Circle of Darkness?

I recently tried to create a "circle of darkness" and found it could not be done with the "darkness" tool. You can do rectangles or polygons, but not circles. This is odd because most of the spells in D&D (and I think Pathfinder) that create magical darkness creates "spheres" of darkness of a given radius. For example, the 3rd level D&D 5E spell Darkness  creates a 15-foot-sphere of darkness. I posted a suggestion/idea about this in the Suggestion forum: Circle of Darkness If you would like to see the ability to create circles of darkness, please add your vote. If you know of a way to do it with the current system, I'd love to know.  Thank you.

Is your goal to have a functional or aesthetic circle of darkness? If functional, then you don't want a perfect circle, but a shape to cover the grid your player tokens would occupy, and this will be made up of squares or hexagons(?). Whatever your area unit is per square/hexagon from the center up to 15' would achieve the functional goal. I believe the tool currently does this. However, if your goal is merely aesthetic and you just want it to look like a circle, then perhaps be specific in your feature request if you also want the area of effect to functionally work correctly but also look like a circle. 

What I've done in he past is use a token that defines the areas of darkness (I use a darkness token from a purchased spell effects pack). The token is opaque and moved to "front" so none of the player tokens can see what it covers. I use a square grid with traditional D&D grid measurement, so the token is a square. I then turn vision off for any player tokens inside that area. When it's that player's turn they tell me what direction and distance they want to move; if their movement takes them outside the radius, I turn their vison back on. It's a little bit of effort for the GM, but it works for me.

At the moment, no token that display black, or darkness or anything similar is working for me. I think it has something to with Dynamic lighting but it's just not working. I want a visual cue for me and the players as to the "edge" of the effect, and I want it functional within that area. Does that make sense? And a square is not a circle no matter how much you want it to be.

Saul J. said: And a square is not a circle no matter how much you want it to be. This likely refers to a long-standing debate on whether radius-defined effects in 5e are properly modeled by squares or circles. If you have 60 of darkvision, and a range of 60 ft., you cannot see anything diagonal from you at 10 grid squares. Roll20, and most spell templates assume a more traditional geometric approach (as do I), but not everyone ascribes to it.  That being said, there is a script by David M that might help you, given that you are a Pro user. I haven't tried it myself, but it looks very useful.

Rick A. said: What I've done in he past is use a token that defines the areas of darkness (I use a darkness token from a purchased spell effects pack). The token is opaque and moved to "front" so none of the player tokens can see what it covers. I use a square grid with traditional D&D grid measurement, so the token is a square. I then turn vision off for any player tokens inside that area. When it's that player's turn they tell me what direction and distance they want to move; if their movement takes them outside the radius, I turn their vison back on. It's a little bit of effort for the GM, but it works for me. Saul J. said: At the moment, no token that display black, or darkness or anything similar is working for me. I think it has something to with Dynamic lighting but it's just not working. You should be able to use Rick's approach, and simplify it with some TokenMod commands: Create a 'Darkness' character and assign it a black circle token like this image. Make sure the 'Darkness' token/character is set to 'controlled by' for 'all' and lock the token, then save it as the default. Pull the 'Darkness' character out onto the VTT in the correct spot, and select all of the tokens in that space: !token-mod --flip has_bright_light_vision I have a 'Spells' character with several different spell effects on different sides of a rollable token. Then I created an Ability macro on the character sheet that looks like this: !wself &{template:npcaction} {{rname=Spells}} {{name=[Reset to Target](!token-mod --order tofront --set currentside|1 scale|140 name|'Spell Target' showplayers_name|on isdrawing|on showplayers_aura1|on aura1_square|off aura1_radius|=-4 aura1_color|#f00) }} {{description=[Fireball](!token-mod --order toback --set currentside|2 scale|560 name|'Fireball' showplayers_name|off isdrawing|off showplayers_aura1|off aura1_square|off aura1_radius|= aura1_color| ) [Lightning Bolt](!token-mod --order toback --set currentside|3 height|70 width|1400 name|'Lightning Bolt' showplayers_name|off isdrawing|off showplayers_aura1|off aura1_square|off aura1_radius|= aura1_color| ) [Spiritual Weapon](!token-mod --order toback --set currentside|4 scale|70 name|'Spiritual Weapon' showplayers_name|off isdrawing|off showplayers_aura1|on aura1_square|off aura1_radius|=-1 aura1_color|#0ff) [Cloud of Daggers](!token-mod --order toback --set currentside|5 scale|70 name|'Cloud of Daggers' showplayers_name|off isdrawing|off showplayers_aura1|on aura1_square|on aura1_radius|=0 aura1_color|#f00) [Hypnotic Pattern](!token-mod --order toback --set currentside|6 scale|210 name|'Hypnotic Pattern' showplayers_name|off isdrawing|off showplayers_aura1|off aura1_square|off aura1_radius|= aura1_color| ) [Darkness](!token-mod --order toback --set currentside|7 scale|420 name|'Darkness' showplayers_name|off isdrawing|off showplayers_aura1|off aura1_square|off aura1_radius|= aura1_color| ) | [75%](!token-mod --order toback --set currentside|8 scale|420 name|'Darkness' showplayers_name|off isdrawing|off showplayers_aura1|off aura1_square|off aura1_radius|= aura1_color| ) | [50%](!token-mod --order toback --set currentside|9 scale|420 name|'Darkness' showplayers_name|off isdrawing|off showplayers_aura1|off aura1_square|off aura1_radius|= aura1_color| ) | [30%](!token-mod --order toback --set currentside|10 scale|420 name|'Darkness' showplayers_name|off isdrawing|off showplayers_aura1|off aura1_square|off aura1_radius|= aura1_color| )}}

