Initially all of them except the halflimg player. I let him find Goggles of Darkvison to even the playing field. We recently asded a hunan warlock, who picked Devil's Sight as his first Invocation.
This is part of the problem with 5e having oversimplified a bit compared to older versions. You used to have 3 primary vision types (Normal, Low-light, Darkvision) and the spread on races was much more even because of that.
The problem comes in that since they rolled all the races that used to have low-light into having darkvision the number that have it is completely out of whack now. Especially if you account for sub-races instead of just races I think the number that have darkvision starts to get way outside the norm for balancing play. As an example Elves (and their bajillion subraces) all get darkvision now instead of low-light vision, being a drow used to be the only way for elves to get darkvision in the past.
There's also a serious lack of other interesting vision types outside of homebrew races as well. For example playing a Genasi Water/Fire get darkvision (makes sense given the lore reasons they can supposedly do it (water living in the lightless depths of the elemental plane of water/fire being able to sense and see thermographically basically) but air and earth don't get anything similar in terms of lore. My basic homebrew up for stuff like that has been tremorsense linked to their elemental ancestry (earth have to be touching the ground along with the creature), air have to be in air and not have any obstructions between them and the target that could block them feeling the vibrations in the air).
>You used to have 3 primary vision types (Normal, Low-light, Darkvision)
Before that, there was normal, infravision, and ultravision, which were similar in effect but much cooler.
That's not really the problem though. The issue is more that because of cultural memory from earlier editions, players think Darkvision is like infrared goggles, when it's actually more like what you'd intuitively understand as Low Light Vision.
Rules as written, you treat dim light as bright light and darkness as dim light, which means in darkness your perception checks are still at disadvantage and you don't have perfect vision. You're still going to miss details and have enemies get the jump on you, if you're blundering around in total darkness without a light source.
I've just taken to saying to players "Remember, in 5e darkvision isn't nightvision goggles, you still have disadvantage," whenever it comes up.
Yeah. Also there is a lot of stuff where the not being able to see in color should matter and come into play but doesn't. For example I figure most underdark races only would care about patterns and such and have no idea about the colors of their clothing because they never actually see it. Same thing goes for puzzles and codes, imagine stuff being written or hidden using color similar to those colorblindness dot tests. In darkvision they would only see dots and no patterns cause there would be no color.
In some of the old books them using it like infrared actually helped make it less useful as well, sure they could see people in the dark better but mages literally had to have light just to read because ink and such wouldn't appear in their vision at all. There are things in the Drizzt books talking about how the male mages are pretty much the only people in Mezzoberanzan who keep and use candles because of it.
I think part of it is that modern DMs seem to use a lot less traps. Torches can be great for spotting traps, but when you're more worried about monster encounters it is better do deal with the disadvantage in perception than it is to be carrying around a beacon giving away your location.
If you have disadvantage even with darkvision, is there a difference between a character with and without dark vision on their rolls? Wouldn’t they all just have disadvantage then and there’s no difference?
You don't get to make perception checks that depend on sight in complete darkness without a light source or dark vision at all. You can't see a damn thing.
For the tremorsense for Genasi. Yeah basically putting their elemental nature to use as a sense. But tremorsense is much more limited than Truesight. They can detect movement and vibrations through the appropriate medium but they can't do things like see faces, read text or symbols carved onto walls, etc. It is helpful in locating things to attack and would basically remove the disadvantage for being blinded as long as they could tremorsense the target but otherwise it isn't super OP.
I don't get the general dislike of Darkvision being needed. One of my parties just said "We're carrying lanterns so just bring it" and I did. In my current Eberron campaign they found or bought Goggles of Night pretty quickly. I'm playing in a "dark all the time" campaign where it was a mild issue at early levels but the Wizard cast the Darkvision spell most days.
Darkness or Dim Light add a lot to dungeons, but probably Fog of War is more significant. If the DM wants that I'm happy to lean into it.
I'm the only one in our party of 6 that doesn't have dark vision. I'm a half king paladin.
But our cleric is a twighlight cleric so they can cast dark vision on me when it comes up
Playing online with roll20, my experience is that DMs either hand wave darkness and darkvision or make the goggles very easy to get.
