D&D 5E How strict are you with vision and illumination rules?

[Li Shenron]

Currently I am mainly running a game for my family and kids, plus the occasional (once or twice a year) one-shot with friends, so I realize I have become pretty much condescending to the problem of vision and illumination. In other words: I practically ignore the issue and in most cases I just assume there is enough illumination to count as bright light everywhere in a certain locale, otherwise I declare that a locale (indoor or outdoor) has dim light instead, or total darkness, but then the PCs can "turn on the light" with torches and lanterns.

The bottom line is, I tend to treat the whole locale uniformly, completely ignoring the illumination ranges or the light sources. So if they have torches, I just say they can see everywhere (at least when indoor), I don't bother tracking those 20ft of bright light + 20ft of dim light + darkness beyond 40ft.

This is obviously a simplification to remove one layer of tactics and management for my kids. It would be nice later on, when they are more experienced with the game, to restore the full rules on this.

How are you normally handling this aspect of the game, do you always enforce the rules strictly or do you handwave something?

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Generally, it only comes up when called out ('Hey, how can you see X, its pitch black and you only have a torch!) or when its fun.

For example:

- we've run dungeon crawls where nobody is bothered that much about lighting after its been established the cleric has 'Light cast on their shield. The light range only became important when exploring a dark space/room for the first time or when the shield was lost/dropped. Outside of these times, illuminations were ignored, tho I like to pretend they were hovering around in the back of the table's minds, adding another layer to the experience.

- on the flipside, again in a dungeon craw, we've had the party micro-manage their movement and supplies, complete with the more detailed encumbrance rules. For this play experience the focus was more on navigation, surviving and looting, with party always making a choice between pushing and risk losing what they have (and most likely their lives) and turning back to the surface with their loot. Here, the illumination ranges were a critical part of play - spells that created light were seriously limited (they attracted unwanted attention more so than mundane illumination sources) and there are only so many torches/bullseye lanterns & oil someone can carry, especially after they've failed their saves versus a fire-themed trap!

 

[CapnZapp]

It's perfectly understandable.

There are real problems with how 5E handles stealth (mainly that it doesn't) but illumination works well enough, given the extra level of detail.

In fact, I've reverted forest-y races (like Elves and Gnomes... and Owls) to low-light vision as defined in 3rd edition.

 

[Nevvur]

My only gaming these days is on roll20, which has some handy tools for making light/vision obvious, especially when running combats on a grid. It's particularly important in my current campaign, which features all human PCs. Even so, I tend to forget the complications arising from dim light, namely the penalty to perception checks, so dim light kinda gets treated like bright light in most of my encounters. No one's complained. Frankly, I don't think anyone has even noticed when I forget.

I am very mindful of total darkness, though.

 

[Imaculata]

Light and darkness don't come up that often in my group. There was one rare occasion where a mummy was standing in the dark, and staring at a PC from across the hall. He could only see the eyes of the mummy glowing in the dark, and so he had no idea who was looking at him. It was really creepy, because the mummy didn't approach, nor respond to his voice. Upon closer investigation, the local clerics had laid out a trail of blessed salt, that the mummy couldn't cross.

So sometimes it can add excitement when your players can't see something. But then there's always someone in the group with low-light vision, or dark vision, to remove all sense of mystery and suspense.

 

[iserith]

I rule it strictly in my games, but only because I use Roll20's dynamic lighting effects which makes it easy. Your character can see what you can see visually.

In a game that doesn't use Roll20, I would say treat it the same as terrain - in this or that scene or adventure location, throw lighting in as part of the challenge. Monsters attacking from the cover of darkness at light-bearing PCs or trying to douse the adventurers' lights to blind them. Or an exploration challenge that is made easier with lighting, but with a higher risk of attracting wandering monsters. If you're doing a dungeon crawl where it's important to track encumbrance, you might use it simply as a necessary resource that takes up valuable inventory space. You might say that for a given 8-hour delve, the PCs need to have 16 torches (16 lbs.) between them or something like that. This creates a trade-off between what you bring into the dungeon and what you can take out and whether you suffer penalties due to encumbrance along the way.

Otherwise, I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it.

 

[Oofta]

I use the light rules, but I don't get too picky about exact distances in most cases. The thing I'm most likely to forget is that most monsters also get disadvantage on perception checks in the dark just like PCs.

But yes, if you are wandering around at night or in a dungeon, bringing a light source is generally a good idea. I also have magic moss that gives off dim light in a lot of caverns/underground areas that's actively cultivated and spread by dwellers of the deep.

 

[jaelis]

Most of the time I don't worry about lighting at all, and just provide enough light for everyone. But sometimes I will design an encounter where illumination is a factor, and then I try to follow the standard rules.

 

[guachi]

I would use them more often if I could remember to do so. I find that it's yet another way to add excitement and challenge to a game.

But then I usually end up forgetting. Though it was fun to reward the one human PC with Pince-Nez Sunglasses of the Night that looked conveniently just like the sunglasses Morpheus had in the Matrix.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

In scenarios where there isn’t any ambient light, if they don’t all have darkvision, I ask who is doing what for light. As long as someone’s got a means of illumination, it just is and I leave it at that. Particularly in my larger open table that has a shorter play time, I don't want to get bogged down in logistics.