Feb05
on February 5, 2015
Average
Humans are one of the few races without darkvision. Or the related variants of low-light vision or infravision or ultravision. And yet humans are continually held up as “the baseline”, one of the dominant races. This is despite humanity being at a huge tactical disadvantage half the time.
This is probably my main complaint with D&D 5e right now. In 4e the low-light vision that was very common meant that humans and others with “normal” vision were not alone about needing a light source. In 5e when I try to come up with new characters I require that they have at least one out of:
-Cantrip “light”
-Darkvision
-2 levels of Warlock for the “Devil’s sight” invocation.
In my group’s main campaign that was converted from 4e my DM instead gave my human character a mask that can provide darkvision.
It’s not just D&D5. I’ve seen this come up a few times in earlier editions. Even my Pathfinder game runs into the problem, with every race being able to get darkvision except the poor human, who suddenly requires everyone to carry a light source.