Replacing Lowlight with Sharpsight

[Stalker0]

So far in my 4e experience, low light seems to be fairly useless for players. But then again, I often thought it was pretty useless in 3e too. The reason is simple, if even one player has regular vision, the party is going to use torches or sunrods or something to see properly, meaning lowlight is wasted. So I've thought of a mechanic that would allow lowlight creatures to get more general use out of their vision, which is now called Sharpsight.

Sharpsight: Creatures with sharpsight only take a -1 penalty to attack rolls against creatures with concealment, instead of the normal -2. Sharpsight has no benefit against creatures with total concealment.

With this version, elves and the like get a benefit against creatures in dim light but they also get a bonus against creatures in fog, smoke, and the like. This way even with a strong light source there's a chance they can make use of their vision in larger variety of encounters...but have a weaker bonus when it comes to regular dim light.

Thoughts?

 

[chris.m.durham]

I really like this idea. Fantasy literature often speaks about the visual acuity of elves but it's hard to represent mechanically without causing balance issues. An increase to DEX sort of represents this in certain situations (improved ranged attack bonus) but doesn't do so much to explain it. I think this small edge from sharpsight represents the visual acuity of elves without unbalancing anything, and is an improvement over something that is not so advantageous as it sounds.

Of course I do like my elves with better low light vision too (Tolkien's elves were people of the stars after all)

 

[darkadelphia]

Granted, this doesn't come up that often, but I've found low-light vision comes into play when fighting humanoids in my games. Since humanoid monster groups often consist of creatures who all have low light vision, it makes sense that they would light their living spaces with candles, embers or other low-light sources. This means the hobgoblin archers shooting from the candle-lit ledge outside of torch range are concealed from the human wizard, but not the elf cleric.

Though, as the cost of sunrods becomes trivial, I'm sure "outside torch range" will become practically non-existent soon.

 

[mlangsdorf]

By the rules, the cost of sunrods is trivial. They cost 2 GP for 4 hours. An everlasting torch is only 50 GP, well within the budget of any 3rd level character.

 

[Syrsuro]

Low light vision is only useless because they need to (imho) errata the section on light sources.

First: Sunrods are ludicrous. They need to cost an arm and a leg or have a reasonable radius. They were put in the game as they are so that lazy DMs wouldn't have to worry about light source radii, they could just go "Oh, you have a sunrod? Everything is brightly lit." Simple? Yes. Cheesy? Also yes. They should reduce its radius in errata (or increase its price).

Second: What happens outside of the radius of a torch (or a sunrod for that matter)? The book doesn't say. But common sense (we have torches in the real world, we can extrapolate how they work) tells us that there is a region of dimmer light outside of their radius. And in this radius, having low light vision matters. I am currently putting this radius at an additional 5 squares beyond the extent of bright light. A line to this effect needs to be added to the section on light sources.

Third (and this falls into the realm of house rule): If Dim Light is as Bright Light to a character with low light vision, it follows that there is some level of lighting that would be Dim Light to a charcter with low light vision and Darkness to a character without. At present I am ruling that, as long as there is a bright light source within line of sight, the lighting is Dim to a character with low light vision, even if it is Dark to a character with normal vision.

Carl

 

[darkadelphia]

By the rules, the cost of sunrods is trivial. They cost 2 GP for 4 hours. An everlasting torch is only 50 GP, well within the budget of any 3rd level character.

everlasting torches are "better" from the DM's perspective because they had a more limited range of illumination. A normal encounter area will often offer the opportunity to hide beyond the range of torch light, it's rare to have an encounter where every single corner would not be illuminated by a sunrod. I realize they both become affordable quickly. Hence my disclaimer that it didn't come up very often and only at low levels. You can hope that all of your will players will hate beancounting and use only everlasting torches so they don't have to track sunrod use ;-).

 

[darkadelphia]

Low light vision is only useless because they need to (imho) errata the section on light sources.

First: Sunrods are ludicrous. They need to cost an arm and a leg or have a reasonable radius. They were put in the game as they are so that lazy DMs wouldn't have to worry about light source radii, they could just go "Oh, you have a sunrod? Everything is brightly lit." Simple? Yes. Cheesy? Also yes. They should reduce its radius in errata (or increase its price).

Second: What happens outside of the radius of a torch (or a sunrod for that matter)? The book doesn't say. But common sense (we have torches in the real world, we can extrapolate how they work) tells us that there is a region of dimmer light outside of their radius. And in this radius, having low light vision matters. I am currently putting this radius at an additional 5 squares beyond the extent of bright light. A line to this effect needs to be added to the section on light sources.

Third (and this falls into the realm of house rule): If Dim Light is as Bright Light to a character with low light vision, it follows that there is some level of lighting that would be Dim Light to a charcter with low light vision and Darkness to a character without. At present I am ruling that, as long as there is a bright light source within line of sight, the lighting is Dim to a character with low light vision, even if it is Dark to a character with normal vision.

Carl

Light was simplified for a reason. Optional rules would be fine, but no errata is necessary for most people. I would consider using more complicated light rules, but only because maptools handles light for me (and does beautifully).