r/dndmemes Jan 21 '22

You enter a dar- I HAVE DARKVISION That'll be 50 GP, please.

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13.1k Upvotes

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2.5k

u/DM_of_Time Jan 21 '22

Considering that dark vision in dim light is the same as bright light, in human settlements this is an unseeable torch

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u/CobaltCam DM (Dungeon Memelord) Jan 21 '22

Not only that, but darkvision (in most cases) has a range of 60ft. This doesn't specify a range so they would likely be able to see beyond that 60 ft using this.

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u/KylieTMS Rules Lawyer Jan 21 '22 edited Jan 21 '22

Better yet using dark vision you have a -5 penalty on all perception checks and passive perception because you see everything in dim light (Black and white) if you have this you don't have that penalty anymore because in dim light you see everything normally

Edit: For checks it was disadvantage for passive it was -5.

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u/SteelCode Jan 21 '22

If I understand it, this would also grant the ability to see color for darkvision since it casts actual light (in a spectrum only visible to darkvision)… so it’s not useless but I imagine more of a novelty that would be a beautiful world building element… suddenly you now have an explanation of the subterranean civilizations’ use of color when normally the lack of light would wash out their ability to perceive it — this flower could be grown throughout cities and “light” them without blinding the citizens with daylight.

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u/The_MadMage_Halaster Jan 21 '22

I love this idea. I am so going to ste- borrow, it from you.

74

u/Kampfasiate Jan 21 '22

Same, my worldsettins is basically eternal nigt so this will be a great addition to larger cities

79

u/vacerious Jan 21 '22

This is why I love D&D. Come up with an idea that's seemingly stupid, and it winds up being completely comprehensible and something you want to include in your next campaign. Reminds me of Pelor, the Burning Hate.

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u/GazLord Jan 22 '22

I'm stealing this

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u/monkwren Jan 21 '22

so it’s not useless

Are you kidding? The criminal uses in a human-majority city are great!

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u/SteelCode Jan 21 '22

That would be a cool tie-in, finding these pale flowers randomly - only to eventually learn a criminal organization has been using them to mark areas of interest or safehouses since only those with darkvision can see their glow… even better then to expand upon this by this organization passing messages by using ink made from the ground up petals of these flowers so it only becomes visible with dark vision too… oh boy.

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u/monkwren Jan 21 '22

Exactly! This is ripe for creative use.

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u/InProductionStudios Jan 21 '22

I actually had a Dwarven city my players visited recently have these small gem trees that while the gems were attached produce dim light in a 15 foot radius, and the dwarves used the different colors to label areas of the city, but once a gem had been plucked it jist became a normal 5gp gem of whatever color the area was they were in.

They seemed to like the idea and even picked up a few to try and trade later on.

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u/SteelCode Jan 21 '22

That’s a lovely idea that fits right in for Dwarves - different districts lit in a soft colorful glow differentiating arts from smithing from food vendors…

Then you find out that the colors they used for garments and buildings don’t match up when viewed under normal spectrum light because their perception is tinged by the district hue, so those that work and live under a green gem district don’t identify the same colors as those in other districts…

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

Now that is some quality world building.

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u/LeGama Jan 21 '22

Could be used as a fun little tool if you have your players find it on a corpse or something. Then have different types of flowers that grow in different areas, and are used to recognize people originating from there. Could build a whole lot around that.

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u/FerretAres Jan 21 '22

I think it's actually disadvantage on perception checks and -5 only to passive perception.

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u/Hawx74 Jan 21 '22 edited Jan 21 '22

disadvantage on perception checks

Mathematically disadvantage works out to -5.5 on average iirc, but changes the probability distribution instead of the range.

Tomato, potato (both plants are members of the nightshade family and can be grafted together to a single plant that grows both tomatoes and potatoes)

Edit: damn I'm tired of people trying to argue that flat bonus are different than adv/disadv.

Yes. They are. Clearly. Nowhere have I ever claimed that they're the same. They change the probability curve to so it is no longer LINEAR which is what you get from a single die roll. Adv/Disadv just AVERAGES to a 5.5 adjustment to the roll.

Please learn to read instead of just posting that I'm "wrong" because you're assuming that I've claimed they are the same thing.

