Want to ask the angry GM a question? It's easy to do. Just send an email with your BRIEF question toTheAngryGameMaster@gmail.comand put ASK MAD in the subject line. And please include your name so I know I can make fun of you, your name, your question, your inability to correct or your misunderstanding of the concept of a SHORT question using its proper nomenclature. And yes. Consider this a warning. If you want courtesy, ask GM Hippie-Dippie-Sunshine-and-Rainbows-and-Bunny-Farts.
You can call me Al. I really hate to ask you this, but it keeps popping up like the plague. For the love of balanced RPGs, could you discuss why Darkvision isn't the most powerful and overpowered racial trait in D&D 5.0, or explain why it is? DMs are granting up to 3 stat bonuses or a feat or sometimes two of your choice to balance the damn darkvision for races that don't have it. Wow I can see in black, white and grayscale for 60 feet so I break the game WTF?
I'll call you Al, but if you call me Betty, I'll kill you. I understand?
Now, when someone sends me a question, the first thing I do is try to analyze the question for its deepest, hidden inner meaning. There is usually a reason someone asks a question and it is rarely stated in the question. Hell, the person asking the question often doesn't recognize the "real" source of the problem. But this one left me a little perplexed. I'm not sure I understand where this question REALLY comes from. It's very clear that Al has some serious, SERIOUS anger about dark vision. Or rather, about no vision in the dark. Or about racial skills. I'm not even sure.
From what I can tell, Al seems angry that races that DON'T have darkvision (presumably most humans) get extra feats and stats. And Al decided that these feats and additional stats are there to balance out the singular ability of darkvision. So let's start there.
Regardless of which edition of D&D you look at, darkvision is NOT the sum total of what makes elves and dwarves different from humans. Each race gets a lot of bonuses. And, in the 5E era, it was ALWAYS bonuses, never compensation. Which in itself is already interesting. Dwarves and elves, for example, gain additional weapon proficiencies, ability bonuses, resistances to specific game effects, etc. All these things together, along with darkvision, represent the total benefit of playing a member of a certain race over any other race. Some of these skills are universally useful, like skill score bonuses. Some of these are situational and vary in their frequency, such as skill bonuses in specific situations or specific resistances. And some are more beneficial when used in synergy with certain classes. Stealth and elven perception bonuses are exceptionally useful for rogues and rangers. But elven weapon proficiencies are somewhat useless for fighters who already have those proficiencies.
If you look at the way 5E is built, you get a rough picture of the equivalencies used to balance all those s$&%. A feat is a list of somewhat related bonuses, some situational, some more universal, right? And an equivalent feat is roughly equivalent to a single +2 to one ability score or a +1 bonus to two different ability scores. The rules tell us. And this is how we can see the "mathematics" behind racial balance.
Assuming all races are roughly equally powerful, we see that whatever a race gets is roughly equal to three feats or three increases in ability score. One presumably stems from the +2 bonus to an ability score that every race (except humans) receives. The second is swallowed in half by a +1 bonus to an ability score. Therefore, all racial abilities are basically worth one and a half feats. How we know? Because humans get THREE skill score boosts. They get +1 to six ability scores. What's REALLY interesting is that the human variant seems to miss between half and two-thirds of a feat. But I suspect it's to balance the fact that being able to freely choose a talent (most of which are very useful or will always be chosen for character synergy) is actually more valuable than the mix of racial abilities they include . - Synergy capabilities.
If we balance this out, we can say that all racial abilities are more or less worth one feat together. That a +1 bonus to an ability score is roughly equivalent to proficiency in a single ability. And we come up with a rough equivalence that a racial choice is worth two feats and some. Of course, none of this is hard and fast. It's all blurry. And that's how it has to be. After all, many of the skills are unrivaled. In fact, the VALUE of ANY given skill, whether it's +1 to a skill score, a skill mastery, four additional weapon masteries, sleep resistance, and charm, the value of any one of those skills will vary wildly. So all this "math" is just an estimate and was never intended to work perfectly.
