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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7424566" data-attributes="member: 6778044">OK, so you want to revert it back the rules for an earlier edition? Fair enough. My vote is, well D&D the entire time it was produced by TSR, and they should all have infravision.See, I like the dim light provision for darkness. Because it makes sense. It's not that they have perfect vision all the time, they have better vision than creatures without it. Infravision (the way it was described in D&D/AD&D) was an interesting approach, because it provided a very different experience in darkness. It would make it impossible for an animal to hide, simply because their radiant heat overpowered that of the air around them. No, I much prefer the 5e approach. The only thing that doesn't make sense from a physics standpoint is that in total darkness underground, there wouldn't be enough radiant light for anybody to see, regardless of the quality of their vision. Magic is a possibility, but really doesn't make sense for every creature that has it.From what I see, you have two issues with the current system:1. Too many creatures have the ability to see in total darkness, to whatever degree. Although most of the creatures you're complaining about historically have had that abilit. Elves, for example, have always had the ability in D&D, it was nerfed when 3e came around with more granularity.2. You want creatures with darkvision to have the same advantage against creatures without darkvision (including those with low-light vision, should it exist) that nocturnal creatures have against non-nocturnal creatures. Or to put it a different way, you want creatures with darkvision to not have any disadvantage in darkness.Personally, I don't have a real issue with either of these, although I don't care for the "solution" which is that there is no middle ground for creatures with low light vision. For them, the three levels of light are bright, bright, and dark. Also, I don't think that creatures with darkvision should have no disadvantage in darkness, just an advantage against creatures with normal (or low-light/night) vision. The reason is simple. I think we have a fundamental difference in what we think darkvision should do. You seem to think that darkvision means a creature can see in the dark as well as we can see in bright light. I think that darkvision means that they can see better than we can in dim light or darkness. I would agree that there are some creatures that I think should be able to see in darkness as well as we do in bright light, such as fiends. I'll get back to that idea in a moment.If I cared to change it (and we haven't yet - I've asked and nobody in my group has any issue with elves having darkvision), it would be to have four levels of darkness:Bright, Dim, Shadow, and Dark. Creatures with night vision would shift everything one step to the right, and darkvision two steps.Bright: No penaltiesDim: Disadvantage on PerceptionShadow: Disadvantage on Perception and abilities requiring sight, and attacks.Darkness: Any ability requiring sight fails, disadvantage on attacks. Most light sources would have three radiuses, bright > dim > shadow. If you cared to, you could also define how far you can see a given brightness, probably tied to the radius of its brightest light. For example, you can see a bright light in darkness from a distance of 20x it's brightest radius. You can see a dim light from 10x it's brightest radius. Shadow from 5x. That means that you'll see a bonfire from farther away than a candle, since they have a different radius of bright light. You have advantage on attacks if you don't have disadvantage on Perception (bright) and they have disadvantage on Perception (shadow or darkness).Normal: bright, dim, shadow, dark.Nightvision: bright, bright, dim, shadow.Darkvision: bright, bright, bright, dim.And for creatures like fiends (and maybe a feat available to tieflings):Infernal vision: bright, bright, bright, bright. And probably dim in magical darkness.So a creature with night vision would prefer dim light, because they aren't at a disadvantage, and they have advantage on attacks against creatures without nightvision.A creature with darkvision would prefer shadow, since they have no disadvantage, but have advantage against creautures without darkvision.The only creatures that would feel comfortable in total darkness are those with other senses that supplement or replace sight. And I think far more darkvision monsters should have these abilities, putting drow and such at a disadvantage against them.Also, there's essentially a fifth category of "too bright" with the same effects of shadow. So creatures like drow with better darkvision have shadow (too bright), bright, bright, dim. Although I might argue that all creatures with darkvision might have this issue.This provides more granularity, but also more complexity that most probably wouldn't care for.</blockquote>

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