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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chriton227" data-source="post: 3800639" data-attributes="member: 33263">First off, I apologize to the OP for getting off topic in my previous post.Let me make sure I understand the situation correctly: A character with darkvision is observing a pirate ship using a spyglass.  The pirate ship has a lantern on deck.Here is how I would rule if it were my game:  The character would be able to observe just fine within the light radius of the lantern, and would be limited as normal for the area in shadowy illumination.  If the character's darkvision range was enough to reach the ship, they could use that to negate the shadowy illumination and to observe into the dark areas.  If the character needed to make spot checks for any reason (reading lips, noticing a hiding creature, noticing something with an arbitrary spot DC), I would allow the spyglass to reduce the range penalties to spot to -1 per 20'.  I would not allow the spyglass to enhance the range of their darkvision, and likewise I would not allow a spyglass to enhance the range of normal vision for a character without darkvision in the dark carrying a sunrod.  It would just allow for better inspection of details of items that were already illuminated.As an aside, if I were going for a highly realistic game, I would hesitate to allow a spyglass to grant any sort of bonus or reduction of penalties for most spot checks unless the character was looking at a specific area or object.  I've used low magnification rifle scopes and it was much easier for me to spot a target with the naked eye and then use the scope than it was to try to locate a target without first eyeballing the general location.  This was because while the scope allowed me to descern far more detail than I could with the naked eye, it greatly limited my field of vision.  You can try this yourself, go out into a field with a small ball (softball or mini soccer ball size).  Throw it over your shoulder so it lands behind you.  Turn around an you will spot the ball pretty quickly because you can take in a large amount of the scene at one time.  Then try doing the same thing, but this time look through a paper towel tube.  On average it will take much longer to find the ball because you can survey a much smaller area at a time.   This effect gets worse when you start adding magnification, as the field of vision tends to narrow as the magnification increases.</blockquote>

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