Ranes
Adventurer
Well, whenever I confront anything as counter-intuitive as an underdark race that can't see in the dark, the first thing I like to do is see if I can justify it to myself. And in the case of derro, I can. Although the notion of derro having darkvision is an easy and obvious one, there are reasons why they might not.
The derro race is, if I've read the background properly, the unhappy result of an experiment by the outcast dwarven deity Diirinka, who wished to create a cross between human and dwarf. As we know, dwarves have darkvision and humans do not. So, the absence of darkvision could be another flaw in Diirinka's terrible experiment, to complement the racial madness the species also inherited. (If derro in your aging campaign have always had darkvision but you're upgrading to 3.5 and want to justify dropping darkvision, perhaps the trait has slowly atrophied for thousands of years, a fact that derro have been trying to conceal from other underdark races.)
They still have Blind-Fight, so they can still seek some tactical advantage in pitch darkness but otherwise they light their dungeons, the only underdark race to so do. Having one underdark race that requires light for most purposes but which lives underground and suffers from a vulnerability to sunlight adds to the richness of the underdark dwelling choices available in the MM.
My problem was not with either derro having darkvision or derro not having darkvision; it was with the MM's slightly confusing presentation of the pertinent facts.
If an MM errata emerges complete with '...add darkvision to the derro SQ', so be it. I'm sure a lot of people will like that and I won't mind altering my conception of them, yet again. Until then, however, I'm sufficiently persuaded (finally) by Jaldaen's argument to have them use illumination. In fact, given the propensity of the species to outfit its domains with macabre furnishings and given the derro predilection for trap making and Blind-Fighting, there's an opportunity for a very evocative dungeon setting.
The derro race is, if I've read the background properly, the unhappy result of an experiment by the outcast dwarven deity Diirinka, who wished to create a cross between human and dwarf. As we know, dwarves have darkvision and humans do not. So, the absence of darkvision could be another flaw in Diirinka's terrible experiment, to complement the racial madness the species also inherited. (If derro in your aging campaign have always had darkvision but you're upgrading to 3.5 and want to justify dropping darkvision, perhaps the trait has slowly atrophied for thousands of years, a fact that derro have been trying to conceal from other underdark races.)
They still have Blind-Fight, so they can still seek some tactical advantage in pitch darkness but otherwise they light their dungeons, the only underdark race to so do. Having one underdark race that requires light for most purposes but which lives underground and suffers from a vulnerability to sunlight adds to the richness of the underdark dwelling choices available in the MM.
My problem was not with either derro having darkvision or derro not having darkvision; it was with the MM's slightly confusing presentation of the pertinent facts.
If an MM errata emerges complete with '...add darkvision to the derro SQ', so be it. I'm sure a lot of people will like that and I won't mind altering my conception of them, yet again. Until then, however, I'm sufficiently persuaded (finally) by Jaldaen's argument to have them use illumination. In fact, given the propensity of the species to outfit its domains with macabre furnishings and given the derro predilection for trap making and Blind-Fighting, there's an opportunity for a very evocative dungeon setting.
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