My common sense i would like to think has improved since 1e days, but certainly that is debateable.
First off, obviously any gm can house rule the vision and light rules to whatever degree they want - i did.
But there is a clear difference between "disadvantage" as a penalty and "disadvantage *and* require rolls for bunches of stuff that are automatic - no roll required."
What you seem to be suggesting is that not only should disadvantahe on rolled checks be applied but also a whole lot of other things require rolls to even attempt.
In combat, you gain disadvantage on attacks made while prone - what other not specified common sense from 1e penalties do you apply? Do they have to roll to successfully draw a weapon or ammo?
Or is the idea that disadvantage means more than the roll only applying to vision?
With infravision being its own thing in 5e, whether you could read with infravision in pre-5e has little sway.
I think its important to look at 5e itself when looking at the vision rules to get a handle on what dim light means.
"A given area might be lightly or heavily obscured. In a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage, creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight."
I cannot apeak for everyone, but i think if GMs started telling folks the cannot read their maps (or need to pass disad check vs dc) in patchy fog or moderate foliage and supporting it as "common sense since 1e" there would be a lot of WTF responses.
Further do wn the RAW specifies dim light as shadows including "The soft light of twilight and dawn also counts as dim light." I say again telling someone they cant read (or need to pass disad check vs dc) their maps at dawn likely gets WTF responses.
Again, obviously, a gm can house rule special additional,penalties for DV
, or dim light or a broader general rule for "when you get disadvantage" for any game subject to only that game's agreed upon hpuse rule policy.
But that means its not the core rules at fault problem if problems arise out of that.
Asude: My personal disagreement with the RAW lighting vision is that it created serious problems to the point that folks did not forget it bit intentionally handwaved it for playability. That seemed to make darkvision more of a necessity to survive and lack of darkvision way too massively exploitable - due to such a preponderance of "darkness - blindness" in everyday cases.
That puts darkvision at mostly necessity and outdoors at night without it massively disadvantaged instead of simply making darkvision an advantage.
It should be fairly easy under RAW lighting for any human and halfling travellers or caravans to be easy pickins for DV enabled raiders unless its a "exceptionally brilliant full moon" for instance - barting rather significant magical assistance.
This kind of thing leads to what quite a few gms describe as more or less "does somebody have torch and their sheet?" dismissal of the situation altogether.
What i prefer to have are consistent and playable rules for the visiin and lighting.
Going the route of adding more severe penalties by house rule to the borderline edge case is going in the wrong direction to me. The more onerous you make even the dim lighting situations the more necessary you make darkvision or the more likely you make "we cannot go there cuz of vision problem" decisions and the more likely you make "shoot out the lights" an oppressively threatening potentally overwhelming option.
That way lies "only adventure on bright sunny days" madness.
“Dim light” due to patchy fog is different than the dim light of dawn and the dim light of a moonless night, etc., and not everything needs a rule.
To me “common sense” which could also be described as “table consensus” is what the table agrees to in terms of things that aren’t covered in the rules. So your table might differ than ours, but it’s consistency at your table that matters. At ours, darkvision isn’t sufficient to read by, nor is a starry night. In fog, it’s not a hindrance. Mostly because fog isn’t a hindrance due to it being dim light, it just has similar effects with regards to being able to clearly see beyond a certain distance.
I adjudicate such things on the fly based on what makes sense to me, based on research and experience, including experience as a DM and running many editions and RPGs. But if somebody at the table questions it, I’m happy to explain my reasoning, and the table can decide if that will be the ruling going forward or not. The entire purpose for the rules to us is to get out of the way as much as possible, and to help us determine what’s possible and whether something succeeds or not. We’ll agree pretty quickly on a decision in the moment, and discuss the final rule after the session, recognizing that the final adjudication may be different than this single instance.
People at night, whether today or in medical times, use light at night to do such things. They build fires because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. We expect they’ll do the same here. If that’s something you don’t care for or wand to hand wave, there’s no problem with that. Our characters generally act the same way that people have for thousands of years. And while ogres, dragons, goblins, or whatever may not have existed, they thought they did. It didn’t alter their use of fire and light at night.
Most of the time, we address the majority of these issues with passive scores and mitigating circumstances. So being knocked prone might have other impacts, although most of the time it’s not necessary to worry about anything else. If you’re knocked prone into thick mud or deep snow, on the other hand, then you might have to deal with other things. Our approach is to roll dice less and focus o. The characters and the narrative more.
It has little to do with 1e or other editions, other than to adjust rules to maintain in-game consistency in the campaign that has been ongoing. The common sense aspect has to do with the here and now. If something doesn’t make sense to us now, then it doesn’t really matter what we decided 20 years ago. There are plenty of things that we have changed over the years.
So yes, we allow for much greater variety of effects and impacts than simply consulting a rule that says, “this is what happens.” If you are knocked prone into 6” of water, the whole situation is going to play out quite differently than falling on a bare stone floor. To start with, you’re likely to be grappled in an attempt to drown you.
And as far as I’m concerned, there’s very little that is automatic, no roll required. However, the majority of that is taken care of by passive scores, and unless the circumstances are significant enough, even disadvantage is usually not enough to alter the results, and thus eliminate the need for a roll. For example, you don’t typically need to worry about being able to stand. But if you’re on a ship that is struck by a large wave? That changes things.
We like the way vision works in our campaign because it makes sense to us. Right now it works pretty much as 5e describes, with a carryover from our long-running campaign that you can’t read by it. If you have disadvantage on Perception due to lack of light (not because of any other source of obscured vision) you can’t read.
We’ve been happy with that interpretation from the ‘70s and see no need to change it now. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other games that do the same. I’m sure there are many that don’t. Probably most at this point, because it hasn’t been a part of the rules since 3e. So why would they if they’ve never played earlier editions? That doesn’t really have any bearing on us. What doesn’t make sense to us is that the elf suddenly sees differently because there’s a new edition released. Abilities suddenly changing due to a new edition was a running gag in Order of the Stick for a while.
