Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmu1" data-source="post: 3571894" data-attributes="member: 319">At its most basic, D&D is about a lot of going into dark holes in the ground and killing things.It usually helps, when you're trying to kill something, that it doesn't see you coming. Despite that (and the fact 2 out of the basic classes specialize in stealth, and many others are at least decent at it) the PC races and classes are essentially designed to instantly give themselves away through a combination of reliance on light sources and heavy clanging armor. (though the armor is a separate issue altogether)Now, of course, there can be many arguments for the lack of the ability to see in the dark on the part of the PCs. Artificial light creates suspense, makes tactics necessary, makes for shadows in which things can hide in, gives the DM a chance to hide something from players and reveal it at the appropriate moment, and, well, it's traditional.None of that, though, really explains why everyone else in the freakin' dungeon needs to be able to see in the darkness perfectly well, making lighting a torch about as obvious as ringing a bell... or why the game should be so very one-sided in this particular respect.So I removed Darkvision from nearly all non-supernatural creatures that had it and replaced it with Low Light Vision instead, and I've been pretty happy with the result. Now, encountering an enemy who can see in complete darkness actually means something, and the PCs are able to - once in a while, if the fighter in full plate is properly packaged in shipping pellets - actually ambush someone else underground by looking for other people's lights. That, and it also tends to save time by doing away with the "Am I carrying a torch? I thought you were carrying a torch! Hey, the wizard doesn't have a weapon out, can we just say that he was carrying the torch?" game...</blockquote>

Verification