Basic Statement of Position: The 5e vision rules make lighting and visibility such a burden on actualy gameplay in a scene that they seriously push (force) workarounds/handwaves or all-DV parties and this "fight against a negative" is out of sync with most 5e design patterns. It would be better play-wise and in keeping with 5e basic "easy to play baseline plus advantages" to have "better vision" features like DV get circumstantial bonuses in situations where their vision matters - showing their "advantage" as opposed to hitting everyone else with practically "unplayable" disadvantages.
Basic Suggested re-imagining of the DV rules:
Darkvision (and its analogs) give advantage on perception rolls and initiative checks unless the scene is brightly lit.
Blindsight is like DV plus it adds it lets you bypass the unseen condition within its radius.
Outside of magical darkness or specified "natural" cases of extreme darkness, the assumption is a minimal amount of vision provided by ambient light. a Gm can certainly apply disadvantage or obstacle rules to provide disadvantage for certain tasks (or take longer times) for many uncontested activities when appropriate but when it comes to things actively opposed, the lighting evens out over the two characters with the DV character getting the edges provided by his superior vision.
Goal was to shift the *play* to work more smoothly even outside at night and shift the focus to the advantages of the DV character and off the round-by-round problems of the normal vision character. this can let the system actually get used instead of getting hand-waved away by driving everyone to Dv or to quickly gained items of Dv or other ways to make Dv "universal" and thus actually eliminating the feature - after all, once everybody has darkvision, it doesn't matter that you do.
Per 5e RAW outside on most moonlight nights a non-darkvision (or othervision) character is blinded unless they bring their own light. Same for inside most ruins etc etc etc.
Lightly obscured is even more common.
Now, obviously in some games and some settings this is "managed" by having the characters quickly or easily get a significant light source that does not impair the characters (look ma, no hands), in others the players all go for DV characters or the Gm gives out DV goggles etc etc etc.
EXCEPTION: There will be some circumstances where visibility is an intentional element of the scene not just a feature of circumstance and in those cases the issues will/can be often more line-of-sight and concealment/cover than basic visibility rules. magical darkness and obscurement are some of those cases.
Now, in practice, in my games and also in other games i have seen both in person and streaming, it really looks like the easy blind sort of rules get handwaved and forgotten after the first moment or two, even if the "light" is really not that suitable to the scene as playing out - theater of the mind it just ceases to be a problem in part because it really is such a huge problem to work thru such a scene with some Dv and some not in a blinded condition scene - like outside on moonlit night outside of the fire's radius. or you find suddenly goggles popping up (taken off NPCs of course) cuz apparently NPCs can get the items the PCs needed but couldn't get cuz you know... just massive not fun to hassle with this scene after scene where you do not fight at high noon. (/hyperbole)
So, some basic questions for feedback and assessment:
Do you play the lighting rules as presented so that most outside at night is indeed blinded fully obscured visibility?
To what extent do you mitigate the lighting rules with handwaves, easy access to Dv items, or just pretty much ignoring it after maybe some initial setup?
Do you find frequent scenes where the 5e raw visual blindness fun to play through?
Do you find it very frequent that after even a short period of play (or chargen) all the PCs have DV-type vision because they just do not want the hassle? if so, did the characters with DV racial features get an extra added something or did they just see their racial feature handed out or hand waved?
have you implemented a house rule that changes the lighting stuff (or even if not a rule script around them)?
Any thoughts or ideas on this notion - changing DV and its ilk to some form of advantage in poor lighting as opposed to inflicting lighting issues as the default?
Any thoughts on other ways to reflect the benefits of "in this lighting i am better off" that are possibly more interesting or active? I have ideas but am interested in hearing others.
Again, the overall objective is to create a case where the "i have darkvision" is an advantage to have that does not require really onerous penalties applied to everyone without Dv in a lot of scenes *and* that is playable enough that the whole Dv/lighting doesn't get "worked around" out of play after even a few sessions.
Thanks in advance.
Basic Suggested re-imagining of the DV rules:
Darkvision (and its analogs) give advantage on perception rolls and initiative checks unless the scene is brightly lit.
Blindsight is like DV plus it adds it lets you bypass the unseen condition within its radius.
Outside of magical darkness or specified "natural" cases of extreme darkness, the assumption is a minimal amount of vision provided by ambient light. a Gm can certainly apply disadvantage or obstacle rules to provide disadvantage for certain tasks (or take longer times) for many uncontested activities when appropriate but when it comes to things actively opposed, the lighting evens out over the two characters with the DV character getting the edges provided by his superior vision.
Goal was to shift the *play* to work more smoothly even outside at night and shift the focus to the advantages of the DV character and off the round-by-round problems of the normal vision character. this can let the system actually get used instead of getting hand-waved away by driving everyone to Dv or to quickly gained items of Dv or other ways to make Dv "universal" and thus actually eliminating the feature - after all, once everybody has darkvision, it doesn't matter that you do.
Per 5e RAW outside on most moonlight nights a non-darkvision (or othervision) character is blinded unless they bring their own light. Same for inside most ruins etc etc etc.
Lightly obscured is even more common.
Now, obviously in some games and some settings this is "managed" by having the characters quickly or easily get a significant light source that does not impair the characters (look ma, no hands), in others the players all go for DV characters or the Gm gives out DV goggles etc etc etc.
EXCEPTION: There will be some circumstances where visibility is an intentional element of the scene not just a feature of circumstance and in those cases the issues will/can be often more line-of-sight and concealment/cover than basic visibility rules. magical darkness and obscurement are some of those cases.
Now, in practice, in my games and also in other games i have seen both in person and streaming, it really looks like the easy blind sort of rules get handwaved and forgotten after the first moment or two, even if the "light" is really not that suitable to the scene as playing out - theater of the mind it just ceases to be a problem in part because it really is such a huge problem to work thru such a scene with some Dv and some not in a blinded condition scene - like outside on moonlit night outside of the fire's radius. or you find suddenly goggles popping up (taken off NPCs of course) cuz apparently NPCs can get the items the PCs needed but couldn't get cuz you know... just massive not fun to hassle with this scene after scene where you do not fight at high noon. (/hyperbole)
So, some basic questions for feedback and assessment:
Do you play the lighting rules as presented so that most outside at night is indeed blinded fully obscured visibility?
To what extent do you mitigate the lighting rules with handwaves, easy access to Dv items, or just pretty much ignoring it after maybe some initial setup?
Do you find frequent scenes where the 5e raw visual blindness fun to play through?
Do you find it very frequent that after even a short period of play (or chargen) all the PCs have DV-type vision because they just do not want the hassle? if so, did the characters with DV racial features get an extra added something or did they just see their racial feature handed out or hand waved?
have you implemented a house rule that changes the lighting stuff (or even if not a rule script around them)?
Any thoughts or ideas on this notion - changing DV and its ilk to some form of advantage in poor lighting as opposed to inflicting lighting issues as the default?
Any thoughts on other ways to reflect the benefits of "in this lighting i am better off" that are possibly more interesting or active? I have ideas but am interested in hearing others.
Again, the overall objective is to create a case where the "i have darkvision" is an advantage to have that does not require really onerous penalties applied to everyone without Dv in a lot of scenes *and* that is playable enough that the whole Dv/lighting doesn't get "worked around" out of play after even a few sessions.
Thanks in advance.
