"I tuck the sunrod in my belt".

[Gort]

Sunrods are easily houseruled out of the game if you like the misery of tracking a moving light-source every turn. Nothing says "heroic adventure" like a -5 penalty to attack for not book-keeping correctly!

 

[babinro]

My players strap light sources to their packs and the like so to keep hands free. I see absolutely no problems with that as a DM. This seems as reasonable to me as an archer stowing arrows in a quiver, or weapons being sheathed or clerics using holy symbols without their hands.

The cost, as people like to put it is in the benefits/detriments of being constantly in light. You are always visible to enemies and will never surprise something. Enemies have time to prepare as a result of such light sources as well, enabling traps and the like.

For a stealthy party member to be effective, they have to go a significant distance from the light source, placing them in greater danger.

 

[Infiniti2000]

The cost, as people like to put it is in the benefits/detriments of being constantly in light. You are always visible to enemies and will never surprise something. Enemies have time to prepare as a result of such light sources as well, enabling traps and the like.

Good point. But, how do you modify the light source distribution? Surely a light strapped to your backpack is less effective than one you hold overhead.

A side question, too. Do you just let PC's strap anything to anything else? And where do they get all these straps? I have several types of backpacks (mine from my old college days, my 5yo's school pack, and a diaper bag). None of them would make strapping a torch to them easy. An adventurer's backpack might be not much easier either. I'd be interested in hearing a detailed description of how it's done, and I bet it would require cutting holes in the backpack to string the straps.

 

[Felon]

Good point. But, how do you modify the light source distribution? Surely a light strapped to your backpack is less effective than one you hold overhead.

Many things in D&D are abstracted. Why should this be different? Do you want characters affixing sunrod-holders to the top of their helms to create some rather silly-looking headlamps, because that's ultimately where that reasoning heads.

Come to think of it, a light stuck in your backpack is potentially more effective than one held in hand. We're talking about an omnidirectional light source, not a flashlight or shuttered lantern, so like torches in the real world, a light held in front of you shines directly into your eyes, creating a blindspot (not to mention those annoying "swirlies" when you look away from it).

And don't call me "surely"!

 

[BruntFCA]

I guess the real question is:

Does darkness actually add anything to your game?

Without heavy modifications to the existing rules, I doubt it. The light rules as written are basically presented as a big screw to use against the PCs if they neglect to write "a light source" on their character sheet.

If you're going to go all out and actually work out where shadowy areas on a battlefield are, and actually play monsters as if they don't want to stumble about in the dark all the time, then I'd say feel free to enforce accurate usage of light sources along with it. I think such a system has the potential to add a lot to the game (ok, if you move over there with our light source, then I have concealment because I'm in the shadows from that statue, so I can hide!) but also a lot of complexity.

Using light in the Heroic tier adds a lot to atmosphere and gameplay, if done properly. Why were the alien films to exiting? Imagine how boring it would be if everyone had a massive "top down" view radius in the film...lol.

I think the reason WOTC put them in is that, with a table top, it can be a hassle working out the light. I sometimes use Maptool or FG2. Maptool in particular is amazing at doing lighting. If you are using such a tool I would suggest using light properly.

As for sunrods, they make stealth almost impossible, and also pre-warn any monsters of your approach. Lights visible from 1/2 mile way I thinkn in PHB. Or you can outright ban them for being lame (assuming your using maptool and running an underground adventure).

Here's a screenshot showing what Fog of War and dynamic light can add to the game.

Below is the first room in Rivenroar in FG2 with the party holding torches. The back wall is lit by the braziers, the adventurers can see up the steps and the back wall. Monsters are hiding since they heard the party smash open a door.

These pics are taken from maptool. This guy is equipped with a sun-rod. The PC version is first, the light lances into the room.

Here is the DM version. The light has tipped off anyone in the room of the advancing party.....

Also, I want to feel that players that chose dwarves/Drow can see better underground. Undead get a lot more interesting since they have darkvision, so you can have them drag PC into dark pits and corners and have their "way" with them.

All of this is really hard though if you are using normal paper dungeon tiles. I'd be interested to hear of any ideas anyone has. If you allow sunrods, I my opinion this actually makes it *harder* to work out light on paper; like I said I think they are there just to make the light rules "go away".

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I'd say sure, but it halves the distance that the light travels. Seems like a reasonable tradeoff.

Does it also travel half as fast?

 

[Nytmare]

A side note (and one that I wish I had bothered to ask while I was at home so I could take pictures of things) but for the non-Maptools users out there who track light sources on the battlemap, how do you keep track?

I used to do transparent overlays but they seemed to get in the way more than anything else. We tried marking corners for a while, but I didn't like it. Keeping track of four extra markers for every light was just a little too much work, and we never seemed to be able to convince our brains to read them correctly.

What I eventually landed on was cutting a bunch of the square 1/4 inch dowel rods to 9" (4 squares), 11" (5 squares), and 21" (10 squares); and just plopping them down at the outskirts of the battle to mark how far the pool of light extends.

 

[Skallgrim]

Using light in the Heroic tier adds a lot to atmosphere and gameplay, if done properly. Why were the alien films to exiting? Imagine how boring it would be if everyone had a massive "top down" view radius in the film...lol.

...

All of this is really hard though if you are using normal paper dungeon tiles. I'd be interested to hear of any ideas anyone has. If you allow sunrods, I my opinion this actually makes it *harder* to work out light on paper; like I said I think they are there just to make the light rules "go away".

Well, it is a bit harder using just paper dungeon tiles (as I do), but what I do is remove monsters and track them using my own DM single page map if the PCs can't see them. The sunrod does sort of make the light rules "go away", but, at least for me, in a good way:

The first part of the encounter is a bit of tense exploration with the low-light people sneaking around, then, someone screws up/gets bitten/whatever and all hell breaks loose, and THEN the lights come on. It almost lets you have two encounters in the same room.

I could also imagine that if you were running an encounter with Darkvision PCs, you could have the reverse. They explore around, then douse the lights and commence the Whoop-@$$.

If I had the wherewithal, patience, and drive to run something like an overhead projector and maptools, I bet it would be even more awesome, but it's still been pretty good with regular old paper (and the black construction paper to cover up the stuff you can't see).

 

[eriktheguy]

Wow, this is a good thread. I really like the combats suggested by Skallgrim. They make darkness seem more like an obstacle to use in a battle like a pit or a pool of lava, rather than being another book keeping issue.
I think I'm going to try using darkness in a few combats going forward, and maybe the characters holding the sunrods will find themselves the prime targets.
Also the suggestions for maptools etc looks really tempting, since I have a second monitor I can project that onto for my players.

 

[eriktheguy]

I've downloaded and begun using the maptool and it is amazing. My favorite feature is the ability to have a map of darkness that reveals what the players see as they move through the dungeon, while keeping the DM's view separate.

I am not using the tool online, instead I run two copies (one for player view, one for DM view) and project the player view onto my LCD TV for the players to see everything while I control what goes on behind the scenes. For dungeon exploration it blows pencil/paper/battleboard out of the water!
It doubles as a decent dungeontiles type mapbuilder, and sometimes you can import a map from an outside image (although getting the grids to match up doesn't always work).
Recommended to any DM that has a projector or largescreen TV.