low-light vision + darkvision?

[GlassJaw]

Can you have both low-light and darkvision? If so, what are the benefits of having both? If not, does darkvision supercede low-light?

 

[Lamoni]

Sure you can. My character has both right now. Low-light from a racial trait and darkvision from an item. They each work normally. In complete darkness, you only see out to 60' in black and white. In low light you can see twice as far as normal and can distinguish color. Our campaigns rarely have situations where either of these is much of a benefit, but the abilities are still there.

 

[AuraSeer]

You can have both abilities, and some monsters already do-- magical beasts for example. The abilities work normally, and don't directly interact at all. (That is, LLV does not double the range of your darkvision.)

The benefit of having both comes when you're not standing next to the light source. Say you're a displacer beast, sneaking up on a distant party of sunrod-carrying adventurers. You have darkvision, which lets you see the area immediately around yourself. You also have low-light vision, which improves your ability to see in the lit area, so you can see the pesky elf who is 120' from the sunrod (but still outside the range of your darkvision).

If you were an elf sneaking up in the same situation, you would still be able to see a 120' radius around the sunrod, yet nothing in the area immediately around yourself. You might trip over something in the darkness, or some other monster might sneak up and eat you.

On the other hand, if you were a dwarf, you would be able to see just fine around yourself. But you wouldn't get as much benefit from the light source, so you could not see that elf 120' from the sunrod until you personally got within 60' of him.