D&D 5E Too Many PC Races With Darkvision? (a Poll)

[Reynard]

I was just discussing this with a friend and I think the real issue is that we don't enforce the negatives of dim light (and to a lesser extent monochrome vision) enough. Especially when dungeon crawling, disadvantage on those attacks and perception checks, and enemies having concealment can be very bad.

 

[Iry]

I voted yes to races that live underground: dwarves, deep gnomes, drow, kobold.

I voted yes to races of darkness: bugbear, goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, half orcs.

I voted yes to races related to creatures with supernatural vision: dragonborn, tieflings.

Everyone else gets a no, including every elf that is not a drow.

 

[GreenTengu]

I think part of the issue is that there should be two very distinct kinds of "see in the dark" types.

There should be those who live on the surface but are likely primarily nocturnal and so can get around in low-light conditions and those who live underground or deep underwater where they just won't be any natural sun, moon or star light and yet manage to get around just fine.

But probably a big barrier to that is that one would have to rewrite a lot of what has been written about the Goblinoids, Orcs and so on and very clearly define what their natural habitat in the world actually is even if that makes old adventures make a bit less sense. Something that, I suppose, could be resolved if they simply had clearly distinct subterranean subraces.

Although I think subraces should just be done away with entirely and instead figure that these previous representations kind of represent the extremes of a race and the typical member of a race is probably somewhere on the spectrum between some of these subraces and not necessarily entirely defined by them.

 

[robus]

I was just discussing this with a friend and I think the real issue is that we don't enforce the negatives of dim light (and to a lesser extent monochrome vision) enough. Especially when dungeon crawling, disadvantage on those attacks and perception checks, and enemies having concealment can be very bad.

I have a similar issue. And monochrome vision sucks out a lot of the fun of dungeon exploration. No fantastic mural that leaps out at you. No red blood to warn of trouble ahead. I remember some fountain the PCs encountered that was some interesting color, until I remembered they all had dark vision, so yeah it was just grey.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I would tie darkvision to daylight sensitivity. Therefore, the only races that have darkvision are those with daylight sensitivity. Like that's just part of the darkvision package now. Instead of disadvantage in total darkness, you get disadvantage in daylight. Then make the daylight spell trigger daylight sensitivity. Then update magic effects that grant darkvision to also eliminate daylight sensitivity.

I would probably limit darkvision to just the races that always dwell deeply underground: gray dwarves, drow, deep gnomes, kobolds, etc.

 

[Reynard]

I would tie darkvision to daylight sensitivity. Therefore, the only races that have darkvision are those with daylight sensitivity. Like that's just part of the darkvision package now. Instead of disadvantage in total darkness, you get disadvantage in daylight. Then make the daylight spell trigger daylight sensitivity. Then update magic effects that grant darkvision to also eliminate daylight sensitivity.

I would probably limit darkvision to just the races that always dwell deeply underground: gray dwarves, drow, deep gnomes, kobolds, etc.

This is probably the simplest and fairest solution.

 

[TwoSix]

Voted dwarves, drow, svirfneblin, kobolds. Wouldn’t mind some other races getting a “dim light as bright light” feature, though, to recognize them as more nocturnally oriented.

But very few races should be able to see in an unlit cave.

 

[Lidgar]

I’d like darkvision to only apply to underground races AND that the distance of that vision was much reduced - say 10 - 20 feet max, except for races that also have sunlight sensitivity.

 

[MNblockhead]

Dealing with vision is a pain for many gamers. I think the proliferation of races with darkvision is to make it easier to hand-wave the issue away.

 

[Stormonu]

Darkvision is way too common. I think it should only go to a handful of races, and only those that dwell in the lightless realms such as Duergar, Drow and the other races that never see the light of day.

I'm not even sure I'd give it to the likes of goblins, orcs, trolls and the like. Let them still have a reason to use torches and light their dark caves.