"Daylight brought into an area of magical darkness (or vice versa) is temporarily negated, so that the otherwise prevailing light conditions exist in the overlapping areas of effect."
Say someone is in a dark room and he casts darkness on himself. This means that daylight won't reveal him at all, even though it's a higher level spell that would otherwise raise the light level by 2 more levels than darkness would drop?
"Daylight counters or dispels any darkness spell of equal or lower level, such as darkness."
I can't find anything about using one spell to dispel another. Does that meant that one can cast daylight targeting a darkness spell, leaving neither functional?
As far as I know, as long as the spell is the same level or higher, it negates the other one. To me, that means that you have to consider the preexisting lighting conditions as well as the areas of effect of both spells (if/where they overlap). If it's already dark, you could have darkness, dim light, and normal light occurring simultaneously in the same place.
Observing multiple lighting conditions is a headache. It's no wonder my GM usually just disregards them unless it's absolutely necessary.
If it's already dark, you could have darkness, dim light, and normal light occurring simultaneously in the same place.
There can only be one level of illumination in a given square, so that makes no sense.
The question is if really "darkness" the resulting illumination in the specified conditions (naturally dark + subject to daylight + subject to darkness). Absent special rules, the light level would be dark -> bright (from daylight) -> normal (from darkness).
But there is two special rules.
1) "Daylight brought into an area of magical darkness (or vice versa) is temporarily negated, so that the otherwise prevailing light conditions exist in the overlapping areas of effect."
If I read that right, the light would got from dark -> bright (from daylight) -> dark (from darkness). This rules seems crazy. A 2nd level spell completely cancels a 3rd level spell when its description wouldn't even do that normally.
It also means the only way to light up an area that is naturally dark and subject to darkness is to use both daylight and a non-magical light source, even though daylight is higher level.
Or does it? Let's look at the second special rule.
2) "Daylight counters or dispels any darkness spell of equal or lower level, such as darkness."
So again, I ask: What does this mean? Does one need to specifically cast daylight to dispel darkness, or is the darkness dispelled by simply being within the area of a daylight?
*** SPOILER FOLLOWS ***
This is not speculative. Council of Thieves part 1 has an underground setting with enemies that cast Darkness. One of the PCs can cast daylight (1/day), and another can cast light at will. They might not have torches or lamps, so they'll be blind in melee even if they use the powerful 3rd level daylight spell if I'm reading this right. If the bad guys do this right, they'll slaughter the PCs.
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The way I read it:
1) If you cast daylight on your sword, and walk in a room where a pillar has been enchanted with Darkness, the effects cancel each other out.
2) If you cast Daylight on the pillar that had previously been enchanted with Darkness, then your spell dispels the older one, and no enchantment remains on the pillar. And you can use Daylight to counter someone's casting of Darkness.
This spell causes a touched object to glow like a torch, shedding normal light in a 20-foot radius, and increasing the light level for an additional 20 feet by one step, up to normal light (darkness becomes dim light, and dim light becomes normal light).
and
This darkness causes the illumination level in the area to drop one step, from bright light to normal light, from normal light to dim light, or from dim light to darkness.
So if they're underground, which would normally be darkness, and suddenly their Light effect goes from being normal light to dim light, then they know they've entered the area of effect of a Darkness spell. But they can still see.
So if they're underground, which would normally be darkness, and suddenly their Light effect goes from being normal light to dim light, then they know they've entered the area of effect of a Darkness spell. But they can still see.
You missed this "Magical light sources only increase the light level in an area if they are of a higher spell level than darkness."
So no, light doesn't help them see into darkness. Well, not unless daylight is also used to cancel darkness.