Post by calithena on May 31, 2012 10:29:55 GMT -6
This can be viewed as a follow-up to my "Cavern Adventuring" article in Fight On! #11. I may write it up as an article for the mag but in the meantime I thought I'd share with the board.
There are two very interesting tours of Mammoth Cave that go by lantern-light only, they don't even allow flash photography: Star Chamber and Violet City. I went on Violet City and tried to imaginatively model various PC activities with lantern in hand and these are my conclusions.
- Semi-clear vision is only about 20', but you can make out outlines out to more like 60'. As a GM I would give more general information but less specific detail than I normally have in the past based on this.
- With two lanterns or torches melee combat is not going to be any sort of problem; even 1 is probably OK unless you are holding it. The light is dim but you can figure out what to do to fight and probably even what to run at most of the time.
- Missile combat is probably normal out to 20', with a penalty and some risk of hitting the wrong target from 20' to 60', and basically impossible beyond that.
- Thrown torches will tend to stay lit and that is a way to deal with the above issue. Having a torch to throw (up to 60' I'd say, for a strongish character) will light up a distant area for you and in fact if I were a sniper in the dark I would shoot an arrow with a light or continuous light spell on it (or a fire arrow) up ahead and then just fire out of the darkness indefinitely. This would be an ugly situation to face.
- Not having to do with lanterns, but ambushes in caverns would be near-constant if you can wait patiently in the dark. There are a million places to hide and you can see your foes coming if they have light. Although this is perhaps not true for the well-hewn dungeons many of our games take place in, the old-school jockeying for position and brutal surprise rules seem like they would be pretty realistic for cavern combat, basically modeling situations where one party heard the other coming, snuffed their torches (if they had one), and then descended on them with the fury of darkness.
- Reading anything is almost impossible by lanternlight unless you are about a foot away from it with the lantern held up to it. This is very significant for scroll use IMO; a mage could not both hold a lantern and read a scroll without magical assistance of some kind. I can read in a car at night from ambient light from parking lot lamps, I have good night vision for a human and I still felt this way. The exception would be large inscriptions and graffiti.
- Likewise, you could fight with a torch in your off hand risking occasional burns, but fighting with a lantern in your off hand is a complete joke. I have always allowed this and I was wrong, it doesn't work that way. You could probably hold a lantern OK and defend yourself with a shield, up to a point. The lantern will wave around, go out, smash into things - it just won't work because you need a flexible handle and you can't keep it steady in a fight. I didn't believe the guide when she told me this at first but I took seven hit points of damage trying it before defeating my foe in the "Kobold Challenge" part of the tour.
- This is also not a lantern issue, but swordfighting in a 5' passage is kind of a joke too. I would say that spears are king in these tight corners, with shortswords, daggers, maybe short axes the only thing that would work well in close quarters. Granted I am 6'3" in real life but I don't think this is the whole story. Even in a 10' passage it's possible to envision a somewhat more freewheeling fantasy combat of the kind we have in our games, but in close quarters you couldn't have two hobbits fighting side by side (except maybe setting against a charge with spears) and even standard fencing/swordplay would be very difficult.
Well, there were some more quasi-insights I had too, but I'll come back to this later. Hope the reflections were useful.
There are two very interesting tours of Mammoth Cave that go by lantern-light only, they don't even allow flash photography: Star Chamber and Violet City. I went on Violet City and tried to imaginatively model various PC activities with lantern in hand and these are my conclusions.
- Semi-clear vision is only about 20', but you can make out outlines out to more like 60'. As a GM I would give more general information but less specific detail than I normally have in the past based on this.
- With two lanterns or torches melee combat is not going to be any sort of problem; even 1 is probably OK unless you are holding it. The light is dim but you can figure out what to do to fight and probably even what to run at most of the time.
- Missile combat is probably normal out to 20', with a penalty and some risk of hitting the wrong target from 20' to 60', and basically impossible beyond that.
- Thrown torches will tend to stay lit and that is a way to deal with the above issue. Having a torch to throw (up to 60' I'd say, for a strongish character) will light up a distant area for you and in fact if I were a sniper in the dark I would shoot an arrow with a light or continuous light spell on it (or a fire arrow) up ahead and then just fire out of the darkness indefinitely. This would be an ugly situation to face.
- Not having to do with lanterns, but ambushes in caverns would be near-constant if you can wait patiently in the dark. There are a million places to hide and you can see your foes coming if they have light. Although this is perhaps not true for the well-hewn dungeons many of our games take place in, the old-school jockeying for position and brutal surprise rules seem like they would be pretty realistic for cavern combat, basically modeling situations where one party heard the other coming, snuffed their torches (if they had one), and then descended on them with the fury of darkness.
- Reading anything is almost impossible by lanternlight unless you are about a foot away from it with the lantern held up to it. This is very significant for scroll use IMO; a mage could not both hold a lantern and read a scroll without magical assistance of some kind. I can read in a car at night from ambient light from parking lot lamps, I have good night vision for a human and I still felt this way. The exception would be large inscriptions and graffiti.
- Likewise, you could fight with a torch in your off hand risking occasional burns, but fighting with a lantern in your off hand is a complete joke. I have always allowed this and I was wrong, it doesn't work that way. You could probably hold a lantern OK and defend yourself with a shield, up to a point. The lantern will wave around, go out, smash into things - it just won't work because you need a flexible handle and you can't keep it steady in a fight. I didn't believe the guide when she told me this at first but I took seven hit points of damage trying it before defeating my foe in the "Kobold Challenge" part of the tour.
- This is also not a lantern issue, but swordfighting in a 5' passage is kind of a joke too. I would say that spears are king in these tight corners, with shortswords, daggers, maybe short axes the only thing that would work well in close quarters. Granted I am 6'3" in real life but I don't think this is the whole story. Even in a 10' passage it's possible to envision a somewhat more freewheeling fantasy combat of the kind we have in our games, but in close quarters you couldn't have two hobbits fighting side by side (except maybe setting against a charge with spears) and even standard fencing/swordplay would be very difficult.
Well, there were some more quasi-insights I had too, but I'll come back to this later. Hope the reflections were useful.
I thought everybody knew. They are generally referred to as fectbuchs and cover the gamut of weapons and unarmed (ringkunst) combat. Try this website for more information than you can swallow in a half dozen sittings: