In a long tunnel (110') of a mine in complete darkness (non-magical) at opposite ends are the hero and the villain, both with (60') Darkvision, unknowingly making their way toward each other.
Question:
Is it just a black wall of darkness at the 60' end point of Darkvision, or is there more fading vision that would extend further? The hero and villain would obviously see each other at the 60' mark. Still, I'm trying to visualize the travel the two would be taking-- outside of a perception (disadvantage sight and possible advantage on sound), check if they would notice each other beforehand.
What if:
At one end of this 110' tunnel is dimly lit by the light in a connecting chamber. Would that light carry down the length of the tunnel enough so that the Darkvision would see a silhouette of the villain moving down the tunnel?
Due to the simplification of vision, we assume that a character with 60' of darkvision can see someone in darkness just as well at 59' as they can at 3'. And that anything beyond 60' is just darkness. As for a distant light beyond the range of darkvision in non-magical darkness, I think most people treat it as something that can be seen to some degree, otherwise you'd never see the moon or stars on a clear night. The challenge comes when we realize that 5e treats nonmagical darkness (the absence of light) the same as darkness (an active obscurement) so we run into line of sight issues.
Or maybe we don't worry about it. The rules are important to understand, but maybe not as important to follow :)
Due to the simplification of vision, we assume that a character with 60' of darkvision can see someone in darkness just as well at 59' as they can at 3'. And that anything beyond 60' is just darkness. As for a distant light beyond the range of darkvision in non-magical darkness, I think most people treat it as something that can be seen to some degree, otherwise you'd never see the moon or stars on a clear night. The challenge comes when we realize that 5e treats nonmagical darkness (the absence of light) the same as darkness (an active obscurement) so we run into line of sight issues.
Or maybe we don't worry about it. The rules are important to understand, but maybe not as important to follow :)
Fair. I'm just looking for opinions on those situations to see if there was something obscure I was unaware of.
They would see shadow for 60 feet and nothing else past this point.. Viewing in darkness as if dim light means you can’t discern color, only shades of gray and have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight while lightly obscured.
I'll just add this to what others have said but DMG Page 243 has a section on "Visibility Outdoors" which notes you can see 2 miles in daylight, 1 mile in dim light and 100-300 ft in fog. From a mountain top or sufficiently elevated position, they can see 40 miles.
As others have said, Darkvision doesn't exactly have diminishing light rules like bright light progressing into dim light. You see however far your darkvision allows and thats it. DND has a lot of mechanics that don't cover every aspect of real physics just to keep the game simplified, but thats where DMs can come in and do a bit of give and take on the rules, maybe noting some movement just beyond the Darkvision range or asking for a perception check at increasingly higher DC to pick up anything further.
However, for the dimly lit area at 110 ft in line of sight, I would argue it's visible as a dimly lit area. Remembering that Darkvision allows dimly lit areas to appear as if they are bright light but since it's beyond the range of Darkvision, it would be regular dim light. Never-the-less that particular area is in dim light, therefore if it's not obscured then you can see it, even if you can't see everything between that area and your own. Really, just imagine a character without darkvision, observing someone standing 20 ft away from them with a candle in hand. They are lit up in bright light, the area around that person is lit up in dim light and only another 10 ft away is the character sitting in darkness, that darkness isn't like the magical blanket the spell of darkness affords, preventing light from travelling through one side to the other, its just area too dark to see anything in.
If the light is behind the creatures in the darkness, then the DM might decide that they can be seen but might impose disadvantage on the attack, since you can't see clearly where to hit them, you have an outline.
When it comes to distances and how all this functions, Infravision always made much more sense to me than Darkvision now does.
Being able to see in dim light up to a certain point as if it were bright light or in complete darkness up to a certain point as if it were dim light but nothing beyond that certain point. All until that certain point is consistently bright or consistently dim with no gradience. Then nothing. That doesn't make sense for a living organism and sounds like how a high-powered torch might function.
Being able to see only any light emitted by the thermal energy of people, objects, or environments up to a certain point? That at least seems biologically plausible.
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INSPIRATIONS:Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
When it comes to distances and how all this functions, Infravision always made much more sense to me than Darkvision now does.
