Changes to light levels

[Dragovon]

A 5e thread about changes to darkvision has got me thinking. I play PF mostly (though we use 3.0/3.5 stuff)...and we have the exact same issues. Here's where this conversation got me. In Horror Adventures, they dealt with a similar issue with fear immunity and their solution was to create a wider range of fear with more levels...and in that case eliminated immunity and instead made it a reduction amount.

So what I propose is creating more levels of light.

In PF you have Daylight (which is basically normal light, but hurts various things), you have Normal Light, You have Dim light (which provides a 20% miss chance unless you have darkvision...or low light vision and you are within range of a light. You have Darkness (which is 50% miss chance but negated by darkvision). You have Deeper Darkness (which isn't negated by Darkvision...but is negated by See in Darkness).

I propose to create more light levels. Not sure what to name them...or specific penalties/bonuses/etc.. for them to have.
Daylight+ (brighter than daylight), would proved additional damage to things that daylight hurts and additional penalties to things that have penalties in bright light (because why should there only be more levels of darkness. :) )
Daylight
Normal Light
Dim Light
Deep Shadows
Darkness
Deeper Darkness
Absolute Darkness

I'm looking for feedback/suggestions/opinions.

[Potato_Priest]

A 5e thread about changes to darkvision has got me thinking. I play PF mostly (though we use 3.0/3.5 stuff)...and we have the exact same issues. Here's where this conversation got me. In Horror Adventures, they dealt with a similar issue with fear immunity and their solution was to create a wider range of fear with more levels...and in that case eliminated immunity and instead made it a reduction amount.

So what I propose is creating more levels of light.

In PF you have Daylight (which is basically normal light, but hurts various things), you have Normal Light, You have Dim light (which provides a 20% miss chance unless you have darkvision...or low light vision and you are within range of a light. You have Darkness (which is 50% miss chance but negated by darkvision). You have Deeper Darkness (which isn't negated by Darkvision...but is negated by See in Darkness).

I propose to create more light levels. Not sure what to name them...or specific penalties/bonuses/etc.. for them to have.
Daylight+ (brighter than daylight), would proved additional damage to things that daylight hurts and additional penalties to things that have penalties in bright light (because why should there only be more levels of darkness. :) )
Daylight
Normal Light
Dim Light
Deep Shadows
Darkness
Deeper Darkness
Absolute Darkness

I'm looking for feedback/suggestions/opinions.

So, I'm taking a look at this from a 5e perspective, obviously.

In 5e, dim light represents disadvantage on perception checks. No change necessary.
Deep shadows: not sure what to do here.
Darkness: Change to "subjected to the blinded condition mechanically (disadvantage on attacks, advantage attacking them, etc), but can still barely see what they're doing"
Deeper Darkness: If you have darkvision this functions like darkness. If you don't, you are literally blind. Things that aren't making noise are auto-hidden, etc.
Absolute darkness: Everyone relying on actual vision is totally blind, no matter if they have darkvision or not.

[Deepbluediver]

I like it, I really do, I'm just concerned that you'll get to the point where everything is so finely divided that people will have a hard time keeping track of which effects go with what combination of illuminance and sensitivity and won't want to use it. For the ease of use, some kind of chart with X/Y axis might be helpful.

In my setting I tweaked Darkvision to have a couple of different levels, so I had:

Normal vision
Low-light Vision
Darkvision- out to 30 ft., w/light sensitivity
Improved Darkvision- out to 100 ft., w/light blindness
Greater Darkvision- no limit on distance and no penalties, usually reserved for powerful outsiders.


Anyway, I think there needs to be a balance, but maybe it would be helpful if we worked up some descriptions for what each level of light represents it would help us figure out if there's anything we can get rid of. Lets start with the extremes:
Absolute Darkness- you are underground, in a cave, with no light sources at all. With normal vision, your eyes will never adapt and you can't see anything even if it's practically touching your eyeball.
Blazing Light- the "OH GOD MY RETINAS!" kind of light. You don't normally experience this on the material plane unless you stare directly at the sun or maybe if you are standing in front of a lighthouse with a powerful focusing lens.

Next, how finely do we need to divide this? The human eye is actually pretty good at adjusting, so for example whether you're standing in the middle of field at noon or under the shade of a tree, your eye compensates, keeping vision pretty similar. You need significant changes before you'll start to notice an effect, so lets start with:
Normal Daylight- any time between dawn and dusk, or inside a building with plenty of illumination
Dim light/Low-light- inside a building with only small amounts of daylight coming in and no other light sources, within range of a cave or tunnel's entrance but out of direct light, dawn and dusk when the sun is below the horizon but the sky is still kinda blue-ish, etc.
Darkness- the sun is completely down but there is sufficient moonlight to follow a clearly defined path, you're in a cave but with a candle that provides enough illumination for you to walk without tripping, etc

That's 5 classifications to your original 8; is it sufficient? Do we need anything else? For example, do you think you we really need to differentiate between Darkness and an environment where, for example, there was a moon covered by clouds or blocked by foliage? I'm asking here- yes in real life it might make a difference, but for a game with a certain amount of abstraction how often is it going to come up and will adding complexity have a net benefit?

