I'll be blunt here. A small part of me was hoping that Darkvision would be removed from the 2024 core rules altogether. Although I am not surprised it remained, I maintain that Darkvision is a terrible annoyance for DM's and is so prevalent amongst the different species that it is not a very 'special' trait. The endless arguments at the table - "Can't I see in that cave because of Darkvision? Do I even need a torch? Can we just communicate to our one party member without Darkvision everything we see so they basically have Darkvision?" The cycle continues...
Darkvision doesn't just undermine the sinister obstacles that come with low-light areas, but it also cheapens skills like the Blindsight feat and negates the need to cast light or use torches. As a DM, it is very difficult to adjudicate the difference between darkness, and the semi-sort-of-darkness that players with Darkvision can see. Devoid of color, but you can make out shapes? So its like fantasy night vision goggles that almost everyone gets - Darkvision creates more problems than it helps and I really wish that the WotC would have removed it altogether. Either it's dark, or it isn't.
To be clear, I understand the need for monsters to have traits like Darkvision. I am speaking with regards to PC's.
Both 3e and 4e distinguished between low-light vision and darkvision, and made actual darkvision fairly rare for PCs. You do need darkvision for monsters.
I agree about monsters, I am discussing solely for PC's.
I found out running Shadowdark that NO PC's have darkvision, and ALL monsters do. It makes for a vastly better game. There is nothing stopping you as a DM from making a house rule that wipes out PC darkvision, for all the reasons that you gave. That being said, I make it clear to players that in my game a light source nearby ruins darkvision. That alone changes the dynamic, quite a bit.
I get the whole "player interjects that they have darkvision every 10 seconds" meme, but I don't think it's really that much of a problem. It's created some fun scenarios in one campaign where two human PCs can't see in the dark and the elf and tiefling can, and that difference has been a big factor in some combats. I could see an argument for scaling back how many species have it, but again, I just don't think it's such a widespread issue.
Both 3e and 4e distinguished between low-light vision and darkvision, and made actual darkvision fairly rare for PCs. You do need darkvision for monsters.
I think this was a vastly superior way to handle the matter - even if it ran into some issues of players/DMs debating what counted as “low light” and what counted as “darkness.” Those conversations, while they could be disruptive if you had a disruptive player, were nowhere close to as big of a problem as trivializing darkness as a mechanical tool in the DM toolkit.
If a DM told me “it is a house rule that all species with Darkvision have low light vision instead” I would not be too upset with that change. I probably would be upset if the feature was taken away entirely - a lesser version feels like good game design and a compromise, “no, you can’t have any benefit” feels like DM overreach.
I'm not going to "tear you apart" OP, but your belief that Darkvision "negates the need to cast light or use torches" is just false.
And this is actually the crux of the issue - very often, the folks who think Darkvision's prevalence among species trivializes that aspect of the game are not actually running Darkvision correctly. The simple fact is that even if everyone in the party has darkvision, carrying torches or lanterns or Light spells into lightless areas is still beneficial.
If you have Darkvision, you can see in Dim Light within a specified range as if it were Bright Lightand in Darkness within that range as if it were Dim Light. You discern colors in that Darkness only as shades of gray. See also chapter 1 (“Exploration”).
It upgrades Darkness only to Dim Light, which means the party is still at a considerable disadvantage (literally) for using their Darkvision as a crutch:
Light
The presence or absence of light determines the category of illumination in an area, as defined below.
Bright Light. Bright Light lets most creatures see normally. Even gloomy days provide Bright Light, as do torches, lanterns, fires, and other sources of illumination within a specific radius.
Dim Light.Dim Light, also called shadows, creates a Lightly Obscured area. An area of Dim Light is usually a boundary between Bright Light and surrounding Darkness. The soft light of twilight and dawn also counts as Dim Light. A full moon might bathe the land in Dim Light.
Darkness. Darkness creates a Heavily Obscured area. Characters face Darkness outdoors at night (even most moonlit nights), within the confines of an unlit dungeon, or in an area of magical Darkness.
So if you're in darkness and have Darkvision, you go up to Dim, i.e. Lightly Obscured. And that means:
Lightly Obscured
You have Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks to see something in a Lightly Obscured space.
All this means you're constantly eating a -5 to your Passive Perception, as well as roll-twice-take-lowest to your checks, even with Darkvision. That's a honking big penalty to find every trap, every hidden treasure, every secret door, every hiding monster etc if you're trying to do so without light.
