I'm likely to be starting a new campaign in a couple months as DM, and I'm building a homebrew world.
Many of the PC races have darkvision, and I'd like to scale that back. I may even go as far as removing it from all PC races. The thing is, I don't want to unbalance the races.
What would be an appropriate replacement for darkvision if I chose to remove it from PC races?
Public Mod Note
(firehawk2324):
Moved from General Discussion
Many of the races that have darkvision have it because they live in the dark. You basically have to completely change dwarven society if you eliminate their dark vision, because they wouldn't be able to exist underground. Also keep in mind that dark vision only lets you see so far, and then it is useless. Also most of the time, the PCs are going to have a light source, negating the benefit darkvision brings. So I don't think it is that unbalanced. At least not compared to everything else available to the PCs. A mage with a light cantrip for example, nullifies the need for darkvision except when sneaking around at night.
Also how many fights in the dark does your PCs typically do? Darkvision only helps in the dark. Also the other races have something equally good and unbalancing in place of darkvision. Like who doesn't like a dragonborns breath weapon. Which I think is a lot more useful than darkvision most of the time.
It's also shades of greys, no colours. So a creature who is coloured similarly to the environment, moving stealthily, is unlikely to be seen.
Also hard when another player character is waving a torch around in your face... Eyes don't adjust that quick.
Could also throw in a lot of overly bright light, generally speaking those with darkvision are more susceptible to being temporarily blinded by bright flashes.
"You're cursed to live only in the dark, and suffer in the sun!"
"Also, you can't see in the dark!"
You could always replace it with a per-day feature appropriate to races where they can cast it on themselves for concentration, with length of availability and number of uses in line with how the race lives. The concentration makes it a trade-off, and the per-day means if you're keeping them in the dark, they'll have to use it tactically.
Darkvision does give a slight advantage to anyone who has it because most Darkvision is 60' while the Light cantrip and torches are both 40'. That 20' can be very useful.
I wouldn't remove it completely, but just limit it. Reduce racial darkvision by 30ish feet. This way you don't have to rebalance the races too much and can still put a large emphasis on torches, light cantrip, etc.
Another option I have found success with is to just level the playing field by having more enemies have darkvision. It's only unbalanced if it unfairly benefits one side. I also have a physical timers that time torch use for players without darkvision. In that way, darkvision becomes almost a party resource they need to manage and get creative using, which in our games makes even simple interactions in the dark more interesting. Aside from that, with the grey-scale thing, you can make symbols and clues only noticeable in regular lighting.
Example: A Dwarf, Gnome, and Halfling walk into a tavern... Its closed, dark, and empty except the rented rooms upstairs. They are sneaking up on some shady dealings happening in the basement. They don't want to use light and draw attention, but the halfling keeps bumping into chairs and stuff cause she's blind as a bat right now. Creating light reveals some trails of blood that they didn't see in the grey-wash provided by darkvision. (had they not discovered the blood, the next day people would find the barkeep's body stashed in a closet, apparently killed for walking in on the shady dealings.) In this way the players incur a cost for relying solely on darkvision.
Final thought: if darkvision is so common, enemies are aware of it and have likely adapted to combat this using patterns and shades that are harder to detect in grey-scale. So, sure they can "see" in the dark, but clues and patterns are much more difficult to find than using traditional light sources. It changes the game from a default of "ok i'll just need light" to more of a trade-off analysis, "do i REALLY need light?" And then every time they wander around with their darkvision, they wonder what they're missing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Experience: 5e Only - Playing, DM, world building.
DM for Home-brew campaign based on Forgotten Realms lore. 5 player. Also play in party of 8.
A thing to keep in mind about darkvision is that it only allows dim light to become bright light and darkness to become dim light, meaning they have disadvantage on Perception checks in darkness. So darkvision is like having a really crappy torch if the character is in complete darkness.
Could you describe some ways you see darkvision presenting an issue in your campaign?
Make it so that darkvision works like a cat's and only enhances available light sources. In true darkness (no moonlight/starlight/torchlight) they are just as blind as everyone else.
You could also start the campaign by having the party "Cursed" with a loss of darkvision but each player that had it suddenly has the ability to cast light. Even magic-less creatures. Light produces less visibility than darkvision and requires and action.
