Add Different Light Types to Dynamic Lighting

I like the idea, it does seem to complicate things quite a bit.

Players are in a dark forest, illuminated by an even spread of torches marked as 'Infrared'. Only one of the players is marked as 'NV Goggles'. :P "Where'd you go? Don't wander off, can't see my nose here."

I like this idea, but it would also need support for dim/normal light. Something tagged with dim light would appear as bright/normal light to someone with darkvision.

This is a great idea. I have one addition. Deeper Darkness can make it so that even someone with darkvision(simiulated by adding light to a character token) can not see. Maybe having an option(maybe a checkbox) to over ride any other light setting might work for any spell or item that overcomes that level of darkness. PS: The "super darkness" could have a x3 multiplier.

Adrian s. said: This is a great idea. I have one addition. Deeper Darkness can make it so that even someone with darkvision(simiulated by adding light to a character token) can not see. Maybe having an option(maybe a checkbox) to over ride any other light setting might work for any spell or item that overcomes that level of darkness. PS: The "super darkness" could have a x3 multiplier. Would this not be better achieved by having negative light multipliers, ie my elf has low light vision so a 1.5x multiplier then you put down a source of "super darkness" that would have a -1x multiplier. This would be a lot simpler for a user stand point than having a load of check boxes.

The light types are all based on multipliers. So if a light is "dim" (for example, it only emits light 5ft or whatever, which is half what your normal light would be), then the e.g. 2x Darkvision multiplier would cause that to be 10ft, which is the same as a "normal" light. Let me know if that wouldn't work as I'd like to consider all the outlying use cases when considering this idea before we decide if we're going to be able to do it. Sorry - I mistyped. I mean lowlight vision, turning dim light into normal light. So, on the left is a token with a light radius of 5 feet. No dim light. On the right is a token with a light radius of 5 feet. Dim light starts at 0 feet. Someone with lowlight vision should see the one on the right as the one on the left. Does that make sense? Wouldn't setting the multiplier at 2x (what you said darkvision would be) make it look like this? Edit: My point was that multipliers won't work for everything, unless I misunderstand this.

To make the version of lowlight vision that changes dimlight to brightlight work, a checkbox should be added that simple removes the dim light range from the light being viewed by the token with lowlight vision.

In this vein, I'd be most interested in a modifier "black and white" for darkvision. I'd love to actually make players percieve the world the way they'd have to while in total darkness.

Riley D. said: Yeah, the "dim light starts at" stuff is really just for visual effect currently. I'm not sure how that would be incorporated. When I'm talking about the new light types for things like "Darkvision" I am more concerned with "can they see anything at all", and less with "they can see but it uses a 50% gradient instead of a 100% gradient visually". It might be something where we start with just getting it set up and then in the future improve it to give more control over the visual presentation. Well, with your original idea, the whole gradient thing would be handled by how the GM set up that light type anyway, right? So, if they set up a character that was holding a torch with a light source called "darkvision", then they would also specify the radius and "start of dim" for that. Then a character who had "darkvision" as one of their vision tags would see that (the gm could have opted to have the entire thing as a gradient). I love the idea of the gm setting up a set of light sources with tags. Maybe even add the ability to group them? So that you could add the tag "torch" to a token's sight tags, but torch might be a grouping of "torchlight", "infravision" and "darkvision". It would be nice to have a light color as well.

This is complicated in Pathfinder by the two different types of light and darkness effects. In some cases, you want to increase or reduce the light level by N steps; in some cases, you want to set it to a particular level. As these areas overlap, it gets quite nasty, but I'd be very very happy if the system supported negative light levels even in the simple -N levels case.

Josh said: It would be nice to have a light color as well. I was just going to mention that!

Shouldn't it work in the way that the GM defines light sources as the base value (torch for example as 20ft normal and another 20ft dim illumination), with which the different sight types interact? Low-Light-Vision: Double the values of light sources (20 and another 40 for the torch) Darkvision: Show everything within the sight radius, but with a grayscale filter. Handle lights normally. True Seeing/Blindsight: Would just be a light radius on the token that cannot be seen by others. Handle lights normally. I feel like you should be able to move all the configuration from the lights to the sight assigned to characters by turning them into multipliers of the values set for the light, instead of having to define a light radius for each light source for fear vision type.

Query: How would this proposed system handle 4e's LowLightVision/Darkvision which has no range aongside systems where there IS a range?

What are the mechanics for 4e's LowLightVision and Darkvision?

Lowlight vision: Dim light = bright light Darkvision: Dim light, darkness = bright light Unlike 5e, where darkvision only functions out to 60 feet, there's no limit on either low-light vision or darkvision in 4e.

