I was wondering how everyone handles non dark vision characters fighting in the dark with heavy cloud cover and the creature they are fighting has dark vision. Do you give all the non dark vision disadvantage on attack roles (up close melee and range) or do you just give range fighters disadvantage or neither?
"A heavily obscured area—such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage—blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area."
It's worth noting that even creatures with Darkvision are effectively blinded in the dark outside of their Darkvision radius (usually 60' or 120').
Because of a quirk of the advantage/disadvantage rules, two creatures without Darkvision fighting each other in the dark will attack each other with neither advantage nor disadvantage (since they are each blinded).
I'm not sure what heavy cloud cover has to do with it - either it's dark or it isn't. I suppose if the clouds were obscuring the moon and thus not even providing dim light.
Yeah, I just use the darkness rules for characters without darkvision.
I would say heavy cloud cover creates dim light during the day and blocks the moon's dim light at night.
I would say that the cloud cover would have to be extremely heavy (storm cloud) for me to consider that to give dim light during the day, but it's really up to the DM.
Probably something to consider - if the party are near a city and it's heavy cloud cover at night - it might actually be brighter than without clouds due to light pollution from the city's lanterns.
That's honestly why I said city and not town or village.
I mean - going out in the country in the UK on really overcast days - you can see even small villages from miles away because they light up the clouds above them. Of course that's with modern lights - but even in D&D a city would still be a pretty good beacon.
Having done lighting work and knowing the effects, Lyxen is quite correct. While the city/village would indeed show as a glow or "light" in the distance to approaching travelers they are still in the dark, as reflected light in their area is virtually nonexistent. You need a LOT of light pollution to start getting refraction from clouds and there are not any natural sources (candles, torches, etc) that are even remotely close to offer it.
Essentially a big city will appear as a faint glow as you approach, but won't be casting any light beyond 20-30 feet of the city walls.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Good freaking luck finding anywhere online that will talk about how much light a candle provides, instead of overexplaining foot candles or whatever to you... ugh
Good freaking luck finding anywhere online that will talk about how much light a candle provides, instead of overexplaining foot candles or whatever to you... ugh
I don't fully understand this reply, honestly, as there was nothing "overexplained" foot candles, lol. Maybe a RL example?
Sit a flashlight on a stool, on a pitch black night. Walk about 50 feet from it and see how well you can see. If it is truly a dark night (well away from the city and overcast with no moon) you wouldn't see a basketball on the ground in front of you. No measurements or numbers (aside from 50 feet away) to contend with.
***Edit** Also if you search lighting levels or lumens (measurement of light) in Google, it returns a lot of results.
Candela, lumen, lux, foot candles etc etc etc... I couldn’t find a straight answer that would help me figure out how big of an area “a candle” normally lights, without essentially studying for technical school.
D&D towns are full of torches, lanterns, and light spells that provide 20/20 radius light or more. In my experience, that would be a HELLA bright bulb. My floodlights for my barn only really bright light about 30-40 feet out, with dim light out to about 100... so seems to me that D&D lighting is pretty bright, is all I was gonna say.
Probably something to consider - if the party are near a city and it's heavy cloud cover at night - it might actually be brighter than without clouds due to light pollution from the city's lanterns.
If you've got a high magic setting with huge cities and everything lit up with continual flame torches, yes, but in a less significant setting really no. Assuming a D&D candle is one candlepower, a torch is about 200 lumens (for comparison, a typical urban streetlight is about 5,000). To get the equivalent of moonlight in a one mile radius requires 5-10 million lumens bouncing off the sky, which is reasonable for a modern small city of 100,000. A D&D town with a population of 5,000, lit by torches, is going to be more than a hundred times dimmer.
Actually, it's not that hard and often overcomplicated on the interned, but the idea is that the candela unit corresponds roughly to what a candles provides, and although the power of modern light sources are often expressed in lux, there is (for most purposes) an equivalent of 1 candela = 1 lux (again they are not measuring the same thing, but for simple intent and purpose it gives you a direct equivalence).
