Darkvision Ruins Dungeon-Crawling

[Bae'zel]

Okay, now I’m really good with this. When the darkness is a positive presence, I withdraw my generalizations.

I mostly got the idea from the book "Veins of the Earth", where it has many "flavors" or "personalities" of the darkness.

And I'm borrowing ideas from Dark Souls, where campfires and torchlight isn't just for light, but for morale boosting, comfort and warding away nefarious, unseen forces that can wear the PCs down.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've come to accept dark vision as a permanent aspect of most species by doing 2 things:

1. Ensuring that the limitations of dim light are strictly kept;
2. Embracing the "mythic underworld" aspect of dark dungeons.

So dim light makes everything "lightly obscured", so Perception checks are at a disadvantage. Also a lot of visual nuance is lost (colors and small details are harder to discern). And in dark, haunted places, the darkness is "alive" and must be kept at bay or else strange things happen...

I mean, there's a REASON why dwarves and elves like light sources, even if they can see in total darkness. Hell even the Drow have their cities bathed in faery fire.

The most recent World of Warcraft expansion has a lot of stuff about the Azeroth kobolds (mole humanoids who carry "soul candles" on their heads), explaining why they're so obsessed with light. The short answer is that there are malevolent darkness beings (basically super-grue) in some areas, while others have darkness that, all by itself, rips away at the life force of those within it.

Back during vanilla alpha, light sources were a thing, but the game hasn't done anything with them for 20 years. But the use of malevolent darkness in two areas in WoW now has been very welcome and works well mechanically.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mostly got the idea from the book "Veins of the Earth", where it has many "flavors" or "personalities" of the darkness.

Second edition coming to Kickstarter in 2025 for those, like me, who missed it the first time. (No idea if the second edition will be published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which might be a deal-killer for some folks.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

And outdoors the light is less likely to be complete.

As in, its more likely to be progressively weaker across distance?

True, but very few games get into the weeds that far, even ones that care about lighting.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You know, it occurs to me that while I have traveled in pitch black places with lamps and flashlights, I have never done so with an actual flaming torch. That would be an interesting experience to apply to this argument. Has anyone actually used a real fire torch for light? How did that go?

Briefly. Its pretty erratic unless the air is very still, and of course there's the smoke issues. That's another reason (though one few games deal with) to change to lanterns once you can afford to.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you are scouting in a pitch black environment, bring a light.

Kind of my point.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Which doesn't eliminate the "how do you carry it?" issue.

No, but I've answered that before; have the mages and bearers do it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You attach it to your belt. I might be getting old and memory isn't what it was, but i kind of remember that was whole point of bullseye lantern.

Actually the primary purpose of a bullseye lantern is to focus light in a direction; its basically a primitive flashlight.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Dealing damage, IMO, for the most part should not be magic's point of focus and i think it's a bit of a shame it has come to be seen for blasting first problem solving second, it's focus should be utility or facilitation, and the directly offensive spells that do exist would do well to fill utility/problem solving roles for combat, it would be interesting to see a TTRPG that has a long list of spells like DnD but only ~10 of those are levelled offensive spells,

Runequest traditionally had a lot of combat augmentation spells (Fireblade, Bladesharp, Speedart, Protection) but only a very limited number of direct combat spells, and only one (Disruption) that directly did damage. And it wasn't a super-exciting damage (D3 in a game where a broadsword did D8+1 before damage bonus), its main advantages were its attack methodology and it bypassing armor.

Even the higher-powered Rune Magics didn't really lean into direct attack spells all that much.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Its mandatory if it exists. If you have to factor in opponents with darkvision, and you don't have darkvision, that makes you useless as a scout. But if nobody has darkvision, the floor is level again and everybody can scout.

Well, a very small number of opponents can have it and that's just the vagaries of a fantasy setting. The problem with D&D is traditionally darn near all the types you'd run into in a dungeon had it.