Blindness / Darkness / Heavily Obscured Areas

Unfortunately there are some threads dealing with this, but they are closed because older than 2 month. So I start again. How to handle blind characters or PCs in darkness or in a heavily obscured area? I could do this with roll20 by using the token_mod script and setting the line of sight angle to 0. Make them see again was easily done by setting the angle back to 360°. This was fine, because the players could see their token but nothing else. But now since some update roll20 changed the behavior so that the token is also invisible. A totally black screen is not what I intended. Question: is there any reason for changing this bahavior? Is it possible to change it back to the old one? And if not: how can I deal with blindness or darkness now? It's not possible to do so by changing the light radius, because if there are other light sources on the map the PCs could see them too.

Just use Tokenmod to toggle the Has Sight property. Instant blindness and no other light sources will show light.

I believe they are planning to fix the token obscurity at some point but there are bigger fish to fry right now...

The bummer with toggling sight on a token for blindness is that the token can move through DL boundries. ;-(  Maybe set viewing angle to "0" instead to honor boundaries.

Currently the 0 degree option causes the token to disappear.

keithcurtis said: Currently the 0 degree option causes the token to disappear. What's that about? lol  

Since January. Issue 2 on the list, I believe.

Loren the GM said: Just use Tokenmod to toggle the Has Sight property. Instant blindness and no other light sources will show light. Unfortunately Has Sight = no makes the token invisible.

Ziechael said: I believe they are planning to fix the token obscurity at some point but there are bigger fish to fry right now... I hope they will. The sooner the better. It was my favorite way to work with blindness. BTW: The situation appears more often than one might think: Darkness , Fog Cloud , Stinking Cloud , Cloudkill , Sleet Storm , etc.

You could use tokenmod to set their 'light' to be 1' with dim starting at -1... should give enough light to see the token but not enough to make out much beyond what your other senses would tell you in those situations? Kinda like fumbling around in the dark? edit: works best if you have 'dim light reveals' unchecked in the AFoW edit 2: the issue you'll still have is if there are 'all players see light' light sources available out there... would mean you'd need to have DL lines around your darkness/stinking cloud etc areas, unwieldy in play without the DL recorder script and annoying in that the DM would be required to move people outside out of the affected area... *sigh*, sorry.

Ziechael said: You could use tokenmod to set their 'light' to be 1' with dim starting at -1... should give enough light to see the token but not enough to make out much beyond what your other senses would tell you in those situations? Kinda like fumbling around in the dark? edit: works best if you have 'dim light reveals' unchecked in the AFoW edit 2: the issue you'll still have is if there are 'all players see light' light sources available out there... would mean you'd need to have DL lines around your darkness/stinking cloud etc areas, unwieldy in play without the DL recorder script and annoying in that the DM would be required to move people outside out of the affected area... *sigh*, sorry. Thanks anyway for your suggestions! Your 'edit2' issue is why I don't want to use the light radius feature. I tried it even with the sight multiplier set to 0.001. Looks still a bit awkward. But it seems to be the best workaround available currently. Another inconvenience is that you have to remember the original light radius - meaning setting it manually back to 60 for darkvision characters (almost all in 5E). Hope, that roll20 will set it back to the old behavior.

Putting it back to the original value isn't too bad, there is a handy macro for tokenmod you can use for that: !token-mod --set ?{Vision|Torch, light_radius#40 light_dimradius#20 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#yes|Hooded Lantern, light_radius#60 light_dimradius#30 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#yes|Bullseye Lantern, light_radius#120 light_dimradius#60 light_angle#60 light_hassight#yes light_otherplayers#yes|Lamp, light_radius#30 light_dimradius#15 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#yes|Candle, light_radius#5 light_dimradius#=0 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#yes|Darkvision, light_radius#60 light_dimradius#=-5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|Darkvision (90'), light_radius#90 light_dimradius#=-5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|Warlock Devil's Sight, light_radius#120 light_dimradius#=120 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|No light source(Dusk), light_radius#120 light_dimradius#=-5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|Fog, light_radius#200 light_dimradius#=5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|No light source, light_radius#5 light_dimradius#=-5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|Blinded, light_hassight#no light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no}

Ziechael said: Putting it back to the original value isn't too bad, there is a handy macro for tokenmod you can use for that: !token-mod --set ?{Vision|Torch, light_radius#40 light_dimradius#20 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#yes|Hooded Lantern, light_radius#60 light_dimradius#30 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#yes|Bullseye Lantern, light_radius#120 light_dimradius#60 light_angle#60 light_hassight#yes light_otherplayers#yes|Lamp, light_radius#30 light_dimradius#15 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#yes|Candle, light_radius#5 light_dimradius#=0 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#yes|Darkvision, light_radius#60 light_dimradius#=-5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|Darkvision (90'), light_radius#90 light_dimradius#=-5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|Warlock Devil's Sight, light_radius#120 light_dimradius#=120 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|No light source(Dusk), light_radius#120 light_dimradius#=-5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|Fog, light_radius#200 light_dimradius#=5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|No light source, light_radius#5 light_dimradius#=-5 light_hassight#yes light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no|Blinded, light_hassight#no light_angle#360 light_otherplayers#no} Wow!

This should now be fixed :D Bernd S. said: Ziechael said: I believe they are planning to fix the token obscurity at some point but there are bigger fish to fry right now... I hope they will. The sooner the better. It was my favorite way to work with blindness. BTW: The situation appears more often than one might think: Darkness , Fog Cloud , Stinking Cloud , Cloudkill , Sleet Storm , etc.

Why does every "improvement" break half of the functions? Doesn't anything ever get tested?

al e. said: Why does every "improvement" break half of the functions? Doesn't anything ever get tested? I already asked that question. Answer: you can test on the Dev server. So there might be some testing, but not in deep details. Concerning this issue here the question is: bug or feature? They might have changed it intentionally although I don't see why. To anyone it might be reasonable to make the token invisible in the cases mentioned.