Does Major Image block Deeper Darkness and allow Daylight to prevail?

Question

So next session, our party (5/6 of whom are D&D first-timers, myself included) is going to be facing our first really big battle, against a large amount of Drow and such. Since we have about 1.5 weeks to prepare until the next session, we're spending some time (away from the DM, mind you!) going through our character sheets and learning our feats, abilities, spells, and weapons backwards and forwards.

Basically, a paladin in our party is an Aasimar, who can use daylight, but in the presence of some sort of darkness (spell?) in the area we are, its use was negated earlier.

Which brings me to my first question: could our sorcerer use Major Image to conjure a large "room" of sorts around us, inside of which the paladin can use daylight? If so, how large could the room be (we aren't playing very strictly with 5ft squares, etc)?

I saw on the D&D wiki page for Major Image that it has a range of "Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)", and that a "spell’s range is the maximum distance from you that the spell’s effect can occur". Does this mean that we could effectively be inside of a room made by Major Image that is 400 ft. + 40 ft.level in radius?

Answer 1

From a strictly rules-as-written standpoint, this doesn't appear to work.

Major image has no provision or ability to block line of effect, so deeper darkness would still prevail in the area… even though it does block line of sight, so the darkness outside the "room" would not be visible, the spell creates darkness everywhere line of effect allows it to.

However, this is a rather odd interaction, so it's possible to overrule this; I'd recommend that your group take a good bit of thought to illusion spell capabilities in general first, though, as careless houserules in this area in particular can easily overnerf or overbuff a school that is really rather well-designed on the whole if carefully understood.

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Assuming your group/DM does decide to allow this, the room's size is a little tricky to work out; major image limits you to 10'-cubes (not a certain number of cubic feet — 10'x10'x10' cubes), and a Sorcerer 6 (the minimum possible that can cast major image in the first place) would be able to make ten of those. That would seem to get you at least a 50'x20'x10' room, stacked together in the usual fashion, but if you wanted to make the cubes outline only the walls you might be able to get, say, a 40'x30'x10' room with two non-illusioned cubes in the middle, as long as the ceiling is less than 10' high or so. There are various ways to break those cubes down into smaller, more useful parts, but I doubt your Sorc has any of them.

Answer 2

In the spells description it says that the image can be up to four ten foot squares, plus one more for each spell caster level the spells user has. The 'room' produced is a visual illusion that tricks certain senses as described; sound, smell and temperature.

This is where the DM comes in as it doesn't mention affecting lighting (this also means depending on your dm illusions may not cast shadows).

Personally as a DM myself I would reward your innovative use of the spell and allow each person fooled by the illusion to act as if the area was lit again (presuming the illusion includes some kind of light source). The Paladins daylight however would still be affected by the darkness as it's still in the same area.