D&D 5E Replacing Racial Darkvision

[DJCupboard]

Apologies if this has already been covered. What do we think would be a fair trade off if I was to house rule out racial darkvision? I want to make sure the races without darkvision don't end up more or less powerful accidentally due to the trade.

Thanks!


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[jaelis]

I don't think darkvision is a very big deal, so I don't think you need to worry about it very much. You'll just limit opportunities for stealthy exploration, as long as your players know that going in that shouldn't matter.

But replacing it with a different exploration-pillar ability would be nice. And it would make thematic sense if it were darkness related. Maybe just say they don't suffer disadvantage on visual checks in low-light illumination? Perhaps a keen hearing ability that you can accurately judge the distance and location of a source of sound you can hear?

If you want to get away from that, you could give them advantage on checks to avoid getting lost in appropriate terrain (underground for dwarves, forests for elves, etc).

 

[Jester David]

What did you have in mind?
What were you hoping to do in place of darkvision?

 

[Kobold Stew]

There is no need to trade off -- you can remove darkvision from most races and they do not need compensation.

PHB races with dark vision: Dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, tiefling.

Apart from legacy reasons (i.e. they had it in previous editions), there are no good reasons for elves, half-elves, and gnomes to have darkvision. You can make a case for dwarves ("they live underground"; to this add drow subrace) and tieflings ("racial darkness spell") and half-orcs ("they're related to orcs"), but even then, I know I'm fishing.

When you say "fair trade off", you suggest that players are taking these races *because they have dark vision*. I would say that's not the case. Elves, half elves, and gnomes can all have a dexterity bonus; they will always be appealing races to play. Even removing dark vision from these races will have minimal impact.

Do your players choose dwarf, halforc, and tiefling a lot? If they don't then ket them keep dark vision and see if that changes things. If they do, you can strip dark vision from then too.

 

[thethain]

While not perfect, I do like the homebrew race balance Here.

It considers darkvision worth 1/2 an ability score point. And some equivalent replacements: 1 damage resistance(not bludgeon/piercing/slashing), 1 cantrip, brave, lucky, nimble, mask of the wild, trancelike abilities.

Really you would want it to make sense for each race you change. You might make dwarves get the gnome cunning so they are more resistant to spells, while half-orcs get poison resilience or the charge bonus action from orcs.

Basically you will have some work ahead of you.

 

[jaelis]

It considers darkvision worth 1/2 an ability score point. And some equivalent replacements: 1 damage resistance(not bludgeon/piercing/slashing), 1 cantrip, brave, lucky, nimble, mask of the wild, trancelike abilities.

Totally a matter of opinion, but I would say it was cray-cray to value darkvision equally to Lucky.

 

[thethain]

Totally a matter of opinion, but I would say it was cray-cray to value darkvision equally to Lucky.

Id probably personally list lucky as equal to 1 ability point. Considering its like a 2.5% increased chance to succeed at at basically everything.

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[Kobold Stew]

(aside on darkvision).

Most of the time, the dark is an uninteresting problem in D&D: when a party is initially composed, the player has a "solution" to dealing with the dark. Typically, this solution is:
a. character has darkvision.
b. character can cast Light.
c. another character in the party can cast Light.

A fourth solution exists --
d. character uses torches or a lantern
-- but in my experience with 5e, I have seen maybe two characters choose this, out of literally dozens. Most players do not want the bookkeeping, and so Light becomes a "human tax" (an unfortunate phrase that betrays a sense of entitlement to darkvision).

It's an uninteresting problem, though, because it's not dynamic: the solution is typically found before play begins, and it never changes.

It's also a problem that DMs typically don't want to worry about, and so as longs the player has identified one of those four solutions as being operative, darkness is often ignored. I can think of only two DMs I've played with who have actually imposed disadvantage on perception checks in dim light or its equivalents (= darkness for those with darkvision).

Again, darkvision does not need compensation.

 

[thethain]

I really disagree with removing darkvision not requiring any consideration. Darkvision is almost required for a scout type character in dungeons. Having light, or a torch prevents a character from sneaking ahead to get an idea of the dangers. (As the light source would instantly give your location away)

Lacking darkvision may be a "human tax", but variant humans are absurdly powerful at low levels. And there are plenty of other races without darkvision.

Human, Halfling, Aarakocra, Dragonborn, Firbolg, 3/4 of Genesai, Goliath, Kenku, Lizardfolk, Tritons. Honestly its around half of the races unless you are counting every variant of half elf its own race.

 

[guachi]

A gentleman who did the work figuring out point costs for the races in the PHB ended up giving darkvision a value of exactly zero. So if you want to get rid of darkvision I don't think you have to replace it with anything. at all.