So, in the rules section I was trying to find out if there was a particularly good reason dancing darkness and darkness were not 0-level spells.
I was thinking of house ruling them to be 0-level spells in a campaign I'm going to be running later this year. Is there any reason this might not be a good idea?
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Mainly because making things darker can benefit someone more than making things lighter.
The only problem with making something lighter is that it may cause some issues for the few creatures that have light sensitivity, but Dancing Lights and Light (0-level spells) never bring light up above normal light which still isn't bright enough to mess with Light Sensitive creatures. Essentially, all it does is allow for creatures to bring themselves up to their normal fighting potential.
On the other hand, making things Darker can give some significant buffs/effects. If you have Darkvision and these spells as cantrips, you now have 20% concealment from anything that doesn't also have Darkvision as long as the ambient light is at Normal. Keep in mind that if it isn't direct sunlight, then the highest light level you're in is probably Normal. At the entrance of a cave, under a canopy, in a house, etc all have ambient light levels of Normal so you can essentially get 20% concealment very often. If the Ambient is at Low (commonly things like caves or at night) then it's as if the enemy is blind to you.
It basically boils down to "It's almost impossible to give yourself an advantage by making things lighter, but it's very easy to give yourself an advantage for making things darker". This makes Darkness and it's brothers much more useful/stronger than their Light-spell cousins. Thus, making these spells cantrips can open them to abuse.
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Well, darkness spells can be powerful debuffs if used against the right creatures, namely humans and halflings. The 20% miss chance from lowering the light from normal light to dim light is worth more than most cantrips and darkness works even better. Another side effect would be that everburning torches will work in the area of a darkness spell, continual flame being a higher level light spell even from a wizard, making the spell practically useless against the PCs after the first level.
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Well, darkness spells can be powerful debuffs if used against the right creatures, namely humans and halflings.
It's actually a debuff to more things than that. Every Core Race other than Dwarves and Half-orcs can be messed with using darkness effects. Even things with Low-Light Vision aren't immune to the concealment-granting. Low-Light Vision is just defined as "Can see twice as far as humans in dim light" and then defines that as saying that the radius of light sources are doubled. Having low-light vision doesn't really let you see anything better in dim light per se, it just extends the distance at which you can sort of make things out. If there's no actual ambient source giving off a source of Bright Light nearby, an Elf is still going to see the light level as Normal which is then lowered to Dim in a Darkness effect, leading to the aggressor (who I assume will have Darkvision somehow) getting 20% concealment. Sure, if you're near the cave entrance or something then the distance that you would normally see is extended further in, but the light is still going to seem Normal and then Dim to you at some point in there even without magic making things darker. If you're in a house that has curtains drawn (or even just outside on an overcast day), being an Elf isn't going to help you against a darkness effect any more than being a Human is.