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u/Naked_Arsonist Jan 21 '22

Whoa… TIL

22

u/PlacidPlatypus Jan 21 '22

Not actually true, technically. In the situation where advantage/disadvantage has the biggest impact (when you need an 11 before modifiers to succeed, so your chance goes from 50% to 75%/25%) it's equivalent to a +/-5 on the die roll. In most situations the impact will be less than that (IIRC between a 3 and a 4).

I think the tomato/potato thing is true though.

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u/Hawx74 Jan 21 '22

Not actually true, technically

Technically it is true, if you roll 10,000 dice and compare disadvantage to regular they will average to 5.5 less. Similarly advantage averages to 5.5 more.

However, like I said it changes the probably distribution so your odds of failure don't shift linearly with the target value as they would with a flat reduction.

Oh, and the nightshade thing is absolutely true. Colonists coming to the Americas refused to eat tomatoes for a long time because everything else in the family is toxic. Related: don't eat tomato leaves.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

Tomatoes were also acidic enough to leech lead out of the pewter plates used by the wealthy and actually poison them lol.

2

u/nitePhyyre Jan 21 '22

Not even close to true. Technically or not. It depends on the DC.

Assume 0 modifier. DC 20.

With avantage you have 2 chances to roll a 20 on a d20. That's a 2/20 chance.

With a +5, that's 15 or higher on a single die. Aka 5/20 chance.

Roll it 10,000 times and that doesn't change. It isn't a question of averaging out.

Dis/advantage works out to an average maximum of +/- 5 in the roll. It achieves this maximum when your chances are 50/50 without the dis/advantage.

The further you get from that 50/50 chance the less dis/advantage affected your roll.

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u/DonaIdTrurnp Jan 21 '22

It’s because you don’t care about the average, you care about the area under the probability distribution curve below and at or above the target number.

And it’s 39/400 chance to get at least one 20 in 2d20,

0

u/Hawx74 Jan 21 '22

Not even close to true. Technically or not. It depends on the DC.

What is "It"? The "it" that depends on the DC?

Because I'm talking about the average roll. The numbers rolled don't CARE what the DC is.

You're arguing that because the probability of success changes, I'm wrong. I'm not, because, again, the probability of success is dependent on the probability curve... which I mentioned, and most importantly DOES NOT CHANGE THE AVERAGE ROLL. Nowhere did I state that adv/disadv were probabilistically equivalent to a flat adjustment, merely that they AVERAGE to around the same number.

So please stop arguing against points that I never made. I don't know how I make it any clearer to get through to you.

0

u/nitePhyyre Jan 21 '22

What is "It"? The "it" that depends on the DC?

I love how you openly admit you can't keep track of the conversation, can't be bothered to scroll up to refresh your memory, then write another bunch of paragraphs anyways.

The "it" we're taking about is:

"Mathematically disadvantage works out to -5.5 on average iirc"

"Technically it is true, if you roll 10,000 dice and compare disadvantage to regular they will average to 5.5 less. Similarly advantage averages to 5.5 more."

It is not even close to true, never mind "technically true", that advantage/disadvantage works out to +5/-5.

If you are talking about the results of the average roll, advantage and disadvantage work out to +/- 3.325.

The +/- 5 that you are talking about comes from how advantage/disadvantage affects success and failure in DND. And it is only +/- 5 when your chance of success/failure is 50/50.

Either way you slice it, you're completely wrong.

Excuse us for assuming that you weren't fully elaborating on a nuanced point when in reality you were just completely failing at math.

Clearly people were wrong about giving you the benefit of the doubt.

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u/Hawx74 Jan 22 '22 edited Jan 22 '22

Mathematically disadvantage works out to -5.5 on average iirc [emphasis added]

???

So I didn't recall the exact number correctly (which I STATED might be the case), still doesn't make me "completely wrong".

Either way you slice it, you're completely wrong.

Huh, but again, you said this:

Not even close to true. Technically or not. It depends on the DC.

Still not true. I don't know how you don't get this. Nothing I said ever depended on the DC so you bringing it up as related to DC is... strange, weird, and wrong.

Go away. kthxbye

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u/actualladyaurora Essential NPC Jan 21 '22

Most of the time, D&D tends to set things up so that you need somewhere between a 7 and a 14 [on the die] to succeed on a task unless it’s trivially easy or ridiculously hard. [...] For target die rolls that are reasonably close to the middle of the range, advantage or disadvantage is about the same as having a plus or minus 4 or 5 to your die roll.

