According to the new wording for Darkness, normal lights now work perfectly fine (you need Deeper Darkness to snuff torches). So it's like a big tent, in as much as outside light conditions don't matter, only what is inside the radius of the spell. Huh.
I admit the orgininal wording was grossly overpowered (You have a miss chance *even if* you can see fine?), but I'm shakey on letting mundane lights negate a 2nd level spell that easily. Cast it in a dungeon, and the party probably wouldn't even notice.
Yeah, definitely not fond of the new darkness spell wording. And the idea of "emanating darkness" just grates on my nerves (I guess "emanating cold" should too, but eh..). And that a simple torch can negate it makes it worthless. Also, by the wording it seems that light doesn't illuminate the darkness from outside the area, but does from within - which is a wording ASKING for trouble. I'd rather see it stated "suppress all light" so that no light source illuminates the area.
However, I've always thought it somewhat strange that it interfered with darkvision, and I wouldn't mind letting darkvision continue to work an area of darkness.
While I'm uncertain as to the use of darkness if all you need is a torch (or even a candle) to counter it, it sure beats the heck out of the weird nerf they put on the spell in 3.5. "Shadowy illumination" with a 20% miss chance was just dumb. Technically, if you were in a cave with no light sources, you could cast darkness and be able to see via the "shadowy illumination." Blech.