I'll try to come up with a chart to explore some possible interactions between vision and brightness, but I want to mock it up in Excel first where it's easier to play around with the numbers.


Edit: I'm debating changing the various associations with various types of penalties and their related drawbacks. For example, in 3.5 I think Low-light vision is strictly an improvement on regular vision. This seems to match up with what I know of the Elves for the LotR setting, which was the inspiration for a lot of early D&D, when the elves where basically like humans but better. So they had better senses and no drawbacks. Now I'm wondering if we shouldn't have something like matching Light Sensitivity to low-light vision, and have more severe penalties for Darkvision, and/or if I should go back to having just 1 type of Darkvision.

Edit2: I'm re-reading the standard 3.5 rules about light and illumination (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm); there's more differences than I remembered. I may have to go and find the 5e rules, too, just to see how they do it differently.

[Deepbluediver]

Still working on the chart- I keep going around and around in circles on how I want things to work out. Part of it is I can't seem to stop thinking about this in RL science terms.

People say that light and dark are opposites, but really darkness is an abscence of light. We can define absolute dark as the point of zero-light, sort of like how cold (absolute zero) is an absence of thermal energy. But it's harder to define the opposite end of the scale- can we even have a point of maximum light saturation or something like that? I know that if you pump truly mind-boggling amounts of energy into a closed system you can reach a point where physics as we know it breaks down. I don't think we need to go quite that far, but then the question becomes "how far do we need to go?"

Also, IRL light and heat are frequently linked. Incandescent lightbulbs actually spend most of their energy making heat, in fact. You can have sources of light without heat, such as Neon lightbulbs and glow-in-the-dark paint, which produce light via electroluminesence. I'm not sure I 100% understand everything- it gets kind of technical (for example, LEDs apparently produce heat internally but not as IR energy) but it's hard to picture what kind of effect a huge or intense source of non-heat producing light might have.

Of course we're inventing a fantasy world, and we can throw physics out the window and have the rules work however we want them to, but I'd prefer a system that my players could read once and say "that makes sense" rather than sitting there, scratching their heads about it. I need to take a little walk and think about this.


TL;DR how do we balance a scale that goes from zero on the low end all the way up to infinity?


Edit: I'm still mulling over the "scientific" aspects of this issue. For example, Darkvision is kinda described like night-vision goggles, except that night-vision needs SOME light to function- it works by amplifying existing light, so it won't actually function in complete darkness. I'm (internally) debating the efficacy of scrapping "Darkvision" entirely and replacing it when necessary with something like thermal-vision or echolocation. The idea of an underground race living in perpetual darkness is kinda neat as far as storytelling goes, but getting it to mesh with surfacedwelling races mechanically can be difficult. And it's not like D&D lacks for ways to get around darkness, whether it's simply magically-fueled light sources, or something more indirect like Blindfight or Tremorsense.

[Dragovon]

I like the ideas put forth a lot. Going to use part of them in setting up my next iteration which includes , let me know what you think:

First off, I want to discuss the existing levels of vision and existing levels of light:

Normal Vision: Can see normally in Daylight/Normal Light, 20% miss chance in Dim light, Blind in darkness or magical darkness.
Low Light Vision: Can see normally in Daylight/Normal Light/Dim light, Blind in darkness or magical darkness.
Darkvision: Can see normally in Daylight/Normal light, Black and White vision in dim light/darkness, usually out to 60', but sometimes further...commonly 90 or 120. Blind in Magical Darkness. Some creatures, especially those with longer ranges suffer penalties in Daylight/Normal light.
See in Darkness: Can see normally in all light conditions
(there could be other forms that I've not noticed...if you know of one, please share)

Based upon the current levels of vision/light sources, the better your vision, the more ranges of light you can see in, with the minor exception that some creatures with Darkvision may have penalties in Light.

I think to minimize changes to existing creatures, I am leaning to the following for vision (presently..unless something else comes up or I get a suggestion I like more):

Normal Vision: Can see in normal light, can see in Blazing light, though you will have a 20% miss chance, can see in dim light but have 20% miss chance, Blind in Darkness,
Low Light Vision (this functions by light enhancement), can see normally in dim light, 20% miss chance in deep shadows, blind in darkness, deeper darkness and absolute darkness), will be dazzled in Blazing Light and you will have a 20% miss chance.
Darkvision: Blind in Blazing light, dazzled and 20% miss chance in normal light, can see in deep shadows, 20% miss chance in darkness, Blind in Deeper Darkness and Absolute Darkness.
Improved Darkvision: Blind In Blazing Light and and Normal Light, 20% miss chance in dim light, can see in deep shadows, darkness and 20% miss chance in deeper darkness, Blind in Absolute Darkness
See in Darkness (typically only Outsiders, could be done with magic): Normal Vision in all sources of light. May need to change any non-outsiders Vision.

