
Gauss |

Alright this question is primarily 'can someone spam Daylight or Deeper Darkness to overwhelm the other?' While I have my own opinions this is not intended as trolling or whatnot. More of a curiousity of how people run things.
Both counter or dispel its opposite. Unfortunately, this application of dispelling requires touching the source the spell. For this exercise please assume that dispel and counter are not possible.
It is stated that they temporarily negate each other and that ambient light levels remains.
It is also stated that Deeper Darkness cannot be stacked.
So to restate the question in multiple choice form:
Scenario: Deeper Darkness has been cast upon two different stones. Daylight has been cast upon a third stone. The three stones are all located in the same 5 foot space and none of them are covered up.
A) Deeper Darkness prevails.
B) Ambient lighting conditions prevail.
C) None of the above (state reason).
Im curious what people answer with.
- Gauss

wraithstrike |

I know what Mergy's idea is. I had it myself. Spells with the same affect don't stack if they are in the same area. If you cast two deeper darkness twice or daylight twice it only counts once, and any casting of the opposing spell has the same effect as if only one casting of the other spell was already in place.

wraithstrike |

So what you are saying is there is no overlap either. :)
- Gauss
That was my ruling that two castings would only count once, and it makes sense. When daylight and darkness are in the same area they are not dispelled. Their affects are just not prominent. That is most likely what I would use in an actual game, despite my PM.
PS:I like this one better, even if it is wrong.

Gauss |

Wraithstrike, a sensible ruling. :)
Im just wondering if it is RAW. As near as I can figure, there is nothing that states whether or not A or B occur when there are multiple castings.
I can see it going either way due to the following line:
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.
Example: Deeper Darkness and Daylight temporarily negate each other. Then another Deeper Darkness is cast.
Premise: Since this is a new casting it is now the prevalent condition.
From this we might derive the following:
Two Deeper Darkness and One Daylight result in One Deeper Darkness.
However, this is still based upon the premise that a new Deeper Darkness is not negated as well.
Additionally, the derivation has its own flaw: IE: it is a derivation and not the original wording. Derivations do not always stand up on thier own merits.
But if the derivation fails and the premise stands then we wind up with a chain of readied actions. Ready an action for when daylight cancels out deeper darkness. Etc.
- Gauss
Edit: added some material.
Edit2: BTW, thank you for your responses.

redward |

RAW says the same spell with differing results only allows the higher result, but does not stack. It makes sense to also say the same spell with the same result also does not stack. That means more castings in the same area won't do anything. It also makes tracking(book keeping) easier.
Right. The only way the second Deeper Darkness has any effect is if it is cast on the same object upon which Daylight was cast. Then they dispel each other and the first Deeper Darkness acts unimpeded.

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Ok just so I'm straight on this, let me give a situation and see what happens.
- I have an npc start off a fight by throwing half a dozen coins with deeper darkness cast on them to a bunch of points in a room. The starting light in the room is dim. So with this the light would drop two notches to magical darkness (which would be the case with just one casting of deeper darkness).
- Now the cleric casts her daylight spell. Would the light in the room go up to darkness or dim light? I assume in no case would it go up to normal light. What if the original light in the room is darkness, deeper darkness would take it down two steps but as magical darkness is the lowest you can go, would the daylight take it back up to darkness or would it stay magical darkness due to daylight only increasing it 1 step and deeper darkness takes it down 2 steps?
- Also on a side note, what effect does mundane light have on deeper darkness? If the room was originally lit by torches making it normal light, would the deeper darkness take the room down two steps of the normal light from the torches or would it negate the mundane light and take it down two steps from what it would be from natural light (such as that from the moon which would mean dim light.)
Thanks again guys, I just want to make sure I'm crafting quality encounters for my players.

