All the non-humans get 2 less misfortune dice when in darkness or low light situations than humans - however nowhere (that I can find) does it seem to state (or suggest) what penalty acting in darkness should be at.

The racial skills would seem to indicate that the penalty for actions in darkness is probably 2 misfortune dice, leaving the non-humans unaffected, which might be ok if there is further penalty for total darkness - I'd have prefered a challenge dice for total darkness rather than lots of misfortune dice, but since that doesn't work with the racial abilities I guess it'll have to be lots of misfortune dice.

Comments, ideas, anything I've missed?

I would suggest pitch black (a totally enclosed space) be somewhere around 3-4 misfortune (as I tend to think of Elf/Dwarf vision to be more about capturing more light and not able to see infrared frequencies).

Night would be 2, and very low light would be 1.

Edit : thinking about it more there is an interesting distinction to be made between awarding challenge dice over misfortune dice. For instance, fighting in a waning light might increase the misfortune to 2, but I would be inclined to argue attacking in pitch black (for a human anyway) would be harder (i.e. more challenge dice) over just misfortunate. Maybe Pitchblack is 1 challenge + 2 misfortune, and then reduce from there. Hmmm....

HedgeWizard said:

That's exactly what I do.

Double check the "conditions" and "criticals" list (rather than having to look through them, the living index pdf is easiest way) - blinded is a condition, so whatever that card says is hopefully a good start for "the worst" when it's pitch black (don't have cards with me at moment).

Note, a truly blinded elf or dwarf isn't entitled to ignore any misfortune dice because being blinded to seeing light is not the same as seeing better without as much light.

Rob

to my mind, I assign challenge dice to denote how difficult the outright action is, and then use misfortune to simulate the external factors. The case I always use is jumping from a tree to the top of a moving coach. The actual difficulty to leap from a tree through the branches is quite low, Easy (1d), but the speed of the coach, the small profile of the roof of the coach, whether there is luggage on top add misfortune.

Attacking when completely blind (having no sight as opposed to watering or blurry vision implied by most "blinded" conditions and temporary conditions) means having zero idea where your opponent is outside of using your other senses. To my mind this means increasing the difficulty outright , whereas the low-light conditions suggest something more akin to external fortune affecting the outcome.

*Update* The Blinded condition adds 1 difficulty to any sight based checks.

So given that I would be inclined to create a hierarchy of light so:

• Pitch Black - 1 challenge die
• Dark / very low light (the deep recesses of a cave, a boarded up building, standing well outside the periphery of a campfire/torch, etc.) = 3 misfortune
• Moonless Night = 2 misfortune (Dwarf and Elf characters can see fine)
• Late Dusk, a moonlit night = 1.

The above sounds good, if moonless night also is "light to no cloud cover, stars shinining".

I do think the blinded condition, if it only adds 1 challenge dice, is "weak" precisely because I agree that darkness penalties should go up to somewhere around 3 or 4 misfortune dice but those start to produce as much failure as 1 challenge die.

I think a challenge dice breaks down as 12.5% chance of no effect, 25% of 1 failure, 25% of 2 failures, 12.5% one bane, 25% 2 banes, 12.5% chaos star (negative effect or bane) - I believe that is a statistical likelihood of 0.75 failure per roll.

I believe a misfortune die breaks down as 50% no effect, 33% failure, 16.7% bane. 3 Misfortune dice is a likelihod of 0.99 failures, so more failure than one challenge die.

Now if the blinded condition included a "chaos star: something nasty, target a friend accidentally (if attack, perhaps just "mistarget" to take into account beneficial effects)" effect then it would be okay for that added risk, you need to have the added "chaos star" thing on the challenge die count for it to remain nastier than a pile of misfortune dice.

Rob