Level Up (A5E) Darkvision

[Haldrik]

Darkvision is worth about two proficiencies or two cantrips.

I have been counting it as one proficiency. But if people are talking about it, it is probably more powerful, even if the talk is because of its scarcity. So count it as two proficiencies.



Also, reduce spell slot level 2 Darkvision down to slot 1, analogous to Mage Armor.

 

[CapnZapp]

It comes down to how the game plays. A scout type pretty much regularly goes off on their own regularly becoming a party of one each time. For someone sneaking off to scout darkvision is a huge boon.

Let me repeat my earlier sentiment: "D&D is a group activity that isn't improved by one scout playing solo while the other players sit on their hands, so it's best the party explores together."

Let's assume dungeon masters properly puts a cork in the plans of any player to hog more than his or her share of the spotlight by creating a character capable of sneaking ahead of the party. This means the value of being the only character with darkvision is reduced.

If we then make darkvision more expensive and/or difficult to get, we get the happy result where the price of darkvision is increased while its utility is decreased. Happy in that darkvision should become less attractive, which in turn makes it even easier for DMs: not only does it become easier to avoid having most of their players do nothing while solo players have all the fun, it makes nights darker, and full of more terrors!

(That the group might tire of being limited by light sources is another thing entirely. By fifth level or so it's entirely okay if the group carries around half a dozen scrolls of Darkvision or even buys Goggles of Night for everybody. The point is that many lowest-level adventures become better if darkness isn't trivialized already at level 1)

I agree that it's too easy for everyone to have darkvision in 5e without even trying

At first blush your comic appears to say "humans should not hold the rest of us back".

But actually, the real problem is "there are too many heroes with darkvision".

The only reason the "holding us back" sentiment exists is because it's too easy for everyone to have darkvision in 5e without even trying, just as you say. In AD&D, gnomes and elves did not have darkvision (or even infravision).

When only a minority of the party has darkvision, they're not "held back". Instead their darkvision is reduced to its proper value - coping better when the lights go out, being able to pursue a fleeing monster into darkness, and so on.

What the 5E developers failed to realize was exactly what the comic illustrates: the pitfalls of making darkvision the norm rather than the exception.

 

[ThatGuySteve]

Let me repeat my earlier sentiment: "D&D is a group activity that isn't improved by one scout playing solo while the other players sit on their hands, so it's best the party explores together."

Let's assume dungeon masters properly puts a cork in the plans of any player to hog more than his or her share of the spotlight by creating a character capable of sneaking ahead of the party. This means the value of being the only character with darkvision is reduced.

I don't think it's fair to say a stealthy character scouting is hogging the spotlight. While D&D is a group activity, not every character needs to be equally involved every moment. During a social encounter you'll usual find the high charisma characters taking the lead and the 8 charisma fighter keeping quiet.

It's in the interests of the party to have a scout to warm them off danger. I've never encountered a group that saw this as an issue.

In regards to tracking light sources, I think it is up to the DM to set the players expectations. If they are happy to handwave it, fine. If they say it needs to be tracked, it should be up to each individual player to make sure they are keeping within the limit of what they can see. It's like encumbrance, you wouldn't expect the DM to track how much weight you are carrying and let you know when to take penalties.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

For that to work, a few things need to happen

• Darkvision needs to still be useful if you aren't a scout or have a human in your party
• vision rules need to be written in such a way that you don't need a vtt with dynamic FoW & light sources to track it because those penalties still apply even when the gm mostly handwaves light sourcesas @Jessica Wolfman noted above while I was writing this. Darker dungeons has a pretty good system where you add up the size of all the light sources in a room & get a lighting level based on the room size.
• vision rules, light sources, & ranges need to be written for darkvision with non-darkvision races pretty much falling to dc20 or the night is dark and full of terrors in the dark.

Light sources need to be changed to make everything within X' of the source of the light visible not by extending your vision out from it. If I'm standing in dark in the middle of a darkened room 300' away from a party with a torch then I should be able to see the party with no problems.

Dark vision needs to change to make everything lit, not just X'. It's stupid a drow guard looking out across an open cavern can't see anything past less than a short bowshot range. Either you can see in the dark or you can't.

Total darkness isn't a place where many living things thrive, and those that do develop other senses (like the grimlock). Just using eyeballs to see in pitch blackness makes no sense for random humanoids that hang out in light sourced areas constantly.

I would allow for things like underdark races (as the background magic of the underdark could be the source of supernatural sight), extraplanar creatures, and even undead.