keithcurtis said: That being said, there is a script by David M that might help you, given that you are a Pro user. I haven't tried it myself, but it looks very useful. Note that The Darkness script only has full functionality in LDL. For UDL, the interior grid option (to block all interior squares) doesn't work. For UDL, all it will do is draw a circle approximation on the DL layer, so those inside will see everything inside. If you are using LDL, using the interior grid squares will mean that the GM will have to move PC tokens for them if Restrict Movement is on. If that doesn't seem useful for your specific game, Jarren's concept should work fine. You could eliminate having to drag it out of the journal manually by using the SpawnDefaultToken script.

This is really all way too complicated for something very simple. Roll20 provides a way to draw a Rectangle, and a Polygon. Why not a circle? You can draw a circle with the drawing tools, so why not a circle of darkness? I don't get it...

David M. said: keithcurtis said: That being said, there is a script by David M that might help you, given that you are a Pro user. I haven't tried it myself, but it looks very useful. Note that The Darkness script only has full functionality in LDL. For UDL, the interior grid option (to block all interior squares) doesn't work. For UDL, all it will do is draw a circle approximation on the DL layer, so those inside will see everything inside. If you are using LDL, using the interior grid squares will mean that the GM will have to move PC tokens for them if Restrict Movement is on. If that doesn't seem useful for your specific game, Jarren's concept should work fine. You could eliminate having to drag it out of the journal manually by using the SpawnDefaultToken script. Could it instead be set to turn off vision for any token inside the circle? Maybe storing the visions settings somewhere?

That's one way to do it. I could also update it to create a bunch of independent lines for the interior grid if UDL is used (LDL respects multi-stroke SVG paths but UDL only respects the first stroke). I initially went with the interior grid approach so that players could still easily find their tokens and use token actions. I honestly haven't dedicated too much time to this script (my first) since it's initial release - I didn't get the feeling that it was used by too many people. Of course, I suppose there is something of a chicken-and-egg situation going on here. And then I got distracted with other projects/ideas...

I use a slightly different process as I don't have Dynamic lighting. A draw tool circle for the darkness radius. The players in the darkness zone have their character tokens moved to the GM layer. Those players are then moved to a sperate map that is blank and their tokens added there onto start spots marked on the map. They then get to move their tokens relative to where they are and target spaces on their blank map. If they move outside of the zone then they get to switch back to the original encounter map. Possibly a bit convoluted but it does give a good sense of confusion and fog of war.  

Saul J. said: This is really all way too complicated for something very simple. Roll20 provides a way to draw a Rectangle, and a Polygon. Why not a circle? You can draw a circle with the drawing tools, so why not a circle of darkness? I don't get it... Yep, that would for sure be convenient! I don't think anyone is arguing against the suggestion, but rather just discussing potential ways to deal with the current situation since an integrated solution could would be somewhere between several months away to never.

What that guy said. ^^^^^

Yeah, I get it. I'm just befuddled as to why the devs didn't do it from the start. And, so far, all of the methods I've seen for working around the problem are just too convoluted, especially for something that doesn't occur very often, and only applies for a short time. It's simpler to just use the square.  

The whole thing is still having the devs implement a blocking sight-not movement type of line. I use fl-darkness from David.  Maybe a combined use of oosh's script calculating what type of light the token is under and a conditional with token mod to apply has sight or not could be a way of achieving the thing... Though I'm not able to do that myself.... Lol.  I just open a door to a way of thinking about it for all our great modders...