Well, realistically, dim light is sometimes easier to see things in than bright light,
Eh, I'd disagree. The low end threshold for "bright light" isn't what you'd call "bright" in normal language if describing real-world lighting.
5' from a standard candle (1 candela or 12.6 lumens) is 0.44 lux; 10' is 0.11, which is about as bright a full moon and a million times less than full sunlight. A Daylight is 12x the radius or 144x brighter, which makes it about as bright as a 100W bulb.
I suspect a lot if this boils down to ignorance -- people neither know how much light varies in regular experience, nor how dim ancient light sources were.
Nor care about calculations to simulate lumens, nor the historical accuracy of simulating ancient light sources, I'd add.
A bright day is bright, especially if you're out on the water, or in a sandy desert, or on a snow pack. And not just at high noon, when the sun is rising and setting and is straight in your eyes, its quite hard to see! When a light source is up close in your face, its harder to see than it is if the lightsource is further away. Walking from a bright room, into a dim room, makes it harder to see in the dim room for a few minutes... while if you're just hanging out in a dim room, and walk into another dim room, you can see quite well.
Light in the real world is complicated, and works differently in different contexts at different times for different sorts of creatures. 5E doesn't try to simulate any of that, and it SHOULDN'T try to simulate that, so if you're looking for LO and HO rules to accurately simulate what its like to hide in a dark corner and wait for a guard to come near with a torch... keep waiting for 6E, because it doesn't even try. "It's kind of hard to see in dim light, and impossible to see in no light without special powers" is about as close as 5E gets (or cares to get).
Well, realistically, dim light is sometimes easier to see things in than bright light,
Eh, I'd disagree. The low end threshold for "bright light" isn't what you'd call "bright" in normal language if describing real-world lighting.
5' from a standard candle (1 candela or 12.6 lumens) is 0.44 lux; 10' is 0.11, which is about as bright a full moon and a million times less than full sunlight. A Daylight is 12x the radius or 144x brighter, which makes it about as bright as a 100W bulb.
I suspect a lot if this boils down to ignorance -- people neither know how much light varies in regular experience, nor how dim ancient light sources were.
And yet plain old non-darkvision humans operate effectively over a huge range of light intensity. I guess we'll have to make some abstractions and simplifications for this game.
And yet plain old non-darkvision humans operate effectively over a huge range of light intensity. I guess we'll have to make some abstractions for this game.
We're basically fine over a range of about 100-100,000 lux, and can see *something* down to around 0.0001 lux, though based on the actual penalties for blindness in 5e it's probably fine to call 0.1 lux total darkness.
But yeah, D&D is not making any real attempt to model reality. It's just a question of filing off the rough edges so it at least fits our model of cinematic reality.
A bright day is bright, especially if you're out on the water, or in a sandy desert, or on a snow pack. And not just at high noon, when the sun is rising and setting and is straight in your eyes, its quite hard to see!
Standard daylight intensity is roughly 120,000 lux. Modern day workplace guides for minimum safe bright lighting in industrial environments would be in the ballpark of ONLY 200 lux. The difference between both of these "bright" lighting conditions actual intensity of illumination is just ... a lot.
When a light source is up close in your face, its harder to see than it is if the lightsource is further away. Walking from a bright room, into a dim room, makes it harder to see in the dim room for a few minutes... while if you're just hanging out in a dim room, and walk into another dim room, you can see quite well.
Going from noonday sun to even a very well lit office can cause the same effect. The massive swing in actual intensity between even well lit environments can disrupt eyesight while your eyes adjust to the new conditions. They will of course, adjust, but that isn't instantaneous.
All I was getting at, really, was that what the game calls "dim" light wouldn't be very bright at all. Sure, you'd see stuff, and even in color, but details and accuracy might suffer. Is there an intensity of "bright" light that might potentially "realistically" be harder to see in than that? Sure. Glare in daylight. Absolutely. But most of the "bright" light sources other than daylight in the game are ...many... orders of magnitude less intense than actual daylight and wouldn't cause any degree of issue in the same way as dim light would.
