for 10 minutes until their eyes acclimate, and always take disadvantage to perception checks in bright light. Then when you remove it from elves / half - elves and the like, it feels like a neutral change rather than a nerf.

2) You can go the 3rd edition route and split darkvision back into low-light vision and darkvision, where low-light vision simply means you don't take a perception penalty in dim light, but treat darkness normally.

Cyrinishad said:

This is why my responses to this thread have been trying to help show the readers that darkvision doesn't ruin the ambiance of torch-light, and show that the prevalence of darkvision doesn't allow DMs to simply "forget" about lighting and vision rules... Since in my experiences the existence of darkvision has actually required me to think more about the impact of lighting and vision rules.

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I don't quite agree with you here. In my current game where normal rules about darkvision are allowed, I am not forgetting about lighting rules. I know when and which races can see in the dark, and how far, and disadvantage in dim light, etc. When I say it ruins the ambiance, I mean that when most or all the characters have darkvision, there is never the completely pitch-black cave or dungeon. Never a pressing need to cast a light spell. Sure, if you want to search without disadvantage you need light, but the need isn't pressing. Thus a lot of things like torches, lanterns, oil, and light magic get downplayed a lot. That's the loss of ambiance and player immersion in the dungeon I am talking about.

And I don't think having standard (5th ed.) darkvision rules means you think more about the impact if lighting and vision rules, you just think about different aspects of the rules, or different rules. Even if you eliminated darkvision entirely from PCs, you still have to think about dim light and disadvantage, how far light extends when you light a torch, the range of dim light on the outer rim of that, and darkness out from there. You have to think about monsters with darkvision watching the group, and how they are affected by light or the group's torchlight. If you still have low-light vision (which I will have) you have to think about that. So there are still plenty of light and vision rules to think about.

But having a third category of low-light vision, instead of the two categories of normal vision or darkvision (which seems like a kudgel and non-graceful approach to vision) makes sense to me.

Davinshe said:

So, I haven't read all ten pages of this, but I too think darkvision is a bit too common, and here are my thoughts

1) one way to solve it would be to make darkvision have more of a penalty. Perhaps when suddenly exposed to bright light, they take disadvantage to all attack rolls for 10 minutes until their eyes acclimate, and always take disadvantage to perception checks in bright light. Then when you remove it from elves / half - elves and the like, it feels like a neutral change rather than a nerf.

2) You can go the 3rd edition route and split darkvision back into low-light vision and darkvision, where low-light vision simply means you don't take a perception penalty in dim light, but treat darkness normally.

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I quite like the first one. I would probably just say that if you have Darkvision, you have Sunlight Sensitivity.

How interesting, understandable, and frankly, odd...

There seems to be an assumption made by more than one person that Underdark races would use light in Underdark warfare because of the perceived advantages. Is this right, or could it bely a lack of experience in night fighting as it is done in the real world and a lack of the application of self-reflection on the effect of our shared human experience on our personal point of view?

I would say that seems likely.

Let me make a couple of illustrative examples with the rules mechanics thrown in to get the ball rolling on my point of view on this;

1. Attacking at disadvantage due to dim light/darkvision mechanics:

I can find no justification as to why darkvision races would give up the advantage of surprise to increase the chance to hit, they would I think just volley fire in volume at range to increase the number of hits. As nearly any enemy with darkvision (except for those with tremorsense mobs) would be at the same disadvantage in melee the issue balances out at shorter ranges. One only has to look at the effectiveness of the use of volley fired 'night arrows' in the medieval period - how it was both terrifying and regarded as dishonourable (note: this really meant 'too effective' due to the sneaky surprise factor) to see this would not be an advantage readily discarded in a way which evened the odds. Whe one considers longer range darkvision where one has a huge edge over 'normal' darkvision races, this becomes an utter no-brainer.

2. Darkvision and living underground:

With darkvision, in most of the Underdark, or caves, or dungeons (etc.) the next stone wall or turn in the tunnel is going to be within 60ft, and certainly 120ft. Check out real life cave systems, and look at the many dungeons and cavern systems mapped out over the years for D&D and count the instances of this - you will find the overwhelming majority of spaces are smaller, and once again, with longer range Darkvision, we are talking a very high percentage indeed. Why introduce a light source unless some threat you are expecting can only be discerned by colour and not shape... in truth, how many of these threats fit this incredibly narrow definition?

This brings me to my other point - the effect of 'humanocentric' perception bias on the issue.

Where Drow cities in vast caverns are depicted in illustrations, sure, there are light sources, but these would in practicality be about landmark navigation as much as architects wanting everyone to see their magnificent handiwork. With good signage, or the kind of familiarity a denizen would have, even this would prove unnecessary.

It is HUMANS who created D&D and it's races, and humans who expect to see things with a background, and in colour. When is the last time you saw an Underdark scene without a light source and in black and white? That's right - you haven't, because we simply don't value this kind of image. The flipside of this of course is that we use such images as a subliminal baseline for 'what it should look like', and thus you get such illogical nonsense as Drow Houses who use colour in their heraldic devices to differentiate their houses - when in reality, shape of device would be far more prevalent. Drow on Drow fights have no need to include light - whatsoever - unless of course they are using coloured devices to differentiate themselves, in which case why would they use them at all considering the disadvantages?

They wouldn't...

We are all human of course, and are limited to this extent to the capabilities of our senses - but very small numbers of humans DO have experience of using darkvision to fight, and I can tell you from personal experience (I am ex-army), that the use of night vision equipment (a little cumbersome, and makes your blurrier more immediate environment green...) gives you a massive advantage in the darkness (despite the inconvenience and drawbacks of an equipment-based capability) over those without it. No-one would give that up given the alternatives, and if the military ever developed biotech eyeballs with nightvision capabilities, the advantages of using it would be even greater - especially if the user could not be temporarily blinded by bright light (as the short range darkvision races illogically enjoy...).

If you disagree with what I am saying, then of course you are entirely entitled to do so. But if I may ask, if you could justify in your rejoinder why it is you think every advanced army in the world is wrong about this I would genuinely be interested to hear what your reasoning is.

Thanks.