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Under most circumstances the cantrip Light will beat the spell Darkness and make it fail to work in the overlapping field of effect.
Light is a cantrip, and under the rules cantrips are always cast at a spell level equal to the highest you can cast:
"A cantrip is always automatically heightened to the highest level of spell you can cast in the class. This makes a cantrip a 1st-level spell if you can cast 1st-level spells, a 2nd-level spell if you can cast 2nd-level spells, and so on."
Darkness is a level 2 spell, with a level 4 heighten.
Here's how light and darness interact:
"Light and Darkness
Light and darkness from magical and nonmagical sources interact in specific ways. Nonmagical light always shines in nonmagical darkness and always fails to shine in magical darkness. Magical light always shines in nonmagical darkness, but it shines in magical darkness only if the light spell has a higher level than the darkness effect. Spells with the darkness trait or the light trait can always dispel one another, but bringing light and darkness into contact doesn’t automatically cause one to dispel the other. You must cast a light spell on a darkness effect directly to dispel it (and vice versa), though certain spells automatically attempt to dispel opposing effects and describe how they do so."
So, most of the time Light (always cast at max level) will overpower Darkness (cast at level 2 or 4 only). Is this intended?
It does mean that most castings of Darkness will be easily ignored by a same-level PC having a Light cantrip going.
Note: How does the Shadow creature ability Cast Shadow interact with this? It doesn't give an effect level, nor does it appear to reference the spell. It's clearly a magical darkness effect but that relies on effect level to adjudicate.
It is clear that casting Light as a cantrip will always dispel any Darkness effect of any level, and vice versa, because all light effects and darkness effects can always dispel each other.
Thanks. :)
"You can prepare a spell in a higher-level slot than its normal spell level. This is called heightening your spell. If you do this, the spell’s level increases to match the higher level of the new spell slot. This can be useful because some effects, such as dispelling, depend on the spell’s level.
Many spells have specific extra benefits when they are heightened, such as increased damage. These extra benefits are described in a special entry at the end of the spell’s stat block. Some heightened entries specify at what levels the spell can be prepared to gain these extra advantages."
p. 192
So you can cast darkness at any level you have (except 1) if you cast it at lvl 4 or higher it also blocks darkvision. I still think it's odd that a cantrip can beat a spell slot, maybe it should need to be two levels higher but still it's not quite as bad.
I don't think it's unreasonable for a Light cantrip to beat the Darkness spell. If it's a 2nd level darkness, then it's just second level. Period. If you are so mighty and powerful that you can can cast a third level Light cantrip, then you ARE manipulating the magic of the universe at a greater efficacy than that lowly 2nd level Darkness. You SHOULD blow it away with a twitch of your highly magical pinky, regardless of whether you use a "spell" or a "cantrip".
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I don't think it's unreasonable for a Light cantrip to beat the Darkness spell. If it's a 2nd level darkness, then it's just second level. Period. If you are so mighty and powerful that you can can cast a third level Light cantrip, then you ARE manipulating the magic of the universe at a greater efficacy than that lowly 2nd level Darkness. You SHOULD blow it away with a twitch of your highly magical pinky, regardless of whether you use a "spell" or a "cantrip".
I disagree on the basis that one is costing a resource while the other isn't. One caster made a certain amount of commitment learning/preparing that cantrip but isn't sacrificing any supernatural oomph to use it. The other made the greater sacrifice and that should count for more.
I generally agree with cantrips auto-heightening, but this seems like an outlier. And requiring casters to use the equivalent power of a Wish spell just to match a cantrip (even if that cantrip is also 10th-level) strikes me as an artifact of the system (like P1E's mobile monks doing best ehen they stand still), rather than intended. It makes me wish Daylight were still a spell, so its light could be distinguished as magical light (and therefore interacting with/defeating Darkness while still costing a resource on its own) and have the Light cantrip's light (even at 10th level) be considered nonmagical light.
But they are still limitless in their use. That should be a factor in their power level. If my damage Cantrip became better than my Level 2 Damage Spell, why would I ever use the slot?
That is the argument here - if you have to expect that a large number of casters of your powerlevel will have the unlimited ability to cancel your Darkness, why would you ever learn it?A bow is limited by the number of arrows in the quiver, while a Claymore sword can be used indefinitely. That does not mean that the arrow necessarily does more damage than the sword.
The arrow makes up for that by being useful against foes further away than adjacent, while the best you could do with the greatsword is throw it (once).
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This would easily be addressed by adding a rule saying that the counteract level of a cantrip is reduced by 2 from its actual spell level. This way, if you're a 9th level caster with 5th tier spells, you can use light to overwhelm Darkness (which says it defeats light of equal or lower level, so would require a 3rd tier light spell to dismiss). This seems fair to me, eventually the caster is so puissant that even their at will tricks beat the resource investment of a lesser caster, but it doesn't happen on-level.
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This would easily be addressed by adding a rule saying that the counteract level of a cantrip is reduced by 2 from its actual spell level. This way, if you're a 9th level caster with 5th tier spells, you can use light to overwhelm Darkness (which says it defeats light of equal or lower level, so would require a 3rd tier light spell to dismiss). This seems fair to me, eventually the caster is so puissant that even their at will tricks beat the resource investment of a lesser caster, but it doesn't happen on-level.
That seems fair to me.