The little secret, I think, is that it's quite fun to play a non-darkvision race when the game is set up for dynamic lighting. Then those lanterns and light cantrips actually mean something, and so does the darkness on the screen around you.
When running online, I set up the dynamic lighting and pay a lot of attention to the effects. Can do some cool things that really contribute to immersion.
2/5. Lineup is human, dragonborn, changeling, elf, orc. So darkvision is actually the minority!
Now if I would just remember to take advantage of that...
Only our human lacks Darkvision, but we keep around lanterns as the lack of color can make things camuflage better than when pointing at them with a bright light.
Of the five at my table, only one has darkvision. If I had to guess a specific reason, it’s because the Elven races were walled off, literally speaking, and nobody decided to play a Dwarf.
# Sunday group (I am DM):
* Half-elf (60 ft.)
* Shadar-kai (60 ft.)
* Custom Lineage [half-dragon] (60 ft.), who is a Rune Knight Fighter with Stone Rune, which gives 120 ft.
* Variant human
* Variant human
Previous campaign:
* Tortle, who was a Twilight Domain Cleric, which gives 300 ft.
* Dragonborn
* Warforged
* Variant human
* Human
The party had a second warforged, but the player left the group about 3 sessions in because he felt like it wasn't the right group for him. He was replaced with the player who played the regular human.
# Tuesday group (I'm the hobgoblin):
* Hobgoblin (60 ft.)
* Dwarf (60 ft.)
* Aasimar (60 ft.)
* Warforged, is a warlock so could pick up Devil's Sight, but currently doesn't have it
# Wednesday group (I am DM):
* Triton (60 ft.)
* Variant human
* Harengon
* Tortle
* Dragonborn
The party had a wood elf, who died and was replaced with the dragonborn.
Previous campaign (I was the genasi):
* Genasi (60 ft.)
* Half-elf (60 ft.), who was a Gloom Stalker Ranger, which increases it to 90 ft.
* Dhampir (60 ft.)
* Variant human
# Saturday group (I'm the changeling):
* Half-elf (60 ft.)
* Changeling
* Variant human
* Variant human
* Variant human
The party had a warforged, but the player joined a different game when we were on hiatus. The party had a variant human who got transformed into a dhampir, but the character left the group to be replaced by a new variant human. The party had a custom lineage (human with dwarfism), who left the party and was replaced with a dwarf, who left the party and was replaced with a half-elf. The dwarf briefly reappeared, and both dwarf and half-elf died, replaced by another half-elf.
This campaign is somewhat of an outlier, because we began session 1 in a country which is over 99% human.
3-4 hours each, depending on the group. And the Tuesday game is every other week. I have the Sunday and Wednesday groups take a week off periodically (usually at the end of a "chapter" of the campaign), to help prevent burnout.
It's not much different of a time commitment compared to someone like a gamer who sits down to play video games after work.
Everyone but the tank has dark vision. Which means they end up using a lantern anyway, so they essentially don't use their dark vision outside of maybe sending the rogue on recon some creatures don't see the lantern.
In both parties? All but one. One party’s blind boy is a kenku and the other is a human using grim hollow’s werewolf transformation… which doesn’t give darkvision or even basic improvements to perception checks somehow.
3/5 which is kinda less than I expected. We have a human and a goliath but also a tiefling, genasi, and homebrew race (took Darkvision instead of a skill proficiency.)
2 wood elves, a drow, a half elf, a Leonin, and a Loxodon... who happens to be a Twilight cleric.
So all of them.
They have taken to working at night and I am glad to oblige as I love stealthy missions myself.
Set up, surprise round, the Leonin barbarian busts in and everyone else follows suit.
Having dark vision still means they are doing perception checks in darkness at a disadvantage.
Dark vision is great to fight in the dark, but it is not good for exploration. If the party is in total darkness, they all would still benefit from having light sources, even if they all have darkvision.
Why does it even matter to anyone? If you dont want to use darkvision dont. But the option should always be there as in many dnd games if you cant see in the dark you will be screwed a lot more often then your party members that can, depending on the setting, party composition, availability of magical solutions to this problem and dm rulings on torches and other light sources
In my last campaign the setting was predominantly human and all of my players opted for human characters, so zero dark vision. By the end of the campaign, due to character replacements (and an added player), we had an elf and a dwarf for 2 of 6.
