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<blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 6603953">There is very little &quot;true darkness&quot; IRL for a comparison, so how fantasy races work is of course, by fantastical means.&nbsp; However, most creatures that live in what humans consider &quot;true darkness&quot; are sightless or have some means of generating their own luminescense, see: fish that live in the deepest abysses of the ocean.&nbsp; Outside of that, creatures with the ability to see in next-to-no-light situations are evolved to do so, they have large eyes with massive pupils to take in as much light as possible.&nbsp; In most D&amp;D systems the races with darkvision look nothing like this half of them don't even live in darkness.You have to understand that our concept of &quot;true darkness&quot; that is, zero sources of light whatsoever, is almost non-existent.&nbsp; Even for creatures with darkvision, it's going to be rare that they live in situations with zero light at all.&nbsp; If they are intelligent they will likely manufacture their own light (such as Drow) or they will be go in and out of light periodically (Dwarves).&nbsp; Also keep in mind that 5th edition is less granular than previous editions, there's no &quot;Low Light Vision&quot; anymore, and you are correct that in very select circumstances I treat Darkvision as Low Light Vision because I treat it as a non-magical form of vision.Before modern science, it was actually believed that the eyes produced light, which reflected off the things we were looking at and that is how we &quot;saw&quot; things.&nbsp; For all intents and purposes, this is the easiest way to rationalize how darkvision works for dwarves, elves, tieflings and other semi-magical races in D&amp;D (why Dragonborn don't have darkvision I'll never understand).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Sunseeker, post: 6603953"] There is very little "true darkness" IRL for a comparison, so how fantasy races work is of course, by fantastical means. However, most creatures that live in what humans consider "true darkness" are sightless or have some means of generating their own luminescense, see: fish that live in the deepest abysses of the ocean. Outside of that, creatures with the ability to see in next-to-no-light situations are evolved to do so, they have large eyes with massive pupils to take in as much light as possible. In most D&D systems the races with darkvision look nothing like this half of them don't even live in darkness. You have to understand that our concept of "true darkness" that is, zero sources of light whatsoever, is almost non-existent. Even for creatures with darkvision, it's going to be rare that they live in situations with zero light at all. If they are intelligent they will likely manufacture their own light (such as Drow) or they will be go in and out of light periodically (Dwarves). Also keep in mind that 5th edition is less granular than previous editions, there's no "Low Light Vision" anymore, and you are correct that in [I]very[/I] select circumstances I treat Darkvision as Low Light Vision because I treat it as a non-magical form of vision. Before modern science, it was actually believed that the eyes produced light, which reflected off the things we were looking at and that is how we "saw" things. For all intents and purposes, this is the easiest way to rationalize how darkvision works for dwarves, elves, tieflings and other semi-magical races in D&D (why Dragonborn don't have darkvision I'll never understand). [/QUOTE]

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