Blazing Light The "OH GOD MY RETINAS!" This level of light is not normally available on the prime material plane, but could be generated by spells or perhaps exceptional situations, such as closer to the sun, directed light (perhaps via mirrors), or suitably focused light (such as with a focusing lens). This level of light is so bright that it hampers people with normal vision. Things that take damage from light will take increased damage (currently assuming double) from Blazing Light
Daylight/Normal Light any time between dawn and dusk, or inside a building with plenty of illumination.
Dim Light inside a building with only small amounts of daylight coming in and no other light sources, within range of a cave or tunnel's entrance but out of direct light, dawn and dusk when the sun is below the horizon but the sky is still kinda blue-ish, etc.
Deep Shadows the sun is completely down but there is sufficient moonlight to follow a clearly defined path, you're in a cave but with a candle that provides enough illumination for you to walk without tripping, etc
Darkness There is no appreciable light. In Darkness, if you can see, it's because of some other sort of radiation or perhaps magic. It's a magic world, I don't feel the need to explain how it works. :)
Deeper Darkness This may be created by magic, planar energy, removal of whatever it is in normal darkness that allows those with darkvision to see.
Absolute Darkness This level of darkness is on wherein there is nothing to allow you to see. If you see by light...there is none...if you see by whatever it is that allows vision in darkness...it's not there...so you can't see.

[Deepbluediver]

I'm glad you found it helpful- I like the "double damage" effect for things like vampires for Blazing light. Personally I'm still toying with the idea of removing Darkvision entirely from humanoid races (preserving it for Outsiders, Aberrations, and maybe Undead, etc) as a racial trait. I'd keep it around as a magic effect of course, but I tend to prefer high-magic settings so it's not like I expect groups to lack for light sources in one manner or another.

Anyway, there was less racial variety in Darkvision than I remembered, but there are plenty of ways to improve it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?287920-3-5-Max-Darkvision-Range). I put together this little chart just as another way of looking at things- see below for definitions. Everything pretty much works on a sliding scale so you can adjust stuff one way or the other, and add or remove categories as necessary, even homebrew a race that's more light-adapted than humans, if you want. Also, in the RAW "Dazzled" is an effect that is specifically about to much light, but you can use the same effect with problems seeing for to little light as well, IMO. I also went back to just 1 category of Darkvision, but I think it would be easy to see how you could expand that if you wanted.

Vision & Illumination



Blazing
Bright
Normal
Shadowy
Darkness
Absolute


Standard Vision

3

2

1

2

3

4


Low-light vision

4

3

2

1

2

4


Darkvision

5

4

3

2

1

1


Greater Vision

1

1

1

1

1

1


no special changes, vision is as described elsewhere
dazzled for 1 round upon first exposure
blinded for 1 round upon first exposure, afterwards you remain dazzled as long as you remain in the light/dark
blinded as long as you remain in the area of light or darkness
blinded, and take 1d3 nonlethaldamage each round unless your eyes are covered with your hand or a thick blindfold (closing your eyes is insufficient) or until you fall unconscious


Blazing Light- as described above, provides concealment (20% miss chance) against creatures with Standard vision, and total concealment (50% miss chance) against creatures with Low-light vision and Darkvision. Creatures that take damage from sunlight (Vampires, for example) take double-damage if the light source is natural.
Bright Light- light that is uncomfortable to human eyes, provides concealment (20% miss chance) against creatures with Darkvision.
[I've only experienced something like this twice under natural conditions: the first was after coming out of an eye exam when I'd gotten eyedrops put in to dialate my pupils, and so my eyes couldn't adjust to the sun, and the second was while standing in a snowfield under bright sunshine, so there was nowhere I could look that didn't cause my eyes to water. The first probably won't happen in your gameworld, and the second seems really setting-specific, like if you're running a Frostburn themed campaign. I included it as an option though, in case someone also wants to make deserts or sailing a boat with light reflecting off the water like this.]
Normal Light- no changes
Shadowy Light (aka Dim light, Low light, etc)- provides concealment (20% miss chance) against creatures with Standard vision. Creatures that take damage from sunlight (Vampires, for example) take half-damage if the light source is natural.
Darkness- provides concealment (20% miss chance) against creatures with Low-light vision, and total concealment (50% miss chance) against creatures with Standard vision
Absolute Darkness- no changes


P.S. This chart and list of effects may not be exactly what I decide upon for my own setting, so feel free to criticize it or remove and/or add to it as you see fit. I just wanted to include everything I thought about.

[Mith]

If you were to use Infrared vision, keep in mind that that could negate effects like Invisability.

[Deepbluediver]

If you were to use Infrared vision, keep in mind that that could negate effects like Invisability.
That's actually one of the aspects that appeals to me- promoting different types of sense gives the players (or the GM) a variety of problems to solve. Thermalvision might pick up on invisibility, but could miss out on seeing a golem. Tremorsense might not detect flying/levitating creatures. Echolocation not be able to provide fine details, or could be susceptible to noise. etc. etc. etc.