Maddening Darkness: Dark Madder
Spell Level: 8
School: Evocation
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 150 feet
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
Components: V, M (a drop of pitch mixed with a drop of mercury)
Magical darkness spreads from a point you choose within range to fill a 60-foot-radius sphere until the spell ends. The darkness spreads around corners. A creature with darkvision can’t see through this darkness. Nonmagical light, as well as light created by spells of 8th level or lower, can't illuminate the area. Shrieks, gibbering, and mad laughter can be heard within the sphere. Whenever a creature starts its turn in the sphere, it must make a Wisdom saving throw, taking 8d8 psychic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
“You blabbering buffoons, do you know who I am? The gibbering depths hold unspeakable horrors; allow me to introduce you to them personally with my MADDENING DARKNESS! MUAHAHAHA!” - Winkle Darkwillup, gnome warlock ushering the end of times via ancient eldritch deity to the five adventures foolish enough to attempt to stop him
I’m a sucker for the gibbering nothingness spells, you know the ones. Black Tentacles, Hunger of Hadar, you know, the ones whose spell description makes you go “Eughch, what?” Maddening Darkness is the upper level expansion on these ideas, and while its delivery is a bit underwhelming, it's probably still a fine option for those of us who love the eldritch abomination style and want to get some high level magic with it on our character sheets.
An 8th level spell needs to have a really impactful effect. Maddening Darkness is a pretty wide area of damaging darkness, which is… fine? A radius of 60 feet means a creature stuck in the center of this is going to be making a few saves, and 16d8 damage can be enough to justify the slot if you also want the benefits of super-darkness. If you’re not weaponizing the super-darkness, but have other ways to get more than two rounds of damage out of this, it's still quite good.
All of these requirements do ask you to set up the spell and spend resources keeping them in it. Forcing creatures to dash out of it can be somewhat beneficial, but other effects in the game can do the same thing, although not with quite as much damage as this has attached to it. If your goal is to clog up an area, Sleet Storm and other similar effects are probably better. If your goal is to do as much damage as possible, you have to really work with pushing effects or calculated placement to get as much damage as you’d want out of this.
This leaves Maddening Darkness as a perfectly fine 8th level spell. I’m a little disappointed with the descriptors here, no milky tentacles to speak of, but hey, it's better than nothing. If you like the gibbering darkness fantasy, Maddening Darkness can be a perfectly reasonable high level option to pick up, should you be willing to work a little to get it to perform at its best.
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