Elves and "Low-Light Vision"

[Lord Thurham]

I am setting up a night time encounter and I'm trying to determine if the party elves will have a "Spot" chance when the foe is still 50' out from the campfire. It's a moonless, cloudless night. The only light sources are the campfire and starlight. It's 3:00 am.

I am trying to figure out just exactly how far is "twice as far as a human".

Quoted from the Players Handbook:
Low-light Vision: Elves can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor
illumination. They retain the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions.

Can anyone comment on this and help me determine if there is a spot chance? Thanks!

LT

 

[Gez]

Elves (and gnomes, and tallfellow halfling, and animals, and lots of other folks and things) may be considered to see as well as we human see just before dusk, when colors begin to fade and it's dark in houses, if you don't turn on the lights. With a full moon, it would be like day time for them.

A torch is said to illuminate correctly in a 15 feet IIRC. Doubled, that's 30 for people with low-light vision. A campfire by starlight provides more illumination than a torch in an underground tunnel, so you could double again the values -- 30 feet for humans and halfling, 60 feet for creatures with LLV.

These numbers seem reasonnable, provided the campfire burn bright.

 

[AuraSeer]

The rules you want are on this SRD page. Down near the bottom, there's a table of Spot modifiers for various light levels; low-light vision basically reduces the penalties by one category. (An elf in starlight sees as well as a human in moonlight. An elf in moonlight sees as well as a human in the daytime.)

There's also a table of light sources, with the effective radius of each. Low-light vision doubles these radii. (If the only light source is a candle, a human can see things within 5' of the candle, while an elf can see things within 10' of it.)

 

[Lord Thurham]

I can see a party burning a campfire brightly at the beginning of the night when they have just started the fire, thus the 30' radius vision. At 3:00am, I think that same fire will have died down a bit, unless the party makes mention that they feed the fire throughout the night (that's gonna be alot of wood), it's probably a 20' radius (torchlight?). The starlight thing is the only thing that I can't find a fixed number as for distance. I know there is a DC modifier, but it does make a huge difference when the foe is 50' from the campfire. Should the party get a spot chance? Let's see here... 20' for normal vision, 20' for low light vision... ____ feet for starlight low light vision? If a human can see 5' (equivalent to a candle?) in starlight, then an elf could see 10' in starlight. So, I probably could allow a spot chance at 50' for the elves in the party.

That's my 2 cents worth.

LT

 

[Max]

Absolutely they should get a spot check. The SRD says starlight is a +10 to the DC, +5 if the PC has low light vision. I would agree they are probably outside the radius where the campfire would help, so just go with the starlight modifier.

Also, the party should probably also get a Listen check as well. Even if they can't see the bad guys, they might hear them coming.

Max