D&D 5E Replacing Racial Darkvision

[Mistwell]

I have turned Darkvision into Low-Light Vision (see in dim light as in bright light) and Superior Darkvision into Darkvision for my campaigns. You cannot read without Light as well. This has made light much more of a factor and given that I use Roll20 for displaying maps with dynamic lighting has made for more immersive and exciting gameplay.

I think this is a good idea. Though I'd probably switch a few races to either 30' low light instead of 60' (and probably call that infravision, so its heat vision instead of black and white) and give them a minor ability, for some variation.

For example, I'd give dwarves 60' darkvision (low-light black and white vision) while I'd give elves 30' infravision (low-light heat vision) along with advantage on detecting secret doors, and gnomes 30' darkvision (low-light black and white) along with advantage on detecting traps.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Apologies if this has already been covered. What do we think would be a fair trade off if I was to house rule out racial darkvision? I want to make sure the races without darkvision don't end up more or less powerful accidentally due to the trade.

Thanks!


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Just delete darkvision. You dont need to replace it with anything. Your overall game will work better, that is reason enough. You dont need to add anything back to "compensate", just make sure everyone knows before making their PCs.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Just dump it. You don't need to replace it with anything. Losing Darkvision means that characters actually have to make some meaningful choices if they want to investigate underground or dark places. I've noticed that many players don't like having to actually make a meaningful choice.

All PCs are human in my games. It's amazing how much more interesting the game became for everybody after we took that route, and having to treat darkness as an actual obstacle was a larger part of it than we anticipated.

Agree!

 

[CapnZapp]

The power of darkvision only manifest when EVERYONE in the party has darkvision, because then the party can ditch torches and lanterns while travelling.

As long as even one party member lacks darkvision, it isn't overly strong.

But when EVERYONE has it; it is a very strong advantage.

The problem with 5e giving darkvision to Elves is that it becomes too easy to create a functional version of the classical party (Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling) that doesn't need light:

Just go with Half-Elf, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, and you have a significantly advantaged party with no real cost.

So my suggestion is to revert back the forest-dwelling races (Elf, Half-Elf and maybe Gnome) to low-light vision, and problem solved.

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