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Is 5e Darkvision A Good Design?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8001348" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>I picked the bottom option, because I think it's both a good design and a bad design, in different ways.</p><p></p><p>It's a bad default choice for how characters with "vision in darkness" work. The should have gone with a simple implementation of low-light vision as the default for most races. It's easier to work with RP and description-wise, makes more immediate sense, players understand it better, and it means torches and the like are a necessity for pretty much everyone, rather all these stupid situations occurring where one or two party members need a torch and everyone else "doesn't" (except they kind of do, if you actually understand the rules).</p><p></p><p>So it's a bad design in the sense that it was a bad choice for a universal mode of vision (given the above), and it's a bad design in that the rules it works by are not laid out as clearly as they could be (people are still constantly surprised to find out you have Disadvantage on Perception checks when operating with Darkvision, just look at how often it comes up on any D&D board, especially more mainstream ones), and it's arguably a bad design in that, because of the way it works, any being that has it actually would need to and want to light areas it lived in, which makes some lore around those creatures dubious.</p><p></p><p>On the other hand, getting past the error of using it as the default mode of "seeing in the dark", it's a decent implementation of Darkvision. It's almost a direct throwback to 2E's "standard Infravision" (rather than the more elaborate "thermographic" infravision that about 9/10 groups seemed to play with - kinda makes sense as the DMG devotes almost an entire page to the latter), so pleases grogs. It's pretty straightforward in terms of functionality (barring the slightly counter-intuitive darkness disadvantage issue), and the fact that almost everyone as a 60' range on it makes it easy to deal with.</p><p></p><p>So it's a mixed bag. Low-light should have been the default, with Darkvision for special races, after 3E and 4E, though, it really should. Dwarves should have been the only PHB race with Darkvision (arguably Tieflings too).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8001348, member: 18"] I picked the bottom option, because I think it's both a good design and a bad design, in different ways. It's a bad default choice for how characters with "vision in darkness" work. The should have gone with a simple implementation of low-light vision as the default for most races. It's easier to work with RP and description-wise, makes more immediate sense, players understand it better, and it means torches and the like are a necessity for pretty much everyone, rather all these stupid situations occurring where one or two party members need a torch and everyone else "doesn't" (except they kind of do, if you actually understand the rules). So it's a bad design in the sense that it was a bad choice for a universal mode of vision (given the above), and it's a bad design in that the rules it works by are not laid out as clearly as they could be (people are still constantly surprised to find out you have Disadvantage on Perception checks when operating with Darkvision, just look at how often it comes up on any D&D board, especially more mainstream ones), and it's arguably a bad design in that, because of the way it works, any being that has it actually would need to and want to light areas it lived in, which makes some lore around those creatures dubious. On the other hand, getting past the error of using it as the default mode of "seeing in the dark", it's a decent implementation of Darkvision. It's almost a direct throwback to 2E's "standard Infravision" (rather than the more elaborate "thermographic" infravision that about 9/10 groups seemed to play with - kinda makes sense as the DMG devotes almost an entire page to the latter), so pleases grogs. It's pretty straightforward in terms of functionality (barring the slightly counter-intuitive darkness disadvantage issue), and the fact that almost everyone as a 60' range on it makes it easy to deal with. So it's a mixed bag. Low-light should have been the default, with Darkvision for special races, after 3E and 4E, though, it really should. Dwarves should have been the only PHB race with Darkvision (arguably Tieflings too). [/QUOTE]
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