If done properly, only complete darkness should have any impact on combat at all, which functionally means that the ONLY place that darkvision characters should have any advantage over non-darkvision characters in combat situations is when using melee attacks (or ranged attacks inside their darkvision radius), when in total darkness. If you're only in dim light, no-one suffers any combat penalties, and if you're shooting at something outside your darkvision range, your darkvision character is no better off than a non-darkvision character. (Edit for clarity; a torch's light radius should be, if implemented as per rules, be the same range as darkvision - so if you're talking about shooting at something outside your torch light radius, then having darkvision would NOT help you in that case either.)
If you play a character that does not have darkvision, and you're going somewhere where there's likely to be total darkness, and also a likelihood of you needing to fight, then just bring a light; you don't need to waste combat actions lighting up, because you should already have a light source out while you're exploring. If you don't want to carry a torch, have someone cast light on your shield/weapon.
That said, I'm not convinced that BG3 does light properly, at all, and it's very screwy in general, so I could understand frustrations abounding as a result of that mess... but that's mostly going to be as a result of poor implementation more than rules.
Last edited by Niara; 10/03/21 11:49 PM.
