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Q: What are the normal limits of vision (ranges, etc) in CoC?


claycle

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I was setting up our game in Foundry, and I came to setting vision settings on the player's tokens, and, I got a little stumped.

How far can a character see in dim light conditions? How far with a flashlight? Etc.

Can't seem to find this in the raw or player's book. I realize that I would normally (when face-to-face) just say whatever was appropriate for the scene, but we will be using some maps and tokens in Foundry for a few things and computers are picky about numbers.

Any suggestions?

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I struggled with this, and after some internet research (which I haven’t recorded the sources for) settled for 48 yards of full light and 48 more yards of low light (so a total reach of 96 yards), with a 45° arc. This is on Roll20. My players seem to think it’s reasonable enough. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Depends on the light. 

Modern flashlights can be incredibly bright, so 50-100 yards of good illumination is plausible.

1920s flashlights were very dim by today's standards. But in the 1920s they also used carbide lamps.

Carbide lamps use water dripping onto Calcium carbide (manufactured by roasting quicklime with charcoal in an arc furnace) to produce acetylene gas.

Acetylene burns with a brilliant white light which rivals modern flashlights, and likely lasted longer than any modern battery. A small tin of carbide (you had to keep it watertight) would last a long time. The lights ranged from small portable flashlight size lanterns someone could carry, to large carriage mounted lights, all the way up to lamps used in lighthouses which could illuminate 10s of miles.

The 1920s also had arc lamps, which you could use to light up an entire stadium, or were also used as the lamp in a movie projector. But these draw massive amounts of electricity, so they are really only suitable for fixed mounted installations or very large vehicles like ships.

Kerosene lamps had also advanced by the 1900s, my grandpa used to own a gas mantle lamp which ran on gasoline pressurised with a hand pump. But the light element was very fragile, so it wouldn't be suitable for say an adventurer running around at night.

Edited by EricW
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