Ridding Elves and Half-Elves of Darkvision

[clearstream]

Which you treat as Bright Light.

The way these two abilities interact does not leave any room for a treatment of light within its radius as anything but bright.

This is a fascinating and for me justified interpretation (albeit one I would dispute)! You are reading it as a syllogism, right -

All A are B (all dim light is bright light)
All C are A (all darkness is dim light)
Therefore all C are also B

Yet I think what is being stated is subtly different. Rather than having only A (dim light), B (bright light) and C (darkness), there is also D (mechanically alike to bright light) and E (mechanically alike to dim light). "Mechanically alike" arises from the words "as if". For any creature -

All A are E
Some E are not A
All B are D
Some D are not B

For a creature with Darkvision -

All A are D
All C are E

The reason this is likely to be correct is the principle that for mechanical rules, the favoured interpretation is the one that permits all words to have meaning. So on reading "You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light" it is right to ask, why wasn't this written "You can see in dim light and darkness within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light." There's really no reason for the designer to have been coy here. More importantly, if "is" and "as if" have identical meanings, consider the option "Dim light and darkness is bright light out to a radius of 60 feet around you." That "is" feels like it should impact on other creatures, right? Henry Human's way is lit by the radiance of my Darkvision.

I could speculate that it was simple error. They meant to go on to say "...and being dim light, you see as if were bright light." That is always possible, but for professional designers with independent editing staff my first reading should prefer to assume no error. Particularly after errata has been issued clarifying the places where error did occur.

 

[cbwjm]

I'd be tempted to give tieflings devil's sight instead but I'm guessing a lot of people would be dead set against them having perfect vision in darkness as a racial ability.

 

[clearstream]

I'd be tempted to give tieflings devil's sight instead but I'm guessing a lot of people would be dead set against them having perfect vision in darkness as a racial ability.

I found in play using battle maps that Devil's Sight took away some of the possible tactical interest in dark environments. The vision rules are fairly bad anyway. FWIW I ended up using the following -

Unseen but not Unheard: Hiding
Attackers who cannot see their target can guess their location from the noise they make, but have disadvantage on attack rolls made against them, including ability checks made for special melee attacks. Light and vision does not abruptly terminate, so characters lurking precisely on the edge of their listed ranges typically aren’t unseen. Making an attack gives away a creature’s position, so subsequent attacks don’t have advantage unless they shift in a way that cannot be observed or predicted. Experienced combatants whose lives depend on it are not distracted by melee, and may be able to predict obvious hiding places. Creatures can become unheard by taking the Hide action: you can try to hide if you are—
• Heavily obscured by such things as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage
• Concealed by an object that blocks vision entirely such as a creature at least two sizes larger than you
• Unobserved such as when a creature is distracted
• Invisible such as through a spell or class ability
You stop being hidden when you are in a creature’s field of vision under circumstances that would prevent you attempting to hide from it, or you make sounds that it can hear, or you attack it.

Blinded
Blind creatures can’t take actions that rely on sight, such as casting sacred flame or making an Attack of Opportunity. Attackers have advantage on attacks against blind creatures that they can see. Each foot of movement while blind costs 2 extra feet of speed. Contact with a sighted guide reduces that cost to 1 extra foot. If you Dash while blind you must make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (DC 12) or fall prone.

Basically allowing players to target creatures they can't see with ranged and melee attacks. What I liked however is that even for creatures with Darkvision, parts of the map could remain obscured. Until Superior Darkvision and Devil's Sight entered the campaign. What would I prefer? I think in play you can capture the feel of a dark environment quite well if creatures have these kind of small lit circles around them. 120' is too big for a reasonable battle map. Possibly fine for outdoors.

 

[clearstream]

For some reason, when my players all made their characters, there was a slight oversight (no pun intended) in giving the Dragonborn Darkvision. I was told they had it, it made sense (hey, Tieflings get it due to their heritage, why not Dragonborn...), but then recently discovered they don't get it.

Well, that sucks for my players because everyone chose a race purposefully so they all had Darkvision! Now, of course, the Dragonborn doesn't. Since this was my mistake in not checking myself, I'll probably let the player keep it this time.

But, it got me thinking: why do certain races get it and others don't?

To review, these races have Darkvision (or Superior Darkvision): Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, ,Half-Orc, and Tiefling.
These races don't: Halfling, Human, Dragonborn.

Now, I can certainly understand Dwarf, Gnome, and Half-Orc since all of these races do spend quite a bit of time underground. Likewise, I get Drow Elf having it. An argument can be made for the Tiefling's heritage I suppose, but then why not Dragonborns?

And why would the other Elf races and Half-Elf get it? There is no reason why except for a hold-over from earlier editions IMO.

If anyone would like to chime in on this, I'd love to hear your opinions and thanks!

Fog is the new dark, in 5e.

 

[WhosDaDungeonMaster]

That seems much too restrictive, IMO. What purpose does it serve?

