Dispel Magic variants

[jseah]

My GM has requested a few spells to be good vs people who are massively buffed and weaker against those who aren't.

These two, he came up with.
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10442.0

Here's mine.

Any suggestions, critiques and foreseen problems are welcome.

EDIT: It has pointed out that this one relies on a mechanic that is rather hard to control.

I think you need a different mechanic to make it more effective on things with more buffs instead of a higher chance of erasing almost everything on things with more buffs. A normal targeted dispel with a -4 penalty but a +1 for each buff he has would work better and take less die rolling.
I'll think about it, this spell is probably not safe to use. =P

Cascading Dispel
Level: Brd 3, Clr 3, Drd 4, Magic 3, Pal 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target or Area: One creature, or object
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This spell functions as a Targeted Dispel version of Dispel Magic, except that you receive a -5 penalty on the dispel check and you cannot target an ongoing spell.
You also automatically succeed the caster level check to dispel on a natural 20.

For every effect dispelled by this spell, the target is hit again with another Cascading Dispel of your caster level. This can generate multiple extra Cascading Dispels if more than one effect is dispelled.

Items suppressed by Cascading Dispel do not generate another Cascading Dispel.
Metamagic feats applied to Cascading Dispel are not applied to extra Cascading Dispels generated by successful dispel attempts.

[Gamer Girl]

*Except that you receive a -5 penalty on the dispel check

Why? a -5 is nothing? It's kind of a pointless penalty. It's not a good penalty if you want one.

*And you cannot target an ongoing spell.

This confuses me, so you can only target a creature or an item? But if you cast dispel on a drow in mage armor are you targeting the creature or the spell? Are you trying to say the dispel can't dispel spells? I think it's a gray line. Could this spell dispel a forcecage by 'targeting' the creature trapped in side?

You also automatically succeed the caster level check to dispel on a natural 20.

This sounds a bit unbalanced. The best thing about caster level checks is they can scale up or down nicely. With an auto 20, it does not matter how powerful the other magic is, there is always a chance you might 'get lucky'.


For every effect dispelled by this spell, the target is hit again with another Cascading Dispel of your caster level. This can generate multiple extra Cascading Dispels if more than one effect is dispelled.

With no limit? So if the creature has 25 effects, this spell might chain through them all.

So does that make this weaker then a normal targeted dispel? That can already effect any number of spells on a creature, right?

[jseah]

Dispel Magic when targeted, has the option of affecting only 1 specific spell. This is used for your Forcecage example when the spell isn't a Target: Creature spell.
Except of course that Forcecage is immune to dispel magic anyway.
Cascading Dispel cannot target this as there is nothing to target with any generated new Cascading Dispels.

When targeting a creature, a single dispel magic will affect every single buff it has. So does a Cascading Dispel.

*****************************************

The -5 penalty is because it is can chain through spells.
Take for example, a normal dispel magic vs a buffed character that has 4 active spells.
Against an equal CL caster, you dispel on average 2.
With Cascading Dispel, you dispel on average only 1, but because of that one, you get to go again. This time you have 75% chance of getting rid of 1 more spell, and getting to go yet again.

Against an equal CL caster with 16 active spells, dispel magic gets rid of on average 8.
With Cascading Dispel, you'd dispel on average 4 on your first go. Then you get 4 more Cascading Dispels against 12 spells remaining. This will destroy on average 8 more buffs, generating ~8 more dispels against 4 spells remaining. Which will dispel ~3.5 more spells.

...
Unless the other person's caster level is too high, hence the natural 20 auto-success.


The spell is intended to be strictly weaker than normal dispel magic against targets with very few buffs, but stronger against targets with lots of buffs.

[Lateral]

It's good, but buff spells are ongoing effects. As written, it only works on magic items.

Also, it probably would be better if you increased its spell level by one and lowered that thar -5 penalty to, say, -2. It's better to balance by going up than making it awesome, then giving it penalties until it fits.

[ericgrau]

So let's see... he has 8 buffs, which gives you 2 cascading dispels on the remaining 6 which gives you 3 cascading dispels on the remaining 3 which gives you 2 cascading dispels on the remaining 1... I think past a certain number of buffs you hit a chain reaction giving you more and more cascading dispels until they guy runs out of buffs to trigger more cascading dispels. So the spell goes from weak on a low number of buffs to a total wipe of buffs on a higher number. Basically the spell keeps growing and growing until he has 4 or less buffs left, then if that took too long then there are so many cascades left that he'll probably lose all or at least 3 of those 4.

I think you need a different mechanic to make it more effective on things with more buffs instead of a higher chance of erasing almost everything on things with more buffs. A normal targeted dispel with a -4 penalty but a +1 for each buff he has would work better and take less die rolling.

[jseah]

The exploding number of dispels was the point. Although now that I think about it again, it's probably too much die rolling to use.

As an approximation, the number of dispels explodes if your target has enough buffs that you take out on average 2 per dispel.
Which leads to this being devastating when the dispeller has the CL advantage (a +5CL advantage means that this spell is better than normal dispel against 2 buffs or more...
a -4CL disadvantage means that the higher CL target has to have >40 buffs for this to explode at all)

Good points. I'll think about it a bit more. Perhaps something not so gimmicky. =P