D&D 5E Just About Sick Of Darkvision.

[Cadence]

I'm still stuck back on the six year old posts that makes it sound like owls should be able to see in a lighless cave (as opposed.to an overcast and moonless outside). I'm pretty sure that's not how it works...

 

[Maxperson]

At first I was irked by everyone in 5e having darkvision. Then when I realized that all vision perception checks were at disadvantage and started applying that rule, the PCs pulled out torches and light spells anyway.

 

[Dbr]

If you were to take a "realistic" approach to DND (yeah, I know...), in a world where darkvision is the norm, races without darkvision would be at a significant disadvantage from an evolutionary standpoint.

Heck, they'd probably have never survived at all.

I know this is a really old thread, but I feel the need to point out that everyone is ignoring the fact that almost every single animal in real life essentially has dark vision. Most animals can see in much less light than human can, so it's honestly not that surprising that so many races have darkvision. Also, as for orcs and goblins..... they live in the underdark, they kind of need dark vision.

 

[Cadence]

I know this is a really old thread, but I feel the need to point out that everyone is ignoring the fact that almost every single animal in real life essentially has dark vision. Most animals can see in much less light than human can, so it's honestly not that surprising that so many races have darkvision. Also, as for orcs and goblins..... they live in the underdark, they kind of need dark vision.

There are lots of species IRL that can see better than people in dim light... which ones see in complete darkness? (5e Darkvision gives both, right?)

 

[aco175]

I think the problem will become worse with the new rules coming on cultural and heritage character creation. I can pick a race with darkvision, but have him grow up in a culture which I want the power or additional feat from, then I will be able to eat my cake too.

 

[iserith]

I'm not sure I see the problem if the DM is employing the -5 PP rule in darkness with darkvision. I even run for another group who way overvalued darkvision and once they started seeing how things changed when the actual rules were employed, they all got light sources now!

 

[Oofta]

Old thread, but I agree with the OP. Very few races should have darkvision, if I had a vote we'd bring back low light vision. Even though I enforce the disadvantage on perception, it's just annoying that there are only a couple of races that do not have it. I mean, I get it, magic and all but it just feels like an item tax because I let people purchase goggles of night when they can afford it.

On the other hand, I have no problem with people paying base cost for continual flame if they've done something to gain the favor of a specific temple; I don't care to track minutiae like how long a torch lasts.

 

[Charlaquin]

There are lots of species IRL that can see better than people in dim light... which ones see in complete darkness? (5e Darkvision gives both, right?)

This is my only beef with Darkvision. Mechanically it’s fine if you actually apply disadvantage on perception checks to see (and therefore -5 on passive perception), but it bothers me from a verisimilitude perspective that it allows you to see anything in total darkness.

I think the real problem though is that 5e treats “outdoors at night” and “the confines of an unlit dungeon or subterranean vault” as the same level of darkness. An owl could see pretty well in the former, but not at all in the latter. On the other hand, I understand wanting “outdoors at night” to be darker than “the soft twilight at dawn,” which intuitively doesn’t seem like it should be bright light.

Maybe the solution is to treat total darkness as a third category of lighting, in which magical darkness and lightless caverns both belong. Darkvision works as-written as long as there’s some small source of light in the area, even if it’s not enough to bring the light level up to dim - stars in the sky, a soft flickering through the crack under the door, a little patch of bioluminescent fungus, etc. In total darkness, there’s no light at all, so even creatures with Darkvision are effectively blinded (unless they have Devil’s Sight). Then the effect of the Darkness spell is simply to create a patch of total darkness in the affected area.

 

[DEFCON 1]

For my money... darkvision has never been an issue. Because I have never once had a game where every single PC had darkvision, which meant they were always using light sources anyway.

And even if I did have a party of all darkvision PCs... for my money the trope of "bunch of monsters hiding in the darkness attacking the characters that can't see them" is so overdone that I don't care that it'd be harder to pull off if the entire party had darkvision. I mean after all... if a bunch of creatures can hide in the bushes and trees outside during the day and ambush the party even though the PCs have completely normal vision in sunlight... running that same encounter underground with the PCs having darkvision is not that much different.

 

[Cadence]

And even if I did have a party of all darkvision PCs... for my money the trope of "bunch of monsters hiding in the darkness attacking the characters that can't see them" is so overdone that I don't care that it'd be harder to pull off if the entire party had darkvision. I mean after all... if a bunch of creatures can hide in the bushes and trees outside during the day and ambush the party even though the PCs have completely normal vision in sunlight... running that same encounter underground with the PCs having darkvision is not that much different.

This isn't particularly in response to your post, but your post added to some others in this and other threads and makes me want to write something about the old Shadow radio show (invisible by mental powers) and how invisibility (or hiding in the dark) work in D&D. I just can't get my brain to formulate it well at the moment.