How often does low light vision come into play?

[SunstonePhoenix]

I have only been a part of the Pathfinder community for six months or so, so I was thinking that I might not have a very balanced opinion yet on this trait. Currently, I think I've had low light vision come into play once. Have I had an unusual experience, or is low light itself fairly unusual? What kinds of situations involve low light vision? I have found direct light and darkness be far more common than whatever situations involve low light.

[KahnyaGnorc]

Low light would come into play at night, or when a small, limited light source, such as a torch or Light spell, interacts with a larger dark area. During the day inside a place with no internal lights and the windows covered could also be low light.

[Snowblind]

IIRC there is some text somewhere in the CRB that says that creatures with low-light vision can see as well in moonlight as creatures without can see in daylight. That means that during nights with clear skies characters without LLV have to deal with concealment, while LLV characters don't have a problem.

That's probably the most likely time it is going to crop up.

[Godwyn]

Low light is pretty common at low levels if at least part of the group is human, or another race that does not get darkvision.

That said, the impact is relatively minor compared to the difference between darkvision and not having it.

[Kudaku]

Rrrrreally depends on the GM. The lighting rules are notoriously fiddly, so many GMs don't bother tracking it at all as long as the characters are using a Light spell or carrying torches or sunrods.

[Rub-Eta]

I've actually never played a character or had a character in my party with low-light vision. It's either darkvision or light/torch in my group. Some of our DMs are very neglective about vision and lighting as a whole and sometimes needs to be reminded that we can't see in the dark and sometimes that we can.
Though, if a player asked me to take lowlight vision into account, I'd probably make it useful.

[My Self]

Usually the only time you won't have light is if the DM is actively trying to make it dark and mess with the party. In those cases, low-light vision won't help. If it's not too dark to see without Darkvision, and not too light to see, then it's usually just fine for everybody.

Your experience with low-light vision would be unusual for my group. You've seen it used once? That's a lot!

[Deighton Thrane]

Probably the most useful part of low light vision is being able to see twice as far with a light source in darkness, since every party I've been in either has a human, so you go by torchlight, or everybody has darkvision. Also, a lot of GMs tip toe around low light vision because it never says you can see in dim light, only that you can see as well on a cloudless night as others can during the day.

[Urath DM]

Low-Light vision says you can see twice as far as a human in the same lighting conditions. So the torch that provides a 20 ft radius of normal light and an additional 20 ft ring (out to 40 ft from the source) of dim light for a human provides 40 ft of normal light and dim light out to 80 ft for someone with low-light vision.

THAT can be incredibly useful in an adventure where the ambient light is "none" (like most dungeon settings).

Most PC-available Darkvision is 60 ft. What is murky about that is Dim light. Pretty clearly you see normally in "normal" light, and see clearly in monochrome out to 60 ft if there's no light. But it is not clear how it is affected by Dim light.

Reference: PRD; scroll down to "Vision and Light", there's text under the table that goes into this.

My peeve with the lighting rules is that they are written pretty solely from the perspective of someone standing with a light source (torch, lantern, etc.).. and not from the perspective of something lurking in the dark, where that light source makes the bearer a target.

[My Self]

If you're playing a home game, you can just houserule low-light vision to be Darkvision 30 or Darkvision 15 or something.

[MaxAstro]

I ran a game via MapTool once, and the PC with low-light vision saved the party's bacon several times, since with a sunrod he could spot monsters 120' feet out. Meanwhile, the PC with darkvision kept missing concealment rolls due to dim light.

Other than that, I've never really seen low-light vision come into play much.

[DM Soanso]

Whenever I realize the party is all humans. ;)

[Kudaku]

MaxAstro wrote:

I ran a game via MapTool once, and the PC with low-light vision saved the party's bacon several times, since with a sunrod he could spot monsters 120' feet out. Meanwhile, the PC with darkvision kept missing concealment rolls due to dim light.

Other than that, I've never really seen low-light vision come into play much.

This is a great example of how it depends on the GM. When people play on flip mats, tracking lighting is usually more of a hassle than it's worth, but virtual tabletops that support dynamic lighting can both automate the process and make it much more interesting. Here's an example* of how Roll20's dynamic lighting options allows very different gameplay experiences based on whether your character has lowlight vision or darkvision. If your GM plans on using something like this the value of Lowlight vision and darkvision increases exponentially.

*Minor spoilers about the first level of Emerald Spire.

[My Self]

Is it just me, or does the green shape in the bottom left corner of the GM view look kinda like a dog?

[Ragoz]

Lighting came into play a bit more in a PFS game I ran last week. The area had opposed caster level checks to use magical light sources. The light sources distance determined some abilities of the enemies.

I think for the most part this is too difficult to track but the Roll20 example seems like it creates a much more interesting experience. As long as you could switch to 'party vision' as well occasionally it be nice to use.

[Devilkiller]

Assuming somebody in the party has low light vision it should probably come up about as often as the DM enforces the lighting rules. That's fairly rare in a lot of games though at least until a magical darkness effect comes into play. It will never stop surprising me to see how few parties have a counter to Deeper Darkness on hand.

@Urath DM - I'm not sure if there are any rules about the distance limitations for vision in general, but barring obstacles I'd think that creatures in the dark should be able to see a light from quite far off.

@My Self - I think that house ruling low light vision into a short range darkvision is not a good idea since a lot of creatures like animals get low light vision but shouldn't reasonably be able to see in pitch black darkness. They should also be able to see further than a human in dim light. Even just giving short range darkvision to the various races which currently have low light vision would kind of isolate those without it like humans.