Being able to see in dim light up to a certain point as if it were bright light or in complete darkness up to a certain point as if it were dim light but nothing beyond that certain point. All until that certain point is consistently bright or consistently dim with no gradience. Then nothing. That doesn't make sense for a living organism and sounds like how a high-powered torch might function.
Being able to see only any light emitted by the thermal energy of people, objects, or environments up to a certain point? That at least seems biologically plausible.
A lot of the dnd5e revamp was all about simplifying the rules and despite objections it has really opened up the game for a whole slew of people to play who simply found it too much to keep track of the slew or rules that were all designed to make the game feel more in line with life.
One of those things was the various ways creatures could see in dark. Instead of low-light vision and darkvision they just struck it to darkvision, regardless of if its made by magic, physiological means or items, etc. The sudden cut-off in vision is just another simplification, but dim-light is supposed to represent the gradual move from what you can see to what you can't and it's worth remembering that darkvision in complete darkness is effectively like looking through dim light for 60 feet or so.
Personally I think it's good that the core rules of DND go to basics and leave it to DMs to create whatever more convoluted and complicated rules they want to suit their campaigns and ideas around real world craziness rather than complicating things and requiring DMs to strike rules out in various ways.
A lot of the dnd5e revamp was all about simplifying the rules and despite objections it has really opened up the game for a whole slew of people to play who simply found it too much to keep track of the slew or rules that were all designed to make the game feel more in line with life.
One of those things was the various ways creatures could see in dark. Instead of low-light vision and darkvision they just struck it to darkvision, regardless of if its made by magic, physiological means or items, etc. The sudden cut-off in vision is just another simplification, but dim-light is supposed to represent the gradual move from what you can see to what you can't and it's worth remembering that darkvision in complete darkness is effectively like looking through dim light for 60 feet or so.
Personally I think it's good that the core rules of DND go to basics and leave it to DMs to create whatever more convoluted and complicated rules they want to suit their campaigns and ideas around real world craziness rather than complicating things and requiring DMs to strike rules out in various ways.
I'm not so sure I'd say the game has "gone to basics." The player's handbook alone is more than twice as large as that for AD&D and more than four times as large as the complete rules for B/X. Half the charm of earlier editions of the game for old-schoolers still playing earlier editions is that they are simpler albeit more esoteric in their expression and it's much easier for a DM to simply rule things not covered in the rules at will.
Low-light vision came in 3.0/3.5. Which is when things started to become needlessly rules-heavy in my honest opinion.
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INSPIRATIONS:Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
Unfortunately, the rules for light in 5e appear to be a bit incomplete and do not accurately describe what should be happening in the situation described by the OP. I would not call this a mere simplification of the rules. In this case I would call it a genuine oversight.
The problem stems from the fact that the lack of light is listed as just another example of obscurity.
In the section with the heading "The Environment" and subheading "Vision and Light" we have:
The most fundamental tasks of adventuring . . . rely heavily on a character's ability to see. Darkness and other effects that obscure vision can prove a significant hindrance.
Next, the sections describing lightly obscured and heavily obscured areas were not written carefully enough:
In a lightly obscured area . . . creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
That was written with a point of view that assumes that the affected creature is located within the lightly obscured area. We'll see that this is problematic when it comes to light.
However, we also have:
A heavily obscured area . . . blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.
That section was written differently. In this case, it is NOT assumed that the affected creature is located within the heavily obscured area, only that he is "trying to see something in that area". If we always treat light in this manner it actually makes a lot more sense and our intuitive ideas for what should be happening would actually be happening. And it would still hold up well for other forms of obscurity as well.
For example, one concept that is listed as a heavily obscured area is dense foliage. Imagine that we position ourselves fully inside a very lush bush or shrub. There are so many thorns and thick leaves blanketed directly in front of our face and all around our entire field of vision such that we can only see a few inches in every direction. We cannot see out. But another person also cannot see in. The person on the outside might be able to see well in other directions, but not into the shrub. That area is heavily obscured.