And that's not even all either. Need to know if that dark smear on the floor 60ft ahead is oil or blood? No colors, you'll gave to get close enough to smell or touch it. Are there Drow waiting in the dark to ambush your group? I hope you have one of your own, because chances are their DV outranges yours, so they're effectively invisible until you're able to engage. Casting spells in the dark? Hope your casters enjoy having only half the maximum range to work with on many of their spells that need sight.
TL;DR: if your players all have Darkvision characters, and you're not enforcing any of these downsides - then you're the one making Darkvision too powerful, not the game.
I'm not going to "tear you apart" OP, but your belief that Darkvision "negates the need to cast light or use torches" is just false.
And this is actually the crux of the issue - very often, the folks who think Darkvision's prevalence among species trivializes that aspect of the game are not actually running Darkvision correctly. The simple fact is that even if everyone in the party has darkvision, carrying torches or lanterns or Light spells into lightless areas is still beneficial.
Carrying torches or light spells into lightless areas is often much worse than relying on darkvision and putting up with the penalties, because light sources are incredibly obvious and basically make stealth a non-option.
Carrying torches or light spells into lightless areas is often much worse than relying on darkvision and putting up with the penalties, because light sources are incredibly obvious and basically make stealth a non-option.
Here's the thing about lanterns, you can turn them off if there are beings up ahead that you need to sneak past.
Yes, you'll have to weigh the benefits of needing to avoid potential observers vs the benefits of being able to find hard-to-spot traps and other hazards before it's too late. That's called adventuring.
Here's the thing about lanterns, you can turn them off if there are beings up ahead that you need to sneak past.
First of all, if you're using lanterns, most of the time by the time you know there's something to sneak past, they already know you're there and it's too late to sneak.
Secondly, sneaking around while completely blind is a recipe for disaster.
Bring back Infravision! I guess it got too confusing and was eliminated. Seeing heat in the dark makes more sense than the current prevalence of Grayvision, but what did Salvatore know about balancing classes and species, anyway?
Here's the thing about lanterns, you can turn them off if there are beings up ahead that you need to sneak past.
First of all, if you're using lanterns, most of the time by the time you know there's something to sneak past, they already know you're there and it's too late to sneak.
Secondly, sneaking around while completely blind is a recipe for disaster.
Why would you be "completely blind?" I'm making the case for species who have Darkvision to also want a light source on hand, rather than the OP's belief that light sources are useless for them. Searching for traps with a constant -5 penalty has risks of its own.
Each DM runs games differently, only at level 1 or 2 do I put the players through the "it's dark how do you see?" routine. Once the players solve it the first time, I never bring it up again unless it is specifically important for combat mechanics. ie clearing out a demon filled base at level 10 (my current players) and even then I only use it to limit the amount of demons attacking at once.
Next most player are human, I don't get this honestly but it happens every time. Seriously I can't believe of the four characters on the table we have 1 kalashtar (basically a human with added fluff) barbarian, 1 Human Pirate, 1 human Necromancer, and one Tiefling/Aasimar (using the UA Hybrid rules) Bard.
Because the big problem case is how utterly crippling it is to not have darkvision. If you give darkvision to everyone (including humans), there's no real problem with darkvision (it's kind of stupid, but doesn't cause game problems).
Although I frequently play those without darkvision, most at our tables won't even consider a species without darkvision for their characters (and if human, take Devil Sight (Eldritch Invocation Feat) for the human feat at first level). Of course 5e24 changes this, but i'm talking 5e up to now.
If the group just used Darkvision, and doesn't use light sources, I suspect they would change their tactics in the future if you'd toss them up against a Gloom Stalker evil NPC. That Gloom Stalker would annihilate a party without the capability of producing light.
Personally, I think they should greatly reduce the number of playable species that get Darkvision (yet they keep expanding the list).