The bottom line though is that the premise of Al's question, that Darkvision is somehow worth MULTIPLE exploits, is preposterous. No one considers Darkvision worth MULTI talents or skill score boosts. At best, it is worth a fraction of the feat, if such comparisons can be made meaningfully.
By the way, if you're curious about Pathfinder (and, by extension, D&D 3.5), check out the Advanced Career Guide. This book, which is a lot of fun, is about the painstaking process of balancing all sorts of different racial abilities against each other based on point values. Once again, you'll find that Darkvision isn't worth sixty billion points.
But I didn't answer that question because I wanted to talk about racial skill balance and talent equivalencies and incomparables. I decided to tackle this question because darkvision is an interesting topic, and I figured that since I couldn't figure out what the hell was REALLY going on in the question, I could talk about vision and darkvision in just about any context I wanted. And there are some contexts where darkvision is interesting. First, in the broader context of vision and light. And second, in the context of how underrated darkvision is. And third, what a headache it is to have races that can see in the dark and races that can't in the same group.
Lighting and visibility is one of those problems like ammo, clutter, food and water. It's one of those things that most general managers don't give much thought to. Lighting is a headache. You have these rules for different light sources and the range at which they give light and the amount of light they give. Which is fine and fancy, except it doesn't really reflect how people use lighting in their games. Most games handle light like this. The GM asks "who has the light source?" There's a brief discussion about who needs both hands to do useful things, and finally someone says they carry the light. And then no one will care about the light anymore. Once the party has a source of light, the dungeon lights up. The PCs can go as far as the GM wants to describe. And that is. On most tables, torches will burn forever, even.
Of course, if you're playing at one of those virtual tables with dynamic lighting, it's completely different. But I'm not talking about those people.
The point is that no GM and no player wants to bother with remembering where the light source is, keeping track of the distance between the light source and any character or creature, and keeping track of how long a light source is on. And that's on top of the fact that every light source is different as fuck.
And that's why D&D makes it so easy to ignore lighting. In 4E, sunrods were super light sources available for free. In 3E, an always-on torch cost around 100 gp if I remember correctly. In 5E, light is a simple trick every mage uses. And that is. The thing is, at any table where lighting and visibility exist (because the GM is a stickler), solutions are trivial, so they don't stick around for long. And any table where lighting and visibility ARE NOT a thing, well, it just isn't.
Now, the reason nobody wants to worry about lighting and vision is because it's unnecessarily too detailed. The difference between different light sources, visibility rules, all that crap. It's not COMPLICATED, per se. It just varies a lot from one light source to another. Quick, what's the difference between a torch and a hood flashlight and a target flashlight? You knew? What is the ray of light in each one? How long does each last? How about a light spell? Light? A bonfire? A simplified set of rules and simple conditions can make lighting more important. It's as if the tax is a good idea but a bummer because of the amount of math shuffling required.
The thing is, there's a lot of value in lighting. It is a necessary component for stealth rules, line of sight rules, etc. But beyond that, there are a LOT of overlooked issues with visibility and lighting. The thing is, if you carry a light source through a dark space, it's visible from a very, very far distance. Everyone can see you coming. If you're traversing a dungeon with a torch, it's nearly impossible to hit anything you can see. Because all can see your torchlight coming. Even in curves. Or around cracks in doors. And since most creatures that live in underground spaces like dungeons can see in the dark, this means that absolutely everything that lives underground in the world has a distinct advantage over the PCs.
But one aspect of lighting that is often overlooked is just how dangerous walking in the dark can be. See, if you're like me and you're a fan of lighting, you eventually run into some situations with your players. The first is the group of players who realize how visible the light makes them and decide not to have a light source, leaving the humans in the dark. They all hold hands and wander through the dungeon together. And that's a great way to end up with a broken leg. Or worst. You see, when you can't see ANYTHING, something as simple as an uneven slab in the ground can catch you off guard and cause you to fall very dangerously. You don't see it coming, and due to disorientation, you are unable to properly prepare for the fall and could end up with serious injuries. This is one of the main reasons people don't travel at night, especially in roadless terrain. It was dangerous.