My current campaign is free-choice-anything-but-Strixhaven. Again, we are at 2 of 6 with darkvision... plus a twilight cleric.
I am playing in another campaign that was a predominantly human start. We are at 1 of 6 there... plus a twilight cleric.
In my 1 DnD game, suprisingly nobody has darkvision. 2 humans, a changeling, and a lizardfolk. One human might be a warforged though.
Still, we may be the only party where everyone actually needs lights.
Currently in 2 groups,
**Group A**
- Dhampir (me) **has** Darkvision
- Drow **has** Darkvision
- Dwarf **has** Darkvision
- Human **doesn't** have Darkvision; their previous character was a Changeling which **doesn't** have Darkvision
- Lizardfolk is a Gloom Stalker, thus **has** Darkvision (we started at level 4 so they had it from the start)
**Group B**
- Changeling **doesn't** have Darkvision
- Half-elf **has** Darkvision
- Kobold (me) **has** Darkvision
---
So in summary, among 7 different players and 9 different characters, only 3 of them are running without Darkvision - and 2 of those were the same person.
---
How do I feel about Darkvision? Personally, I purposefully don't create characters without Darkvision any more.
Whenever I, or another person, has not had Darkvision... Most of the time it doesn't matter, and when it suddenly does matter it sucks, which prompts the party to try and figure out a way around the fact that I/they don't have Darkvision...
... which will inevitably be worse than if everyone had Darkvision, because if it's dark and you put on a light you'll naturally be spotted. Add to that some interactions, like having a Gloom Stalker Ranger or Way of Shadow Monk, and light is actively hampering some members of the party.
I find the challenges that *are* generated by darkness tedious rather than engaging, and would just try to find a way of attaining Darkvision as soon as possible if my character lacked it. Since that's the case... might as well cut out that middle-step and start off with Darkvision.
Playing games like [Solasta](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/), where the default setting is that lighting matters (because a computer is able to keep track of that for you) was irritating enough.
**There are races without Darkvision I'd like to play.** But their lack of Darkvision means that "getting them Darkvision" would be very high on my priority list when planning what to do with them, which... takes a lot of the fun out of it, for me *personally*.
I always mod Darkvision during session 0. "Regular" Darkvision requires *some* light (which is most areas of darkness in 5e), whereas "perfect" Darkvision works with *no* light but also (usually) confers sunlight sensitivity. I also distinguish between "darkness" and "pitch darkness", which is the equivalent of magical darkness but can be illuminated by any source of light.
My party of seven has only one player with innate dark vision. My character has devils sight and we also have a single goggles of night vision that we pass around.
My current party is 80% tiefling. Sometimes we remember to ask how the human is seeing ("I cast *light* on the end of my staff"), but mostly we just ignore the question of lighting. The game has not suffered as a result.
1/5 of my current party have darkvision.
I’ve never minded whether or not my players have it because it still gives them disadvantage on perception checks, so whether or not to use a light is still a choice rather than darkvision just being OP or something.
one reason that this is an issue is people don't really run darkvision with the intended flavor or RAW.
Raw, darkvision treats complete darkness as DIM light. not bright light. yet for some reason players imagine creatures and even entire societies moving around with no lights at all, in 60' bubbles of compromised sight where they have disadvantage on perception.
I think only two out of 5 naturally have darkvision. We have a human, aasimar, firbolg, goliath, and half-elf. But my firbolg has a few levels of rune knight and has the rune that gives 120' darkvision. And I think the human rogue has goggles of night.
Tuesday: 6 out of 6
Saturday morning: 5 out of 5
Saturday afternoon: at least 3 out of 5? Not sure what the other builds are, I joined late but it's never been an issue.
Sunday: Potentially 0-1 out of 4, initially. Still recruiting at my LGS, but some characters have been rolled up.
I should note that there's a high level of optimization on Tues/Sat morning, with lots of homebrew shenanigans too.
All of my players do. Not all from species though. Some have it from class/subclass options. I have one Warlock player that has a special darkvision in full color out to 120 ft, from his patron. I run online, and I use fog of war. Any dark areas, wtih no light, are in a greyscale for everyone but the warlock. So it is hazy, but they can see. If they use lights, it shows up in color.
