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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9557069" data-attributes="member: 7006">In each of these cases, we're only talking about one single difference between torchlight and darkvision-- distance.With darkvision (or whatever ability in other non-D&D games have that allow characters to "see in the dark")... you mention noticing doors, monsters that are out of range, and the mechanics of traps that you can't see.  Darkvision allows you to "see further" underground than torchlight does.  Which yes, I would agree with you-- like if we are talking specifically D&D 5E darkvision, that goes out to 60 feet for most of the species that have it (giving us 60' of "dim light" conditions), whereas torches give us a radius of 20 feet in "bright light" and 20-40 feet in "dim light".  So darkvision gives characters an extra 20 further feet for noticing things.  Of course once we introduce the hooded lantern to the party, that gives us 30 feet of "bright light" and 30-60 feet of "dimlight" for non-darkvision species... meaning that the distances at which parties with hooded lanterns and ones made entirely with darkvision can see out to the exact same distance-- and the hooded lantern group also gets the benefit of 30 of bright light which the darkvision party in total darkness doesn't get.Which means that mechanically... if you want to notice as many things as possible you are better off using hooded lanterns than you are relying on just darkvision.  In fact, a darkvision character would actually do better with a lantern because they then see the 30-60 feet of dim light as "bright light" too... meaning their entire 60' of vision is bright light conditions, rather their entire 60' as dim light conditions if there were no light sources at all.But again... this is purely from a game mechanics perspective.  From a game mechanics perspective... it is my opinion that darkvision does not actually accomplish all that much over regular lantern-lighted vision... all you get is an extra 30 feet of "bright light" with a lantern that "regular" species won't get.  Now obviously I can't speak for anyone else and how they run their games... but I know for me personally, I don't run my games where I have specifically designed my dungeons and marked out the distances of monsters/traps/doors in such a way that I can "catch" the non-darkvision species unawares all the time.  Like I don't purposefully make chambers always over 30' long just in order to "gotcha" the party because now that door at the far end in "dim light" has a harder time to be seen by the non-darkvision PC in front when they enter the chamber (having to roll a Perception check with Disadvantage).  That kind of nitpickiness of design is way, way, way too much to bother with.  I just make a dungeon and fill it with interesting stuff... but I don't waste my time trying to guess who is going to be standing where when as they move through the dungeon and thus whether that stuff will be seen in bright light by darkvision-PCs with lanterns out to 60' and non-darkvision-PCs out to 30'... or dim light by non-darkvision-PCs holding lanterns from 30'-60' or darkvision-PCs with no light sources altogether... all in an effort to "surprise" the characters unexpectedly.If I want to surprise the PCs that badly... then it is much easier to just do that narratively.  And when you do it narratively, you can put in whatever the heck you want to bypass any vision-based game mechanics the players would default to (like the smoke screen idea posted further up) and thus the mechanics of darkvision no longer matter.</blockquote>

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