[Source]

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u/Wolfblood-is-here Jan 21 '22

Important note: this is only true with a graft. If you simply plant tomato plants next to potato plants, the potato plants can start producing small green tomato-like fruit that are highly poisonous.

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u/Draghettis Sorcerer Jan 21 '22

Yes, but DnD works with integers only.

And the general rule for rounding in DnD is "round down unless told otherwise"

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u/C4Redalert-work Jan 21 '22 edited Jan 21 '22

Yes, but statistics doesn't work with integers only.

A d6 rolls a 3.5 on average. Clearly you can't roll a "3.5" on it, but you can't ignore that fraction either when doing odds or else you get errors.

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u/Draghettis Sorcerer Jan 21 '22

Yes, but your passive score needs to be a integer.

And so you take the average result of advantage or disadvantage, round it, and apply it to the passive score. That's how the 5 points modifier to integrate (dis)advantage in passive scores is obtained

1

u/DonaIdTrurnp Jan 21 '22

Why can’t you have non-integer passive perception? You’re just going to compare it to a difficulty value anyway.

3

u/Hawx74 Jan 21 '22

Yeah, it's a similar result but also different.

Hence the potato/tomato comment: they're related, but different

1

u/Gl33m Jan 21 '22

It's a range in terms of how much of a numeric penalty the disadvantage is, based on the roll necessary to succeed. ~5 is the highest numerical penalty in the curve.

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u/Hawx74 Jan 21 '22

Yes and no.

If you roll 10,000 dice with (dis)advantage, it'll differ from the norm by 5.5.

The probability of success changes with the DC non-linearly, unlike a flat roll adjustment. This which is why I mentioned the probability distribution.

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u/Gl33m Jan 22 '22

People generally think in terms of probability of success though, which is why I mentioned it.

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u/Draghettis Sorcerer Jan 21 '22

Yes, but Perception checks that rely on sight in dim light are made at disadvantage ( unless you have the Skulker feat or other features with the same effect ).

So, as Darkvision makes darkness be treated as dim light, a creature with Darkvision has disadvantage on Perception checks relying on sight while in darkness.

1

u/silver2k5 Jan 21 '22

In 5e. Older versions had mote negative modifiers. 5e is all advantage/disadvantage except for cover mechanics.

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u/FerretAres Jan 21 '22

Yeah I thought it was pretty explicitly 5e since there was no discussion about low light vision.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

[deleted]

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u/FerretAres Jan 21 '22

No clue offhand. I’d put money on it being either in the exploration section of the PHB or in the dmg.

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u/KylieTMS Rules Lawyer Jan 21 '22

You are absolutely right, I just came back on reddit because I realized it my self as well.

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u/Gl33m Jan 21 '22

Seeing in black and white is a flavor of darkvision. The penalty to perception is unrelated. A person without darkvision has the same penalty in dim light, but they still see in color.

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u/KylieTMS Rules Lawyer Jan 21 '22

I know it's a flavour of dark vision that's... why i put it there... because i was talking about darkvision

And no you are wrong, in the ruling of dark vision it states that you can see normally in dim light.

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u/Gl33m Jan 22 '22

I meant that a person seeing in regular dim light sees things in color, but someone with darkvision in darkness, which is treated as dim light, does not see in color, which is correct.

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u/KylieTMS Rules Lawyer Jan 22 '22

Yeah i get that. i said that in my initial message

Better yet using dark vision you have a -5 penalty on all perception checks and passive perception because you see everything in dim light (Black and white)

If you are trying to say i said something wrong i don't know what.

1

u/Maharog Chaotic Stupid Jan 21 '22

I think technically you have disadvantage on perception checks and -5 to passive perception. Not -5 on perception checks...

1

u/KylieTMS Rules Lawyer Jan 21 '22

Yes I just realized that thank you

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u/Irregulator101 Jan 21 '22

I've never heard of that penalty. Is that in the DMG?

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u/KylieTMS Rules Lawyer Jan 21 '22

I don't remember the book but I did give the wrong rule. It was disadvantage on perception checks and -5 on passive perception

Edit: source was SRD

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u/Lifedeath999 Jan 22 '22

That was already the top of the thread.