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D&D 5E Darkvision in a Gothic Setting
- Thread starter TenkayCrit
- Start date
Bacon Bits
Hero
Honestly, I don't see how darkvision ruins things. Darkvision makes darkness into dimly lit, and dimly lit is lightly obscured.
Remember, too, that in a lightly obscured environment (such as total darkness with darkvision) you suffer disadvantage on Perception, which is also a -5 to your passive perceptions. An open pit trap might have a Wisdom (Perception) DC of 10, but lightly obscured the vast majority of characters will fail to notice it.
If you're really that concerned, make it so that in total darkness (and only in total darkness) darkvision characters see shadowy figures that writhe and move on occasion -- and sometimes look right at them with faintly glowing eyes. Maybe they mostly stay at the edge of vision in total darkness, but the longer light is gone, the watchers creep into view. In other words, make total darkness worse for characters with darkvision. Beat them into the light even more strongly. The watchers don't have to be real. They don't even have to do anything or interact at all.
Remember, too, that in a lightly obscured environment (such as total darkness with darkvision) you suffer disadvantage on Perception, which is also a -5 to your passive perceptions. An open pit trap might have a Wisdom (Perception) DC of 10, but lightly obscured the vast majority of characters will fail to notice it.
If you're really that concerned, make it so that in total darkness (and only in total darkness) darkvision characters see shadowy figures that writhe and move on occasion -- and sometimes look right at them with faintly glowing eyes. Maybe they mostly stay at the edge of vision in total darkness, but the longer light is gone, the watchers creep into view. In other words, make total darkness worse for characters with darkvision. Beat them into the light even more strongly. The watchers don't have to be real. They don't even have to do anything or interact at all.
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GreenTengu
Adventurer
I think one of the unfortunate aspects about D&D settings is how the original designers of them were generally compelled to include the Tolkien races regardless of the fact that they just didn't really fit the concept or tone any longer. Yes, Ravenloft did tweak them slightly, but not nearly enough.
The idea of elves are forest dwelling mysterious immortal wanderers from isolated, peaceful, enlightened societies who come out in the curious spirit of "youth" (although having already lived longer than any human would, albeit without accomplishing or learning all that much due to isolation) to explore the world and let it leave its mark upon them before retiring once they feel they have their fill of it...
The half-blood mongrels that they sometimes leave behind during these youthful trists around humanity who are considered a bit too weird and alien among the human populace who are no doubt jealous of the clear advantages such an individual has over humans making them a target of bullying.... while at the same time being seen as something inferior and shameful to the elves, evidence that for all their so-called enlightenment, at least one of them decided to lie with those child races whose comparable lifespan is about the same as a person and their dog or cat.
The idea of Dwarfs-- a race of hard working, honest, genuine but also greedy, controlling and grudge-bearing subterranean dwellers whose features all stem from them being primarily adapted to living underground and closer to monsters than the other races need to live....
The idea of the Half-Orc whose blood is half the barbaric, brutal enemies of the civilized humans of the world that are designed around all the stereotypes people have about less civilized tribes made manifest, who is biologically driven towards solving thing with violence and having to constantly struggle with those "monstrous" instincts while at the same time being clearly physically different enough that they are no doubt insulted, attacked and instigated every day of their lives to the point it would be so very tempting and easy to give into the monster completely...
And Gnomes... hmm... well... kind of like splitting the difference between elves and dwarves there aside from being tiny in comparison to either. Either they live in forests or caves and they are driven by insatiable curiosity to explore the world beyond the tiny holes in the ground they call home, but while long lived they don't exude the aura of nobility or superiority of the elf, rather being down-to-earth, sincere folk like the Dwarfs though I think prone more towards being ambassadors towards other peoples rather than rigid and violent despite how early editions stated them.
Well, those ideas are great within a world that is designed to utilize them. If those are the core concepts of your world, they work. And why these peoples would be better at seeing in the darkness, either because they are designed to dwell in caverns or because they are as active during the night as the day running around full speed in dark forests... well, it just naturally fits the concepts of darkness just not being the same limitation for them. Humans may adopt the darkness, but those races were born in it.
In Ravenloft... doesn't really work out so well. Ravenloft is about the living dead and aberrations out there in the darkness. You wouldn't have isolated benevolent superior enlightened societies hidden out there in the forests. Those societies would be torn apart unless they took drastic, brutal steps in order to survive. You wouldn't have subterranean stable civilizations built all around mining and honor... nothing would survive exploring the recesses of the darkness for long enough to become adapted to living in such places...
