Eclipse

[Gazzien]

Trying to come up with a way to make a ring of Deeper Darkness, with a circle of Daylight on the inside.

I was looking at Sculpt Spell, but that's only 4 twenty-foot cubes (when I'd like to make something like a ten-foot radius of Daylight surrounded by a further ten feet of darkness). Any ideas how you could do this?

[kitep]

You could cast Deeper Darkness with the Widen Spell feat which doubles its radius, then cast DayLight without the feat at its normal radius.

[zook1shoe]

sculpt spell can add a little to it before you use widen

or.... Eclipse

[Gazzien]

You could cast Deeper Darkness with the Widen Spell feat which doubles its radius, then cast DayLight without the feat at its normal radius.

I didn't think that would work because of the spells counter/dispelling each other?

[ksbsnowowl]

You could cast Deeper Darkness with the Widen Spell feat which doubles its radius, then cast DayLight without the feat at its normal radius.

I didn't think that would work because of the spells counter/dispelling each other?

It is my understanding that to dispel the opposite spell, you have to actually "target" the other spell with it*.  Admittedly this area of the rules is quite bare, and seems to have been left largely to legacy understanding carried over from 2nd edition.

Counterspelling only happens when you ready an action to counterspell (special feats aside).

If the two spells simply overlap areas, then they cancel out their effects, so long as they are overlapping.

*Correction: If they are targeted spells, they must have targeted the same target; area spells must be aimed at the same area.  See the second half of this post for info from a Rules of the Game article that better defines auto-dispelling.

[zook1shoe]

Know what sucks? An Umbral Daylight

[kitep]

You could cast Deeper Darkness with the Widen Spell feat which doubles its radius, then cast DayLight without the feat at its normal radius.

I didn't think that would work because of the spells counter/dispelling each other?

I hadn't thought of that, other than to think you might have to cast Daylight twice.  You're probably right, even with different radii, they would just cancel each other out.

However, looking into it:  Deeper Darkness

Daylight brought into an area of deeper darkness (or vice versa) is temporarily negated, so that the otherwise prevailing light conditions exist in the overlapping areas of effect.

So as long as you don't target one spell with the other, you would have normal illumination inside a ring of deeper darkness.  Ask your DM if casting a second Daylight spell would result in the eclipse.

[Ithamar]

Could an archmage with the Mastery of Shaping pull it off perhaps?

[zook1shoe]

War Wizard of Cormyr PrC in Magic of FR gives +150% radius when using Widen Spell ... (RAI, since RAW is based off of Widen Spell 3.0)

[Gazzien]

Ooh. Wonderful. Thank you all!

[zook1shoe]

Anytime

[kitep]

I don't know what you're trying to accomplish with eclipse, so I thought I'd bring up Assassin's Darkness -- it's a 40' sphere of darkness that even blocks darkvision, but the caster can see through it normally.
Blacklight does the same thing.

Creeping Darkness is a cloud of darkness you control through concentration, so you could put it around you.

[kitep]

You could cast Light on your shirt, and darkness(es) on torches that you then hand to unseen servants/lay on Tensor's Disk and position around you.  Actually, I guess you could cast darkness directly on the Disks.

[Gazzien]

Was trying to go for a circle of Daylight (whether natural or the spell) for killing things, then (Deeper) Darkness around it to hide the light. Which works, with the widen strategy.

[ksbsnowowl]

Was trying to go for a circle of Daylight (whether natural or the spell) for killing things, then (Deeper) Darkness around it to hide the light. Which works, with the widen strategy.

Note, from my previously linked Rules of the Game on this topic:

When two opposing spells have areas, one spell can remove the other when aimed at the same area. If the second spell's area covers the first spell's point of origin, both spells are completely negated (no caster level check is required). If the second spell's area of effect merely overlaps the first spell's area without covering the spell's point of origin, the two spells negate each other only the area where the areas overlap.

However, the way it is worded seems to me that this only happens if you cast one so that it comes into effect with the other spell's point of origin within its bounds.  I think if you cast Daylight and Deeper Darkness on two objects that are ~100 feet apart, then move them together, they would not dispel each other; they would just cancel out where they overlap.