The idea of Darkvision is great, however most of the characters in my campaign currently have it. They spend a decent amount of time in dungeons, and caves, but our party can see everything all the time due to darkvision. Because of this, it made Darkvision seem useless or underwhelming (since it was always useful), so we decided to scale it back.
We decided it was best if instead of the following:
Darkvision (original):
You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light.
it would be best if we scaled it back slightly to:
Darkvision (homebrew):
You can see in dim light within 30 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness within 30ft as if it were dim light.
It makes characters with Darkvision still 'balanced', but it prevents them from being too useful in dark/dim circumstances. We all agreed that if we needed something more powerful for dimly lit circumstances that a Produce Flame or even a Torch would suffice.
I actually houserule that unless your race lives underground full-time, you don't get full darkvision and instead have what i've termed 'duskvision' which has the same dim light bonus without having the darkness bonus.
It's hard to put into words exactly what problems I have with darkvision as a DM. That's why I was looking for some other house rules, to see if they made explicit what I haven't been able to define.
In part, both my players and I are not cognizant of the effects and limitations of vision, especially when different players have different vision abilities. I'll describe something before the full table. The one character without darkvision just plays along as if he can see it, even if in that instance his character shouldn't be able to see it. Like I said, we just aren't thinking about vision. We default to everyone sees everything.
Currently I'm running Out of the Abyss, which takes place entirely within the Underdark. Many of the locations are "dimly lit" with bio-luminescent fungi. But even in the areas of total darkness, all of the characters have darkvision except one. So, there is no consequence to being in the darkness. The environmental change has no practical effect on the game or story. None of my PCs care about darkness. They just bound right in, because why not - "I can see". And because we aren't really thinking about it, we take "I can see" as equivalent to "I can see everything", which quickly morphs into "everyone can see everything".
In general, I want there to be a "fear of the dark" in the game, and that is completely absent when darkvision is introduced. There are no things lurking in the shadows of darkvision.
When looking at the PHB it seems like the default for races is to have darkvision, and therefore the few races that don't have it are actually at a disadvantage relative to the others. So maybe, one possible solution is not to remove darkvision, but to make the non-darkvision races more attractive to players by giving them some other kind of benefit.
It's hard to put into words exactly what problems I have with darkvision as a DM. That's why I was looking for some other house rules, to see if they made explicit what I haven't been able to define.
In part, both my players and I are not cognizant of the effects and limitations of vision, especially when different players have different vision abilities. I'll describe something before the full table. The one character without darkvision just plays along as if he can see it, even if in that instance his character shouldn't be able to see it. Like I said, we just aren't thinking about vision. We default to everyone sees everything.
Currently I'm running Out of the Abyss, which takes place entirely within the Underdark. Many of the locations are "dimly lit" with bio-luminescent fungi. But even in the areas of total darkness, all of the characters have darkvision except one. So, there is no consequence to being in the darkness. The environmental change has no practical effect on the game or story. None of my PCs care about darkness. They just bound right in, because why not - "I can see". And because we aren't really thinking about it, we take "I can see" as equivalent to "I can see everything", which quickly morphs into "everyone can see everything".
In general, I want there to be a "fear of the dark" in the game, and that is completely absent when darkvision is introduced. There are no things lurking in the shadows of darkvision.
When looking at the PHB it seems like the default for races is to have darkvision, and therefore the few races that don't have it are actually at a disadvantage relative to the others. So maybe, one possible solution is not to remove darkvision, but to make the non-darkvision races more attractive to players by giving them some other kind of benefit.
But the other races are balanced around not having darkvision. They all have something else. Some other benefit to make up for their lack of darkvision.
In addition to the other races having something else to make up for Darkvision, Darkvision is black and white only. Without a light source, the PC's can't tell the difference between a pile of gems and a pile of pebbles. Plus ambushes are much easier, I'd say it's reasonable to give Advantage to Stealth rollto hide when the monster is motionless because all they have to do is do something to break up the lines of their body a little bit. I'm thinking about the way the way chameleons are almost impossible to see when they're motionless even in bright daylight.