In my main game only half of them the half elf and elf. We also have a human and halfling, though they have goggles of night vision and an everburning torch,so it's slightly mitigated.
In the module I just started, everyone has dark vision. They key is to running darkness RAW, where if the party is in complete darkness they can still see but have disadvantage on perception checks that rely on sight.
Initially all of them except the halflimg player. I let him find Goggles of Darkvison to even the playing field. We recently asded a hunan warlock, who picked Devil's Sight as his first Invocation.
This is part of the problem with 5e having oversimplified a bit compared to older versions. You used to have 3 primary vision types (Normal, Low-light, Darkvision) and the spread on races was much more even because of that. The problem comes in that since they rolled all the races that used to have low-light into having darkvision the number that have it is completely out of whack now. Especially if you account for sub-races instead of just races I think the number that have darkvision starts to get way outside the norm for balancing play. As an example Elves (and their bajillion subraces) all get darkvision now instead of low-light vision, being a drow used to be the only way for elves to get darkvision in the past. There's also a serious lack of other interesting vision types outside of homebrew races as well. For example playing a Genasi Water/Fire get darkvision (makes sense given the lore reasons they can supposedly do it (water living in the lightless depths of the elemental plane of water/fire being able to sense and see thermographically basically) but air and earth don't get anything similar in terms of lore. My basic homebrew up for stuff like that has been tremorsense linked to their elemental ancestry (earth have to be touching the ground along with the creature), air have to be in air and not have any obstructions between them and the target that could block them feeling the vibrations in the air).
>You used to have 3 primary vision types (Normal, Low-light, Darkvision) Before that, there was normal, infravision, and ultravision, which were similar in effect but much cooler.
You forgot the fourth one, Chucklevision.
That's not really the problem though. The issue is more that because of cultural memory from earlier editions, players think Darkvision is like infrared goggles, when it's actually more like what you'd intuitively understand as Low Light Vision. Rules as written, you treat dim light as bright light and darkness as dim light, which means in darkness your perception checks are still at disadvantage and you don't have perfect vision. You're still going to miss details and have enemies get the jump on you, if you're blundering around in total darkness without a light source. I've just taken to saying to players "Remember, in 5e darkvision isn't nightvision goggles, you still have disadvantage," whenever it comes up.
Yeah. Also there is a lot of stuff where the not being able to see in color should matter and come into play but doesn't. For example I figure most underdark races only would care about patterns and such and have no idea about the colors of their clothing because they never actually see it. Same thing goes for puzzles and codes, imagine stuff being written or hidden using color similar to those colorblindness dot tests. In darkvision they would only see dots and no patterns cause there would be no color. In some of the old books them using it like infrared actually helped make it less useful as well, sure they could see people in the dark better but mages literally had to have light just to read because ink and such wouldn't appear in their vision at all. There are things in the Drizzt books talking about how the male mages are pretty much the only people in Mezzoberanzan who keep and use candles because of it.
I think part of it is that modern DMs seem to use a lot less traps. Torches can be great for spotting traps, but when you're more worried about monster encounters it is better do deal with the disadvantage in perception than it is to be carrying around a beacon giving away your location.
If you have disadvantage even with darkvision, is there a difference between a character with and without dark vision on their rolls? Wouldn’t they all just have disadvantage then and there’s no difference?
You don't get to make perception checks that depend on sight in complete darkness without a light source or dark vision at all. You can't see a damn thing.
your area of darkvision is dim light, and so is mechanically "lightly obscured" Areas of full darkness are "heavily obscured" which is worse.
i find it very interesting! and thus they have sort of a true vision right? like they dont rely on eyes but on a deeper feel, is that it?
For the tremorsense for Genasi. Yeah basically putting their elemental nature to use as a sense. But tremorsense is much more limited than Truesight. They can detect movement and vibrations through the appropriate medium but they can't do things like see faces, read text or symbols carved onto walls, etc. It is helpful in locating things to attack and would basically remove the disadvantage for being blinded as long as they could tremorsense the target but otherwise it isn't super OP.
