If I had a copper piece for every time someone asks about how darkness works...
I've been trying to make sense of the myriad of Darkness and lighting issues covered in the rulebooks.
You and everyone else.
Does 'magical darkness' refer to the Supernaturally Dark lighting level, or to any darkness effect created by magic?
Darkness created by magic.
Reading the rules has had me believe that it is the latter, so that in order to raise the lighting level above the ambient natural light level, you would need a Daylight spell to negate the darkness, followed by another light source to then raise the lighting level.
If only it were that simple. Darkness negates any mundane sources so those simply don't work. The way I understand it (and there is much debate about this) is in the area where sunlight and a darkness spell overlap only ambient light can exist. So if the ambient light is "dark" then you would need darkvision to see.
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This is one of those areas where a GM just needs to make a decision and just keep it consistent.
I do have a DM who keeps his rulings on the interaction of light/darkness consistent.
Unfortunately it means that we are continually shafted.
In the dark.
Because our 9th level magical light is negated by a 2nd level darkness spell which, while it doesn't provide any darkness per se as both it and the light spell supress each other in terms of not affecting the level of illumination, it still prevents non-magical light sources from helping, and there is no ambient light.
So, we've got 9th level light spells and we still can't even get to 'dim'.
The system needs an overhaul. It says, 'Magical light sources only increase the light level in an area if they are of a higher spell level than darkness'.
But it doesn't say, 'Magical darkness only decreases the light level in an area of magical light if the darkness is produced by a spell of higher level.'
And it should!
What is the 9th level light spell being used?
Heightened light?
It seems to me that per the darkness rules a Light spell cast using Heighten Spell to make it 2nd level for a 2nd level Darkness or 3rd level for a 3rd level Deeper Darkness should result in them being cancelled out. Wouldn't it just be easier to use Daylight?
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We don't need two separate FAQ threads asking the same question. Please just go to this thread and add your FAQ vote to it/discuss the issue there.
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What is the 9th level light spell being used?
Heightened continual flame, cast by a paid NPC on a non-magical amulet, for at-will hands-free illumination.
I was under the impression that the heigher level spell would continue to work normally, and the DM kept hitting us with magical darkness underground.
I shelled out the readies and he didn't tell me what I thought would be the situation wasn't how things worked.
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What is the 9th level light spell being used?Heightened continual flame, cast by a paid NPC on a non-magical amulet, for at-will hands-free illumination.
I was under the impression that the heigher level spell would continue to work normally, and the DM kept hitting us with magical darkness underground.
I shelled out the readies and he didn't tell me what I thought would be the situation wasn't how things worked.
Your GM's doing it wrong, then.
Magical light sources only increase the light level in an area if they are of a higher spell level than darkness.
A heightened spell has a higher spell level than normal (up to a maximum of 9th level). Unlike other metamagic feats, Heighten Spell actually increases the effective level of the spell that it modifies.
Daylight is a little weird with its special clause, but a Heightened Continual Flame shouldn't have any problem with Darkness
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Indeed, your GM changing/being unfamiliar with the rules does not indicate that the rules need an overhaul.
Granted, but when reading the CRB and trying to understand how light and darkness spells interact, there seems to be no single place to find out!
So, we have to go hunting through the various spell descriptions and collate the results, and try and make sense that way.
And when reading daylight we discover that it is negated (supressed) by magical darkness, even of a lower level, while the darkness loses the ability to decrease the light level but retains the ability to stop non-magical light sources from increasing it!
It's little wonder that this is understood as a general rule for light/darkness, because the alternative is that the most powerful purely illumination-increasing spell in the CRB has a weakness that lower-level light spells don't, which is a hard position to defend!
And this is reason that the rules need an overhaul!