TornadoCreator
First Post
Owlbears have owl eyes. Which are eyes designed to work in the dark. Vampires are "children of the night". Do you really want vampires having to carry around lanterns while sneaking about?5th edition darkvision is actually sub-par for what I would expect.
Neither owls nor bears having Darkvision though... check the animal listings.
Admittedly what people are describing sounds more like Low Light Vision to me. The problem I have is them being able to treat dim light as bright light, and complete darkness as dim light. It's too much I feel. Still creature by creature I could make an argument... Vampires for example, fair enough; Zombies, Skeletons, Wraiths etc. no, they don't need Darkvision.
I'd say your hatred carries a bit too far, particularly that kobolds, goblins and orcs are subterranean/cave dwelling races that evolved underground. Orcs used to have a penalty to hit in 1st edition from light sensitivity IIRC. Also, as noted, 5E darkvision sucks. It just gives you crappy 60' vision, at disadvantage. -5 to passive perception is hardly "I can see everything" vision. Its more like "can your 10 dex untrained doofus not roll a 4 or less to sneak past me" vision.
Yeah, but that's because they abstract everything too much. As far as I'm concerned passing a Stealth check means nothing if your moving past any creature that can see. You auto-fail the Stealth check. Why? Because you can no more stealth in a room without cover than you can Swim in a pool without water. You can roll as many natural 20s in Athletics as you like, you can't swim if there's no water. The same goes for Stealth. So yes, technically RAW Darkvision is a lot less powerful than I first thought, but that's because the writers didn't write practical skills into the game, they just put in arbitrary contests. As far as I'm concerned Darkvision should be like Infravision of previous generations, and it should be limited to a few magical creatures, and Underdark races. Even Orcs etc. shouldn't get it I feel, because depending on your campaign setting they're not strictly subterranean; same goes for Dwarves. (in fact the number of subterranean creatures in general is too damn high; most animals live in forests, jungles, grasslands, and where possible; along rivers and coastline. They don't all pile into miles of underground caves... some do sure, but most don't.