Some comments from the peanut gallery 1) it’s a fantasy game so yes you can toss physics out the window if you want, but to my mind infravision at least had real world analogs and explanations - and loopholes. Technically it was even capable of a sort of “color vision”. Pit vipers and a few other snakes and reptiles have infrared “visual” sensors ( the pits) that allow them to identify warm blooded prey in the dark of night. It’s not highly detailed but it’s enough to tell what it is, where it is and if there is something hotter or cooler between the snake and the prey. Oh, why don’t mammals have infravision? Why is it only cold blooded creatures like snakes? Because the body has to be cold to not generate so much natural heat that the body wipes out external signals with its own internal “noise” so technically only cold blooded creatures should have infravision. 2) the old ultra vision that dark vision is effectively built off of was always bogus. It used UV light with the premise that it was so thourougkly scattered as to be present in the air everywhere, even miles deep in the underdark. Sorry, but that was wrong physics to start. Because the wavelengths are so short even the atmospheric dust etc is too large to scatter it so it basically follows straight lines. 3) A lot of folks, possibly including the authors, appear to have a misconception of how folks see. Your eyes don’t produce any light, they only receive light from other sources that is reflected off objects and surfaces to them. Then the brain fits the info the eyes receives into a picture. So if there are no nearby light sources there is no light to be seen, no matter how long you wait for your eyes to adjust. Yes you can see a grey image in very dim light - light that you would normally consider darkness. But in true darkness nothing is ever visible. ( this is something every film photographer learned when they started making their own film rolls - especially of low light/high ASA black and white film - or when trying to move film from the film can to the development tank to develop your film) . 4) in a really dark environment, even something as bright as a moon lite night in the middle of the ocean something as dim as a cigarette coal can be seen at over a mile - talk to anyone who has served in the navy about night time security measures - something as bright as a torch or a glowing sword is going to be seen from far greater distances than the light allows the party to see. It’s so bad that the torch is causing the walls to reflect enough around corners to be visible from the other end of that super long hallway the foes are watching from. The first hint that they are there is going to be the hail of arrows or bolts and spells that assault the party from the invisible dark depths of the hall. How many stories have you heard or read where the protagonist sees and counts the fires of his trailing foes from the protagonist’s dark fire less camp. Or, they light a bunch of fires with a few folks keeping them going while the rest of the army changes position and assaults the light blinded foe from the darkness? 5) low light vision is a real thing as well, cats, owls, etc have eyes adapted to gather as much of the limited light present at night. This is something that makes sense for night/evening adapted warm blooded surface creatures to have ( such as elves).
I suppose darkvision sort of works a simplified substitute for all of the above but ….
Some comments from the peanut gallery 1) it’s a fantasy game so yes you can toss physics out the window if you want, but to my mind infravision at least had real world analogs and explanations - and loopholes. Technically it was even capable of a sort of “color vision”. Pit vipers and a few other snakes and reptiles have infrared “visual” sensors ( the pits) that allow them to identify warm blooded prey in the dark of night. It’s not highly detailed but it’s enough to tell what it is, where it is and if there is something hotter or cooler between the snake and the prey. Oh, why don’t mammals have infravision? Why is it only cold blooded creatures like snakes? Because the body has to be cold to not generate so much natural heat that the body wipes out external signals with its own internal “noise” so technically only cold blooded creatures should have infravision. 2) the old ultra vision that dark vision is effectively built off of was always bogus. It used UV light with the premise that it was so thourougkly scattered as to be present in the air everywhere, even miles deep in the underdark. Sorry, but that was wrong physics to start. Because the wavelengths are so short even the atmospheric dust etc is too large to scatter it so it basically follows straight lines. 3) A lot of folks, possibly including the authors, appear to have a misconception of how folks see. Your eyes don’t produce any light, they only receive light from other sources that is reflected off objects and surfaces to them. Then the brain fits the info the eyes receives into a picture. So if there are no nearby light sources there is no light to be seen, no matter how long you wait for your eyes to adjust. Yes you can see a grey image in very dim light - light that you would normally consider darkness. But in true darkness nothing is ever visible. ( this is something every film photographer learned when they started making their own film rolls - especially of low light/high ASA black and white film - or when trying to move film from the film can to the development tank to develop your film) . 4) in a really dark environment, even something as bright as a moon lite night in the middle of the ocean something as dim as a cigarette coal can be seen at over a mile - talk to anyone who has served in the navy about night time security measures - something as bright as a torch or a glowing sword is going to be seen from far greater distances than the light allows the party to see. It’s so bad that the torch is causing the walls to reflect enough around corners to be visible from the other end of that super long hallway the foes are watching from. The first hint that they are there is going to be the hail of arrows or bolts and spells that assault the party from the invisible dark depths of the hall. How many stories have you heard or read where the protagonist sees and counts the fires of his trailing foes from the protagonist’s dark fire less camp. Or, they light a bunch of fires with a few folks keeping them going while the rest of the army changes position and assaults the light blinded foe from the darkness? 5) low light vision is a real thing as well, cats, owls, etc have eyes adapted to gather as much of the limited light present at night. This is something that makes sense for night/evening adapted warm blooded surface creatures to have ( such as elves).
