Them Bones of Adventure - II: Light

Continuing my exposition on table procedures for common exploration feats & rules, which began here with part one.

Introduction

Light is the lifeline of dungeon delving. Even more than rope or sustenance, light sources in pits of indissoluble darkness are a complete game changer for those willing to embrace the challenges of exploration and wishing to avoid succumbing to the plagues of convenient glowing fungi or networks of eternally fuelled sconces patrolled by the world’s most sysiphean workforce, 1/0 switch definitely included.

Modelling light itself is much like the abstraction of an abstraction, one that at the best of times can hardly hope to be traced with perfect boundaries and rigour. My advice, this coming from someone who has wasted his share of time trying to adjudicate the clash of atoms, is to take the burden of its meaningfulness to where you can and avoid falling prey to blatant irrealism but otherwise avoid sweating too much on it; it is a windmill waiting to be tilted and one that emphatically should not dominate the proceedings. Err on the generous side with this one.

Shared Woes – Anatomy of a Houserule

Turning light into a non-handwaveable notion requires that it should not be a challenge affecting just a select slice of any given party of explorers.

I’m all for the possibility of magical items and spells as means of overturning a problem, but decidedly less keen on the demihuman condition at large, whose suite of abilities invariably tends to include that which mitigates a key part of human psychology, which all ought to share: the fear of the dark.

Unless they’re of proven cave dweller stock (and thus actually sensitive to daylight!), I’m houseruling in favour of demihumans having low-light vision (mechanically, simply treating dim light as bright light) instead of darkvision, with the pertinent exception of Dwarves and maybe some Gnomes, but still at a range not exceeding a claustrophobic 30 feet.

The Crunchy Bits

Light Sources (and Light Radius)

There are no bullseye lanterns and the lanterns that do exist, instead of the usually implied default of renaissance fare, are modelled on the medieval lanthorn type, that hems the light from a candle or oil lamp in a cage protected with strips of thinly stretched animal skin or translucent panes of bone (hence the name) and thus still vulnerable to being blown out though retaining an edge on duration compared to a torch.

So, going with:

- Candles: 5’ of light radius, lasting 30 minutes

- Oil Lamps: 15’ of light radius, lasting 1 hour

- Leviathan' Oil Lanthorns: 20’ of light radius, lasting 3 hours

- Torches: 20’ of light radius, lasting 30 minutes, d4 fire damage if used as melee weapon, but must check to see if the light extinguishes

N.B: Both these radii and durations are a purely gamey abstraction that does nothing but mock the subtle intricacies of the real world; I am nothing but proud of them.

I’m keeping the dual radii of Bright plus Dim Light, as per the book, meaning the above figures for each light source are accompanied by an effective doubled range consisting of dim light.

The dim light radius, however, is predicated on the light source being held high. Should the bearer drop or deliberately throw his light aside such as to free up his hand for combat, this kills the dim light, leaving only the bright light radius in effect.

Who’s Holding the Light?

Within the metrically drawn confines of the dungeon corridor, a ready answer leaps forth; yet other, vaguer times may well challenge the collective notion of where exactly is the light emanating from. Like I wrote before, if the party’s not illogically drawing a blatant full radius from a rearguard-borne torch, err on the side of generosity.

That said, the “who” part remains important, due to the fact of having to give up a hand slot. This’ll mostly mean no use of two-handed weapons without dropping the light source.

Additional Light Sources

Opening the possibility of more than mere redundancy in clustered lighting:

- Multiple significant (i.e. stronger than a candle) light sources in overlapping proximity increase the ambient dim light radius by 5’ for each additional light beyond the first.

I pondered several things but went with the flat & gross simplification. As of yet I'm playing it cautious with this one, just adding the bare minimum to the weaker typed light radius, but there ought to be something here to further develop past being conservative and without compromising "realism" (adding more radius per light or  enough sources eventually adding to the bright radius).

When does the Light run out?

Three general ways:

- When delving: Encounter Roll enriched with the relevant entries (one for solid fuel sources like torches/candles, the other for oil-based lanthorns/lamps);

- Flat time counting if travelling or doing something more stable and time-consuming than outright exploration.

- A (pseudo)breakage roll (automatic, d2, d4 and d6 for each successive light source type) to extinguish the flame whenever there’s an occurence to justify it, such as the light being forcibly dropped, a gust of wind or some spell effect; Particularly strong winds may snuff lights out with no recourse to a roll.

Closing Thoughts - Some notes on behaviour

Though things will not constantly reach this level of deviousness, due to variables such as creature organization, courage, intelligence and inherent behaviour, always consider the possibilities of:

- Attacks with missiles from beyond a (not necessarily the) party's sight;

- Staging hit and run attacks that exploit a party’s limited light radius;

- Hazing explorers with noises outside their sight distance, leading the characters to make mistakes or panic;

- Attacks that deliberately target the light bearer;

- Creatures (such as wildlife or certain cave dwellers) who will shirk the light or exposed flames and ostensibly avoid confrontation on these grounds.

Proceed to part three: Searching