Spell Bug: Darkness (Multiple issues)

This spell seems to seriously wonked out now. It has several issues.

1) The 'darkness' effect is persisting on NPCs after the spell duration ends. Not that I'm complaining per-se about free unlimited sneak attacks with no effort in solo-play... but yeah, it's a tad unbalancing

2) Vamp/Shadowchild/Drow sunblocking issues.... this spell protects against sun damage. However.... you do not get this feature if you've got spell resistance or spell immunity (evocation for regular darkness, illusion for the shadow variant).

This is a HUGE issue if you happen to be a reincarnated or ascended vampire, especially in the epic levels. Unless you're a big time caster, you're not gonna beat your own SR, and if you got immunity to the relevant spell schools, you gotta remove the items, and still have to pass an SR check

For drow, this is pretty much a non issue as that 1 point of sun damage is nothing more than an annoyance once you get even 1 point of regen. For shadowchildren... it's not quite so much an issue. For vampires.... it's a severe issue given all the massive disadvantages vampires already face.

Ok... now say you DO get it to work on you.... like with the NPCs... the sun protection persists even after the spell wears off. I tested with Aurora (my only sun sensitive who has the caster levels to bust through her own SR). Removed her illusion immunity item, cast darkness, no more sun damage. Left the AoE... no sun damage. Rested, spell ended. Still no sun damage.

Of all the spell bugs, I really think this one needs to be addressed very soon, both for the combat balance issue AND the sun protection issues. For the sun issue... the sun protection should come even if you block the "darkness" from disabling you via SR/immunity. The field of darkness is there. Just because it doesn't effectively blind you doesn't mean it isn't there.

I discovered today that the first issue is not the darkness effect staying on NPCs, but invisibility staying on you - as soon as you get dispelled(say, by elder eyes), the invisibility vfx disappears and other creatures start to see you. Also, undispelled it stays through area transitions(!).

That's not it. There's a load of wonkyness with beholder AM and darkness to start with. My tests were against other baddies, and the results negate that idea. After dispelling the darkness with an AoE mords, and using mords on myself for dispelling effects, the group of orcs still acted as if they couldn't see me. However, a second group who was not affected by the darkness AoE at all could see me just fine. The sun protection aspect likewise persists through dispels, area transitions and resting.

Do you mean in your tests only those you cast on were affected? In mine every hostile was.

Correct. Orc training camp... one group I used darkness on. The orcs acted as if still under darkness after the spell ended (they were subject to sneak attacks and all the associated benefits of darkness). Ran to towards one of the barrack houses to get another group to spawn/attack. They attacked me as normal, and were not subject to sneak attacks, even while the first group was still taking sneak attack damage

Now imagine if you had that on *all* mobs of Aenea. Challenging, eh?
That's exactly what I got with Leah. Except it does get reset on resting. It basically works like and unlimited invisibility, which even attacking doesn't break(though some beings start responding to that, maybe listen check).

Update: it seems sometimes the perma-all-encompassing-effect only kicks in on the second cast. Noted that specifically on the second cast of a character's life(reincarnation resets this), although this might be coincidental. Can't remember if it happened in diffrent circumstances.

Other than that, I get the effect noted above on all PCs.

OMG, I used Darkness to get a little sunshade for my shadowchild, and I was floored when the whole entire area went dark! A plague of darkness upon Tradeholme!

The only thing visible was the sky, from end to end. After a few minutes when it would have usually dissipated, I did info selfbuffs but there was nothing listed as active to dispel.

I went into other areas, outdoor and buildings too, and it was all dark also! I think I must have darked the whole server!

Did you by chance apply true-seeing or ultravision to yourself (by spell or item) while inside the darkness AoE?

The only way to fix that is to relog. And remember TS/UV first THEN darkness

Nope, no TS or Ultravision. I had no other spells active.

I relogged and the entire world is still dark.

Finally someone else logged in and he said it wasn't dark for him.

I cast Ultravision and it fixed it, lets see if the fix lasts after this spell wears off.

And atm I seem to have retained the protection against sun for my shadowchild, as if the Darkness were still active.


P.S. edit: The Ultravision wore off and things were still lit. Then I rested, but after all this I still have immunity to sunlight.

P.P.S. edit: After the server reset, she regained her vulnerability to sunlight.

Looks like Darkness has been tweaked.

I cast a couple spells of it from learned, and cool that it made only a small area dark --no longer making the whole universe dark at least.

But it is providing NO sun protection for my shadowchild.

Darkness is still providing no sun protection for my shadowchild wizard.

And when I stepped out of the dark area and returned inside it, I think it made a spell immunity check, which my wizard succeeded against, so I was wondering if if that had anything to do with it, i.e. my wizard is maybe immune to her own Darkness spell?

Darkness is still providing no sun protection for my shadowchild wizard.

Fortunately I've been getting along without this since my wizard created a sun protection spell in epic magic, but we still love the Darkness spell.

One of our new players has mentioned to me that her drow subrace ability (darkness) causes the eternal blindness bug.  The one night, relogging didn't help her, but letting her try to wear my PC's cloak of vision (popped right back off her as she was under level 21) fixed it.

As for the sun-protection aspect... I remember once that  explained that the "protection" was applied as a variable through the on-enter event of the AoE, and removed when the player left the AoE, just like entering/leaving any other 'shade' trigger, such as the path from the Asis altar in VV to the front door of the SDI.

Maybe for the sunshade aspect, a fix could be, when the spell is cast (either the regular evocation version, or the shadow conjuration version, or the subrace drow/half-drow versions), mimic the epic sunshade spell's function.... make the whole area shaded for the duration of the spell effect, skip the whole mess of entering/leaving AoE triggers.

Granted that steps on the toes of the epic seed a bit, however, the epic seed lasts a whole game day, and can't be dispelled.  Darkness lasts 1 round per caster level, and can be dispelled/breached away.

And while it may not quite make sense that a player pops off a darkness spell on one side of a medium to large map, and the other side gets protection, I think it's a reasonable trade off if it provides the advertised sun protection for the short duration of the spell.  My epic 40th level vampire wouldn't really gain anything from the whole area shade function... she has massive resources to deal with sunlight...

The protection would be of far greater value to the new low level PCs who do not have such resources at hand (no shadow cloaks, no alchemy skill, no alchemy reagents to brew daywalker oil even if they had the skill, extremely low caster levels, limited to zero teleporting ability), but are at the greatest risk of frying.  Such PCs are also certainly not casting 40 CL extended darkness spells to basically brush off the sundamage threat.