Theory - Questions and Salt

[DangerousPuhson]

Rebuttal: My art is not Simpsons art, though the fact that your exposure to Simpsons art is so limited saddens me all the same.

It could be worse though - my avatar could be Christopher Perkins apparently joining a cult or whatever...

 

[bryce0lynch]

Rebuttal: Your avatar is right on the Simpns Art facebook page!
In the center.

Simpsons pictures that I gone and done

Simpsons pictures that I gone and done. 1,490,542 likes · 656 talking about this. if you feel sick just be sick. if you love someone just tell them. Chris (Simpsons artist) xox

www.facebook.com

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Ah, but it's just some guy's art, not actually from The Simpsons. Sidenote: weird fucking page, that one. I just grabbed some random shit from Reddit.

 

[Gus L.]

J' Accuse

You can of course play your game how you want, but the question is specifically "what to do at the table with a party that runs out of light?".

The question isn't if your players have fun with resource management or if you like it. Heck I know a lot of people don't play that way - see the enduring success of Adventure Paths. The question isn't if you can trivialize encumbrance with henchmen - you can if you run your game that way. You can trivialize encumbrance a lot of ways: bags of holding and the very very common - completely ignoring it come to mind.

 

[Two orcs]

While my players never run out of light they've found themselves in the dark often enough because of separation traps, chutes etc. I run the game as normal except they don't see anything so their movement speed is as if heavily encumbered and they have -4 to hit and +4 to be hit by monsters with infravision. Spells that require line of sight don't work. Normally I sketch out the room layout for them to see, in the dark they have to rely on verbal descriptions of what they feel and hear.

 

[bryce0lynch]

The +4/-4 thing mirrors the ... 1e? rules, or is similar, isn't it?

Your reliance on heavy encumbrance, etc, is interesting also. A kind of mechanic re-use to handle 'new' situations.

 

[Gus L.]

The 1e DMG it has no real rules for a lightless situation - but "-4 to hit, saving throws and armor class" (presumably not a massive bonus to AC) is the traditional AD&D penalty for blindness. B/X calls for the inability to attack for blinded creatures which I find interesting because it's less a penalty to be overcome by min-maxing and more a categorical limitation. 5E uses and advantage/disadvantage mechanic similarly, and interestingly has lots of mid-level class abilities that mitigate blindness (it's a powerful encounter ability for some foes).

 

[Slick]

I booted up Darkest Dungeon the other day and being reminded of the way that game handles the light situation gave me some new thoughts. Your amount of available light sources doesn't affect your ability/inability to see and navigate your environment, it determines how dangerous the environment is. It's almost like the purpose of light in the dungeon in this case is to "beat back" the creeping darkness around you. Applying this to D&D is pretty simple: if you run out of light, you can still see and explore as normal ("your eyes adjust to the dark" or whatever), but the malevolence of the Mythic Underworld becomes more potent, more sinister. Without the light to protect you, monsters appear in greater numbers whenever they are encountered, and they gain surprise more easily. Traps never fail to spring. Otherwise friendly or neutral faces in the dungeon become twisted and hateful; reactions are always hostile. Cleric spells become warped and chaotic.

This way darkness doesn't mean certain doom, nor does it involve "fumble in the dark" roleplaying. The structure of the game remains the same, it just sharply increases the difficulty in spooky ways.

 

[bryce0lynch]

That's an interesting abstraction. It reminds me of the doppleganger/charmed thing I saw once. Rather than tell the player, with all the logistical issues that entails in and out of game, you just increase the wandering monster roll to represent their subtle machinations and treachery.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Rather than tell the player, with all the logistical issues that entails in and out of game, you just increase the wandering monster roll to represent their subtle machinations and treachery.

Ugh, that sounds like a lame way to work in the "compromised" mechanics. I can see the game now:

DM: "Haha, you guys have been under the influences of a doppelganger all along. That's why you were fighting more monsters than usual - it was subtly leaving trails to follow and making noises to draw enemies! What a twist!"

Players: "Oh... uhhh, ok. Well, I guess now we kill the Brendan/not-Brendan guy then? That was certainly inconvenient while it happened, I guess?"

 

[Gus L.]

Dopplegangers are annoying. Borderline unrunnable - or at least I've never seen it done well. I do like possessing PCs with spirits that really want things. The player gets to know what the spirit wants, and it will try to force them to act - if they don't want to they can take WIS or HP damage.

The thing about Darkest Dungeon is that light acts as a sort of difficulty metric in the game - it's an interesting way of designing a CRPG, but TTRPGs have different incentives and player goals usually.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Here's how you run doppelgangers: You don't.

But seriously, here's how you run doppelgangers:

1) DM asks everyone to make a Perception check (or Spot, or whatever edition thing you roll). He rolls his own counter-roll, with a bonus/Advantage if nobody suspects there's a doppelganger.

2) DM gets the results: if the DM loses, it just means that the winning player notices the next bit as it happens.

3) DM announces what the doppelganger did, but not who did it. Something like "A glass bottle breaks, awakening the sleeping guards" or "The Fighter's sword is not in its scabbard". If someone beat the check in Step 2, then you get this "Someone among you breaks a glass bottle, awakening the guards" or "One of you has taken the Fighter's sword". In the first circumstance, the players will be puzzled, but not likely suspicious yet. In the latter circumstance, they will become suspicious of each other and rightfully paranoid.

