Sun Rods are awesome!

[frankthedm]

Sunrods light a large enough area that you shouldn't have to worry about lighting effects while you have one out. This is a Good Thing.

For some people. Others don't like making visibility a non issue.

 

[The Green Adam]

It doesn't make sense by your definition, for sure.

But if they are creating an aura of even light, then it makes sense. In a magickalelele world, light doesn't have to emit from a point, it can simply be an aura.

That's kind of what I was thinking. Maybe looking directly at the Sunrod might make you see spots but for the most part 'light descends upon the region' seeming to 'come from no one place but bathing the area in light'.

D&D has always outsold SciFi games yet many of its fans analyze it like a book on physics . Never understood that.

AD

 

[Agamon]

That typo was really laugh-out-loud funny for me for some reason.

It was funnier 8 years ago when diaglo coined the phrase...

 

[Ahglock]

I hate sunrods. I hate all alchemical items that popped up in 3e, actually

And I misread the illumination as 20 ft. (4 squares)

I just use torches w/o problems

I liked the idea behind alchemical items in general but some items were auto-fail due to lameness and other failed due to there mechanics, and none were win.

 

[drothgery]

For some people. Others don't like making visibility a non issue.

I don't want to redraw the circles of lit vs unlit areas on the battlemap every round because the guy who has one hand free rogue is moving around constantly with the light source.

To accomplish this, you either need light sources that light up a bigger area than you're likely to move in within a combat scene, or you ignore the lighting rules entirely.

 

[Bullgrit]

Convenient and continual/continuous light sources have existed in D&D from the beginning.

In the original D&D, continual light was a 2nd-level magic-user spell and a 3rd-level cleric spell with a diameter of 240', but less than full daylight. (Yes, that's two hundred forty feet.)

In Expert D&D it was a 60' diameter area of light equal to full daylight.

In Advanced D&D it was 60' diameter area of light equal to torch light.

And none had any material cost at all -- a 3rd-level MU could literally create one permanent light source a day for free with no effort beyond casting a single spell.

If your party didn't have at least one something with continual light cast on it, you weren't serious dungeon explorers.

Bullgrit
Total Bullgrit

 

[Toras]

They are the glow sticks of doom and as anyone who has gone splunking will tell you, they can be dead handy. But my question is, can Sun rods kill vampires?

 

[fba827]

It really comes down to mood/style of the game (and by default, the preference of the DM).

If you do not want to worry about moody feelings in dungeons and hate having to track darkness/vision issues, or simply see no problem with them, then, yeah, sunrods are just pure win (cheap, effective, and light -- no pun intended on that last one )

If you want there to be more moodiness and potential problem from darkness, then, yeah, sunrods need some adjusting. How to adjust it? Several suggestions in this thread include:
* removing sunrods altogether (and that goes for the new hat of sunrods too! )
* increase cost (i.e. 2gp to 20gp -- just remember to increase the cost of the "standard adventurer's pack" accordingly or remove them from said pack; or 50gp to make it as expensive as an everburning torch but brighter and shorter duration than that item)
* decrease illumination radius (i.e. 20 sq to 10, 5, 3, or 1 square radius)
* decrease duration (i.e. 4 hour to 1 encounter or to 1 round)
* something else ...
* some combination of the above

Keep in mind that the suggestions on how to adjust it are just examples, you may have a different preference for price increase amount, etc. Everyone has their own preference for what works best in their own games.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

We used sunrods extensively in 3.X as well, so this change makes me smile, even if it is a tad OP.

 

[Mistwell]

CLEARLY I DISAGREE. Gah, do you think I didn't consider the context? Amazingly, I DID! Only on the internet, eh?

They're not fine because:

A) They're trivially expensive from low levels.

B) They make every other light source, including all the ones you, the DM, might be considering in their dungeon, utterly meaningless unless for some inexplicable reason the players choose not to use them, or stealth is being used and no-one has one of these turned on.

C) They DO NOT make any sense even in a magical context and assuming they purely emitted light, because sheer AMOUNT of light even a bloody "magickalelele" world, needed to "brightly illuminate" roughly 100ft will BLIND YOU REAL GOOD if you look at the source, and everyone standing behind the guy with the sunrod would be dealing with horrible after-images and generally the whole thing seems fundamentally ludicrous.

In a magical world, I can see a safe, non-burning, pure-light emitting alternative to a torch. I don't see, however, why it should be AMAZINGLY BRIGHT to the point of being patently ludicrous and making every other light-source pointless. Sunrods should be clean, safe magical alternative to torches (with a similar light radius), generally only used by adventurers due to their cost. Not some sort blinding space-flare which completely removes darkness for 100 feet.

This would also leave some room for other, cooler magical light sources, and make the wizard's floating light not entirely pointless, perhaps.

That's the thing about sunrods. They're not cool. They're not rocking. They're just "Ok let's forget about any lighting rules indoors". And whilst that works for some people, for me, I think the whole "light in the darkness" deal is cool.

If it is a typo and it's meant to be 5 squares or something, then that's cool. I just don't think it's a typo.

Up until your last two paragraphs, you seem to have confused your subjective opinion with objective truth.