Another example -- from the DMG there is a section on Heavy Precipitation. Unfortunately, this is also badly written as:
Everything within an area of heavy rain or heavy snowfall is lightly obscured, and creatures in the area have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
So again we have a description that was written with a point of view that assumes that the affected creature is located within the lightly obscured area. He has trouble seeing all around him from where he is located. However, suppose the creature was located outside of this area of heavy rain? Intuitively, we know that he might see just fine in many directions, but would have trouble seeing into and through the area of heavy rain. The problem is, for RAW, it's unclear if the rules actually imply this as the description given is incomplete.
Intuitively, we all know that light should work differently than all of these other examples of lightly obscured and heavily obscured areas:
If two creatures are in an open field facing each other a half-mile apart from each other during a nighttime that is total darkness such that they cannot even see their own hand in front of their face, then it makes sense that they cannot see each other.
However, one of these creatures has created a large campfire and is standing right next to it. Intuitively, we all understand that the creature next to the campfire has no chance of seeing the creature who is still in total darkness. However, the creature who is standing in total darkness should easily be able to see the creature standing right next to the campfire. But, RAW, it's actually pretty difficult to come to that conclusion. If we look at the various poorly worded creature-centric descriptions in these rules listed above, we might come to the conclusion that the creature in darkness is located within a heavily obscured area and therefore has no radius of visibility. But in my opinion, the correct answer is that this creature still cannot see his own hand in front of his face, but he CAN see the other creature that is standing next to a campfire in the distance!
To come to that conclusion, we have to cling strongly to the one relatively well-written portion of the rules which described the affects of heavily obscured areas as occurring "when trying to see something in that area. In the case of looking at the guy who is standing next to the campfire in the distance, we are NOT trying to see something within the darkness, we are trying to see something in an area that is well lit.
Unlike other heavily obscured areas such as dense foliage, our line of sight is not actually hindered in the campfire example, or in the long hallway example in the OP. So, my interpretation is that as long as we can see into an area in terms of line of sight and if that area is well lit then we can see everything in that area perfectly well, even when we are looking through areas of darkness to see it.
I love me some Sly Flourish. Mike definitely doesn't run RAW. Better in my opinion, but not RAW.
Though, in this case, the description of Darkvision quoted is pure RAW. Darkvision in darkness has its downsides, it is much harder to notice traps, ambushers, secret doors or anything else you might want to notice when using only Darkvision in the dark (since it counts as dim light). In addition, it is only shades of gray - no colors. This is one reason that the Devils Sight invocation is great, especially for rogues, since it treats darkness as brightly lit, has 120' range and essentially avoids the negative effects of Darkvision.
In a game I am running, the characters are traversing the underdark using just darkvision. They did not notice that they were leaving noticeable tracks in the dust and other debris until they passed through an area of dim light which made it much easier to notice.
This is one reason that the Devils Sight invocation is great, especially for rogues, since it treats darkness as brightly lit, has 120' range and essentially avoids the negative effects of Darkvision.
Although a funny RAW part about Devil's Sight is that it has no effect in Dim Light.
Setup:
In a long tunnel (110') of a mine in complete darkness (non-magical) at opposite ends are the hero and the villain, both with (60') Darkvision, unknowingly making their way toward each other.
Question:
Is it just a black wall of darkness at the 60' end point of Darkvision, or is there more fading vision that would extend further? The hero and villain would obviously see each other at the 60' mark. Still, I'm trying to visualize the travel the two would be taking-- outside of a perception (disadvantage sight and possible advantage on sound), check if they would notice each other beforehand.
What if:
At one end of this 110' tunnel is dimly lit by the light in a connecting chamber. Would that light carry down the length of the tunnel enough so that the Darkvision would see a silhouette of the villain moving down the tunnel?
Due to the simplification of vision, we assume that a character with 60' of darkvision can see someone in darkness just as well at 59' as they can at 3'. And that anything beyond 60' is just darkness. As for a distant light beyond the range of darkvision in non-magical darkness, I think most people treat it as something that can be seen to some degree, otherwise you'd never see the moon or stars on a clear night. The challenge comes when we realize that 5e treats nonmagical darkness (the absence of light) the same as darkness (an active obscurement) so we run into line of sight issues.
