D&D 3E/3.5 Darkness Spell in 3.5

[Narfellus]

Making difficult battles easy is the advantage of preparing in advance. Strategy is supposed to reward smart players. It's ultimately always up to the DM to figure out ways to challenge the players, without taking away powers or items that they already have.

DM should be able to balance the campaign by picking encounters appropriately, and having the PCs develop a reputation for using their particular special ability, causing NPCs to prepare for it in advance, and so on, etc. etc.

Anyway, it's irrelevant to my campaign, of course...

Jason

I agree. There are imbalances in the DnD system, mostly because it is such a sprawling conglomeration of magical effects that have been culled together from over thirty years of various sources. Of course it's impossible to mesh such a game seamlessly, but that's where individual creativity comes in. I wasn't aware of the Darkness change, but if a player wanted to cast a higher level "True Darkness" spell, i'd let me. We use a freeform point based system anyway where you can metamagic and alter spells on a whim, within game balance (and good ol DM discretion)

 

[Cheiromancer]

House rule warning!

I could see magical light and magical darkness mixing to produce "shadowy illumination." Maybe if the two spells were within one spell level of each other. But otherwise the highest level spell takes priority; it totally drowns out the lesser spell. Of course, non-magical light gets trumped by magical darkness. (Although natural sunlight should count at least as a third level spell; I'll need to think about that.)

For example, a darkness spell (level 2) would overcome a light spell (level 0) completely (including magical weapons and non-magical light) but not a continual flame (divine 3 or arcane 2); in those circumstances a shadowy illumination would result. Same for deeper darkness (level 3).

But the BoVD's damning darkness (level 4) would overcome an arcane continual flame; the divine version would provide shadowy illumination.

Heighten Spell would be useful for producing the Blindsight/Darkness tricks. It would also be useful for making continual flames that prevent such cheesy tricks. These would be rare and expensive; how many spellcasters choose the Heighten Spell feat?

 

[Stormrunner]

Our houserule is:
Darkness lowers the existing light by one level - bright becomes shadowy, shadowy becomes dark. (And no, it doesn't make already-dark areas shadowy - that's just stupid.) Darkvision becomes "shadowy".
Deeper Darkness produces total blackness, in which darkvision doesn't work, just like 3.0 - while we figured this was too potent for a 2nd-level spell, at 3rd-level it's more reasonable.

Also, note that 3.5 divides blindsight into "true" blindsight (possessed by very few creatures, mostly dragons) and "blindsense" which is less detailed. (Blindsense: "There's a Medium-size creature 5' to your left." Blindsight: "There's a drow in chainmail with a sword 5' to your left.")