Any peoples who try to live off the land and have a drive towards conflict to such a degree that they cannot cooperate to build up proper defenses against the horrors of the night and huddle together in the few points of light among the mist... well, they just aren't going to survive. The land is far too hostile, they would all become undead or lycanthropes or something really fast... and any offspring that show signs of clearly inhuman origin... well, in a place like Ravenloft that is likely to belie something much more sinister and the dark urges are likely to be far too strong to control and people will have every reason to think the odd features are signs of an infectious disease or demonic taint or some other curse that is likely to result in everyone around them being destroyed.
In short, literally all the basic races wouldn't work within Ravenloft. And the small, inconsequential tweaks to them in order to try to make them fit better... well, frankly, they are all too small of tweaks because the changes don't erase all the features that naturally spring from their originally concept and the altered concept doesn't explain very well.
In short, Ravenloft if it even has non-human races, it really should have its own that are clearly different and not just small face-lifts of the Tolkien ones. Halflings are about the only ones that maybe kind of work without much alteration except one would expect them to be even more superstitious and crazy with a whole litany of rituals.
Half-Elves and Half-Orcs don't work, but something like a Tiefling or Shifter could take its place... with the understanding that either one is like to find itself sacrificed ritualistically in order to assure the safety of the town soon after being born and thrown out as soon as discovered if it was some time later. Really, the "Calibans" really make more sense as some sort of Tiefling, though I guess since Tieflings aren't about brutal physical force the Half-Orc stats were used.
Dwarfs are just wholly unworkable. Maybe some of the traits of being industrious workers who tend to grow beards and love alcohol and maybe even their drive for general order, tradition, honor while they tend to also be greedy and vengeful... but since the whole thing about being subterranean dwellers would be gone, the excuse for their ability to see in the dark and their squat build really is no longer justifiable. Why in a world where the dangers are infectious and running or hiding is the only survival strategy, a breeding pool of people with wide bodies and stubby legs surviving just doesn't make sense. The fact the Dwarves weren't even altered in any meaningful way for Ravenloft is kind of crazy... maybe they are just so utterly out-of-place that no adjustment seems to bring them into line.
Elves should have been tossed out nearly all together. High Elves could be replaced with Vistani by making the Vistani a bit less human and a bit more mystic... But anything akin to Wood Elves should likely be corrupted into monsters really fast in a world like that. "Being in tune with the land" ought to just utterly turn against you in a world like that.
Since Dragon aren't really a big piece of the world concept, both Dragonborn and Kobolds would be way out of place.
Anything akin to Orcs, Goblins or Bugbears would be turned into true monsters almost right off.
An adaptation of Kalimdor and Eberron version of Hobgoblins might be all right, given their ability to alter the world around them, remain organized and take the necessary brutal steps to survive, they might even "thrive". Although conceptually they either need to be made into either the concepts in a goth horror story of the oriental travelers from far away, rarely encountered and with strange customs that are never trusted and probably never more than a couple found in any one place... or have them be a people who strictly and brutally enforce prejudices against others.
Yet all of these adjustments, you see... in the end it really boils down to... none of them is likely to have dark vision because the closest things you could come to them in this world would not be born in the darkness like in other worlds-- anything that was would be corrupted and destroyed. This suggests to me that Darkvision just shouldn't be a thing among Ravenloft's people. Although it may be a useful trait for survival-- no one should be comfortable enough in the darkness to feel at home there.
The idea of elves are forest dwelling mysterious immortal wanderers from isolated, peaceful, enlightened societies who come out in the curious spirit of "youth" (although having already lived longer than any human would, albeit without accomplishing or learning all that much due to isolation) to explore the world and let it leave its mark upon them before retiring once they feel they have their fill of it...
The half-blood mongrels that they sometimes leave behind during these youthful trists around humanity who are considered a bit too weird and alien among the human populace who are no doubt jealous of the clear advantages such an individual has over humans making them a target of bullying.... while at the same time being seen as something inferior and shameful to the elves, evidence that for all their so-called enlightenment, at least one of them decided to lie with those child races whose comparable lifespan is about the same as a person and their dog or cat.
The idea of Dwarfs-- a race of hard working, honest, genuine but also greedy, controlling and grudge-bearing subterranean dwellers whose features all stem from them being primarily adapted to living underground and closer to monsters than the other races need to live....