And then you have the stealth and exploration theme. See, if you're in an underground complex and you're human, it's almost impossible for you to explore or sneak around because you need a light source to explore effectively. And that means you're visible to everything. That kind of stealthy ruins.
It boils down to this: facing creatures that can see in the dark is one of the deadliest things you can do. At least it should be. Descending into a completely dark cave to hunt orcs must be downright terrifying for anything that has to carry a light source.
And D&D couldn't care less. D&D just doesn't think darkvision is that important. And neither do most GMs. Because the idea of different creatures with different senses in the same environment is a headache to keep track of and judge. Do you want proof? Why does black magic ALSO interfere with darkvision? Where are the spells and magic items that shed light just for the user? I mean, come on, where is Draco Malfoy's Hand of Glory? Where is the light spell that casts light only to the caster's allies? D&D is actually pretty messed up about whether lighting and variable senses matter.
So what is enlightenment for? If we're going to sweep most of the big visibility issues under the rug and only worry about them for specific reasons (like stealth), why bother with lighting? Well, lighting makes dungeon crawling easier to manage because it puts limits on how far the PCs can see. That is, when they are in room one and looking down the hall to see what's down there, the GM can use the limit of their vision as a practical way to decide how far to describe. The cloak of darkness provides a convenient fog of war for exploration.
See, lighting provides the same kind of benefit to the game as the dungeon itself. Provides a constraint. The wargames from which D&D emerged were played on arena tables and other surfaces where all participants could see the entire battlefield. Just as RPGs represented a downgrade in scale from armies to individual warriors, so too the dungeon (and the lighting issues that go with it) represented a downgrade in scope from entire battlefields to individual encounters. And when nature exploration came back into play, hex-based exploration provided a similar constraint. The hexagon in a wild map represents the extent of your awareness in the wider world.
The problem is that if you ask the average person "how far can a human being see" you will get a lot of different answers. And the reason is that we rarely find ourselves in situations where we can see as far as our vision. Very rarely do we have continuous, endless lines of sight. And even when we do, like when we're out in the ocean or on an open plain, the curvature of the Earth itself puts more restrictions on how far we can see than our naked eyes. Realistically, unless something is very high up, we can only see something from about three miles away because after that, it drops below the horizon. If you are on top of a hill or tall tower, this stretches to about 12 miles. And we can recognize a human-sized thing as a different human-sized thing from about 2 miles away. Though it's impossible to make out any real detail at that distance.
But when it comes to light, we are VERY good at seeing the light. In the dark, we can see light the size of a candle flame up to 30 miles away (assuming we have line of sight). So if something comes closer and has a light source, we'll almost certainly know about it. With or without our own darkvision. And light has a wonderful tendency to diffuse around corners and through small openings like doorways and doorways.
The strangest thing about all of this is that we have a very poor idea of how light works in RPGs. And that actually comes from the weirdly detailed, weirdly complicated, yet weirdly vague rules about light. When we say that torchlight encompasses (say) 30 feet of bright light and another 30 feet of shadows, we tend to see them as absolutes. We imagine that 18 meters away there is a wall of darkness. But, the problem is that we could reflect light from the right surface from much further away. Like, say, armor.
What is the point of all this rambling? Well, that's all: the value of darkvision and visibility in general in RPGs varies A LOT depending on who's running the game and how much they think about it. But in the average game, darkvision isn't as valuable. In part, its value is affected by the fact that unless everyone has it, the party will need a light source, and these light sources are just as useful as darkvision because most GMs deal with light. as something binary: either you can see it or you can't. Done and done. That said, a smart party with a darkvision scout MIGHT get some value out of it. The problem is, everything they want to explore also has darkvision, so the element of surprise is situational at best.
It is a shame. Darkvision MUST be terrifying in enemy hands. And honestly, it's so painful when it CAN BE in the hands of SOME PCs that it's probably best to remove it from all PC runs and even everything.