Trimming the Fat, Part 1: Death to Sunrods!!!

This is Part 1 of a short series of blog posts about parts of 4e that I am cutting from the game for my 4e Forever mag. First thing to go: sunrods.

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.

I like ditching them for several reasons. I like resource management, and using torches and lanterns adds an extra layer of this. Torches can burn out fairly quickly, and since 4e Forever uses "turn"-based exploration (more on this another time), those suckers can be going out before you know it. I like Demi-Human vision, or powers that give you unusual vision, to mean something more than just "I don't have to be the one to put a sunrod in my belt". I like being able to design encounters where every PC on the table cannot immediately see a clear-as-day 20 square radius, without having to trick the system with a gas cloud or other convoluted crapola.

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!