How to defeat Darkness with a Nature's Ally?

[mcv]

Here's the situation: we're in a really cramped place where we can barely move around, and some annoying little buggers who can move around and fight in Darkness are attacking us, and one of them has cast Darkness.

I've been thinking that there should be some kind of animal that a Druid can summon, that would be able to do something in Darkness. There's the Dire Bat, for example, but it seems a bit big to fly around in such a cramped space. I think a Porpoise can see in Darkness, but we're not in water. I'd settle for a regular bat, but I can't summon those.

So, any ideas? I'm not entirely up to date on which abilities help in Darkness and which don't.

[Quietus]

Note : Darkness is not total blackness. It is "Shadowy illumination".

Beyond that, anything with Scent could use that to find targets, as could bats/dire bats with blindsense. Do earth elementals get tremorsense, too? I can't remember.

[Last Laugh]

Also, the Daylight spell appears on every core spell list (except ranger, but meh) and counters and dispels all darkness spells of lower level. Classic darkness is a 2nd level spell, daylight is 3rd. problem is solved for the whole combat!

Darkness is not as terrible as you might think, and having summons helps some, more chances to smash face.

There are no animals with darkvision? odd. All vermin have it so if you can summon some of those... Druids can't summon vermin? what an enlightening day!

(Sharks have blindsense, you can summon them ABOVE people.... because it's cool)

Thoqqua (SNA III) has tremorsense 60. Inside core I think that's the earliest summon that has it.

[Kalim]

Darkvision or Low-Light Vision don't do anything in Darkness because you can still SEE in Darkness.

All the spell does in 3.5, is give everyone in the area 20% miss chance.

[awa]

warlocks and some other things can see in a darkness spell but normal darkvison does not help you in magical darkness

[Yuki Akuma]

Darkvision or Low-Light Vision don't do anything in Darkness because you can still SEE in Darkness.

All the spell does in 3.5, is give everyone in the area 20% miss chance.

Low-light vision doesn't require you to not be able to see. It lets you see twice as far in lower illumination.

[Re'ozul]

On that topic I'd like to ask something that I'd like to know.
If cast in total darkness (enclosed room or the like) would a darkness-spells shadowy illumination actually raise the illumination-level?

[sreservoir]

On that topic I'd like to ask something that I'd like to know.
If cast in total darkness (enclosed room or the like) would a darkness-spells shadowy illumination actually raise the illumination-level?

shush, you're not supposed to notice that.

[starwoof]

On that topic I'd like to ask something that I'd like to know.
If cast in total darkness (enclosed room or the like) would a darkness-spells shadowy illumination actually raise the illumination-level?

Yes.

They might as well call the spell 'Dimness'.

[awa]

by raw maby but ask your dm before you try to use it for illumination

[mcv]

Darkvision or Low-Light Vision don't do anything in Darkness because you can still SEE in Darkness.

All the spell does in 3.5, is give everyone in the area 20% miss chance.

I didn't know that. My impression was that it was complete blackness. My eagle animal companion is sitting helplessly on the ground, because otherwise he'd constantly be flying into walls and rocks and stuff. The description by the GM gave me the impression that we can't see anything, and I thought we had a 50% miss chance.

So either the GM's description was inaccurate, or I didn't understand it properly, or it's something nastier than Darkness.

It is a pretty narrow passageway we're in, so it's possible the GM ruled that it was already pretty dark, and now the darkness is even deeper and more oppressive. Or something like that. We did discuss that low-light vision and most other abilities were useless, and we needed something with Darksense or Darksight in order to see properly.

[starwoof]

I didn't know that. My impression was that it was complete blackness. My eagle animal companion is sitting helplessly on the ground, because otherwise he'd constantly be flying into walls and rocks and stuff. The description by the GM gave me the impression that we can't see anything, and I thought we had a 50% miss chance.

So either the GM's description was inaccurate, or I didn't understand it properly, or it's something nastier than Darkness.

It is a very common mistake. In earlier editions, including 3.0, Darkness did in fact create an area of actual darkness instead of the darkly shadowy dimness it makes now. I myself was completely surprised and somewhat baffled when I discovered that my group had been playing darkness wrong for years just because we remembered the 3.0 version.

[awa]

its counter intuitive as well you would think a magical darkens would make things dark but no

[Last Laugh]

its counter intuitive as well you would think a magical darkens would make things dark but no

Well, it's darkness compared to sunlight, can you imagine the horror if a level 3 wizard could make space blacker?

Contrary wise, casting daylight on the sun's surface wouldn't do a whole lot.

And you'd be pretty dead in either situation.

Edit: yup, it's goofy.