Unbearable Brightness and Vampires

[ITCampbell]

Hi folks,

I'm trying to pick spells for an unlettered arcanist in a Carrion Crown campaign. We just started Ashes at Dawn, so there's going to be lots of vampires. I'm using the Witch spells based on my archetype, and I'm trying to vet them to make sure they work on undead (a lot of them seem like they would at first blush, but then for some reason won't either due to needing to target a living creature, spell wording, or some undead immunity that I forget about [like polymorph]).

Anywho, I believe that the general consensus on the forums about light spells harming vampires is that the spell needs to specifically call out that it has an extra effect for creatures harmed by light, but the spell "Unbreable Brightness" seems ambiguous to me because it does call out an extra effect for creatures sensitive to bright light, and it does counter magical darkness, but it doesn't specifically mention damage anywhere (probably because it isn't a damaging spell, normally).

Quote:

Unbearable Brightness Description:

School evocation [light]; Level alchemist 4, sorcerer/wizard 4, witch 4

CASTING

Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S

EFFECT

Range personal and 30 ft. (see text)
Area 30-ft.-radius emanation centered on you
Duration 1 round/level
Saving Throw none and Reflex partial (see text); Spell Resistance no and yes (see text)

DESCRIPTION

Your body glows with a terrible light. Creatures within 30 feet of you that can see you are dazzled (no saving throw). Creatures with light sensitivity must succeed at a Reflex saving throw or be blinded. This light counts as daylight for the purpose of affecting darkness effects (and vice versa). If the emanation enters an area under the effect of magical darkness (or vice versa), both effects are temporarily negated so that the otherwise prevailing light conditions exist in the overlapping areas of effect. Dazzled and blinded conditions from your light end when the spell ends or when the creature is out of line of sight.

So, if you flipped this spell on around some vampires, it seems clear it would blind them if they failed their save, but would it harm them like sunlight would?

I'm leaning towards an interpretation of no based on what is written, but then I think about the fact that it counters magical darkness and the fact that the spell first appeared in the Undead Slayer's Handbook, and I start to think that maybe it was intended to count as sunlight for these sorts of purposes.

So, first question: What do you all think about this spell?

Second question: Any confirmed anti-vampire spells on the witch spell list that you can think of up to level 6 that I should look into that might let me kill vampires without trailing them back to their coffins? The only one I have come up so far with is Banish Seeming to force them back into corporeal form once they are reduced to zero hitpoints, which, I think, will then allow me to season it (aka stuff garlic in its mouth), stake it, and decapitate, which should do the trick. But it'd be nice to have a less labor-intensive option, since Banish Seeming will only keep it in solid form for about a minute.

[Claxon]

I think it only works as daylight for how it interacts with darkness spells. So no, I don't think it would damage creatures as though it were real daylight.

[Diego Rossi]

Jathiel wrote:

So, if you flipped this spell on around some vampires, it seems clear it would blind them if they failed their save, but would it harm them like sunlight would?

No, it wouldn't. Vampires don't have light sensitivity and the spell blinds only creatures with light sensitivity.

Light sensitivity is a specific quality of a creature. Being armed by sunlight isn't the same thing.

[Pan, definitely not a Kitsune]

Big ambiguity:
When a spell says it "counts as daylight", it's usually referring to the Daylight spell (which also specifies that "Despite its name, this spell is not the equivalent of daylight for the purposes of creatures that are damaged or destroyed by such light.") - but here, it's neither written in cursive, nor capitalised, which would normally be the case for a spell reference.

But then, they also failed to mark Light Sensitivity as a specific rules term.