Darkvision Ruins Dungeon-Crawling

[Thomas Shey]

that's true and if you wanted to argue that a creature that can only see with dark vision couldn't be blinded I'd say sure. But WOTC loves it's monsters to see in any light so we have most creatures with switchable vision. (weird idea at best). So there should be some penalty to just switch from one to the other IMO. But I'd be ok with a creature that only had dark vision but it would be screwed by not having any variable distance vision like real vision works and that would make easy to kill encounters. or (not necessarily a bad thing) force dark vision to just be an underground thing. But I'd cheer the switch to lowlight (infravision) and ultravision from 1e and just make dark vision a monster ability. then we could do away with the whole at 60 ft you see a black wall of nothing and let all types of vision work more like it does with normal vision where you might see movement in the distance even if you can't see details.

Unfortunately, darkvision has pretty much always been depicted in D&D as compatible with mundane vision, so anything about "switching" can't be anything but a house rule. My real point was that trying to do comparisons to real world animals isn't useful because no real world creature has anything particularly similar to what is usually called "darkvision".

 

[Thomas Shey]

The hard range of darkvision always struck as hard to make anything resembling logical sense out of.

That's because it only makes sense at all as a magical sense.

 

[Thomas Shey]

i mean a red dragon flying at max of 80 ft per round who dashes cannot see past 120ft when he starts the dash. But he'll end move at 160 ft......George George George of the Jungle "watch out for that Tree!" very poorly thought out.

Well, its not like that move doesn't progress a bit at a time. After all movement has no braking time either, so once he gets to 60' he can just stop when the wall comes into view.

 

[nevin]

Still are you going to run full speed into a big dark wall of who knows what.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's because it only makes sense at all as a magical sense.

And yet it's given to creatures that are not otherwise magical.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Still are you going to run full speed into a big dark wall of who knows what.

But you aren't. Its not like the darkvision turns off as soon as you start to move.

You start 80' away from a wall; can't initially see it because its 20' outside your range--but by the time you've crossed 20-30' you can see it and stop.

Like I said, its not like many games pay any attention to acceleration and deceleration, either.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And yet it's given to creatures that are not otherwise magical.

Not the only thing that is. Consider the majority of D&D fliers.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not the only thing that is. Consider the majority of D&D fliers.

Most flyers are either obviously magical creatures or they aren't.

 

[nevin]

the big black wall with no sure knowledge of what is there would stop 99 percent of all rushed attacks was the point. add acceleration and the idea of a dragon flying through the mountains in the dark (or forest) and it just gets stupid. But I'm beating a dead horse.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Most flyers are either obviously magical creatures or they aren't.

My point was that almost none of them should be able to fly successfully without magic. Including ones that, while unusual looking, otherwise don't do anything magic (griffins, for example).