Or maybe we don't worry about it. The rules are important to understand, but maybe not as important to follow :)
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Fair. I'm just looking for opinions on those situations to see if there was something obscure I was unaware of.
They would see shadow for 60 feet and nothing else past this point.. Viewing in darkness as if dim light means you can’t discern color, only shades of gray and have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight while lightly obscured.
I'll just add this to what others have said but DMG Page 243 has a section on "Visibility Outdoors" which notes you can see 2 miles in daylight, 1 mile in dim light and 100-300 ft in fog. From a mountain top or sufficiently elevated position, they can see 40 miles.
As others have said, Darkvision doesn't exactly have diminishing light rules like bright light progressing into dim light. You see however far your darkvision allows and thats it. DND has a lot of mechanics that don't cover every aspect of real physics just to keep the game simplified, but thats where DMs can come in and do a bit of give and take on the rules, maybe noting some movement just beyond the Darkvision range or asking for a perception check at increasingly higher DC to pick up anything further.
However, for the dimly lit area at 110 ft in line of sight, I would argue it's visible as a dimly lit area. Remembering that Darkvision allows dimly lit areas to appear as if they are bright light but since it's beyond the range of Darkvision, it would be regular dim light. Never-the-less that particular area is in dim light, therefore if it's not obscured then you can see it, even if you can't see everything between that area and your own. Really, just imagine a character without darkvision, observing someone standing 20 ft away from them with a candle in hand. They are lit up in bright light, the area around that person is lit up in dim light and only another 10 ft away is the character sitting in darkness, that darkness isn't like the magical blanket the spell of darkness affords, preventing light from travelling through one side to the other, its just area too dark to see anything in.
If the light is behind the creatures in the darkness, then the DM might decide that they can be seen but might impose disadvantage on the attack, since you can't see clearly where to hit them, you have an outline.
When it comes to distances and how all this functions, Infravision always made much more sense to me than Darkvision now does.
Being able to see in dim light up to a certain point as if it were bright light or in complete darkness up to a certain point as if it were dim light but nothing beyond that certain point. All until that certain point is consistently bright or consistently dim with no gradience. Then nothing. That doesn't make sense for a living organism and sounds like how a high-powered torch might function.
Being able to see only any light emitted by the thermal energy of people, objects, or environments up to a certain point? That at least seems biologically plausible.
INSPIRATIONS: Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
SYSTEMS: ShadowDark, C&C, AD&D.
GEAR: pencils, graph paper, dice.
A lot of the dnd5e revamp was all about simplifying the rules and despite objections it has really opened up the game for a whole slew of people to play who simply found it too much to keep track of the slew or rules that were all designed to make the game feel more in line with life.
One of those things was the various ways creatures could see in dark. Instead of low-light vision and darkvision they just struck it to darkvision, regardless of if its made by magic, physiological means or items, etc. The sudden cut-off in vision is just another simplification, but dim-light is supposed to represent the gradual move from what you can see to what you can't and it's worth remembering that darkvision in complete darkness is effectively like looking through dim light for 60 feet or so.
Personally I think it's good that the core rules of DND go to basics and leave it to DMs to create whatever more convoluted and complicated rules they want to suit their campaigns and ideas around real world craziness rather than complicating things and requiring DMs to strike rules out in various ways.
I'm not so sure I'd say the game has "gone to basics." The player's handbook alone is more than twice as large as that for AD&D and more than four times as large as the complete rules for B/X. Half the charm of earlier editions of the game for old-schoolers still playing earlier editions is that they are simpler albeit more esoteric in their expression and it's much easier for a DM to simply rule things not covered in the rules at will.
Low-light vision came in 3.0/3.5. Which is when things started to become needlessly rules-heavy in my honest opinion.
INSPIRATIONS: Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, M. John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Steven Brust, Terry Pratchett, China Miéville.
SYSTEMS: ShadowDark, C&C, AD&D.
GEAR: pencils, graph paper, dice.
Unfortunately, the rules for light in 5e appear to be a bit incomplete and do not accurately describe what should be happening in the situation described by the OP. I would not call this a mere simplification of the rules. In this case I would call it a genuine oversight.