Even with Darkvision, there's an advantage to having one PC in the party carrying a torch or using a Light cantrip. Just stay back enough to not illuminate the scout who's using the darkness to his advantage.
I've seen gems in person that looked like worthless pebbles to me but were incredibly valuable and they were colored, not greyscale. In grey I doubt that experts would be positive.
Your comment about shades of grey is accurate, but it doesn't change how hard it is to spot a chameleon or a walking stick insect when it's motionless in bright daylight. I imagine that in darkness people with darkvision would face the same challenge.
I'm likely to be starting a new campaign in a couple months as DM, and I'm building a homebrew world.
Many of the PC races have darkvision, and I'd like to scale that back. I may even go as far as removing it from all PC races. The thing is, I don't want to unbalance the races.
What would be an appropriate replacement for darkvision if I chose to remove it from PC races?
Many of the races that have darkvision have it because they live in the dark. You basically have to completely change dwarven society if you eliminate their dark vision, because they wouldn't be able to exist underground. Also keep in mind that dark vision only lets you see so far, and then it is useless. Also most of the time, the PCs are going to have a light source, negating the benefit darkvision brings. So I don't think it is that unbalanced. At least not compared to everything else available to the PCs. A mage with a light cantrip for example, nullifies the need for darkvision except when sneaking around at night.
Also how many fights in the dark does your PCs typically do? Darkvision only helps in the dark. Also the other races have something equally good and unbalancing in place of darkvision. Like who doesn't like a dragonborns breath weapon. Which I think is a lot more useful than darkvision most of the time.
You can allow them to keep darkvision, but throw a lot of fog. Darkvision does not work in dense fog.
It's also shades of greys, no colours. So a creature who is coloured similarly to the environment, moving stealthily, is unlikely to be seen.
Also hard when another player character is waving a torch around in your face... Eyes don't adjust that quick.
Could also throw in a lot of overly bright light, generally speaking those with darkvision are more susceptible to being temporarily blinded by bright flashes.
- Stu
#6321 on Discord.
Don't remove it from Drow. That'd be nuts.
"You're cursed to live only in the dark, and suffer in the sun!"
"Also, you can't see in the dark!"
You could always replace it with a per-day feature appropriate to races where they can cast it on themselves for concentration, with length of availability and number of uses in line with how the race lives. The concentration makes it a trade-off, and the per-day means if you're keeping them in the dark, they'll have to use it tactically.
Darkvision does give a slight advantage to anyone who has it because most Darkvision is 60' while the Light cantrip and torches are both 40'. That 20' can be very useful.
Professional computer geek
Yeah, but the other classes have a useful ability themselves that make up for not having darkvision.
I wouldn't remove it completely, but just limit it. Reduce racial darkvision by 30ish feet. This way you don't have to rebalance the races too much and can still put a large emphasis on torches, light cantrip, etc.
Another option I have found success with is to just level the playing field by having more enemies have darkvision. It's only unbalanced if it unfairly benefits one side. I also have a physical timers that time torch use for players without darkvision. In that way, darkvision becomes almost a party resource they need to manage and get creative using, which in our games makes even simple interactions in the dark more interesting. Aside from that, with the grey-scale thing, you can make symbols and clues only noticeable in regular lighting.
Example: A Dwarf, Gnome, and Halfling walk into a tavern... Its closed, dark, and empty except the rented rooms upstairs. They are sneaking up on some shady dealings happening in the basement. They don't want to use light and draw attention, but the halfling keeps bumping into chairs and stuff cause she's blind as a bat right now. Creating light reveals some trails of blood that they didn't see in the grey-wash provided by darkvision. (had they not discovered the blood, the next day people would find the barkeep's body stashed in a closet, apparently killed for walking in on the shady dealings.) In this way the players incur a cost for relying solely on darkvision.
Final thought: if darkvision is so common, enemies are aware of it and have likely adapted to combat this using patterns and shades that are harder to detect in grey-scale. So, sure they can "see" in the dark, but clues and patterns are much more difficult to find than using traditional light sources. It changes the game from a default of "ok i'll just need light" to more of a trade-off analysis, "do i REALLY need light?" And then every time they wander around with their darkvision, they wonder what they're missing.