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Ok just so I'm straight on this, let me give a situation and see what happens.
- I have an npc start off a fight by throwing half a dozen coins with deeper darkness cast on them to a bunch of points in a room. The starting light in the room is dim. So with this the light would drop two notches to magical darkness (which would be the case with just one casting of deeper darkness).
- Now the cleric casts her daylight spell. Would the light in the room go up to darkness or dim light? I assume in no case would it go up to normal light. What if the original light in the room is darkness, deeper darkness would take it down two steps but as magical darkness is the lowest you can go, would the daylight take it back up to darkness or would it stay magical darkness due to daylight only increasing it 1 step and deeper darkness takes it down 2 steps?
No matter how many points are radiating DD, the daylight will negate any of the area with which it overlaps, returning to ambient light levels. Within the overlapping areas, you won't even be counting "steps" up and down the "light level ladder" - both effects are suppressed, leaving you with whatever light level would be there if neither spell were active. Period.
- Also on a side note, what effect does mundane light have on deeper darkness? If the room was originally lit by torches making it normal light, would the deeper darkness take the room down two steps of the normal light from the torches or would it negate the mundane light and take it down two steps from what it would be from natural light (such as that from the moon which would mean dim light.)
DD functions as darkness which says in its description that it prevents mundane light sources from raising the light level at all. So a torchlit room that's then subjected to DD will lose its torchlight AND drop two steps. As a result, DD used indoors will almost always result in supernatural darkness.

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Tormad wrote:Ok just so I'm straight on this, let me give a situation and see what happens.
- I have an npc start off a fight by throwing half a dozen coins with deeper darkness cast on them to a bunch of points in a room. The starting light in the room is dim. So with this the light would drop two notches to magical darkness (which would be the case with just one casting of deeper darkness).
- Now the cleric casts her daylight spell. Would the light in the room go up to darkness or dim light? I assume in no case would it go up to normal light. What if the original light in the room is darkness, deeper darkness would take it down two steps but as magical darkness is the lowest you can go, would the daylight take it back up to darkness or would it stay magical darkness due to daylight only increasing it 1 step and deeper darkness takes it down 2 steps?
No matter how many points are radiating DD, the daylight will negate any of the area with which it overlaps, returning to ambient light levels. Within the overlapping areas, you won't even be counting "steps" up and down the "light level ladder" - both effects are suppressed, leaving you with whatever light level would be there if neither spell were active. Period.
Ok that's what I was thinking, but just wanted to double check.
Tormad wrote:- Also on a side note, what effect does mundane light have on deeper darkness? If the room was originally lit by torches making it normal light, would the deeper darkness take the room down two steps of the normal light from the torches or would it negate the mundane light and take it down two steps from what it would be from natural light (such as that from the moon which would mean dim light.)DD functions as darkness which says in its description that it prevents mundane light sources from raising the light level at all. So a torchlit room that's then subjected to DD will lose its torchlight AND drop two steps. As a result, DD used indoors will almost always result in supernatural darkness.
Very cool. Thanks again guys. So within the radius of a daylight spell would mundane light function again, since the two are negating each other?

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So within the radius of a daylight spell would mundane light function again, since the two are negating each other?
Since both effects are negated, I believe that includes the "no mundane light" clause of darkness effects being negated as part of that. And daylight does say the "otherwise prevailing light conditions" come back, which I would interpret to mean torches start working again within the area of overlap.

Tels |

I'm thinking of this like a Venn Diagram. If A and B are the Deeper Darkness and C is the Daylight, then where A, B and C overlap, the second casting of Deeper Darkness is prevalent. A is cancelled out by C, so B comes into play.
Where A and B overlap, nothing happens, because the spells don't stack.
Where A and C overlap, the normal ambient lighting comes into play.
Where B and C overlap, the normal ambient lighting comes into play.
Same thing applies if I cast Resist Energy - Fire, twice on myself and someone hits me with a Dispel Magic. If they dispel the first Resist, the next one is still active.

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There's a difference between the supressed effects of an active daylight, and a daylight that's actually been dispelled. That makes your resist energy analogy completely inapplicable.
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There are two different problems with your interpretation:
1) You have an area where, with 2 DD's, the final result is different (and more severe) than it would be if there were only 1 DD. That's the very definition of stacking, which DD explicitly does not do.
2) You have an area where a DD and a daylight are overlapping without negating each other's effects. Daylight explicitly contradicts this.
Your interpretation is incorrect on two different counts.