The problem stems from the fact that the lack of light is listed as just another example of obscurity.
In the section with the heading "The Environment" and subheading "Vision and Light" we have:
Next, the sections describing lightly obscured and heavily obscured areas were not written carefully enough:
That was written with a point of view that assumes that the affected creature is located within the lightly obscured area. We'll see that this is problematic when it comes to light.
However, we also have:
That section was written differently. In this case, it is NOT assumed that the affected creature is located within the heavily obscured area, only that he is "trying to see something in that area". If we always treat light in this manner it actually makes a lot more sense and our intuitive ideas for what should be happening would actually be happening. And it would still hold up well for other forms of obscurity as well.
For example, one concept that is listed as a heavily obscured area is dense foliage. Imagine that we position ourselves fully inside a very lush bush or shrub. There are so many thorns and thick leaves blanketed directly in front of our face and all around our entire field of vision such that we can only see a few inches in every direction. We cannot see out. But another person also cannot see in. The person on the outside might be able to see well in other directions, but not into the shrub. That area is heavily obscured.
Another example -- from the DMG there is a section on Heavy Precipitation. Unfortunately, this is also badly written as:
So again we have a description that was written with a point of view that assumes that the affected creature is located within the lightly obscured area. He has trouble seeing all around him from where he is located. However, suppose the creature was located outside of this area of heavy rain? Intuitively, we know that he might see just fine in many directions, but would have trouble seeing into and through the area of heavy rain. The problem is, for RAW, it's unclear if the rules actually imply this as the description given is incomplete.
Intuitively, we all know that light should work differently than all of these other examples of lightly obscured and heavily obscured areas:
If two creatures are in an open field facing each other a half-mile apart from each other during a nighttime that is total darkness such that they cannot even see their own hand in front of their face, then it makes sense that they cannot see each other.
However, one of these creatures has created a large campfire and is standing right next to it. Intuitively, we all understand that the creature next to the campfire has no chance of seeing the creature who is still in total darkness. However, the creature who is standing in total darkness should easily be able to see the creature standing right next to the campfire. But, RAW, it's actually pretty difficult to come to that conclusion. If we look at the various poorly worded creature-centric descriptions in these rules listed above, we might come to the conclusion that the creature in darkness is located within a heavily obscured area and therefore has no radius of visibility. But in my opinion, the correct answer is that this creature still cannot see his own hand in front of his face, but he CAN see the other creature that is standing next to a campfire in the distance!
To come to that conclusion, we have to cling strongly to the one relatively well-written portion of the rules which described the affects of heavily obscured areas as occurring "when trying to see something in that area. In the case of looking at the guy who is standing next to the campfire in the distance, we are NOT trying to see something within the darkness, we are trying to see something in an area that is well lit.
Unlike other heavily obscured areas such as dense foliage, our line of sight is not actually hindered in the campfire example, or in the long hallway example in the OP. So, my interpretation is that as long as we can see into an area in terms of line of sight and if that area is well lit then we can see everything in that area perfectly well, even when we are looking through areas of darkness to see it.
Read this description. It is how I run Darkvision
https://slyflourish.com/darkvision_isnt_as_good_as_you_think.html
I love me some Sly Flourish. Mike definitely doesn't run RAW. Better in my opinion, but not RAW.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I should have thought to check Mike's material! I'm a Patreon of his and have yet to disappoint. (Watching his weekly stream right now)
Though, in this case, the description of Darkvision quoted is pure RAW. Darkvision in darkness has its downsides, it is much harder to notice traps, ambushers, secret doors or anything else you might want to notice when using only Darkvision in the dark (since it counts as dim light). In addition, it is only shades of gray - no colors. This is one reason that the Devils Sight invocation is great, especially for rogues, since it treats darkness as brightly lit, has 120' range and essentially avoids the negative effects of Darkvision.
In a game I am running, the characters are traversing the underdark using just darkvision. They did not notice that they were leaving noticeable tracks in the dust and other debris until they passed through an area of dim light which made it much easier to notice.
Although a funny RAW part about Devil's Sight is that it has no effect in Dim Light.