Experience: 5e Only - Playing, DM, world building.
DM for Home-brew campaign based on Forgotten Realms lore. 5 player. Also play in party of 8.
Thanks, A1Qicks, ArchSeshiro, and NikoCaiden. I found your comments insightful.
I'll think more about how significant of a change I want to make.
A thing to keep in mind about darkvision is that it only allows dim light to become bright light and darkness to become dim light, meaning they have disadvantage on Perception checks in darkness. So darkvision is like having a really crappy torch if the character is in complete darkness.
Could you describe some ways you see darkvision presenting an issue in your campaign?
Make it so that darkvision works like a cat's and only enhances available light sources. In true darkness (no moonlight/starlight/torchlight) they are just as blind as everyone else.
You could also start the campaign by having the party "Cursed" with a loss of darkvision but each player that had it suddenly has the ability to cast light. Even magic-less creatures. Light produces less visibility than darkvision and requires and action.
The idea of Darkvision is great, however most of the characters in my campaign currently have it. They spend a decent amount of time in dungeons, and caves, but our party can see everything all the time due to darkvision. Because of this, it made Darkvision seem useless or underwhelming (since it was always useful), so we decided to scale it back.
We decided it was best if instead of the following:
it would be best if we scaled it back slightly to:
It makes characters with Darkvision still 'balanced', but it prevents them from being too useful in dark/dim circumstances. We all agreed that if we needed something more powerful for dimly lit circumstances that a Produce Flame or even a Torch would suffice.
I actually houserule that unless your race lives underground full-time, you don't get full darkvision and instead have what i've termed 'duskvision' which has the same dim light bonus without having the darkness bonus.
It's hard to put into words exactly what problems I have with darkvision as a DM. That's why I was looking for some other house rules, to see if they made explicit what I haven't been able to define.
In part, both my players and I are not cognizant of the effects and limitations of vision, especially when different players have different vision abilities. I'll describe something before the full table. The one character without darkvision just plays along as if he can see it, even if in that instance his character shouldn't be able to see it. Like I said, we just aren't thinking about vision. We default to everyone sees everything.
Currently I'm running Out of the Abyss, which takes place entirely within the Underdark. Many of the locations are "dimly lit" with bio-luminescent fungi. But even in the areas of total darkness, all of the characters have darkvision except one. So, there is no consequence to being in the darkness. The environmental change has no practical effect on the game or story. None of my PCs care about darkness. They just bound right in, because why not - "I can see". And because we aren't really thinking about it, we take "I can see" as equivalent to "I can see everything", which quickly morphs into "everyone can see everything".
In general, I want there to be a "fear of the dark" in the game, and that is completely absent when darkvision is introduced. There are no things lurking in the shadows of darkvision.
When looking at the PHB it seems like the default for races is to have darkvision, and therefore the few races that don't have it are actually at a disadvantage relative to the others. So maybe, one possible solution is not to remove darkvision, but to make the non-darkvision races more attractive to players by giving them some other kind of benefit.
In addition to the other races having something else to make up for Darkvision, Darkvision is black and white only. Without a light source, the PC's can't tell the difference between a pile of gems and a pile of pebbles. Plus ambushes are much easier, I'd say it's reasonable to give Advantage to Stealth rollto hide when the monster is motionless because all they have to do is do something to break up the lines of their body a little bit. I'm thinking about the way the way chameleons are almost impossible to see when they're motionless even in bright daylight.
Even with Darkvision, there's an advantage to having one PC in the party carrying a torch or using a Light cantrip. Just stay back enough to not illuminate the scout who's using the darkness to his advantage.
Professional computer geek
Darkvision is not only black and white. You can distinguish shades of grey, and, I think, the difference between gems and pebbles.
I've seen gems in person that looked like worthless pebbles to me but were incredibly valuable and they were colored, not greyscale. In grey I doubt that experts would be positive.
Your comment about shades of grey is accurate, but it doesn't change how hard it is to spot a chameleon or a walking stick insect when it's motionless in bright daylight. I imagine that in darkness people with darkvision would face the same challenge.
Professional computer geek