I apologize if this had been brought up before, but I did a search on this and nothing had come up.
See in Darkness-Prerequisites: None; Benefit: Members of this race can see perfectly in darkness of any kind, including that created by spells such as deeper darkness.
The way I read this, there is no limit on vision, like there is with Darkvision. You can see as far out as line of sight, just like it works in daylight. You also see in color, as well.
Our DM agrees with this reasoning, but I will admit, there is part of me who feels this is extremely strong. But I think the main part I feel it works this way, and our DM agrees, is because of the 'you can see perfectly in darkness of any kind.
Do you agree? If not, how do you rule this at your table?
Agreed. As the description even alludes to, it's a completely different ability than Darkvision. While it is much better than Darkvision, that's okay.
I also understand feeling "guilty" for having a superior ability like this, but remember that when it comes to picking and choosing racial traits from ARG, you're trading other powerful situational things for this one. While See in Darkness is great, it's still situational.
It is an advanced trait worth 4 RP -- so it should be powerful.
The real issue is why anything from the Race Builder is coming up. It is far too easy to make something unbalanced if player characters are given free rein to mix and match things as they wish. Did your DM impose any limitations on race building? If not, you could easily create a race that is well suited for the class you want to play and for nothing else at a cost in RP even less than the standard races.
seeing perfectly in darkness of any kind is powerful just with the combination of deeper darkness and abilities that simulate it.
really, how often is there a difference between seeing perfectly well in normal darkness and 120' darkvision? not that much in my experience.
It is an advanced trait worth 4 RP -- so it should be powerful.
The real issue is why anything from the Race Builder is coming up. It is far too easy to make something unbalanced if player characters are given free rein to mix and match things as they wish. Did your DM impose any limitations on race building? If not, you could easily create a race that is well suited for the class you want to play and for nothing else at a cost in RP even less than the standard races.
There is no issue here.
Whether it was brought up because we were making races or just because we were going over the book is irrelevant. There was a racial trait that my DM and I thought was pretty nice, so we wanted to see if others had read it the same way as ourselves.
seeing perfectly in darkness of any kind is powerful just with the combination of deeper darkness and abilities that simulate it.
really, how often is there a difference between seeing perfectly well in normal darkness and 120' darkvision? not that much in my experience.
Well, obviously the difference of this trait compared to Darkvision doesn't play a factor in your campaigns. It certainly does in ours.
At least a couple times each session we run into situations where our 120' Darkvision is not far enough to see what we need to.
Of course there are numerous times where our 120' Darkvision comes in great use. However, there is a big difference in seeing as far as the terrain allows, compared to 120'.
Also, there have been enough times our DM has made changed our information depending on whether we see color or grey. And nevermind the added usefulness of seeing through magical darkness.
So at least in our campaign, there is a big difference between this trait and Darkvision.
Agreed. As the description even alludes to, it's a completely different ability than Darkvision. While it is much better than Darkvision, that's okay.
I also understand feeling "guilty" for having a superior ability like this, but remember that when it comes to picking and choosing racial traits from ARG, you're trading other powerful situational things for this one. While See in Darkness is great, it's still situational.
No guilt here, just like I said above, our DM and I were going over the book and were just looking to see if others read "See in Darkness" like we do.
It is an extremely good trait (IMO) and we just wanted to make sure we were interpreting it correctly. It sounds like we were.
Thanks to everyone for their input!
Hi, sorry to necro the thread, but, since it has pre-reqs of None, shouldn't it only cost an extra 2 RP to get on top of the basic Darkvision, as you could, say, want a custom Tiefling with See In Darkness?
(currently having a Hero Labs moment is all... I'll take it to the HL forum after this if I can get a bit of clarification)
It's ok if you build a Humanoid with straight up SiD (but then technically there are certain feats off limits etc.),
but if you choose the Outsider(native) then you effectively get Darkvision costed into that initial 3RP... and then SiD cost 4RP on top of that, for the same effect as the Humanoid just got for more RP!
Thoughts?
Hi, sorry to necro the thread, but, since it has pre-reqs of None, shouldn't it only cost an extra 2 RP to get on top of the basic Darkvision, as you could, say, want a custom Tiefling with See In Darkness?
If you're in the rare position where this matters (like your GM said "generate an advanced mutant member of a standard race with N extra RP") then yes, I agree it's pretty clearly an upgrade for which you should pay only the difference. Just realize that you're firmly in homebrew territory even to be asking the question....
Thanks :D
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One (rarely important) addendum: See in Darkness is a supernatural ability, whereas racial Darkvision is Ex. This means an anti-magic field or a dead-magic zone shuts down See in Darkness entirely but leaves Darkvision untouched. So if you're in the odd position where such situations are common you may actually still want Darkvision.
ah, now that makes more sense; gosh darn it, I may not have enough points *sigh*. Might have to ditch something else; decisions decisions...
I find it hard to believe that darkvision and SiD are typed differently on purpose. (I'd never noticed before StabbittyDoom pointed it out.) It seems more likely that the writer who typed SiD did so under the mistaken assumption that darkvision was Su already. You could raise that point with your GM and argue that therefore you should be allowed to buy (or upgrade to) SiD as an extraordinary ability.
I'd FAQ it but I'm pretty sure this is an infrequently asked question :)
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I find it hard to believe that darkvision and SiD are typed differently on purpose. (I'd never noticed before StabbittyDoom pointed it out.) It seems more likely that the writer who typed SiD did so under the mistaken assumption that darkvision was Su already. You could raise that point with your GM and argue that therefore you should be allowed to buy (or upgrade to) SiD as an extraordinary ability.
I'd FAQ it but I'm pretty sure this is an infrequently asked question :)
I very much doubt that it's a mistake. See in Darkness was Su in 3.x as well. And it's Su in both the general rules and the Devil subtype rules. Very consistent. It's worth noting that Devils have both SiD *and* Darkvision 60ft, so they're covered on both fronts.
Not everything needs to be a strict upgrade, yo.