I suppose darkvision sort of works a simplified substitute for all of the above but ….
You missed echo location.
Alright, yes everything you said is true about the real world. D&D is not based on the Real world, nor does it use Real World physics at all. (just look at Spell jammer rules if you thought otherwise.)
1st in the ancient world up until the mid 18th century people thought that there was a type of light emitted by eyes, and some night creatures could see at night because this light was brighter for them. It's where the idea of the Evil eye comes from, as the evil eye was a cursed light emitted by those eyes. It's how basilisks, gorgons(Medusa), and cockatrice could turn you into stone. (I always find it funny how these monsters got translated into D&D)
In D&D drow and other Under Dark species used this light with great advantage as their dark skin avoided reflecting back eye light. ((Anyone familiar with actual cave creatures will notice the lack of pigment they have and they are usually white as milk.))
So yeah, D&D is based on mythology explanations, not real world explanations.
I hate using Wikipedia for references you can read, but mythology isn't something posted on the internet correctly. (Either the myth is published from a crazy believers POV, or not treated with the correct dispassion of anthropology.) Wiki entry on eye light: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_beam <- lacking in much detail.
Because the big problem case is how utterly crippling it is to not have darkvision. If you give darkvision to everyone (including humans), there's no real problem with darkvision (it's kind of stupid, but doesn't cause game problems).
If you don't want darkness to ever be an issue at your table, just stick dim light everywhere. Bioluminescent mushrooms/lichen in caverns, ensconced candles in dungeons, eerie glowing mist in crypts, starry nights and fireflies in the deep forests etc. Giving every human and halfling nightvision isn't just immersion-breaking, it's completely unnecessary.
If you don't want darkness to ever be an issue at your table, just stick dim light everywhere.
I don't want darkness to be an issue for some characters; the difference between having darkvision and not is just too large.
Depends on the campaign and the DM. I usually do something at 1st or 2nd level to remind players to maintain a source of light for the humies. Then I ignore the rule unless it counts for combat. ie disadvantage/advantage. Otherwise it kills the game flow.
D&D Family,
I'll be blunt here. A small part of me was hoping that Darkvision would be removed from the 2024 core rules altogether. Although I am not surprised it remained, I maintain that Darkvision is a terrible annoyance for DM's and is so prevalent amongst the different species that it is not a very 'special' trait. The endless arguments at the table - "Can't I see in that cave because of Darkvision? Do I even need a torch? Can we just communicate to our one party member without Darkvision everything we see so they basically have Darkvision?" The cycle continues...
Darkvision doesn't just undermine the sinister obstacles that come with low-light areas, but it also cheapens skills like the Blindsight feat and negates the need to cast light or use torches. As a DM, it is very difficult to adjudicate the difference between darkness, and the semi-sort-of-darkness that players with Darkvision can see. Devoid of color, but you can make out shapes? So its like fantasy night vision goggles that almost everyone gets - Darkvision creates more problems than it helps and I really wish that the WotC would have removed it altogether. Either it's dark, or it isn't.
To be clear, I understand the need for monsters to have traits like Darkvision. I am speaking with regards to PC's.
Feel free to tear me apart in the comments.
Both 3e and 4e distinguished between low-light vision and darkvision, and made actual darkvision fairly rare for PCs. You do need darkvision for monsters.
I agree about monsters, I am discussing solely for PC's.
I found out running Shadowdark that NO PC's have darkvision, and ALL monsters do. It makes for a vastly better game. There is nothing stopping you as a DM from making a house rule that wipes out PC darkvision, for all the reasons that you gave. That being said, I make it clear to players that in my game a light source nearby ruins darkvision. That alone changes the dynamic, quite a bit.
I get the whole "player interjects that they have darkvision every 10 seconds" meme, but I don't think it's really that much of a problem. It's created some fun scenarios in one campaign where two human PCs can't see in the dark and the elf and tiefling can, and that difference has been a big factor in some combats. I could see an argument for scaling back how many species have it, but again, I just don't think it's such a widespread issue.