Tels |

There's a difference between the supressed effects of an active daylight, and a daylight that's actually been dispelled. That makes your resist energy analogy completely inapplicable.
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There are two different problems with your interpretation:
1) You have an area where, with 2 DD's, the final result is different (and more severe) than it would be if there were only 1 DD. That's the very definition of stacking, which DD explicitly does not do.
2) You have an area where a DD and a daylight are overlapping without negating each other's effects. Daylight explicitly contradicts this.Your interpretation is incorrect on two different counts.
No where in my interpretation are they stacking for a more severe effect.
A and C suppress one another in the area they overlap in. Because A and C are suppressed, B is still active, and therefore, it's affects come into play.
In areas where only A and C overlap, the effects of both spells in the overlapping area is suppressed. In areas where only B and C overlap, the effects of both spells in the overlapping area is suppressed. In areas where A, B and C overlap, C suppress the (and is suppressed by) the effects on either A, or B, but not both. Since C is suppressed by either A or B in the overlapping area, then the unsuppressed spell's effects are still active.
No stacking, and the overlapping spells are negating each other. My interpretation isn't incorrect at all.

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If having one of each spell active produces one result, and adding a second DD spell changes that result, then the 2 DD's have stacked. If they weren't stacking, then having 1, 2, or 99 instances of DD in the same place would all have identical effects.
You said that if there are 2 DD's and 1 daylight, the result is different than if you had the same situation but only 1 DD. Therefore, you're stacking them.

Tels |

Stacking increases the effect in some way. If you put 10,000 Deeper Darkness spells in a room, it still only reduces the light level by two steps. Period.
This is an overlapping effect, not stacking.
If you were two Rings of Protection +2, you still only get an increase in your AC of +2. If someone were to cast Dispel on one ring, thereby suppressing the ring, you still get a +2 because the other Ring is still working.
It's the same thing here. If Caster A casts Deeper Darkness, and Caster C casts Daylight, in any area they overlap, they suppress one another in that area. If Caster B then comes in and casts Deeper Darkness and overlaps an area that both A and C are overlapping, then, because A and C are suppressed, B's effect is the one that is still in play.
Not STACKING. OVERLAPPING.
If you have Two Morale bonuses from different effects that have the same bonus, and one is removed, the other one still affects you because it wasn't removed.
It's almost like a math problem:
0 + (-1) + 1 + (-1) = -1 + 1 + (-1) = 0 + (-1) = -1
You cannot stack Deeper Darkness in anyway. Overlapping two different castings of Deeper Darkness is not stacking them. If you overlap two Anti-magic fields, nothing happens. They don't stack, nor do they cancel one another out.
If you cast Prayer twice, they don't stack, they overlap.
If you cast Greater Magic Weapon twice, they don't stack, they overlap.
In all the above scenarios, if you remove the affect of one, the other one is still active, therefore you still gain the benefits of that effect.
Deeper Darkness + Daylight + Deeper Darkness = Deeper Darkness.

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Stacking increases the effect in some way.
That would be what I said.
If a small room is dimly lit, and there is an active daylight and an active deeper darkness, then the room is in "dim light". If a second casting of deeper darkness takes it from dim light to magical darkness, then you've just "increased the effect". Thus, by your own definition, you've stacked the two castings of deeper darkness.
Now, if you had a dimly-lit room with daylight and deeper darkness in effect (net result: dim light) and then used a second DD to dispel the daylight, then the remaining DD would drop the light level by 2 steps. But that's a very different situation.
Furthermore, having daylight and DD both active in a room does not dispel either of them. Their effects are suppressed, but the spells are still active and present. Therefore, if you expect a second casting of DD to reduce the light level in that area, then you've got DD existing in the area of a daylight spell without being suppressed. There's nothing in the daylight spell saying it can only suppress one darkness effect at a time. If that were the intent, it would say something to that effect. But it doesn't. It just says that if areas overlap, they're ALL negated.

