Every adventurer lurking through dungeons risks getting caught in one of the darkness spells, such as Darkness or Deeper Darkness. Not being able to see anything because of such spells is a sure way to a Total Party Kill. How can one deal with those spells at lower levels (8th or lower)?
[RPG] How to deal with darkness spells and spell-like abilities, such as Darkness or Deeper Darkness
pathfinder-1espellsvision-and-light
Related Solutions
You have identified the difference between practical and theoretical optimization. Theoretical optimization identifies only the end product in the presence of a "neutral but benign GM." Practical optimization is worried about the paths and the playability at all levels.
It is easy to state this goal, of course. In practice, this means rebuilding a character four or five (or seventeen) times to account for the discrepancies introduced during the creation process. It also means finding a way to experience the class at various choke points to be aware of the optimization level at each choke point.
Looking at the Theurge you gave in your example, it is immediately obvious that the opportunity cost of a 2 level multiclass is nominally intolerable for the "Thou shalt never lose caster levels" Tier 1 classes. Therefore, we can look for solutions which minimize this opportunity cost. Ur-priest, the various early-entry methods, race selection to maintain effective caster level, etc.
None of these tricks are difficult nor even non-obvious. However, this problem illustrates my Constrained Optimization paper nicely: a good character is about well stated requirements. It is a common failing of the theoretical optimizer that they do not sufficiently articulate their requirements such that the character is playable or fun.
Practically, there are many ways to mitigate "low-level" weakness in a character. They all start with a coherent level by level build of the character, the level goals, and the intended play style. By creating quantifiable requirements, it is possible to anticipate "low-level" weaknesses and therefore build around them.
The best way to do this, besides not taking the superficially optimal class that does not fulfill your requirements, is to offload common tasks onto class features/items that do not necessarily require a higher level to function. In the case of the theurge, careful spell selection will mitigate the one level dip into an arcane caster class due to various feats neatly. There exists sufficient variety in spells that the trade off of one divine caster level for arcane casting is easily balanced.
Will this create an 'optimal blaster?" It depends on your requirements.
By enchanting magic items with common healing spells, it then becomes less necessary for you to have a maximal number of healing/buffing slots available. By finding an attack method that is not tied to caster-level during these first few critical levels, the need for higher-level spell slots is reduced.
Therefore, the "optimal" strategy is to take a level of ur-priest and theurge from that. Barring that, precocious apprentice or earth spell will provide a much shorter entry into mystic theurge, making it a slightly less non-optimal choice to take. At the end of the day, this is an area that has been well researched with much literature. Searching the literature for your given set of requirements will show solutions that you can test against your requirements level by level.
Be prepared to spend significant amounts of time on practical optimization, especially in systems that do not lend themselves to trivial computational modelling.
Well, if you don't mind making a pact with some powerful entity, you could get 2 levels of warlock. This will give you access to a few spells, some of which perhaps being interesting (both stats and flavor-wise) for your character. But most of all, this will give you access to 2 invocations.
One of these invocations should be Devil's Sight, which grants you the ability to see through any form of darkness, magical or otherwise, for up to 120 feet. This is more than enough to cover the 15 feet of the darkness spell. Cast it on your clothes, and bring terror to your enemies.
While this is a good strategy (generally favored by blade pact warlocks), it has some limitations. While under the effect of the darkness spell, your allies cannot see you. As such, any spell requiring line of sight that they would like to cast on you simply cannot work. Healing you might be problematic, as it requires your allies to be able to touch you. They might know that you are smack in the middle of that sphere of pure black darkness but, once they get inside, it's suddenly not so easy to find you anymore.
These limitations also affect your enemies, however. Any attack from the outside of the sphere should have disadvantage as your enemies, even if they can approximate your position, can't exactly see you to aim properly. Enemies inside the darkness should also suffer from disadvantage when attacking you, unless they possess some form of blindsight or a similar ability. When you attack them, you should have advantage on the roll since you are functionally invisible for them.
The biggest cost of this strategy is the fact that it requires multi-classing. While the lvl 19 and 20 abilities for monk would not really be missed (realistically, few campaigns will reach these levels), it will still set you back 2 levels in obtaining you other core monk powers. Note that doing this would get you 2 invocations, however, and that some of them can be quite interesting for a ninja-esque character:
Armor of Shadows (cast mage armor at will, which might be better than using your wisdom for AC if its under 16),
Eldritch Sight (cast detect magic at will),
- Eyes of the Runekeeper (allows you to read anything, even languages you don't know... useful for spying!),
- Gaze of Two Minds (share the eyes of a willing target, more spying!),
- Mask of Many Faces (disguise self at will!), etc...