The idea of the Half-Orc whose blood is half the barbaric, brutal enemies of the civilized humans of the world that are designed around all the stereotypes people have about less civilized tribes made manifest, who is biologically driven towards solving thing with violence and having to constantly struggle with those "monstrous" instincts while at the same time being clearly physically different enough that they are no doubt insulted, attacked and instigated every day of their lives to the point it would be so very tempting and easy to give into the monster completely...
And Gnomes... hmm... well... kind of like splitting the difference between elves and dwarves there aside from being tiny in comparison to either. Either they live in forests or caves and they are driven by insatiable curiosity to explore the world beyond the tiny holes in the ground they call home, but while long lived they don't exude the aura of nobility or superiority of the elf, rather being down-to-earth, sincere folk like the Dwarfs though I think prone more towards being ambassadors towards other peoples rather than rigid and violent despite how early editions stated them.
Well, those ideas are great within a world that is designed to utilize them. If those are the core concepts of your world, they work. And why these peoples would be better at seeing in the darkness, either because they are designed to dwell in caverns or because they are as active during the night as the day running around full speed in dark forests... well, it just naturally fits the concepts of darkness just not being the same limitation for them. Humans may adopt the darkness, but those races were born in it.
In Ravenloft... doesn't really work out so well. Ravenloft is about the living dead and aberrations out there in the darkness. You wouldn't have isolated benevolent superior enlightened societies hidden out there in the forests. Those societies would be torn apart unless they took drastic, brutal steps in order to survive. You wouldn't have subterranean stable civilizations built all around mining and honor... nothing would survive exploring the recesses of the darkness for long enough to become adapted to living in such places...
Any peoples who try to live off the land and have a drive towards conflict to such a degree that they cannot cooperate to build up proper defenses against the horrors of the night and huddle together in the few points of light among the mist... well, they just aren't going to survive. The land is far too hostile, they would all become undead or lycanthropes or something really fast... and any offspring that show signs of clearly inhuman origin... well, in a place like Ravenloft that is likely to belie something much more sinister and the dark urges are likely to be far too strong to control and people will have every reason to think the odd features are signs of an infectious disease or demonic taint or some other curse that is likely to result in everyone around them being destroyed.
In short, literally all the basic races wouldn't work within Ravenloft. And the small, inconsequential tweaks to them in order to try to make them fit better... well, frankly, they are all too small of tweaks because the changes don't erase all the features that naturally spring from their originally concept and the altered concept doesn't explain very well.
In short, Ravenloft if it even has non-human races, it really should have its own that are clearly different and not just small face-lifts of the Tolkien ones. Halflings are about the only ones that maybe kind of work without much alteration except one would expect them to be even more superstitious and crazy with a whole litany of rituals.
Half-Elves and Half-Orcs don't work, but something like a Tiefling or Shifter could take its place... with the understanding that either one is like to find itself sacrificed ritualistically in order to assure the safety of the town soon after being born and thrown out as soon as discovered if it was some time later. Really, the "Calibans" really make more sense as some sort of Tiefling, though I guess since Tieflings aren't about brutal physical force the Half-Orc stats were used.
Dwarfs are just wholly unworkable. Maybe some of the traits of being industrious workers who tend to grow beards and love alcohol and maybe even their drive for general order, tradition, honor while they tend to also be greedy and vengeful... but since the whole thing about being subterranean dwellers would be gone, the excuse for their ability to see in the dark and their squat build really is no longer justifiable. Why in a world where the dangers are infectious and running or hiding is the only survival strategy, a breeding pool of people with wide bodies and stubby legs surviving just doesn't make sense. The fact the Dwarves weren't even altered in any meaningful way for Ravenloft is kind of crazy... maybe they are just so utterly out-of-place that no adjustment seems to bring them into line.
Elves should have been tossed out nearly all together. High Elves could be replaced with Vistani by making the Vistani a bit less human and a bit more mystic... But anything akin to Wood Elves should likely be corrupted into monsters really fast in a world like that. "Being in tune with the land" ought to just utterly turn against you in a world like that.
Since Dragon aren't really a big piece of the world concept, both Dragonborn and Kobolds would be way out of place.
Anything akin to Orcs, Goblins or Bugbears would be turned into true monsters almost right off.
An adaptation of Kalimdor and Eberron version of Hobgoblins might be all right, given their ability to alter the world around them, remain organized and take the necessary brutal steps to survive, they might even "thrive". Although conceptually they either need to be made into either the concepts in a goth horror story of the oriental travelers from far away, rarely encountered and with strange customs that are never trusted and probably never more than a couple found in any one place... or have them be a people who strictly and brutally enforce prejudices against others.