Ughbash |
Deeper Darkness supresses Daylight and above in its area. If you have 2 Deeper Darknesses in the same area they still have the same effect of supressing daylight.
Now if you through a dozen coins into the room blanketing the room and it was a LARGE room, you would have magical Darkness all over the room except where the Daylight effect was which would be dim light.
Earlier in the thread someone mentioned empowering the daylight. That would have no effect as it woudl still be considered a level 3 spell. If you instead Heightened the daylight to a fourth level spell it would overwhelm the deeper darkness. And if the NPC threw a coin with Heightened darkness into the room a regular daylight would have no effect in the area of the heightened darkness.

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It's almost like a math problem:
0 + (-1) + 1 + (-1) = -1 + 1 + (-1) = 0 + (-1) = -1
By the way, you kind of shot yourself in the foot here, because:
(-1) + 1 + (-1) and every other iteration of the equation you wrote
is the same as
1 + (-2)
You know what that "-2" means? It means you stacked. "One and one makes two" is the definition of stacking, and you just proved mathematically that you were doing it.
You keep giving examples of a redundant effect being completely dispelled to illustrate why an overlapping effect can remain, but that's not what goes on when daylight and deeper darkness are overlapping.
You keep comparing the interaction at hand to a very different situation, correctly identifying the latter as overlapping but then insisting that the former is overlapping as well even as your descriptions describe stacking in perfect detail.

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And if the NPC threw a coin with Heightened darkness into the room a regular daylight would have no effect in the area of the heightened darkness.
Where are you getting this idea?
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.
There's no mention of spell levels here. You must be thinking of what can dispel what. But dispelling requires casting a spell onto the same target that an already active spell is affecting. In this case, touching the same pebble/coin when you cast.

Tels |

Ughbash wrote:And if the NPC threw a coin with Heightened darkness into the room a regular daylight would have no effect in the area of the heightened darkness.Where are you getting this idea?
Daylight wrote: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.There's no mention of spell levels here. You must be thinking of what can dispel what. But dispelling requires casting a spell onto the same target that an already active spell is affecting. In this case, touching the same pebble/coin when you cast.
If you Heighten a Darkness spell to 4th level, it overpowers all Light spells of 3rd level or lower. If you Heighten a Light spell to 4th level, it overpowers all Darkness spells of 3rd level or lower.
The same thing works even without Heighten. If there are 10,000 Darkness spells of 2nd level cast in a room, and a creature comes in and casts Daylight, then Daylight overpowers all 10,000 Darkness spells.

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If you Heighten a Darkness spell to 4th level, it overpowers all Light spells of 3rd level or lower.
Depends on what you mean by "overpowers". It's true that a lower-level light spell will not raise the light level within the radius of a darkness effect of a higher level. However, daylight has a special clause of negating magical darkness within its area that is completely separate from it normal raising of light levels. It will still have that effect no matter how Heightened the darkness effect is.