TL;DR
Sacrifice 2 monk levels and multiclass as a warlock. Gain some minor but potentially useful spellcasting, as well as the ability to see through magical darkness and one more ability of your choice!
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Best Answer
As one can learn from this Q&A, this Paizo blog post, and some SRD entries, there are many ways of beating a darkness spell.
Dispelling with light spells
Because light spells have a range of “touch”, dispelling can get tricky and dangerous. You'll need to find the object on which a darkness spell was cast and touch it. If darkness comes from an at-will spell-like ability, you are screwed if you try to compete with it using limited resources such as spell slots.
Counterspelling
Requires you to ready an appropriate action and is generally considered an inferior strategy: instead of readying an action to counterspell, it’s usually better to ready a damaging spell or to disable the enemy. Also, if darkness comes from a spell-like ability, it can’t be counterspelled.
Dispelling with Dispel Magic
Dispel Magic has a Medium range, allowing you to dispel from a distance. However, it requires a caster level check and line of effect.
Darkvision
If something grants you Darkvision, for example, your race or this spell, you can see in normal darkness. However, not in supernatural darkness caused by the Deeper Darkness spell, and nor can your allies see in darkness unless they also possess Darkvision.
Get a light spell of higher level
Hire an NPC to cast a Continual Flame that was Heightened to level 4 on your Dull Gray Ioun Stone. This will shine through all the darkness spells of levels lower than 4 (namely 0, 1, 2 and 3) or spell-like abilities functioning like them. This will cost you 25+7*4*10=265 gp. Ask your GM if they allow buying metamagic’ed spellcasting services. Once you get your own level 4 spell slots, you can perform this procedure yourself.
A simple Ioun Torch wouldn’t help, as, per the “Illuminating Darkness” blog post, it won’t be able to penetrate even a simple level 2 Darkness spell. Even if you persuade your GM that the spell cast upon it comes from a Cleric, not a Wizard, Deeper Darkness will still mean getting screwed.
Buy a scroll of Daylight and a few mundane torches
The aforementioned blog post says that even if Daylight cannot suppress all the darkness spells by outlevelling them, lighting simply defaults to “ambient” and you can use non-magical sources such as torches to light your way.
For just 5 gp, you can buy a spring-loaded Wrist Sheath and draw a scroll as a swift action. Ask your GM if they provoke attacks of opportunity and if scrolls count as “one forearm-length items”: your mileage may vary.
Scrolls of Daylight can be of limited use, though, because the darkness you're trying to overcome can prevent you from reading the scroll if you are already inside it. The potion version, Oil of Daylight, is often what you want. Even though it costs more, it's worth it because it's an emergency item.
Use Unwelcome Halo instead of Daylight
As clarified by Mark Seifter, a member of the Pathfinder design team, because Unwelcome Halo uses the same wording as Daylight, it should be able to penetrate any darkness spell of any level, at the cost of just a level 1 spell slot.
So, instead of scrolls of Daylight, you might buy scrolls of Unwelcome Halo, costing 25 gp each. Do you expect to fight darkness spells? Prepare Unwelcome Halo or two, it shouldn’t hurt much. Do you fight creatures with darkness spell-like abilities on a regular basis? Buy a wand of Unwelcome Halo!
As of August 2019, this solution is fully PFS-legal, but your GM might or might not consider applying physical violence if you solve entire darkness-based encounters so cheaply.
Note, though, that Unwelcome Halo’s radius is 3 times less, making the illuminated square 9 times less. At some point, Daylight will also become affordable and can hence be preferred.
Oil of Unwelcome Halo could be more useful than a scroll for the same reason as Oil of Daylight.
Be a level 8+ Cleric of the Sun domain
While level 8 can hardly be considered a “lower” level, someone who attains it and has a Sun domain can use Nimbus of Light, the level 8 domain power.
See in Darkness ability
This ability allows you to see even through supernatural darkness. There are some spells that grant it, there are Tieflings who can take the Fiendish SIght feat twice, Rogues with Darkvision can take this Rogue talent, and some very expensive items that are probably too expensive for parties of levels mentioned in the OP can grant See in Darkness.
Summary