Oh, how I hate sunrods. They make Demi-Human vision meaningless. They make imaginative notions of light and shadow evaporate in a 20 square radius. They take a DMs attempts at moody Gothic atmosphere, and bathe them in garish fluorescence. It is as if the designers just decided that darkness was not going to play any role in 4e, unless it is from a PCs perma-invisibility build. A player saying that their character ties a sunrod to his belt is to me the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard.
I have heard of lots of houserules on sunrods, everything from having them sometimes fail, to having certain structures prevent them from working, and on and on, but I think it best just to go ahead and take them out behind the woodshed and shoot them.
Long story short: they take away from one of the greatest aspects of D&D exploration: darkness. Cave-black, impenetrable darkness. And so they have to die.
I am always interested in readers' thoughts! Do you have an opinion on sunrods? Let it fly!
I'm with you. Underground, it should be frickin' dark...
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I also ban sunrods.
ReplyDeleteA way to discourage sunrods and other light sources is that monsters detect the PCs much easier.
I absolutely agree and wish I'd thought to do this before I started running my first campaign. Now that they already exist in the world, it will be hard to say they aren't available. GARGLBALARLGLALBALLGGG. Yeah, I wish I'd taken them out before hand.
ReplyDeleteI actually like sunrods because I despise resource tracking. I get your point about banning them, but I will definitely keep them in my game. My suggestion (or intention) for keeping a bit of the mystery in the dark is talking about the tone of the game before hand with the players and letting them know that while sunrods (and other pc resources) will work as described in most cases, that I may have them work differently in order to improve the narative of the game.
ReplyDeleteHate sun rods. Fine if wizard can conjure light through cantrip, but light radius should be less than torch or lantern. I am returning to the old school idea of bringing retainers into adventure to carry light source, sacks of treasure, etc. Make retainers or hencman same level minions as party and they can even serve to make the characters look so much more heroic in comparison.
ReplyDeleteSunrods are fine...for Paragon and above! At low levels though, PCs should be only a notch or two above the NPCs of their level as far as Tech goes. Finding that first Sunrod should be something of great wonder along the same vein as finding their first Magic Weapon. And it should be limited as well. Using that Sunrod should be an important choice too, on par with using the last Healing Potion.
ReplyDeleteJust my two CP.
GF
I agree, I don't like them either. I found that the minimum possible to make them tolerable was to cut the light radius to 10 squares; this quarters the area covered, makes them equivalent to lanterns, and makes darkness possible in large areas.
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