D&D 5E Eliminating darkvision from most races

[Ilbranteloth]

If you mean once combat has started, sure.

There is still no reason to give your general presence away before combat, though.

Especially when your darkvision is double-range - if anything Drow would hope the encounter can take place entirely in the dark, since that gives them a HUGE advantage: just keep a 70+ ft distance, and you're essentially invincible.

It's not double-range. It's the same as other Underdark creatures. It's only double-range against surface creatures, which are very rare.

 

[CapnZapp]

This list makes no sense.

It might not make sense to you, but then that's because you make Darkvision much less useful than what it actually says.

You don't need light to cook, or to have a conversation with friends or family.

You're entire mindset is appropriate for surface-dwelling races, especially "civilized" ones, but I consider it a luxury you can't afford if you live in places of actual danger.

As I said, it doesn't apply if you have the security of numbers, so I'm not sure why you're talking about larger settlements - I've already said I don't have a problem with a Drow city, say, using lights for all sorts of things.

Besides, we're getting sidetracked here. The core question is:

Will a human rogue be able to sneak into a kobold warren, say, or a drow settlement, to pick off sentries and stragglers amid chaos and confusion.

My take is: no way. Not only are you severely disadvantaged if you can't see in darkness, there is no reason to assume the first instincts of inhabitants wouldn't snuff out any lights first thing. If you have Darkvision and sense danger from surface-dwellers, first thing is to gain a massive advantage by making sure there are no lights.

Moreover, said human should not even be able to get close. Any such settlement worth its salt would have hidden sentries watching from darkness. Any human party would have to rely on lights.

The result is that the monsters would see the humans coming a mile away, with ample time to coordinate massive traps and deadly ambushes.

TL;DR: unless your campaign takes place in a "classic" AD&D world (with lots of humans, daylight, and outdoors/above ground), don't play a scout without darkvision.

 

[CapnZapp]

This is only true for 3e through 4e.

There's nothing "only" about D&D gaming for the last two decades, probably including 90% of all current gamers.

Stop pretending later editions does not have a larger impact than the semi-obscure earliest-effort ones.

Beyond that; I've already adressed the faulty logic of "it wasn't true in 2e" (though I can't remember if it was in this thread or somewhere else).

I say 5e is the first edition where non-darkvision can be said to be the exception rather than the rule.

How can that be, if demihumans like elves only had low-light vision in 3e and 4e?

Because the balance between humans and demihumans have shifted considerably since AD&D.

Humans were very much the norm in the early editions, not because of anything related to vision, but because of a host of other reasons, mainly expectations. If you were there you know I am speaking the truth. Humans were very much depicted as heroes front and center, in artwork, in literature. And in the very core essence of the rules themselves: if you weren't human, you weren't allowed the "regular" way of multiclassing. You had strange limits on what you could be (like treating dwarves and elves as their own class!) and there were limits on how much of a hero you could become (level limits!), none of which applied to the human.

Any hero like Drizzt or Bruenor was always the exception, the spicy exotic outsider. (Sure you might have played an all bugbear party back then for what I know, but that's hardly representative of art, mood, descriptions of the time)

So arguing against "no darkvision was the norm up until 5th Ed" is deliberately ignoring the larger issue.

Yes, if you only look at vision, you might be tempted to conclude 5e is the normal state of D&D. But in reality it is far from the truth.

The reality is that in 5e, it's easy to create an entire darkvision-enabled party with much less baggage than in any earlier edition. This is a much larger shift than I suspect the designers realized. I believe they simply assumed humans would still be the norm, when 5e no longer maintains any reason for keeping things that way.

Moving elves and half-elves out of Camp Darkvision is my identified solution to this problem, that the designers probably didn't anticipate and the playtest probably failed to catch.

 

[CapnZapp]

Note: I might sound like that's an objectively bad thing, but I'm actually not saying that.

It's only if you, like me, prefer classic conservative fantasy where gaining access to darkvision is supposed to be a thing (a low-level challenge), this needs to be a problem.

It is if you share this view I present my suggestion to move elves to low-light vision.

 

[Starfox]

Read the first pages of the thread (not all of it) but didn't see this comment, so here goes.

Removing darkvision hits different classes/roles very differently. Mainly, it kills any chance of advance scouting in darkness. Now, stuck doors also eliminate scouting, but corridors, caverns, and open temple maps can be scouted even underground. So, a scout basically has to have darkvision, and having the main party not use light lessens the distance the scout has to be ahead of the party, thus reducing the scout's vulnerability.

That said, I agree with the OP. 100% darkvision removes a lot of ambience. But so does total darkness. My solution is that few underground areas, especially inhabited ones, are actually lightless. Rays of sunlight from above, glowing fungus, glowing crystals, and light used by inhabitants (after all, who wants disadvantage). This creates areas of different illumination, which promotes stealth and creates great ambience.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Will a human rogue be able to sneak into a kobold warren, say, or a drow settlement, to pick off sentries and stragglers amid chaos and confusion.

TL;DR: unless your campaign takes place in a "classic" AD&D world (with lots of humans, daylight, and outdoors/above ground), don't play a scout without darkvision.

Off the top of my head, ways to play a scout and not be restricted as to choice of race on this basis or forced to rely on another party member would be . . . Shadow Monk, Ranger, Druid?
Maybe Artificer at a higher level? But the rest of the class doesn't really synergise as a scout-type.

Any others? (Do arcane Tricksters get access to the Darkvision spell?)

 

[CapnZapp]

Sure.

I didnt say it this time, but obviously a human works fine if his spellcaster buddy is fine with semipermanently devoting a spell slot for darkvision.

Or, as you say, he or she fixes his own way to extinguish that lantern.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Caliburn101]

Carried Light gives you away, fixed lighted positions are vulnerable to being sidestepped or extinguished.

Serious Darkvision races do not need Light except for social purposes, and Darkvision is far too ubiquitous - to the point some are actually saying that Halfling Rogues are a bad choice of character and stealth characters cannot operate in total darkness without it, so any race without it is a bad choice for that - Rogues, Monks, Rangers...

This is a problem of 5th Editions obsession that everything and it's dog has the ability to see in utter darkness -not a problem with those classes. The huge majority of times 'it is dark', it isn't pitch black, nor should it be except in parts of the Underdark.

The idea that 120ft Darkvision races would use light everywhere is illogical.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

You don't need light to cook...

It sure makes using the right ingredients easier, though.

 

[CapnZapp]

It sure makes using the right ingredients easier, though.

I completely agree.

In the comfort of my own home, I generally prefer to cook with the lights turned on.

But then again, I don't live in a wilderness where everything and everybody that sees my light will come to eat me - that's not the kind of cooking I had in mind.