Slashing Dispel - useless on a Duskblade?

[Telonius]

Duskblade gets access to Slashing Dispel (PHB2) at level 17. It's "as Dispel," meaning the maximum bonus to CL check is 10. The DC for Dispel is 11+ spell's caster level. If he's going up against a 17th-level mage as an opponent, all of the spells cast will have a DC of 28 - meaning the Duskblade will only dispel on an 18 or better. To even get a 25% chance of success, he has to be facing a level 15 caster. (That would be true whether the Duskblade is level 17 or level 20, since the bonus to the CL check maxes out).

Am I reading this right? Is there any reasonable situation where this would be a worthwhile spell (from a very limited spell list) to take?

[Thrawn183]

It would be worthwhile against partial casters: hexblades, paladins, rangers, etc.
Edit: And all the prestige classes that have their own small spell lists.

It would also be useful against significantly lower level casters. Ie. The lone duskblade that cleans out an entire tower full of wizards.

I'm not too familiar with ways of boosting your dispel checks, but I'm sure you could do something.

[Runestar]

Pretty much. It would be useful for a wizard who can access it at 7th lv, and thus still enjoy a reasonable change of success. But a duskblade gets it way too late for it to be of any use, unless your DM has a penchant for letting your foes pre-buff with potions/wands (which have a low caster lv by default).

[Claudius Maximus]

If you take steps to boost your dispel checks it becomes less terrible, but that becomes moot if enemy spellcasters boost CL or dispel DCs a lot.

[Runestar]

Why would the duskblade bother boosting his caster level here? By the time he gets it, the cap would already have been hit!

[Big Fau]

I've honestly never considered the CL cap to apply to those spells for this very reason.

[Divide by Zero]

Seems like it'd be an easy house rule to just remove the cap. It's probably not going to break anything.

[Salanmander]

Seems like it'd be an easy house rule to just remove the cap. It's probably not going to break anything.

If you house rule it to /increase/ the cap, it's probably not going to break anything. If you /remove/ the cap you'll have people finding all sorts of stackable situational CL boosts, and have unstoppable dispels. Not the biggest breaker in the book, but it will make him able to completely shut down an enemy caster 1-for-1 if he so chooses.

[Big Fau]

If you house rule it to /increase/ the cap, it's probably not going to break anything. If you /remove/ the cap you'll have people finding all sorts of stackable situational CL boosts, and have unstoppable dispels. Not the biggest breaker in the book, but it will make him able to completely shut down an enemy caster 1-for-1 if he so chooses.

Any Tier 2 and up spellcaster can easily compensate for their buffs being eaten by it. It really isn't that powerful.

Even uncapped, I'd still prefer it to MDJ.

[faceroll]

It's good against stuff that comes from items. There are a lot of spells a caster character should have handy in item form for solving particular problems. Duskblade gets to turn those off.

It's also useful against enemy gishes and lower level opponents that have a lot of spells up.

[Salanmander]

Any Tier 2 and up spellcaster can easily compensate for their buffs being eaten by it. It really isn't that powerful.

Even uncapped, I'd still prefer it to MDJ.

They could still choose to shut down the caster at the expense of doing other things themselves by readying counterspell actions.

[MeeposFire]

Not for very long though. Seems like kind of a waste if you have a real arcanist in the party.