1 candela = 1 lumen/sr. For an omnidirection light source like a candle, 1 candela = 12.6 lumens.
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I was wondering how everyone handles non dark vision characters fighting in the dark with heavy cloud cover and the creature they are fighting has dark vision. Do you give all the non dark vision disadvantage on attack roles (up close melee and range) or do you just give range fighters disadvantage or neither?
The PHB directly addresses darkness:
"A heavily obscured area—such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage—blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area."
It's worth noting that even creatures with Darkvision are effectively blinded in the dark outside of their Darkvision radius (usually 60' or 120').
Because of a quirk of the advantage/disadvantage rules, two creatures without Darkvision fighting each other in the dark will attack each other with neither advantage nor disadvantage (since they are each blinded).
I'm not sure what heavy cloud cover has to do with it - either it's dark or it isn't. I suppose if the clouds were obscuring the moon and thus not even providing dim light.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
ok thank you for that. Yeah that is what i was thinking with the heavy cloud cover they wouldn't even have the advantage of having moon light
Yeah, I just use the darkness rules for characters without darkvision.
I would say heavy cloud cover creates dim light during the day and blocks the moon's dim light at night.
That's what I was thinking, yeah.
Probably something to consider - if the party are near a city and it's heavy cloud cover at night - it might actually be brighter than without clouds due to light pollution from the city's lanterns.
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That's honestly why I said city and not town or village.
I mean - going out in the country in the UK on really overcast days - you can see even small villages from miles away because they light up the clouds above them. Of course that's with modern lights - but even in D&D a city would still be a pretty good beacon.
Mega Yahtzee Thread:
Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).
Having done lighting work and knowing the effects, Lyxen is quite correct. While the city/village would indeed show as a glow or "light" in the distance to approaching travelers they are still in the dark, as reflected light in their area is virtually nonexistent. You need a LOT of light pollution to start getting refraction from clouds and there are not any natural sources (candles, torches, etc) that are even remotely close to offer it.
Essentially a big city will appear as a faint glow as you approach, but won't be casting any light beyond 20-30 feet of the city walls.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Good freaking luck finding anywhere online that will talk about how much light a candle provides, instead of overexplaining foot candles or whatever to you... ugh
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I don't fully understand this reply, honestly, as there was nothing "overexplained" foot candles, lol. Maybe a RL example?
Sit a flashlight on a stool, on a pitch black night. Walk about 50 feet from it and see how well you can see. If it is truly a dark night (well away from the city and overcast with no moon) you wouldn't see a basketball on the ground in front of you. No measurements or numbers (aside from 50 feet away) to contend with.
***Edit** Also if you search lighting levels or lumens (measurement of light) in Google, it returns a lot of results.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Candela, lumen, lux, foot candles etc etc etc... I couldn’t find a straight answer that would help me figure out how big of an area “a candle” normally lights, without essentially studying for technical school.
D&D towns are full of torches, lanterns, and light spells that provide 20/20 radius light or more. In my experience, that would be a HELLA bright bulb. My floodlights for my barn only really bright light about 30-40 feet out, with dim light out to about 100... so seems to me that D&D lighting is pretty bright, is all I was gonna say.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
If you've got a high magic setting with huge cities and everything lit up with continual flame torches, yes, but in a less significant setting really no. Assuming a D&D candle is one candlepower, a torch is about 200 lumens (for comparison, a typical urban streetlight is about 5,000). To get the equivalent of moonlight in a one mile radius requires 5-10 million lumens bouncing off the sky, which is reasonable for a modern small city of 100,000. A D&D town with a population of 5,000, lit by torches, is going to be more than a hundred times dimmer.
1 candela = 1 lumen/sr. For an omnidirection light source like a candle, 1 candela = 12.6 lumens.