Thanks, Jarret B. I've been really lucky, thus far, no PCs have darkvision. The one NPC who does is losing it because it's just too much of a pain in the rump.

But my question is, is this light "effect" gonna happen, is it being worked on? Cause it a fantastic idea.

I was thinking of have a light that you could count as "darkness" so like a reverse light. Example being monsters that emit darkness aura. So it'd be like an aura that blocks light effects in a certain radius.

DM Korgul said: I was thinking of have a light that you could count as "darkness" so like a reverse light. Example being monsters that emit darkness aura. So it'd be like an aura that blocks light effects in a certain radius. I've handed that in the past with PNGs with a black circular gradient and a bit of transparency at the edges, which I just drop onto the creature casting/causing darkness, scaled to the proper size: :

The different kinds of dynamic lightnings could be quite interesting, and also some different kind of colors for the lightning would be a nice touch too, graphically speaking of course, but I am a sucker for gorgeous maps. Speaking of maps, could there be a way to enforce dynamic lighting on a token, for example a door? When the door is closed (active on the layer token) it would block the line of sight, and when it's opened (removed from layer token to the GM layer, for example) it would let the lightning and line of sight open for other tokens. This could also work for players and enemies, thus hiding behind moving obstacles. Or is it something that we already can do, and I just haven't figured it out yet? For now I've been drawing zones with the dynamic lightning icons and removing them when necessary.

The way I handle doors is a line segment on the lighting layer, in a different color from my walls, and when a door is opened I remove that line segment. Sadly, you can't move things TO the DL layer, only FROM, so reclosing the door means manually redrawing the line again.

I agree with GK. If we could have something that could easily turn on /off lighting effects (like portals) that would be fantastic If you could have an open/close door model and when closed it adds the dynamic line automatically., etc. I guess what I am saying is it would be great if dynamic lighting was already programmed into the structures, especially the ones that you buy off the main site. It doesn't mean you can't change them but it would be awesome if the lines were already drawn and the doors had an open/close button or something.

I think this would excellent, especially in combination with my idea here... <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1246470/special-" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1246470/special-</a>...

Alex L. said: Adrian s. said: This is a great idea. I have one addition. Deeper Darkness can make it so that even someone with darkvision(simiulated by adding light to a character token) can not see. Maybe having an option(maybe a checkbox) to over ride any other light setting might work for any spell or item that overcomes that level of darkness. PS: The "super darkness" could have a x3 multiplier. Would this not be better achieved by having negative light multipliers, ie my elf has low light vision so a 1.5x multiplier then you put down a source of "super darkness" that would have a -1x multiplier. This would be a lot simpler for a user stand point than having a load of check boxes. Maybe. I am not that great of a programmer so whatever works for them, and gets us what we need works for me. :)

I have given it some thought, and am not sure that having all the light types just be multiplier based would work out quite right. For example, in pathfinder, dark vision is a radius around the creature that has it, and is usually 60 ft, but it doesn't give you any benefit beyond the 60 ft. If 2 characters both have dark vision, they can't see everything the other sees if they have line of sight, but are out of range. Also, there are creatures with non standard distances for dark vision. What about having all the lights be configured as standard distances like they are now, but having vision be based off of multipliers? All the tags would still be the same, but the interface would have to be a little different. Here is a mockup... When you set up the tags, you would need to have an option to restrict certain types of light to only the emitting token, like the current all players see light setting. That would be the best way I can think of to handle vision types that are specific to the token even though multiple tokens could have the same vision type.

I have to give a +1 to the colored lighting above all else. For sci-fi based games it would really come in handy to sort thru things like thermal vision and ultra sound. A negative or black&white color effect would be great for 5e darkvision, but I imagine that would be alot harder...

Roger A, I really like the way you are showing it and hope this can be done.

+1 sci fi games and certain fantasy games could really use the ability to add many different types.

With the greyscale darkvision and all?

Whatever you do, it has to handle systems where low-light vision and darkvision don't have limits. Just please keep that in mind :&gt;

With multiples, that could be handled with a sufficiently large number... X10000 ought to get it done.. =D For maximum flexibility, it might be nice if you could individually assign a multiple to both the bright and dim radius. So perhaps some people want to represent low-light vision as seeing in dim light as bright light (x2,x1), or maybe they want to represent it as seeing the same way, but with the unlimited low-light distance (x1,x1000), or maybe double everything (x2) or (x2,x2), etc..

Yeah, like 4e. I'm sure there's other systems out there too, but 4e is what I'm running personally.