Tels |

Tels wrote:Stacking increases the effect in some way.That would be what I said.
If a small room is dimly lit, and there is an active daylight and an active deeper darkness, then the room is in "dim light". If a second casting of deeper darkness takes it from dim light to magical darkness, then you've just "increased the effect". Thus, by your own definition, you've stacked the two castings of deeper darkness.
Now, if you had a dimly-lit room with daylight and deeper darkness in effect (net result: dim light) and then used a second DD to dispel the daylight, then the remaining DD would drop the light level by 2 steps. But that's a very different situation.
Furthermore, having daylight and DD both active in a room does not dispel either of them. Their effects are suppressed, but the spells are still active and present. Therefore, if you expect a second casting of DD to reduce the light level in that area, then you've got DD existing in the area of a daylight spell without being suppressed. There's nothing in the daylight spell saying it can only suppress one darkness effect at a time. If that were the intent, it would say something to that effect. But it doesn't. It just says that if areas overlap, they're ALL negated.
It seems obvious to me that you have no idea how stacking works when it is applied to spells affecting the ambient lighting.
If a Deeper Darkness is cast in an area that is brightly lit, it reduces the lighting to Dim light (2 steps). If you cast Deeper Darkness again, it doesn't reduce it to Supernatural Darkness, because Darkness spells don't stack.
Daylight and Deeper Darkness are both spells that alter the lighting of an area. If those spells are inactive for any reason, then it returns to ambient lighting.
If I am in a room with Normal light and cast Darylight, then the room is Brightly Lit for 60 ft, and has Normal Light for another 60 feet beyond that. Then I cast Deeper Darkness which suppress Daylight, and returns the entire room back to Normal Light. If I then cast regular Darkness, this then reduces the light level to Dim Light for 20 ft around me.
If someone were to dispell the Daylight, then the room would be plunged into Darkness, but not Supernatural Darkness, because Darkness and Deeper Darkness don't stack.
Why does this work? Because Deeper Darkness and Daylight are suppressed. They don't work as long as their two areas are overlapping.

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...I think the disconnect between you and me is the idea of just how suppressed DD is while overlapping daylight.
I.e., is it essentially not there at all, or is it just not applying its effects?
If it's treated like it's completely gone (functionally identical to having been dispelled, except it can "come back" if the daylight goes away), then you become right.
If instead it's treated as present but not having its usual effects (and if daylight is as well), then 99 DD's can be suppressed by a single daylight because that's how daylight works and nothing's stopping it from working on all of them.

Tels |

Tels wrote:If you Heighten a Darkness spell to 4th level, it overpowers all Light spells of 3rd level or lower.Depends on what you mean by "overpowers". It's true that a lower-level light spell will not raise the light level within the radius of a darkness effect of a higher level. However, daylight has a special clause of negating magical darkness within its area that is completely separate from it normal raising of light levels. It will still have that effect no matter how Heightened the darkness effect is.
You might want to read exactly what Daylight says again.
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.
Daylight brought into an area of magical darkness is temporarily negated.
Vice Versa.
Magical Darkness brought into an area of Daylight is temporarily negated.
Either way, in the area they overlap, the prevailing light conditions exist.
So, per Daylights rules, if Daylight enters an area that is under the affects of the 2nd level spell Darkness, the area they overlap is temporarily negated.
If you cast another Darkness spell, the second Darkness spell becomes the prevalent lighting condition, because the affects of both Darkness and Daylight are temporarily negated by the overlapping effects.

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I would have to day since Deeper Darkness doesn't stack, it does not overlap either.
2 DD spells would either do the following:
1) Cast first DD. Then cast second DD. The first becomes irrelevant as the second casting subsumes the first and basically just increased duration.
2) Individual castings of DD work like bubbles. Two castings next to each other work (increases total area of darkness) but have a boundary between them (like the film on the outside of a bubble). There is no overlap nor stacking.
If a light spell is cast and it will suppress both DD castings.
I might get more involved with a light bubble vs. a dark bubble, but it would be depend on the context. No need to complicate things. :p
That's how I'd rule it, anyway.

Tels |

so... a wizard casts anti-magic surpressing the DD... if I cast another DD - does it get dark?
Daylight used to surpress darkness effects, surpresses them. all of them in the area, as long as the surpression effect is there.
Except that when Daylight suppresses a Darkness spell, it too is suppressed per the clause written into the Daylight spell.
Also, Anti-Magic Sphere is called Anti-Magic for a reason. When inside an Anti-Magic Sphere, you can't cast any spells at all.

