D&D 5E (2024) 5.5 Darkvision and the Unseen

[UngeheuerLich]

I think I want an even trade. Where "brightvision" is blind in darkness, darkvision is blind in brightness. Races are either on oneside or the other. Dimness is a kind of neutral territory, but darkvision has an edge.

Brightvision (Normal Human)
Bright: color
Dim: shades of gray
Dark: Blind

Darkvision
Bright: blind
Dim: color
Dark: shades of gray

I am missing a category: near total darkness. Where someone woth brightvision can see enough to navigate (stary night), but not necessarily enough to discern a foe.

Also I would allow someone with darkvision to be able to navigate on a cloudy day or in some shades.

I also might have creatures that are able to switch their form of sight or at least allow to see normally in dim light/bright light with a few minutes of adaption.

 

[Yaarel]

I am missing a category: near total darkness. Where someone woth brightvision can see enough to navigate (stary night), but not necessarily enough to discern a foe.

Also I would allow someone with darkvision to be able to navigate on a cloudy day or in some shades.

I also might have creatures that are able to switch their form of sight or at least allow to see normally in dim light/bright light with a few minutes of adaption.

Maybe only track areas of bright light and areas of darkness. Treat everything in between as "dim", whether shadowy or just barely perceptible.

That way, the DM only pays attention to a bright light radius but ignores the radius of dim light beyond that. Oppositely, the DM can pay attention to a Darkness spell, or situations like being underground where there might be no light or not enough.

Make candles 10 feet bright light, and torches 30 feet bright light, and call it a day.

 

[jasper]

Judging by the number of races with darkvision, I would change darkvision as an ability or characteristic and start to name regular vision as a disability, just like barbarians illiteracy in previous editions.

67 races 37 with the darkvision. I think only the under dark races should have it.

 

[cyberdefender]

Personally I'd like most racial darkvision to go away. You feel kinda stupid as a human rogue trying to scout ahead of the party these days.

24 ed/5.5 darkvision should be limited( nerfed) to, does not work in bright normal light. Maybe those with it get an extended dim light vision range say 30 feet more.( but still does impose the the disadvantage)Human rogues can feel their way having to use it often.( blindfold training) and sense of hearing/smell for perception? Nobody will play humans which is a travesty. IMHO. shadow dark and other older versions have made a comeback which I really enjoy. 120' darkvision is ridiculously broken. Even if some monsters do have degrees of better darkvision. If their is a hint of some light source, the party may see glowing eyes like animals. Make humans viable once more.

 

[James Gasik]

If you want people to play humans, then give humans something people can't ignore. I had the opposite problem in 3.5- nobody would play anything but humans, because the benefits of most other races were so niche compared to the bonus Feat as to be unnecessary.

*I saw something similar in my AD&D days- most people would be human, because they didn't want to have level limits. Then when they realized it was highly unlikely to ever see those limits in play, you stopped seeing new human PC's.

In fact, I was seeing a lot of Variant Human PC's in my 5e games, until I banned them (and instead gave everybody a bonus level 1 Feat) and suddenly nobody was human.

I started playing Tales of the Valiant, that does give humans a bonus Feat (or Talent, as they call it), and instantly I got one in the party, go figure.