D&D 5E This Almost Never Happens (A Light/Vision Thread)

[iserith]

Yeah, this is the old "turn", a unit of time (10 min) used to measure dungeon exploration in older ruleset.

I tied it to 10 minutes not for legacy purposes but because it fits pretty neatly within certain things like spell durations or ritual casting times. As well, 6 "rounds" per hour is a little easier to manage in my view than, say, 60 if I tied it to 1 minute increments. If I am using a rule of 8 hours of travel/adventuring per day before forced march rolls start happening, it means each adventuring day has 48 of these increments which end up being a resource like hit points or hit dice for the players to manage. You get 48 "rounds" of things you can do minus travel time, use it wisely!

 

[pukunui]

Next time I run Curse of Strahd, I'm thinking I'll either limit it to races without darkvision or just say that darkvision doesn't work in Barovia (except for vampires and other allies of Strahd). I found that having PCs who could see in the dark ran against the theme of a horror story too much for my taste.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I'm a big fan more magical darkness in supernatural/haunted/mysterious places. In fact, most of my Underdark is filled with with the equivalent of a mass upcasted Darkness spell. Now the players have to invest in some light!

Oh and dont forget living spells: a Huge (or gargantuan) sentient Shadow of Moil or Maddening Darkness engulfing the party in the dungeon will guarantee that they'll never use Darkvision as a once-size-fits-all anti-darkness solution!

 

[CleverNickName]

The part that baffles me is that this wasn't planned at all. I didn't restrict any race options, the players could choose any race they wanted (and I also allowed the customization options in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.) I didn't have any houserules or restrictions for darkvision, either. The players could choose their spells from any WotC sourcebook they wanted, they could purchase their equipment a la carte, and they even got to start with a free magic item from Table B.

I was deliberately hands-off with their characters: I wanted them to have free reign to play exactly the character they wanted to play, and then I would shape the world around them. (You know, the opposite of what usually happens with homebrew campaign settings.)

The odds of this happening were almost nil.

I'm really looking forward to looking at the sword-and-board Fighter and asking, with a straight face, "Which hand are you using to hold the torch?" Because just this once, after more than three decades of playing D&D and seeing the same clichés, the fighter won't be able to beg the mage for a light spell.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I have been wondering about this problem for some time. I like the atmosphere and groundedness that torches and lamps imply.

I toyed with the idea that since my world’s main religion involves the symbol of a brazier, magical light works differently. I want to get rid of the cantrip.

But I don’t want to frustrate folks—-just create more atmosphere and little more logistics. I have less and issuer with prestidigitation to light stuff.

I think as a player and DM I have been lax in keeping track of my own and other pc’s and monsters’ darkvision. It ain’t perfect thought we sometimes treat it that way!

 

[Ancalagon]

Something else I should mention - not every system has 80% ish of races having darkvision. In the GLOG (keeping in mind there are many, many versions of the GLOG) only one race can see in the dark (goblins). It creates the situation depicted in the OP by default.