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Jiggy wrote:Tels wrote:If you Heighten a Darkness spell to 4th level, it overpowers all Light spells of 3rd level or lower.Depends on what you mean by "overpowers". It's true that a lower-level light spell will not raise the light level within the radius of a darkness effect of a higher level. However, daylight has a special clause of negating magical darkness within its area that is completely separate from it normal raising of light levels. It will still have that effect no matter how Heightened the darkness effect is.You might want to read exactly what Daylight says again.
Daylight wrote: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.Daylight brought into an area of magical darkness is temporarily negated.
Vice Versa.
Magical Darkness brought into an area of Daylight is temporarily negated.
Either way, in the area they overlap, the prevailing light conditions exist.
So, per Daylights rules, if Daylight enters an area that is under the affects of the 2nd level spell Darkness, the area they overlap is temporarily negated.
If you cast another Darkness spell, the second Darkness spell becomes the prevalent lighting condition, because the affects of both Darkness and Daylight are temporarily negated by the overlapping effects.
I think you might have clicked "Reply" on the wrong one of my posts, because what you typed makes no sense as a response to what you quoted.

Tels |

Tels wrote:I think you might have clicked "Reply" on the wrong one of my posts, because what you typed makes no sense as a response to what you quoted.Jiggy wrote:Tels wrote:If you Heighten a Darkness spell to 4th level, it overpowers all Light spells of 3rd level or lower.Depends on what you mean by "overpowers". It's true that a lower-level light spell will not raise the light level within the radius of a darkness effect of a higher level. However, daylight has a special clause of negating magical darkness within its area that is completely separate from it normal raising of light levels. It will still have that effect no matter how Heightened the darkness effect is.You might want to read exactly what Daylight says again.
Daylight wrote: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.Daylight brought into an area of magical darkness is temporarily negated.
Vice Versa.
Magical Darkness brought into an area of Daylight is temporarily negated.
Either way, in the area they overlap, the prevailing light conditions exist.
So, per Daylights rules, if Daylight enters an area that is under the affects of the 2nd level spell Darkness, the area they overlap is temporarily negated.
If you cast another Darkness spell, the second Darkness spell becomes the prevalent lighting condition, because the affects of both Darkness and Daylight are temporarily negated by the overlapping effects.
No, I had a point I was going to make, but then my Nephew distracted me and I lost my train of thought, and just decided to hit Submit anyway. Haven't remembered yet where I was going with it...

Gauss |

Nice necro :)
First, daylight DOES have the line about countering and dispelling spells of an equal or lower level. Thus, heighten is valuable if dealing with heightened deeper darkness.
Daylight counters or dispels any darkness spell of equal or lower level, such as darkness.
Second, I have been interpreting it the same way as Tels but I don't like that interpretation because it becomes a tit-for-tat battle of Deeper Darkness vs Daylight. He who has the last spell wins.
While I did run it that way I think in the future I will run it the way Jiggy has laid out because players simply cannot keep up with the tit-for-tat Deeper Darkness vs Daylight.
Example: Assume a 4 player group where one spellcaster has done his due diligence and has Daylight memorized or on a scroll. The group runs into two Dark Stalkers. The Dark Stalkers start off by spamming Deeper Darkness. Now the players are screwed. They will be blind-fighting the entire battle.
I wont run it this way again, it was overwhelming to the players and I had to back it off when I did this. While I think the rules state that it works the way Tels suggest I will run it the way Jiggy suggests because to do otherwise is too much.
- Gauss

Tels |

Nice necro :)
First, daylight DOES have the line about countering and dispelling spells of an equal or lower level. Thus, heighten is valuable if dealing with heightened deeper darkness.
CRB p264 Daylight wrote:Daylight counters or dispels any darkness spell of equal or lower level, such as darkness.Second, I have been interpreting it the same way as Tels but I don't like that interpretation because it becomes a tit-for-tat battle of Deeper Darkness vs Daylight. He who has the last spell wins.
While I did run it that way I think in the future I will run it the way Jiggy has laid out because players simply cannot keep up with the tit-for-tat Deeper Darkness vs Daylight.
Example: Assume a 4 player group where one spellcaster has done his due diligence and has Daylight memorized or on a scroll. The group runs into two Dark Stalkers. The Dark Stalkers start off by spamming Deeper Darkness. Now the players are screwed. They will be blind-fighting the entire battle.
I wont run it this way again, it was overwhelming to the players and I had to back it off when I did this. While I think the rules state that it works the way Tels suggest I will run it the way Jiggy suggests because to do otherwise is too much.
- Gauss
Funny thing, you need to be able to SEE to read the scroll :P
Daylight scrolls are useless.
Dark Stalkers are, in my opinion, more powerful than their CR because of their at-will Deeper Darkness. It's just way too good for what it's capable of. I'd love to use them one day, but if I ever do, I'll make sure the Dark Stalker is alone with no one around, so the party at least has a chance of taking him out.