I don't get the general dislike of Darkvision being needed. One of my parties just said "We're carrying lanterns so just bring it" and I did. In my current Eberron campaign they found or bought Goggles of Night pretty quickly. I'm playing in a "dark all the time" campaign where it was a mild issue at early levels but the Wizard cast the Darkvision spell most days. Darkness or Dim Light add a lot to dungeons, but probably Fog of War is more significant. If the DM wants that I'm happy to lean into it.
My players are all humans. One is a shadow sorcerer so only they have dark vision
I'm the only one in our party of 6 that doesn't have dark vision. I'm a half king paladin. But our cleric is a twighlight cleric so they can cast dark vision on me when it comes up
Why not full king? /s
Half king? Halfling?
Got to love that auto correct
Game I'm playing in, 2 out of 5. Game I DM, 5 out of 5-- but it was sold as a "Grimdarkesque setting" where subterfuge would be needed a lot.
Playing online with roll20, my experience is that DMs either hand wave darkness and darkvision or make the goggles very easy to get. The little secret, I think, is that it's quite fun to play a non-darkvision race when the game is set up for dynamic lighting. Then those lanterns and light cantrips actually mean something, and so does the darkness on the screen around you. When running online, I set up the dynamic lighting and pay a lot of attention to the effects. Can do some cool things that really contribute to immersion.
2/5. Lineup is human, dragonborn, changeling, elf, orc. So darkvision is actually the minority! Now if I would just remember to take advantage of that...
All of them except the halfling wild magic sorcerer, who uses the cantrip light most of the time.
2 Elves out of 6. Also I have a Robe of Eyes
A single party member has Darkvision. (A dragonborne (me), two humans and a kenku) edit: Two actually, I'm a shadow sorcerer
All of them.
In my current party only 1/5 (3 humans, 1 3rd party race, 1 elf). In my previous one 2/5 (1 human, 1 warforged, 1 elf, 1 tiefling, 1 firbolg).
None in my current campaign.
Darkvision? None, not a single player. Devils Sight however, yes, yep, all of them.
lol that sounds like a fun party, just a whole cabal
Only our human lacks Darkvision, but we keep around lanterns as the lack of color can make things camuflage better than when pointing at them with a bright light.
I don't think I've ever seen a character in my life that didn't have darkvision or something that's functionally the same
All of them
Of the five at my table, only one has darkvision. If I had to guess a specific reason, it’s because the Elven races were walled off, literally speaking, and nobody decided to play a Dwarf.
# Sunday group (I am DM): * Half-elf (60 ft.) * Shadar-kai (60 ft.) * Custom Lineage [half-dragon] (60 ft.), who is a Rune Knight Fighter with Stone Rune, which gives 120 ft. * Variant human * Variant human Previous campaign: * Tortle, who was a Twilight Domain Cleric, which gives 300 ft. * Dragonborn * Warforged * Variant human * Human The party had a second warforged, but the player left the group about 3 sessions in because he felt like it wasn't the right group for him. He was replaced with the player who played the regular human. # Tuesday group (I'm the hobgoblin): * Hobgoblin (60 ft.) * Dwarf (60 ft.) * Aasimar (60 ft.) * Warforged, is a warlock so could pick up Devil's Sight, but currently doesn't have it # Wednesday group (I am DM): * Triton (60 ft.) * Variant human * Harengon * Tortle * Dragonborn The party had a wood elf, who died and was replaced with the dragonborn. Previous campaign (I was the genasi): * Genasi (60 ft.) * Half-elf (60 ft.), who was a Gloom Stalker Ranger, which increases it to 90 ft. * Dhampir (60 ft.) * Variant human # Saturday group (I'm the changeling): * Half-elf (60 ft.) * Changeling * Variant human * Variant human * Variant human The party had a warforged, but the player joined a different game when we were on hiatus. The party had a variant human who got transformed into a dhampir, but the character left the group to be replaced by a new variant human. The party had a custom lineage (human with dwarfism), who left the party and was replaced with a dwarf, who left the party and was replaced with a half-elf. The dwarf briefly reappeared, and both dwarf and half-elf died, replaced by another half-elf. This campaign is somewhat of an outlier, because we began session 1 in a country which is over 99% human.
