by 12345 » Wed May 24, 2006 7:34 pm
This reminds me of the D&D flashlight. Cast continual light into a container with a lid and you can flip it open and shut to turn it on and off and carry it around. Easy solution for a complex problem.
Even your basic old school lantern came with shudders for dimming the light without having to relight it every time you want to use it. Flip the shudders up, you can see, flip them down, you can't. I can still hold the lantern and get bonuses, I just can't see anything unless I have darksight or infravision.
If you wanted to be realistic about it, you could easily have a switch for lights. Some, like torches, are either on or off, they can't be dimmed. Some, like lanterns, can simply be dimmed or not dimmed as a natural function of the lamp. Even magical lights can fall into this category depending on how magical and/or functionally built they are. For instance, a pearl of the rising tide might glow of its own accord, but a symbol of the dark lord will dim according to the wishes of its possessor. So you would have to lose the +con and +3 mregen to dim a pearl, but the symbol, just dim and maintain the bonuses.
This doesn't seem like it needs a skill at all. Any idiot can flip a dimmer switch, provided its there in the first place. Wether they can see or not while its dimmed is another issue entirely.
Kein Mehrheit Fur Die Mitleid -KMFDM