Gauss |

Not useless, my experience is that typically the player with the daylight scroll is behind the front line. As a result they can step out of the darkness and then cast it.
In order to deal with all of this my players initially made scrolls of daylight and then when that became insufficient they made Wands of Daylight in order to deal with them.
- Gauss

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So the final say on a heighten Deeper darkness or darkness spell is that it would need an equivalently heightened or higher light spell to negate it or dispel it.
Or even if the deeper darkness is heightened to say 6th level, it could still be suppressed by a 3rd level daylight?
Note that "negating" (per the text from daylight, regarding overlapping areas) and "dispelling" (a standardized function from the Magic chapter) are two entirely different things (and "counter" is yet a third thing, also from the Magic chapter).
When the spells in question say they "counter or dispel" each other, they reference spell levels.
When daylight says that overlapping areas negate each other, this is an entirely separate effect and does not reference spell levels at all.
So no matter what level any of the spells involved are, the overlapping areas between daylight and a darkness effect will ALWAYS negate each other.
However, if I want to cast one of these spells on the same pebble/coin/whatever as its opposite and use it to dispel the existing spell, mine will have to be of an equal or higher level to do so.

mdt |
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--EDIT : Spacer Line
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I may have missed where this was pointed out, but I want to make sure it is.
If I have, let's say, four deeper darknesses, and one daylight, all in a big underground arena, I might have this :
############################
############################
####DD##7#######6#####DD####
##########=====#############
##########=1=2=#############
##########==D==#############
##########=4=3=#############
##########=====#############
####DD##8#######5#####DD####
############################
############################
DD = Object with Deeper Darkness
D = Object with Daylight
# = Dark space
= = Lit space
1-8 = Torch
If each torch has 20 ft radius, and each character represents 5 feet, then the following occurs :
Torch's 1-4 burn, and brighten the area of the Daylight spell normally (due to them being the 'ambient light', which means that the daylight area is lit to the brightness of a torch, due to no other light being ambient (again, underground here)).
Torch's 5-8 do NOTHING, they don't illuminate any of the area covered by the Daylight spell, because they are inside the effect of an unimpeded deeper darkness, which causes them to stop emitting light (no mundane light sources work), thus they aren't valid for generating ambient light.
What does this mean? It means that if the torches 1-4 were not there, the Daylight spell would do nothing other than allow you to strike a match in the area, the torches 5-8 would not generate ambient light for Daylight to restore. If however, you carried torch 5 into the daylight spell area, it would start generating light.

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ah... something looks odd. (and then a question)
Daylight raises the light level for 60 feet (12 characters in your example), and torchs 5 thru 8 appear to be only 25 feet from the daylight (two characters up and 3 sideways). Wouldn't they be in the area of the daylight spell?
(now the Question: how is this effected by Low-Light vision, which would see the daylight spell as effecting an area of radius 120'?)

mdt |

ah... something looks odd. (and then a question)
Daylight raises the light level for 60 feet (12 characters in your example), and torchs 5 thru 8 appear to be only 25 feet from the daylight (two characters up and 3 sideways). Wouldn't they be in the area of the daylight spell?
(now the Question: how is this effected by Low-Light vision, which would see the daylight spell as effecting an area of radius 120'?)
Didn't make the daylight to full effect. Just said that if the Daylight effect was in the area described by the ='s, then this is how things work.
Mainly, because I didn't want to have to build a 40x40 grid to represent at full size. So for purposes of the example, the Daylight only has a radius of approx 10 feet.