Its purpose is because it is biological. When you go from dark conditions to bright, your eyes need a few seconds to adjust. Making it an action reflects those few seconds of disorientation. If you don't like the action cost, simply make it that during the turn of transition, you have disadvantage on perception/investigation checks, Dex saves, and attack rolls. Then you could still act, but at a penalty.

 

[akr71]

The flip side of this is that "historically" darkvision removed the problem of darkness, but in 5e it doesn't -- even with darkvision, in 5e you suffer disadvantage on all perception checks.

That's huge, and even parties with darkvision need to use light sources regularly.

Thanks for posting this. My players frequently think that 'darkvision = blindsight' and when I tell them to roll at disadvantage they look at me like I'm trying to pull something over on them.

 

[CapnZapp]

If anyone would like to chime in on this, I'd love to hear your opinions and thanks!

A party gains so much from being all-dark enabled that it isn't funny. Any group of minmaxers worth their salt rolls up half-elf instead of human and gnome instead of halfling, and can then enjoy a minor variation of the classic Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling party with no lanterns and no problems sneaking around.

Getting rid of "low-light vision" was made to simplify the game, but it is a stupid misguided simplification that is bad for the game in my opinion.

Do what I have done - readd back Low-Light Vision for "forest creatures". Elves, cats and owls do not have Darkvision, they have Low-Light Vision.

This is easy:
* Characters with low-light vision can see outdoors on a moonlit night as well as they can during the day.
* Characters with low-light vision have eyes that are so sensitive to light that they can see twice as far as normal in bad light: treat any light source as having twice its regular range.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#lowLightVision
(These rules worked perfectly then, and they work equally perfectly now)

So an Elf treats a Torch as providing bright light with 40 ft and then dim light for an additional 40 ft (instead of the regular 20 ft and 20 ft respectively). Easy.

This helps humans and halflings (and Dragonborn) the most. No longer do they have to feel stupid for joining an all-darkvision-enabled party even though they add a considerable handicap to that group.

Sure you can still create an All-Dwarf party and enjoy darkvision all around, but you have always been able to do that.

 

[Charlaquin]

This is a fascinating and for me justified interpretation (albeit one I would dispute)! You are reading it as a syllogism, right -

All A are B (all dim light is bright light)
All C are A (all darkness is dim light)
Therefore all C are also B

Yet I think what is being stated is subtly different. Rather than having only A (dim light), B (bright light) and C (darkness), there is also D (mechanically alike to bright light) and E (mechanically alike to dim light). "Mechanically alike" arises from the words "as if". For any creature -

All A are E
Some E are not A
All B are D
Some D are not B

For a creature with Darkvision -

All A are D
All C are E

But if all dim light is mechanically alike to bright light, how can anything mechanically alike to dim light be mechanically unlike to bright light?

The reason this is likely to be correct is the principle that for mechanical rules, the favoured interpretation is the one that permits all words to have meaning. So on reading "You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light" it is right to ask, why wasn't this written "You can see in dim light and darkness within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light."

Right, which is precisely why I initially interpreted it as meaning that you can see dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness (at any distance from you) as if it were dim light. Upon finding out that the intent was for the “within sixty feet” part to apply to the “and in darkness as if it were dim light” part despite the comma separating them, it became clear to me that the intent must not be for you to be able to see in darkness within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light. But I don’t think the wording communicates that clearly at all

There's really no reason for the designer to have been coy here. More importantly, if "is" and "as if" have identical meanings, consider the option "Dim light and darkness is bright light out to a radius of 60 feet around you." That "is" feels like it should impact on other creatures, right? Henry Human's way is lit by the radiance of my Darkvision.

I could speculate that it was simple error. They meant to go on to say "...and being dim light, you see as if were bright light." That is always possible, but for professional designers with independent editing staff my first reading should prefer to assume no error. Particularly after errata has been issued clarifying the places where error did occur.

I don’t think they were being coy or that they made an editing mistake, just that they worded it in a very unclear way. Had it said, for example, “and in darkness within 60 feet of you,” it would have made the intent much clearer. I would also have preferred something like “you can see in [lighting condition] as other creatures see in [other lighting condition], because that way you’re not treating darkness the way you treat dim light (which is to treat it as bright light), you’re treating it as other creatures treat it (which is to make attacks and vision-based checks with disadvantage.)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Which you treat as Bright Light.

The way these two abilities interact does not leave any room for a treatment of light within its radius as anything but bright.

No, you wouldn’t. It’s still darkness.

There aren’t two abilities, there is one ability. It lets you see as if darkness were dim light, and dim light were bright light. It doesn’t change the level of light in the area. The area is either bright, dim, or dark, regardless of any creature’s vision.

 

[clearstream]

But I don’t think the wording communicates that clearly at all

And you rule out the possibility that it was intended to communicate something else?

^^