I think this was a vastly superior way to handle the matter - even if it ran into some issues of players/DMs debating what counted as “low light” and what counted as “darkness.” Those conversations, while they could be disruptive if you had a disruptive player, were nowhere close to as big of a problem as trivializing darkness as a mechanical tool in the DM toolkit.
If a DM told me “it is a house rule that all species with Darkvision have low light vision instead” I would not be too upset with that change. I probably would be upset if the feature was taken away entirely - a lesser version feels like good game design and a compromise, “no, you can’t have any benefit” feels like DM overreach.
I'm not going to "tear you apart" OP, but your belief that Darkvision "negates the need to cast light or use torches" is just false.
And this is actually the crux of the issue - very often, the folks who think Darkvision's prevalence among species trivializes that aspect of the game are not actually running Darkvision correctly. The simple fact is that even if everyone in the party has darkvision, carrying torches or lanterns or Light spells into lightless areas is still beneficial.
2024 Rules citations in the spoiler:
Let's start with what Darkvision actually does:
It upgrades Darkness only to Dim Light, which means the party is still at a considerable disadvantage (literally) for using their Darkvision as a crutch:
So if you're in darkness and have Darkvision, you go up to Dim, i.e. Lightly Obscured. And that means:
All this means you're constantly eating a -5 to your Passive Perception, as well as roll-twice-take-lowest to your checks, even with Darkvision. That's a honking big penalty to find every trap, every hidden treasure, every secret door, every hiding monster etc if you're trying to do so without light.
And that's not even all either. Need to know if that dark smear on the floor 60ft ahead is oil or blood? No colors, you'll gave to get close enough to smell or touch it. Are there Drow waiting in the dark to ambush your group? I hope you have one of your own, because chances are their DV outranges yours, so they're effectively invisible until you're able to engage. Casting spells in the dark? Hope your casters enjoy having only half the maximum range to work with on many of their spells that need sight.
TL;DR: if your players all have Darkvision characters, and you're not enforcing any of these downsides - then you're the one making Darkvision too powerful, not the game.
Carrying torches or light spells into lightless areas is often much worse than relying on darkvision and putting up with the penalties, because light sources are incredibly obvious and basically make stealth a non-option.
Here's the thing about lanterns, you can turn them off if there are beings up ahead that you need to sneak past.
Yes, you'll have to weigh the benefits of needing to avoid potential observers vs the benefits of being able to find hard-to-spot traps and other hazards before it's too late. That's called adventuring.
First of all, if you're using lanterns, most of the time by the time you know there's something to sneak past, they already know you're there and it's too late to sneak.
Secondly, sneaking around while completely blind is a recipe for disaster.
Bring back Infravision! I guess it got too confusing and was eliminated. Seeing heat in the dark makes more sense than the current prevalence of Grayvision, but what did Salvatore know about balancing classes and species, anyway?
Why would you be "completely blind?" I'm making the case for species who have Darkvision to also want a light source on hand, rather than the OP's belief that light sources are useless for them. Searching for traps with a constant -5 penalty has risks of its own.
kay.
Each DM runs games differently, only at level 1 or 2 do I put the players through the "it's dark how do you see?" routine. Once the players solve it the first time, I never bring it up again unless it is specifically important for combat mechanics. ie clearing out a demon filled base at level 10 (my current players) and even then I only use it to limit the amount of demons attacking at once.
Next most player are human, I don't get this honestly but it happens every time. Seriously I can't believe of the four characters on the table we have 1 kalashtar (basically a human with added fluff) barbarian, 1 Human Pirate, 1 human Necromancer, and one Tiefling/Aasimar (using the UA Hybrid rules) Bard.
Like seriously only 1 in the four has darkvision.
Because the big problem case is how utterly crippling it is to not have darkvision. If you give darkvision to everyone (including humans), there's no real problem with darkvision (it's kind of stupid, but doesn't cause game problems).
Although I frequently play those without darkvision, most at our tables won't even consider a species without darkvision for their characters (and if human, take Devil Sight (Eldritch Invocation Feat) for the human feat at first level). Of course 5e24 changes this, but i'm talking 5e up to now.
If the group just used Darkvision, and doesn't use light sources, I suspect they would change their tactics in the future if you'd toss them up against a Gloom Stalker evil NPC. That Gloom Stalker would annihilate a party without the capability of producing light.
Personally, I think they should greatly reduce the number of playable species that get Darkvision (yet they keep expanding the list).
