The Environment

Starship exploration involves delving into the potentially dangerous, uncharted territory. The rules in this section cover some of the most important ways in which adventurers, and their ships, interact with the environment. The Dungeon Master's Guide has rules covering more unusual situations.

Vision and Light

The most fundamental tasks of starfaring—noticing danger, finding hidden objects, and hitting an enemy ship in combat, to name just a few—rely heavily on a ship's ability to see. Darkness and other effects that obscure vision can prove a significant hindrance.

A given area might be lightly or heavily obscured. In a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, dust clouds, or electrical storms, ships have disadvantage on Wisdom (Scan) checks.

A heavily obscured area-such as darkness, opaque gases, or dense asteroids-blocks vision entirely. A ship in a heavily obscured area effectively suffers from the blinded condition (see appendix A).

The presence or absence of light in an environment creates three categories of illumination: bright light, dim light, and darkness.

Bright light lets most ships see normally.

Dim light, also called shadows, creates a lightly obscured area. An area of dim light is usually a boundary between a source of bright light, and surrounding darkness.

Darkness creates a heavily obscured area.

Blindsight

crewmembers on a starship equipped with an enhanced scanner (Scanner, Premium) can perceive their surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius.

Truesight

More advanced scanners (Scanner, Renowned) offer truesight, allowing crewmembers to detect starships that are completely invisible. Truesight allows a starship's scanners to automatically detect visual illusions and succeed on saving throws against them.