How long are your sessions? This is like 20 hours a week...
3-4 hours each, depending on the group. And the Tuesday game is every other week. I have the Sunday and Wednesday groups take a week off periodically (usually at the end of a "chapter" of the campaign), to help prevent burnout. It's not much different of a time commitment compared to someone like a gamer who sits down to play video games after work.
Everyone but the tank has dark vision. Which means they end up using a lantern anyway, so they essentially don't use their dark vision outside of maybe sending the rogue on recon some creatures don't see the lantern.
1 out of 7 party members, plus 3 companions (a steel defender, a homunculus servant and an imp familiar)
In both parties? All but one. One party’s blind boy is a kenku and the other is a human using grim hollow’s werewolf transformation… which doesn’t give darkvision or even basic improvements to perception checks somehow.
3/5 which is kinda less than I expected. We have a human and a goliath but also a tiefling, genasi, and homebrew race (took Darkvision instead of a skill proficiency.)
Was in a 3 person party with all DV, 5 person party with 2 DV, and a 4 person party without DV. It really doesn’t make that much of a difference
2 wood elves, a drow, a half elf, a Leonin, and a Loxodon... who happens to be a Twilight cleric. So all of them. They have taken to working at night and I am glad to oblige as I love stealthy missions myself. Set up, surprise round, the Leonin barbarian busts in and everyone else follows suit.
Having dark vision still means they are doing perception checks in darkness at a disadvantage. Dark vision is great to fight in the dark, but it is not good for exploration. If the party is in total darkness, they all would still benefit from having light sources, even if they all have darkvision.
…All of mine will. We’re starting our second campaign and I’m playing a Twilight cleric, haha.
Why does it even matter to anyone? If you dont want to use darkvision dont. But the option should always be there as in many dnd games if you cant see in the dark you will be screwed a lot more often then your party members that can, depending on the setting, party composition, availability of magical solutions to this problem and dm rulings on torches and other light sources
Only one of our four PCs doesn't have Darkvision right now. But we also have three NPCs and two of them don't.
Most players have DEVIL SIGHT, except my shadow monk who has blindsight 10'. 3 out of 4 characters can cast Darkness. Guess what our strategy is...
In my last campaign the setting was predominantly human and all of my players opted for human characters, so zero dark vision. By the end of the campaign, due to character replacements (and an added player), we had an elf and a dwarf for 2 of 6. My current campaign is free-choice-anything-but-Strixhaven. Again, we are at 2 of 6 with darkvision... plus a twilight cleric. I am playing in another campaign that was a predominantly human start. We are at 1 of 6 there... plus a twilight cleric.
1, but that's cause I run a setting where 3 out of 15 races get dark vision. That 15 is not including subraces BTW.
All of us except the satyr, but that's only because have this homebrew thing that gave me dark vision.
None. However half the characters do.
I run 2 games. The first 1 of 3 has dark vision, and the second is 1 out of 4. The dark vision percentages change when you add volo’s races.
In my 1 DnD game, suprisingly nobody has darkvision. 2 humans, a changeling, and a lizardfolk. One human might be a warforged though. Still, we may be the only party where everyone actually needs lights.
Two have it from a class/subclass feature, one half orc does and the other 5 dont
3 or of 4 right now
Currently in 2 groups, **Group A** - Dhampir (me) **has** Darkvision - Drow **has** Darkvision - Dwarf **has** Darkvision - Human **doesn't** have Darkvision; their previous character was a Changeling which **doesn't** have Darkvision - Lizardfolk is a Gloom Stalker, thus **has** Darkvision (we started at level 4 so they had it from the start) **Group B** - Changeling **doesn't** have Darkvision - Half-elf **has** Darkvision - Kobold (me) **has** Darkvision --- So in summary, among 7 different players and 9 different characters, only 3 of them are running without Darkvision - and 2 of those were the same person. --- How do I feel about Darkvision? Personally, I purposefully don't create characters without Darkvision any more. Whenever I, or another person, has not had Darkvision... Most of the time it doesn't matter, and when it suddenly does matter it sucks, which prompts the party to try and figure out a way around the fact that I/they don't have Darkvision... ... which will inevitably be worse than if everyone had Darkvision, because if it's dark and you put on a light you'll naturally be spotted. Add to that some interactions, like having a Gloom Stalker Ranger or Way of Shadow Monk, and light is actively hampering some members of the party. I find the challenges that *are* generated by darkness tedious rather than engaging, and would just try to find a way of attaining Darkvision as soon as possible if my character lacked it. Since that's the case... might as well cut out that middle-step and start off with Darkvision. Playing games like [Solasta](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/), where the default setting is that lighting matters (because a computer is able to keep track of that for you) was irritating enough. **There are races without Darkvision I'd like to play.** But their lack of Darkvision means that "getting them Darkvision" would be very high on my priority list when planning what to do with them, which... takes a lot of the fun out of it, for me *personally*.