I don't think you need to radically change the game, I just think DV should be super rare. If you want to give a bunch of current DV races low light vision that requires at least some light (so that a torch illuminates 10x as far for those races) then that's an acceptable middle ground.

 

[tetrasodium]

The night should be dark and full of terrors. At low level.

I wanted to go back I beat this FR-ism like the bad printer from office space.. That is pretty much true for outside on the surface of prime material plane in Greyhawk & outside on the surface of the prime material plane of its clonestamp setting FR. d&d is not Forgotten realms & I may not be a physicist, but I can confidently say that it gets dark underground or inside if there are no lights even in FR. That "at low levels" is not the case in a place like the mournland or demon wastes, nearly anywhere on Athas(darksun), or a good number of planes accessible from whatever setting you happen to be playing in.

 

[Maxperson]

5th Edition makes it way too easy to have an all-darkvision party.

Yes you have always been able to create an all-Dwarf party in every edition, but previously that came with a heavy cost in group diversity.

In 5E, just avoid humans and halflings.

I had a group do that, and then they just ended up using light sources anyway. Disadvantage on visual perception checks ran them into all kinds of traps and encounters that could have been avoided. If you run darkvision per 5e RAW, it's not that great.

 

[Faolyn]

Let me repeat my earlier sentiment: "D&D is a group activity that isn't improved by one scout playing solo while the other players sit on their hands, so it's best the party explores together."

From my own personal experience, we had a game (using one of the old 1e modules, updated to 5e) where we sent the "cat strat" (pair of sneaky tabaxi) ahead to scout. The DM would tell them what they saw, based on their rolls, and then they'd come back. The whole thing took maybe a minute or three of real time. No, I wasn't one of the cat strat.

"One scout playing solo" doesn't have to mean mean "one scout gets a solo adventure while everyone else does nothing for an hour."

 

[Haldrik]

Light sources need to be changed to make everything within X' of the source of the light visible not by extending your vision out from it. If I'm standing in dark in the middle of a darkened room 300' away from a party with a torch then I should be able to see the party with no problems.

Dark vision needs to change to make everything lit, not just X'. It's stupid a drow guard looking out across an open cavern can't see anything past less than a short bowshot range. Either you can see in the dark or you can't.

Total darkness isn't a place where many living things thrive, and those that do develop other senses (like the grimlock). Just using eyeballs to see in pitch blackness makes no sense for random humanoids that hang out in light sourced areas constantly.

I would allow for things like underdark races (as the background magic of the underdark could be the source of supernatural sight), extraplanar creatures, and even undead.

I don't think you need to radically change the game, I just think DV should be super rare. If you want to give a bunch of current DV races low light vision that requires at least some light (so that a torch illuminates 10x as far for those races) then that's an acceptable middle ground.

Heh, low light vision is an unacceptable middle ground because low light vision is unacceptable.

Low light vision is a bookkeeping nuisance, in the family of encumbrance bookkeeping.

 

[CapnZapp]

If I'm standing in dark in the middle of a darkened room 300' away from a party with a torch then I should be able to see the party with no problems.

Nobody has ever suggested a torch stops being visible just because you're more than 40 ft away. (Well, the WFRP rules once did, but you obviously just ignore such silliness)

All the rules say is that the torch's illumination is enough to treat 20 ft radius as bright light and the next 20 ft as dim light. The rules don't even try to codify lines of sight except in the simplest cases (basically dungeon rooms drawn on graph paper with clear 90° angles). Anything else, and it's up to the DM. And any DM worth his salt will simply assume a party with a torch travelling through clear terrain (or underground) is always detected well in advance, and never manages to catch anything unawares.

There's a reason people were killed from lighting a cigarette during war. The tiny pinprick of light travels long distances.

Obviously anyone who has ever been in a dark cave knows you become aware of a party carrying a light source before you actually get line of sight to the actual torch. Light is reflected from walls etc. And the eye (once accustomed to darkness) is really great at detecting the difference between no light at all (pitch black darkness) and even the smallest illumination.

 

[CapnZapp]

I wanted to go back I beat this FR-ism like the bad printer from office space.. That is pretty much true for outside on the surface of prime material plane in Greyhawk & outside on the surface of the prime material plane of its clonestamp setting FR. d&d is not Forgotten realms & I may not be a physicist, but I can confidently say that it gets dark underground or inside if there are no lights even in FR. That is not the case in a place like the mournland or demon wastes, nearly anywhere on Athas(darksun), or a good number of planes accessible from whatever setting you happen to be playing in.

Sorry but I don't understand if you agree with me or argue with me.