Patryn of Elvenshae said:
Ah - but you're assuming the point to prove the point!
You can't assume you can read without light to prove that you can read without light.
Sorry, it appears I was too vague. I was trying to say that one cannot use the phrase "[...]sufficient light to read them [spellbooks] by" to argue anything. It was not meant to be a support for my view of things.
"Sufficient light" cannot be used as quantificator, because "sufficient" does not specify the amount involved. What's sufficient for one can easilly be too much, or too little, for someone else. "Sufficient food for a day" means a different thing to a halfling or gnome than it does to human or dwarf, and it's certainly not "sufficient" for an ogre. An elf would probably find a lit match sufficient to read comfortably by (provided it could burn long enough). A candle is sufficient for a human, whereas an elf can discern detail in a pretty big room with it. An elf wizard could prepare his spells on am moon-lit night, provided he's outside, with no additional light at all. Such a feat is impossible for a human or a halfling (unless magic is involved).
Also, I think the nonprevalence of dwarven wizards is a point in *my* favor. In general, dwarves don't write on paper. The paper-based spellcasting traditions of humans and elves, therefore, have penetrated very little into dwarven society for exactly that reason. Instead, they have devised their own methods of spell recording - rune magic, which is based on Divine magic.
You mention rune magic in your reply, and divine rune magic is province of FR, therefore I assume you use FR as your setting.
Do drow carve runes? I've read FRCS, Races of Faerun, Player's Guide to Faerun, the Underdark accessory (quite a few books about drow by Salvatore and Cunningham, but they bear no relelvance here, since most were written following the AD&D ruleset and infravision) and yet I never remember reading about them using carved writings as their primary writing method. And yet, they're a race renowned for their wizards.
In fact, you'd think Underdark would have to say something regarding reading and darkvision, provided it was meant to work you say it does.
But, you didn't say anything about the description of the darkvision spell I quoted, which is quite clear on the subject.
Likewise, I referred to, but didn't quote the description of darkvision as written under the dwarf and half-orc entry:
Darkvision:Dwarves can see in the dark up to 60 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but is othervise like normal sight, and dwarves can function just fine with no light at all.
Again, nothing that would even remotely indicate that darkvision doesn't function just like normal vision, only in black and white.
If you were describing a black-and-white film to some kid that never actually saw one, you'd proably say something like "it's like normal, colour films, only in black-and-white" (or you might say 'greyscale' instead).
If you were describing the kind of vision you support as darkvision, you, in all likelyhood, wouldn't use those words, as they don't describe the effect, because it's not "like normal vision". It is in black-and-white, but that's the only connection between the two.
Also, apparently, the illithid piture is not present in the 3.5 DMG (don't have it at hand to check myself). So you can't base the theory on it. Even if it is in there, it's a stretch, since there are plenty of pictures in the books that don't exactly correspond to the relevant text (check carrion crawler pic and description text in the MM).
And, if you take the "dwarves can function just fine with no light at all" line from the dwarf description, and apply your version of darkvision, then they can't function "just fine". Granted, dwarven wizards are rare. But dwarven blacksmiths, stonemasons, miners, etc. aren't. With your darkvision one piece of metal looks identical to other pieces of metal, that is a smith can't discern steel form iron from copper from mithral from bronze from adamantine from... you get the idea. A dwarven stonesmith can't tell one kind of stone from another. A miner has no way of recognising a lump of ore from a lump of stone. A cook will have trouble cooking (how do you discern various foods once they're chopped -- chopped carrots from chopped potatoes from chopped turnips from chopped beets from chopped beef...). In fact, just about any kind of job would require some degree of light at some time, which can't exactly be described as "functioning just fine with no light at all".
Your idea of darkvision is interesting, and I could see how it has some role-playing merits. But, it carries almost the same baggage old infravision did, which is why 3e designers got rid of it. Darkvision as is is a simple solution. It's not scientiffically accurate, but others have long before proven that it's not healthy mixing real-world science with D&D mechanics.
Regards!