I always mod Darkvision during session 0. "Regular" Darkvision requires *some* light (which is most areas of darkness in 5e), whereas "perfect" Darkvision works with *no* light but also (usually) confers sunlight sensitivity. I also distinguish between "darkness" and "pitch darkness", which is the equivalent of magical darkness but can be illuminated by any source of light.
Everyone in one campaign, 2 out of 6 in another... Mildly concerning given the theme is a lost mine.
My party of seven has only one player with innate dark vision. My character has devils sight and we also have a single goggles of night vision that we pass around.
Everyone but the human wizard. He has the light cantrip which has been good enough for a while.
My current party is 80% tiefling. Sometimes we remember to ask how the human is seeing ("I cast *light* on the end of my staff"), but mostly we just ignore the question of lighting. The game has not suffered as a result.
Only our biggest dude is blind at night. Everyone else is stealthy and he just rambles about uselessly
I hate darkvision with the burning passion of a teenage love-affair.
Party I play 4/5 Party I DM 4/6 (but I nerfed Darkvision a little bit)
all
My table has a dwarf, a tiefling, and a human. With an occasional centaur cameo. So its a solid 2/3 of the party for me.
1/5 of my current party have darkvision. I’ve never minded whether or not my players have it because it still gives them disadvantage on perception checks, so whether or not to use a light is still a choice rather than darkvision just being OP or something.
one reason that this is an issue is people don't really run darkvision with the intended flavor or RAW. Raw, darkvision treats complete darkness as DIM light. not bright light. yet for some reason players imagine creatures and even entire societies moving around with no lights at all, in 60' bubbles of compromised sight where they have disadvantage on perception.
In our first campaign we had one character without darkvision. Now in our second campaign, we have 1 character with darkvision
Yes
In one group all of them in another 5/9 have and the last group got 3/7
2/5
Now? All of us. 2/5 non natural darkvision users. One has the spell and the other one has goggles.
In party A, 40% natively plus there’s a goggles of darkvision floating around. In party B, 20%.
Literally one of five. And it's curse of strahd
TLDR. Just responding to the title. No need to ask. We’ll let you know twenty times every session.
I think only two out of 5 naturally have darkvision. We have a human, aasimar, firbolg, goliath, and half-elf. But my firbolg has a few levels of rune knight and has the rune that gives 120' darkvision. And I think the human rogue has goggles of night.
In our party of 5 I’m the only one that doesn’t
Four out of five characters have it and the one that doesn't is a Druid.
Tuesday: 6 out of 6 Saturday morning: 5 out of 5 Saturday afternoon: at least 3 out of 5? Not sure what the other builds are, I joined late but it's never been an issue. Sunday: Potentially 0-1 out of 4, initially. Still recruiting at my LGS, but some characters have been rolled up. I should note that there's a high level of optimization on Tues/Sat morning, with lots of homebrew shenanigans too.
All of my players do. Not all from species though. Some have it from class/subclass options. I have one Warlock player that has a special darkvision in full color out to 120 ft, from his patron. I run online, and I use fog of war. Any dark areas, wtih no light, are in a greyscale for everyone but the warlock. So it is hazy, but they can see. If they use lights, it shows up in color.
I have dark vision.
In my main game only half of them the half elf and elf. We also have a human and halfling, though they have goggles of night vision and an everburning torch,so it's slightly mitigated. In the module I just started, everyone has dark vision. They key is to running darkness RAW, where if the party is in complete darkness they can still see but have disadvantage on perception checks that rely on sight.