Darkvision Ruins Dungeon-Crawling

[Bill Zebub]

If you happen to be playing the 2024 version of the Dwarf, you can use their Stonecunning feature and sense what's around you via Tremorsense. It works on natural or worked stone for up to 60 feet and up to 10 minutes. Uses of this feature is tied to your PB. The only thing that this feature won't help you with is any monster that flies, floats or is incorporeal (by nature or magic).

I was describing Shadowdark, not D&D.

EDIT: possible that you thought I meant "Underdark"?

 

[Corinnguard]

I was describing Shadowdark, not D&D.

EDIT: possible that you thought I meant "Underdark"?

I know that you weren't talking about D&D, but dungeon crawling in the dark is a likely problem that any adventurer is going to face eventually regardless of the RPG that's in use.

 

[Reynard]

I know that you weren't talking about D&D, but dungeon crawling in the dark is a likely problem that any adventurer is going to face eventually regardless of the RPG that's in use.

But different games handle it very differently.

 

[CreamCloud0]

not to re-tangent but personally my issue with infinite offensive cantrips isn't that they exist but that they're too strong, the average damage die of a cantrip is d8, most are ranged they scale multiple times and they often come with rider effects.

a cantrip to me is a caster's basic attack, i think it's not unfair to compare it to a martial's weapon attack, but if this is so, it means that most casters are walking around with a cross between a hand-crossbow and longbow with extra attack(+3) and weapon masteries, though at the very least most don't include casting mod or PB as damage,

offensive cantrips IMO should be reduced to be more equivilant to simple weapons that scale once, mirroring that most martials only get extra attack(+1), average damage d6, average range about 30/80, i'm okay with them typically having riders, at least the average and weaker ones, because i think part of what makes magic is the extra effects that you need to think about to pick your best option in whatever situation you're in, if it's better to slow the creature with ray of frost or inflict disadvantage on it's attack with vicious mockery, but overall having the weaker at-will attack compared to martials to counterballance their more powerful limited casting.

this might mean some wizards choose to carry around a light-crossbow but that's a trade off you're making, it's not dealing magic damage, it's not ever going to scale as you don't get extra attack, and it means your attack isn't keying off your primary class stat.

 

[GMMichael]

Characters with darkvision can see in the dark out to perhaps 120 feet. Fine. What does that mean? It means GMs can't use "jump scares" of monster leaping into the radius of a lantern or torch and attacking the party in melee. Okay. Well... if "jump scares" are really that important to a GM to "startle" or "frighten" the players of characters with darkvision...And that occurred whether or not the PCs could "see in the dark".

Jump-scares can happen anytime, anyplace. But without darkvision 120, it's more likely that an explorer's first warning of trouble arises at only 10-20 feet away, which is really bad if that trouble is something you don't want to tangle with.

Look, I get it... when a DM narrates what the players see, hear, and smell in a dungeon... there is a psychological switch that flips in a lot of people when the description only goes out to a certain distance that makes the unknown past that "scarier". But that's only because we've been trained by media to react to the jump scare of the thing that will kill us easily.

That's not media training. That's evolutionary training.

But in gaming? Most encounters that GMs build are relatively balanced fights and fighting at melee range is no different or more deadly that fighting at range...

These are probably the GMs who only pay lip service to lighting effects.

It's the bulk and encumbrance that's the resource issue with torches in AD&D (and OD&D if you do more with encumbrance than just saying "all your misc equipment weighs 80" as in the example on page 15 of Men & Magic). They weigh 25cn each, so they do add up, and they burn pretty quickly; an hour in which you get 5 moves/turns and a rest in when in dungeon exploration mode (and each fight rounds up to a Turn). Yes, torchbearers, hirelings, mules, and potentially bags of holding down the road all could mitigate or eliminate the encumbrance issue

I think someone else mentioned my logistical issue with torches: they don't carry themselves. Use your right hand to carry it? Okay, stow your axe. Use your left hand? Put your shield away or risk burning it. Hang a lantern off your armor? Um, why would you want a burning flask of oil fixed right next to its target? Hey, Mr. Brigand who camps in dungeons while counting his loot, would you break my burning oil flask with your cudgel and possibly douse me in fire, please?

Torchbearers solve all these problems, but as you say, they're squishy. Oh, and darkvision removes all of the above-referenced fun.

I voted no. I don't mind darkvision at all. It's same as going in with NODs. You see, but it's not nice and crisp like with regular sight.

Ooh! What if darkvision had crummy peripheral vision like (older) NODs? And only the BBEG had it, like this:

You know what scarier than dark and danky old abandoned dungeon? Well lit, clean, old abandoned dungeon.

Like an AirBNB? I don't know. I just need to see a thick web with a deep hole in it (where a nasty-looking spider could be just out of sight) to start feeling scared. That doesn't happen in clean dungeons.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's the bulk and encumbrance that's the resource issue with torches in AD&D (and OD&D if you do more with encumbrance than just saying "all your misc equipment weighs 80" as in the example on page 15 of Men & Magic). They weigh 25cn each, so they do add up, and they burn pretty quickly; an hour in which you get 5 moves/turns and a rest in when in dungeon exploration mode (and each fight rounds up to a Turn). Yes, torchbearers, hirelings, mules, and potentially bags of holding down the road all could mitigate or eliminate the encumbrance issue, but they do have their own limitations and complications. Hirelings and bearers and animals typically have low HP and are subject to morale checks if you're playing this style, introducing a Shadowdark-like vulnerability of the light.

