Making it Dark with Maddening Darkness

Hi all, I have a big baddie that's going to use Maddening Darkness. Is there a way to quickly (during game play) create a 60' radius area that will block out all light and darkvision so the characters in the area of effect don't see anything on the play map? Thanks, Paul Alter

I ran this recently. I made a DL "circle" to keep people from seeing in. Once they entered it, I just turned off their sight (easy with Pro, not as much with plus, unfortunately), and had them describe the direction and distance they wanted to move. I was very forgiving about obstacles, just figuring they were feeling their way along if they ran into something that required navigating around. I asked them to move at half speed, which made the descriptions shorter. They could move at normal rate, but then I gave dex rolls and minor damage or movement dings if they ran into something. It's amazing how much pitch darkness becomes debilitating if the players don't have "god mode" to show them their map position. If you don't want to fiddle with their sight, leave the token at the point where it entered. This way they still have a general idea of the greater area. Use any NC token as a marker for the DM to track their progress inside the DL circle. (remember to draw your circle as a multisided polygon—DL abhors a curve).

Just thought of an even easier way. Draw a circular polygon with regular Fog of War. You can have them move their own characters through the blackness that way, if you want. It does let them know their position in the area of effect, but that doesn't seem too out of keeping with 5e visibility rules. EDIT: I just reviewed my recording, and I used Fog of War, not a DL line. I did turn off their sight while in the field so they couldn't see their spatial relationship to unblocked areas.

keithcurtis said: Draw a circular polygon with regular Fog of War. Eh? How's that again?

With the conceal tool, which normally draws squares, you hold alt (and possibly shift) and it draws a circle. This is with the plain old fog of war, so you might need to turn that on in the page settings, and possibly reveal all of the map to start.  In my game, I have a big black disk of the right size assigned to a Spell character and I just drag it in to obscure the space. I usually don't care what's under it, but if I did, I could either draw an approximation on the GM layer, or screen shot the area and put it also on the GM layer to ghost it over my vision when I obscure the space. 

The Aaron said: With the conceal tool, which normally draws squares, you hold alt (and possibly shift) and it draws a circle. This is with the plain old fog of war, so you might need to turn that on in the page settings, and possibly reveal all of the map to start.  Apparently neither of our methods work. I must have obscured in my game with squares. There is only a polygon reveal , and no combination of alt, shift or other turns the conceal from anything but a rectangle.

Hmm... neither Alt nor Alt-Shift make circles for me with either the conceal or reveal tools; I just get rectangles. Alt and Alt-Shift do make circles with the drawing tools, so I know it's not me.

Well bummer on that. =D. That's probably why I use the graphic instead!