Regular vision

[Darklone]

Dancing Lights

 

[Quasqueton]

Yet even when the torch is a hundred yards away, the orc can see perfectly well in the area where he himself is standing; that doesn't sound like "dim vision" to me.

I wasn't calling the orc's darkvision, "dim vision". I was refering to human normal vision. The human, who sees jack nothing immediately around him when the torch is a hurdred yards away.

Quasqueton

 

[Alduk]

(OK, this post was made quite redundant due to being typed offline 2 hours ago, but there we go anyway...)

I don't quite get your argument, AuraSeer; no one is disputing that the Darkvision possessed by the orc is a superior kind of vision. Quite the contrary; we argue that, being the weakest and minoritary degree of vision, human-like vision doesn't deserve the title of "normal" vision.

 

[AuraSeer]

Right, but when someone with only darkvision is looking at a light source, he can only see in the same radius as a human. If human sight were labelled "dim vision," you would have to say that orcs and dwarves and other non-LLV races have "Darkvision and dim vision."

Let me put it another way. If you rename things so that elves have "normal vision," then the "normal" light radius of a torch is 40'. But a dwarf and a human looking at it can only see a radius of 20'. So the dwarf has "dim vision," like the human, even though he also has Darkvision (which isn't really dim at all).

And I just thought of something else, which is probably the real reason: D&D is just one game that uses the d20 system. In d20, humans are supposed to be the baseline, with no special powers or drawbacks, because not all games will have alternate races to compare them to. So even in a game where all the alternates have better vision than a human, whatever humans get is "normal" by default.

 

[Saeviomagy]

My personal suggestion is that the entire perception system of 3e needs an overhaul.

Spot and listen should be cut back into a single "perception" skill. Why? Because so many monsters have abilities that are neither spot nor listen, and it really matters.

Naturally move silently and hide would be turned into stealth.

Every single monster should be cut back to a default of "normal vision" and deserving monsters should be given additional abilities

blindsight, scent, tremorsense, blindsense, low-light vision etc should all be modified to be bonuses to perception (up to +40 in the case of blindsight, so detection and pinpointing of invisible but otherwise unhidden targets is automatic). These bonuses should also have situations where they do not apply, or are reduced (ie - creature with blindsight that is in the area of a silence spell, and is trying to find a creature with some form of scent-defying spell will, unless the blindsight is magical, be relying on normal sight...)

Concealment should be a matter of the spot check - a sufficiently high spot check should defeat concealment which is not total. After all, it seems strange to get a 50+spot check to see a target in the shadows, but yet still have a 1/5 chance of not having seen him well enough to hit him with a weapon.

and so on and so forth

IOW - if you're going to do it, do it properly.

 

[Alduk]

Auraseer:

Ah, now I see your point. (weak pun intended)

Let me put it another way. If you rename things so that elves have "normal vision," then the "normal" light radius of a torch is 40'. But a dwarf and a human looking at it can only see a radius of 20'. So the dwarf has "dim vision," like the human, even though he also has Darkvision (which isn't really dim at all).

That wouldn't be too much hassle - either you give low-light vision to everyone who has darkvsion (not a terribly big deal, but an uncalled for boost to many creatures anyway) or you put it this way: elves have normal vision, humans have dim vision, and dwarves have "darkvision up to 60 ft., dim vision beyond that".

And I just thought of something else, which is probably the real reason: D&D is just one game that uses the d20 system. In d20, humans are supposed to be the baseline, with no special powers or drawbacks, because not all games will have alternate races to compare them to. So even in a game where all the alternates have better vision than a human, whatever humans get is "normal" by default.

Now this is the one argument I agree with the most. If I had to choose a justification to why humans' inferior kind of vision is the standard, this one would be the easiest to swallow.