4) If the doppelganger loses another check, they can narrow their suspicions a bit more without outright knowing who the traitor is. The next statement (using the same scenario) would go like "A breaking bottle awakens the guards. The Ranger and Thief were both closest to the table where the bottle was a second ago" or "The Fighter's sword is missing, yet it clatters to the floor behind the Ranger's back". Because even the doppelganger-replaced character doesn't know he's the doppelganger, he'll genuinely deny it, which is exactly what a doppelganger would do, so it's authentic.

4) If the doppelganger loses three opposed checks, then the party has sensed enough to know who it is with "The Ranger breaks a glass bottle which awakens the guards" or "You see the Ranger trying to covertly steal the Fighter's sword". Then you inform the doppelganger-replaced character that they are a doppelganger, and pull them from the fight while you start combat.

The key is not telling the character that they're a doppelganger, so they do the deceiving for you without even know they are doing it (also, there's no metagaming, which is the biggest bane of doppelganger play).

 

[Dave]

what to do at the table with a party that runs out of light?

Roll on your Escaping the Dungeon table with a penalty.

You do have an Escaping the Dungeon table, don't you?

 

[squeen]

Doesn't the whole light-as-a-resource go out the window as soon as a spell caster can pull off a continual light spell? I've tried putting in some limits on things like continual light and invisibility (i.e. limiting the caster to maintaining 1 or 2 "permanent" spells per level), but it doesn't seem to elevate it to a major resource. Think I must be doing it wrong.

Also, I struggle with the demi-humans with dark vision. How crappy should dark vision be in order to make the player prefer a genuine visible light source? (Also, as much as my players would hate it---I think the game would actually be better if all PC were human. Honestly.)

Lastly, if I'm not mistaken, doppelgangers were originally intended to make the party nervous about their hirelings. I can see were it would break down badly if a PC was replaced.

 

[bryce0lynch]

Interesting doppelganger/hireling dynamic!

ContLight takes up a spellslot. That's not fireball. Or comprehend languages. Or passwall. I see the spells and magic items as mechanism for overcoming some resource obstacles, especially as the game transitions in to domain play?

Create Food/Water isn't a heal spell slot ...

 

[Slick]

Also, I struggle with the demi-humans with dark vision. How crappy should dark vision be in order to make the player prefer a genuine visible light source? (Also, as much as my players would hate it---I think the game would actually be better if all PC were human. Honestly.)

Demi-humans having darkvision only alleviates the problem for themselves, so unless the whole party is elves/dwarves then you're going to have a few people who still need to rely on standard light sources. There's also the other benefits that torches/light provides: some feral monsters (especially mundane animals) are afraid of fire, you have a ready source to ignite firebombs/tapestries/etc., you can drop torches down dark pits to gauge depth.

 

[Dave]

Doesn't the whole light-as-a-resource go out the window as soon as a spell caster can pull off a continual light spell?

Yes, and that's okay. The game changes over time and level. Face the challenge of counting torches and tracking encumbrance for long enough, and eventually you get the option of bypassing that.

One mistake I've seen GMs make is taking a year or two to get up to second or third level, and a couple of the party members have +1 swords, then announce they're starting over with a new 1st level campaign, only this time, they're going to keep it gritty. And I'm fine with gritty, but it leaves me wondering what they call a year or two of low level play. Let the players have their rewards! Let them use their magic items! Change the kind of challenges they face!

 

[Beoric]

Also, I struggle with the demi-humans with dark vision. How crappy should dark vision be in order to make the player prefer a genuine visible light source? (Also, as much as my players would hate it---I think the game would actually be better if all PC were human. Honestly.)

The power of "darkvision" also varies by edition. In earlier editions you had infravision, which was more or less like the Predator's vision. You could see heat sources, but not details like color; you couldn't read by it; and if I recall correctly, you could be blinded by areas of great heat.

 

[squeen]

Yes...I was referring to infra/ultra-vision or basically non-visible spectrum sensitivities and curious how this was typically handled by other practitioners.

Also, with regard to continual light and Bryce's comment---it's one of those "permanent" spells like invisibility that don't really take up a spell slot because that can often be prepped/cast "outside the dungeon". I'm totally on-board with letting the PC's level modify the game, but these two spells in particular seem to get some heavy-handed application.

Thanks for all the replies.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Also, with regard to continual light and Bryce's comment---it's one of those "permanent" spells like invisibility that don't really take up a spell slot because that can often be prepped/cast "outside the dungeon". I'm totally on-board with letting the PC's level modify the game, but these two spells in particular seem to get some heavy-handed application.

It helps if you look at spells through the lens of a Class ability that you can get by sacrificing the use of a spell, rather than a spell by itself. Nobody bats an eye when a thief gets bonuses for sneak attacks, or barbarian gets health bonuses for raging, or a fighter suddenly doubles his damage output, yet for some reason people fall over themselves if a Wizard gets the ability to hide for up to an hour, or can let the party ignore light management.