All Over the Map,  Battle Arenas

The Temple of Shadow and Light

I’ve been meaning to get around to making a map the specifically leverages Foundry VTT‘s dynamic lighting for a while now. My older maps work great with the dynamic lighting, and it’s been easy to add the walls and light to them. That said, they don’t fully make use of lighting. And so, the Temple of Shadow and Light was born.

One key feature of dynamic lighting is that it makes D&D’s sense and lighting systems come to life in ways that are really hard, if not impossible to replicate on a real table, or even by hiding and manually revealing the map. There are two big ways dynamic lighting accomplishes this:

Temple of Shadow and Light map
The Temple of Shadow and Light
  1. Dynamic lighting is generated for each character individually. The elf in your party can see 60 feet in the dark, the human is just in the dark.
  2. Lighting is also simulated. When the human in your party decides to spark up a torch, they can see about 40 feet. Sadly, every nasty in the dungeon with a line of sight can also see them.

All of this is a nightmare to keep track of manually. With good dynamic lighting my characters with dark vision can move about unseen while those gifted with only normal vision stumble in the dark. Maybe they’ll paint a target on their backs by lighting a torch. Dynamic lighting also encourages teamwork and communication. The party needs to tell each other who and what they are seeing.

The Temple of Light and Shadow Confounds Friend and Foe alike

The key feature of the Temple that makes use of dynamic lighting is the number of pillars in the structure. Looking at the image above, every circular shape on the map is a pillar that extends from floor to ceiling. These disrupt sight lines for beings with darkvision, and block torchlight. The central pyramid also obstructs vision, while the light atop it will attract those who are not adapted for darkness. They’ll find the light cold comfort, though, as attacks rain down upon them from their opponents in the darkness.

A poor commoner stumbles about in the dark, simultaneously drawn to and frightened by the earie light pulsing forth from the pyramid…

Want some nasty monsters to put in the arena? Check out my hotlist. Or maybe you’d prefer to frustrate your players with some nuisance monsters?

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