Quick Links
Dungeon Master: “The door to the mysterious standalone outhouse opens to reveal a hole in the ground where the bathroom should be. A rusty ladder is attached to one side of the hole, which descends into dark-” Entire Party (interrupting): I have darkvision!
Anyone who has spent even a trivial amount of time playingDungeons & Dragonshas met with players who assert the infallibility of their character’s darkvision at every step of an adventure. However, most of the same players would be surprised to find out that darkvision doesn’t truly let you see perfectly in the dark. Believe it or not, vision is a complicated issue in D&D that few players and game masters alike fully grasp.
How Vision Really Works
In order to truly understand how vision and perception-based skills work in D&D, you’ll need toreference the Vision and Light section in chapter eight of the Player’s Handbook.Here there are a number of terms and their definitions which are used for adjudicating vision:
Lightly Obscured
These definitions provide a framework for understanding how creatures perceive one another with sight in D&D. As you can see,areas of heavy and light obscurement impose penalties on sight-based vision.
Always remember that dim light is lightly obscured, and darkness is heavily obscured.
What Darkvision Does
Counter to what most players believe,darkvision does not allow you to see perfectly in darkness.In reality,darkvision only allows you to see in darkness as if it were dim light.Consequently,characters with darkvisionsuffer disadvantage on Perception checks based on sight when looking into darkness. Meanwhile, characters without darkvision are effectively blinded when looking into darkness. As a result, they cannot see into darkness at all as it’s a heavily obscured area for them.
In other words, creatures without darkvision should not even get a chance to make a perception check based on sight when looking into an area of darkness. They literally cannot see.
On top of the area of darkness being lightly obscured,darkvision also states that it does not allow creatures who are using it to see color.A character with darkvision who is looking into darkness can only perceive shades of grey. Darkvision is a very useful ability that affords many characters the ability to see when they otherwise could not, however, it is not as powerful as a light source which would allow the same character to perceive with their regular vision.
Furthermore, darkvision typically has a range of 60 feet. This means thata character with darkvision is still affected by the heavy obscurement of darkness outside of their darkvision rangeof 60 feet. Granted, there are some exceptions to this general darkvision range rule.
Other Forms Of Sight
While darkvision is useful, it’s far from the best mode of vision available in the game.Many creatures your party encounters during their adventures will have far superior senses than darkvision,and it’s helpful to understand all of them. After all, your character will inevitably come face to face with a monster who sports one or more of these senses sooner or later.
Benefit
Blindsight
The creature can perceive its surroundings to its blindsight range without relying on sight.
Tremorsense
The creature can perceive the location of any creature in contact with the ground.
Truesight
The creature can see invisible creatures, perceive the true form of creatures under effects such as wild shape or polymorph, see through normal and magical darkness, and see into the Ethereal Plane.
Tips For Stealth And Perception
By the end of this article, you might be thinking that darkvision is useless as an adventuring party might as well light a torch or carry another source of light so that everyone can see without difficulty. However, this is far from the truth.Light sources in dark places call monsters to your party like a lantern beckons moths to its flame.
A light source might allow the entirety of your party to see normally, butit also makes it so that creatures who can perceive your light source know exactly where you are while they remain hidden in the darkness beyond.Thankfully, mostdungeonsare filled with twisting corridors and closed rooms that provide obstruction from prying eyes interested in your light source.
One of the things that makes the Underdark so terrifying is that its caverns are massive and allow vision from as far as miles away. If there’s one place where you probably never want to carry a light source, it’s the Underdark.
As a consequence of light revealing your party,it’s almost impossible to move stealthily with a light source in hand.Monsters would see the area of dim light shed from your light source, even from the end of a long corridor or shining from beneath the door of an upcoming room. Keep this in mind during your dungeon delves, and you might just find your party on the winning end of surprise for once.