Yet all of these adjustments, you see... in the end it really boils down to... none of them is likely to have dark vision because the closest things you could come to them in this world would not be born in the darkness like in other worlds-- anything that was would be corrupted and destroyed. This suggests to me that Darkvision just shouldn't be a thing among Ravenloft's people. Although it may be a useful trait for survival-- no one should be comfortable enough in the darkness to feel at home there.
I like this a lot. In the Monster Manual, Echolocation is just a limitation on Blindsight:
Echolocation. The bat can't use its blindsight while deafened.
Likewise, you could give the PHB races Low-Light vision, as a limitation on Darkvision:
Low-Light Vision. You can't use your darkvision to see into any space that is more than 120 feet from bright or dim light.
This isn't much of a nerf because typically the party is going to be carrying a torch for the benefit of the human PCs, and most racial darkvision only goes out to 60 feet. Instead, it means that the party's elf rogue can't go slink off alone to scout in pitch blackness, or when the party dwarf falls into a teleport trap and arrives in a pitch-black room, he had better light something fast in order to see.
bromleylaerchenheim
First Post
I houserule, that one effect of the Ravenloft mist is that darkvision only works with limited range, say 15ft.
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CapnZapp
Legend
I soo wish at least Elves had night vision in the default rules...!
delericho
Legend
What? Does it make them sparkle instead? Because that truly is horror...
evilbob
Explorer
I'm going to go with the minority here and say that it absolutely doesn't make any difference at all.
Darkvision just allows you to see without a torch. It's torch-distance sight. Unless you're sneaking around without a torch, it's the exact same thing. There's no reason to think that just because you can see a little ways in the dark that there's not also areas you cannot see. Also, you don't constantly have to describe every object within sight all the time.
I tend to just allow most races to have darkvision simply because it makes things easier, and everyone (including me) always forgets if there's a torch casting light anyway. This impacts absolutely nothing - no level of scariness or fear or gothic...ness is taken away because you can see without a torch as far as you could with a torch. In fact, without carrying your own light source, it's probably a little scarier.
So yeah, just ignore it. Darkvision is useless anyway. Unless everyone in the party has darkvision someone needs a torch, making it moot - or if everyone has darkvision, then it's like they have a continual flame torch that enemies can't see. It gains them almost nothing that way as well, since either enemies have darkvision too (so everyone can see everyone) or the enemies also needed a torch (so everyone still sees everyone at the same distance). The only time it comes up is if the enemy is at the edge of their own torchlight for some reason, which no smart enemy would do.
Darkvision just allows you to see without a torch. It's torch-distance sight. Unless you're sneaking around without a torch, it's the exact same thing. There's no reason to think that just because you can see a little ways in the dark that there's not also areas you cannot see. Also, you don't constantly have to describe every object within sight all the time.
I tend to just allow most races to have darkvision simply because it makes things easier, and everyone (including me) always forgets if there's a torch casting light anyway. This impacts absolutely nothing - no level of scariness or fear or gothic...ness is taken away because you can see without a torch as far as you could with a torch. In fact, without carrying your own light source, it's probably a little scarier.
So yeah, just ignore it. Darkvision is useless anyway. Unless everyone in the party has darkvision someone needs a torch, making it moot - or if everyone has darkvision, then it's like they have a continual flame torch that enemies can't see. It gains them almost nothing that way as well, since either enemies have darkvision too (so everyone can see everyone) or the enemies also needed a torch (so everyone still sees everyone at the same distance). The only time it comes up is if the enemy is at the edge of their own torchlight for some reason, which no smart enemy would do.
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
Saying "you see nothing, it's dark" just gets boring. It's not suspense or horror building at all. I've yet to see a horror film where anything of note takes part in pitch darkness. In fact the majority carry out spookiness in areas that are well lit, because cinema is a visual medium.
Darkvision won't change a thing except occasionally free up a hand from carrying a lantern or torch.
Darkvision won't change a thing except occasionally free up a hand from carrying a lantern or torch.
CapnZapp
Legend
The hard and bitter truth is that it isn't Darkvision that is the problem.
If you want Gothic Horror, you can't use an action-oriented game with levels and scores of hit points.
The problem is D&D.
To truly run Gothic Horror, switch to a game system where heroes stay human and where you can't take down the vampire through combat alone.
If you want Gothic Horror, you can't use an action-oriented game with levels and scores of hit points.
The problem is D&D.
To truly run Gothic Horror, switch to a game system where heroes stay human and where you can't take down the vampire through combat alone.
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