D&D General How do you really handle illumination in your games?

[Charlaquin]

So... Ireland?

Scotch is from -get this- Scotland!

 

[Merlecory]

Scotch is from -get this- Scotland!

That doesn't stop people from Ireland from adding it to their coffee though

 

[CreamCloud0]

why bother with torches and lanterns when you can just set your enemies on fire to provide the light?

 

[Willie the Duck]

My only real surprise is that I have not been able to get them to bother to use Lanterns. I thought that 30' of bright and +30' of dim were so obviously superior to the 20' of bright and +20' of dim from a Light spell that they would have one going all the time, but they don't seem to care.

So, honest question: have you regularly had situations where the difference would meaningly benefit them? Where the 10' or 20' extra radius would have made all the difference and they couldn't just move closer or the like?

That's kind of what we discussed near the beginning of the thread: how most of us--if we enforced/checked for light/darkvision at all-- mostly just checked to see whether people had it, not whether it actually extended to the enemies/traps/dungeon clues the PCs would come across.

 

[Lanefan]

why bother with torches and lanterns when you can just set your enemies on fire to provide the light?

Chicken-and-egg: you need light in order to find the enemies you want to set on fire to provide light.....

 

[Lanefan]

So, honest question: have you regularly had situations where the difference would meaningly benefit them? Where the 10' or 20' extra radius would have made all the difference and they couldn't just move closer or the like?

That's kind of what we discussed near the beginning of the thread: how most of us--if we enforced/checked for light/darkvision at all-- mostly just checked to see whether people had it, not whether it actually extended to the enemies/traps/dungeon clues the PCs would come across.

Most of the time the difference comes about from one of two situations:

--- an enemy uses the darkness to catch the party off guard, which wouldn't have happened had the party had better light
--- the party isn't careful about their exploring as they pass through a large area and misses something relevant - an exit, a treasure chest, a captive - in the darkness that they'd have almost certainly noticed with longer-range light.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

That doesn't stop people from Ireland from adding it to their coffee though

What stops them is national pride! If you're Irish, I'm guessing you're adding an Irish whiskey, like Bushmills or Jameson.