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
Some comments from the peanut gallery
1) it’s a fantasy game so yes you can toss physics out the window if you want, but to my mind infravision at least had real world analogs and explanations - and loopholes. Technically it was even capable of a sort of “color vision”. Pit vipers and a few other snakes and reptiles have infrared “visual” sensors ( the pits) that allow them to identify warm blooded prey in the dark of night. It’s not highly detailed but it’s enough to tell what it is, where it is and if there is something hotter or cooler between the snake and the prey. Oh, why don’t mammals have infravision? Why is it only cold blooded creatures like snakes? Because the body has to be cold to not generate so much natural heat that the body wipes out external signals with its own internal “noise” so technically only cold blooded creatures should have infravision.
2) the old ultra vision that dark vision is effectively built off of was always bogus. It used UV light with the premise that it was so thourougkly scattered as to be present in the air everywhere, even miles deep in the underdark. Sorry, but that was wrong physics to start. Because the wavelengths are so short even the atmospheric dust etc is too large to scatter it so it basically follows straight lines.
3) A lot of folks, possibly including the authors, appear to have a misconception of how folks see. Your eyes don’t produce any light, they only receive light from other sources that is reflected off objects and surfaces to them. Then the brain fits the info the eyes receives into a picture. So if there are no nearby light sources there is no light to be seen, no matter how long you wait for your eyes to adjust. Yes you can see a grey image in very dim light - light that you would normally consider darkness. But in true darkness nothing is ever visible. ( this is something every film photographer learned when they started making their own film rolls - especially of low light/high ASA black and white film - or when trying to move film from the film can to the development tank to develop your film) .
4) in a really dark environment, even something as bright as a moon lite night in the middle of the ocean something as dim as a cigarette coal can be seen at over a mile - talk to anyone who has served in the navy about night time security measures - something as bright as a torch or a glowing sword is going to be seen from far greater distances than the light allows the party to see. It’s so bad that the torch is causing the walls to reflect enough around corners to be visible from the other end of that super long hallway the foes are watching from. The first hint that they are there is going to be the hail of arrows or bolts and spells that assault the party from the invisible dark depths of the hall. How many stories have you heard or read where the protagonist sees and counts the fires of his trailing foes from the protagonist’s dark fire less camp. Or, they light a bunch of fires with a few folks keeping them going while the rest of the army changes position and assaults the light blinded foe from the darkness?
5) low light vision is a real thing as well, cats, owls, etc have eyes adapted to gather as much of the limited light present at night. This is something that makes sense for night/evening adapted warm blooded surface creatures to have ( such as elves).
I suppose darkvision sort of works a simplified substitute for all of the above but ….
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
You missed echo location.
Alright, yes everything you said is true about the real world. D&D is not based on the Real world, nor does it use Real World physics at all. (just look at Spell jammer rules if you thought otherwise.)
1st in the ancient world up until the mid 18th century people thought that there was a type of light emitted by eyes, and some night creatures could see at night because this light was brighter for them. It's where the idea of the Evil eye comes from, as the evil eye was a cursed light emitted by those eyes. It's how basilisks, gorgons(Medusa), and cockatrice could turn you into stone. (I always find it funny how these monsters got translated into D&D)
In D&D drow and other Under Dark species used this light with great advantage as their dark skin avoided reflecting back eye light. ((Anyone familiar with actual cave creatures will notice the lack of pigment they have and they are usually white as milk.))
So yeah, D&D is based on mythology explanations, not real world explanations.
I hate using Wikipedia for references you can read, but mythology isn't something posted on the internet correctly. (Either the myth is published from a crazy believers POV, or not treated with the correct dispassion of anthropology.) Wiki entry on eye light: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_beam <- lacking in much detail.
If you don't want darkness to ever be an issue at your table, just stick dim light everywhere. Bioluminescent mushrooms/lichen in caverns, ensconced candles in dungeons, eerie glowing mist in crypts, starry nights and fireflies in the deep forests etc. Giving every human and halfling nightvision isn't just immersion-breaking, it's completely unnecessary.
I don't want darkness to be an issue for some characters; the difference between having darkvision and not is just too large.
Depends on the campaign and the DM. I usually do something at 1st or 2nd level to remind players to maintain a source of light for the humies. Then I ignore the rule unless it counts for combat. ie disadvantage/advantage. Otherwise it kills the game flow.