Light in the real world is complicated, and works differently in different contexts at different times for different sorts of creatures. 5E doesn't try to simulate any of that, and it SHOULDN'T try to simulate that, so if you're looking for LO and HO rules to accurately simulate what its like to hide in a dark corner and wait for a guard to come near with a torch... keep waiting for 6E, because it doesn't even try. "It's kind of hard to see in dim light, and impossible to see in no light without special powers" is about as close as 5E gets (or cares to get).
Sure, yeah. The game chooses expediency and heavily... heavily relies on the DMs intuitive understanding of how light and visibility should function. It doesn't try to simulate the multitude of complex light interaction we experience in the real world. But.. again, it should at least aim for something resembling believable. Treating a shrub and darkness, for example, identically in all situations... is too bizarre and so unlike reality that it breaks suspension of disbelief.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
5' from a standard candle (1 candela or 12.6 lumens) is 0.44 lux; 10' is 0.11, which is about as bright a full moon and a million times less than full sunlight. A Daylight is 12x the radius or 144x brighter, which makes it about as bright as a 100W bulb.
I suspect a lot if this boils down to ignorance -- people neither know how much light varies in regular experience, nor how dim ancient light sources were.
Nor care about calculations to simulate lumens, nor the historical accuracy of simulating ancient light sources, I'd add.
A bright day is bright, especially if you're out on the water, or in a sandy desert, or on a snow pack. And not just at high noon, when the sun is rising and setting and is straight in your eyes, its quite hard to see! When a light source is up close in your face, its harder to see than it is if the lightsource is further away. Walking from a bright room, into a dim room, makes it harder to see in the dim room for a few minutes... while if you're just hanging out in a dim room, and walk into another dim room, you can see quite well.
Light in the real world is complicated, and works differently in different contexts at different times for different sorts of creatures. 5E doesn't try to simulate any of that, and it SHOULDN'T try to simulate that, so if you're looking for LO and HO rules to accurately simulate what its like to hide in a dark corner and wait for a guard to come near with a torch... keep waiting for 6E, because it doesn't even try. "It's kind of hard to see in dim light, and impossible to see in no light without special powers" is about as close as 5E gets (or cares to get).
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
And yet plain old non-darkvision humans operate effectively over a huge range of light intensity. I guess we'll have to make some abstractions and simplifications for this game.
We're basically fine over a range of about 100-100,000 lux, and can see *something* down to around 0.0001 lux, though based on the actual penalties for blindness in 5e it's probably fine to call 0.1 lux total darkness.
But yeah, D&D is not making any real attempt to model reality. It's just a question of filing off the rough edges so it at least fits our model of cinematic reality.
Standard daylight intensity is roughly 120,000 lux. Modern day workplace guides for minimum safe bright lighting in industrial environments would be in the ballpark of ONLY 200 lux. The difference between both of these "bright" lighting conditions actual intensity of illumination is just ... a lot.
Going from noonday sun to even a very well lit office can cause the same effect. The massive swing in actual intensity between even well lit environments can disrupt eyesight while your eyes adjust to the new conditions. They will of course, adjust, but that isn't instantaneous.
All I was getting at, really, was that what the game calls "dim" light wouldn't be very bright at all. Sure, you'd see stuff, and even in color, but details and accuracy might suffer. Is there an intensity of "bright" light that might potentially "realistically" be harder to see in than that? Sure. Glare in daylight. Absolutely. But most of the "bright" light sources other than daylight in the game are ...many... orders of magnitude less intense than actual daylight and wouldn't cause any degree of issue in the same way as dim light would.
Sure, yeah. The game chooses expediency and heavily... heavily relies on the DMs intuitive understanding of how light and visibility should function. It doesn't try to simulate the multitude of complex light interaction we experience in the real world. But.. again, it should at least aim for something resembling believable. Treating a shrub and darkness, for example, identically in all situations... is too bizarre and so unlike reality that it breaks suspension of disbelief.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.