We occasionally saw morale checks for bearers during the slice of time they were used (same for mules, but honestly, unless a problem is right on them mules are more phlegmatic than most humans...), which is why the MU or MUs usually carried a torch as a backup (at least in OD&D I don't recall ever hitting a GM that wouldn't let a mage cast one handed). Also, just to be nit-picky, it was 6 exploration turns (10 min a pop). The encumbrance still didn't add up to much unless you were in a very sparse dungeon (because, again, it doesn't matter if the dungeon theoretically had more extent than was easy to handle with torches if you were going to turn around and go out as soon as the spellcasters ran dry, which was liable to happen quickly at the lower levels when the ancillary costs with light were most noticeable. Those bottom-end characters were usually the least likely to try and do things like camp in a dungeon, too.

I'm not saying the solutions for this didn't sometimes have their own complications, but that never stopped people from using them IME, and they at the very least moved lighting out of a resource-consumption problem, or, for the most part, a significant factor in how difficult the dungeon was, since most of the same solutions were needed to be able to haul significant treasure out anyway.

Continual Light is definitely a huge factor once you get access to it, but it's also a big, bright light, and may impact your ability to surprise monsters even more than torches or a lantern. (Though that's up to DM adjudication, of course).

With most parties, expecting to get surprise was a fool's game anyway; if people ran into GMs who were kind about thinking people in chain or plate were particularly quiet, or regular light sources weren't visible at a pretty fair distance, they're pretty much unicorns. You could potentially hit specialty groups that were trying for that route, but the trade-off at the bottom was going to make it functionally impossible there anyway.

I agree that plenty of tables even back in the 70s minimized resource management in terms of encumbrance and light sources, though. I just think that others did indeed make it a core part of dungeon play and that the game reasonably supported that.

I'm just of the opinion that a GM had to be bending over backwards to make it routinely a problem even then. Like I said, about the only time I saw it as a factor was when magical darkness was involved.

It is an interesting wrinkle to include such obstacles in dungeons. I ran into them a few times in the 1974-style OD&D games I played in online during the pandemic. A 10' pit trap at an intersection can also prove an uncrossable obstacle to a mule. An ascent up or descent down a cliff to enter the dungeon or within the dungeon to continue presents challenges in terms not only of being unable to bring a mule, but in terms of slowing entry and retreat.

It is, but I have to note a lot of those kind of obstacles could effectively make the same area impassible for the PCs depending on how the GM handled them; in the OD&D days things like climbing and jumping were so vaguely handled that before you even wanted to try you wanted to make good and sure it wasn't just an invitation for most of the group to take damage, and later on when skills or proficiencies became a thing, a lot of characters were poor enough at it to add up to the same. There's a reason a lot of people just shrug and wave magic at those sorts of problems if they can, and if they can't just won't even try. The cliff is a little better because you can do some finessing with rope but the 10' pit is often going to turn into "Let's find out if we can go around or forget it."

Again, that's probably only a big problem at the bottom end when the mule is more economic than bearers anyway. Beyond that, either there are other solutions to the problems, or any obstacle bearers can't handle at least some of the PCs probably can't, either.

 

[Thomas Shey]

People scouted and used stealth in real life without darvision or its equivalent for a long time, so I don't see how it can be "mandatory".

They weren't doing it in the pitch dark, though; its not like most places people would want to scout didn't have at least some lighting. They were normally trying to avoid other humans who don't see in the dark any better than they do.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Because those people were doing that by moonlight or starlight, not in pitch blackness underground. Scouting when you literally can't see your hand in front of your face is virtually impossible.

Thankfully this can be mitigated a good deal if we assume that in dungeons many monsters DO use light and fire, for reading, heat, cooking, etc.

Yeah, a lot of the dark vision development in modern D&Doids is a reaction to the fact so many opponents have/had it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As for light as resource, even back in 3ed days, we weren't fussing with naughty word torches. Bullseye lantern that could be attached to armor and pint or two of oil ( useful for other things too) and you're good to go for full working day. In 5e, where cantrips are so easily available, Light cantrip is no brainer.

The only reason I mentioned torches is that at the bottom end in the older games they were really cheap. Lanterns and oil were generally the better choice once you had a little money to work with.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How did soldiers scout tunnels on pacific islands in WWII? Or how did the "Tunnel Rats" do it in Viet Nam? Those places were pitch black.

(I assume they carried lights, which meant they were also at risk of being spotted.)

Mostly they didn't, but then, the opposition had their own lighting so it wasn't as necessary. Keep in mind those places weren't as pitch dark as you might be thinking, because there were usually a lot of surface apertures letting some light in, because otherwise you also didn't have much air. And once you're adjusted to little light, its not as big a disadvantage as you'd think, especially in areas that aren't going to have much distance anyway.