Darkness and Light

[Prince Atom]

Last session, the party fought some yuan-ti. One of them laid down a darkness spell. I'll be the first to admit I messed that up, because I hadn't reviewed the darkness rules in the DMG.

The party had at least one everburning torch. The light from the torch would not penetrate the field of shadows more than to provide that 20% miss chance. When the torch passed into the darkness, I ruled that it was occluded for the duration and that the entire underground area was plunged into inky blackness because it was the only source of light.

Now, continual flame is a Clr3 spell, while darkness is only 2nd level. The continual flame should not have been damped out entirely. That's where I was wrong.

I guess my question is... does light pass through a darkness spell on a kind of meta-level? A torch casts light in a 20' radius. If the darkness spell covers only a part of that radius, but includes the torch, does the rest of the radius receive light?

Does anybody have any idea what I'm asking?

TWK

 

[werk]

I think I understand...

Light or Dark spells counter or dispel Dark/Light of equal or lower level.

So a CL2 Darkness is cast.
A CL3 Continual light enters into the area of darkness.
The darkness would be dispelled, since the light is higher level.

I don't know what happens to the higher level effect tho...

 

[Prince Atom]

Well, I just found my answer over on Skip Williams' Rules of the Game on WotC's site:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20050607a

No, it's not dispelled -- you have to ready to counterspell to do that. It's just suppressed. A darkness spell would not suppress a continual flame effect at all, and would be suppressed itself. A greater darkness effect would pwn the continual flame, however. I don't know the greater darkness's spell level, but it's possible that they would merely cancel out where they overlap and normal lighting conditions prevail there.

Crud (or as my supervisor says, "Crust!"), I really flubbed that battle up but good. Time to eat crow.

TWK