Permanency and dispelling it

[eyebreaker7]

"Spells cast on other creatures, objects, or locations (not on you) are vulnerable to dispel magic as normal."

Why does dispel magic Permanently dispel Permanency but not magic items? Also if it does dispel spells made permanent on others then why not the caster?
If we're dispelling spells it shouldn't matter if they were cast on someone/something else or the person casting the Permanency spell. If it's dispellable it dispellable.
I'm looking for some sort of logic other than game balance for dispel magic, permanency, and magic items.

[Telonius]

If you're looking for a fluff reason: Dispel is mostly an anti-spell thing. When you make a magic item, there's a spell involved, but there's also the crafter's life force (in the form of XP) and a bunch of time and money required. A magic item has had its nature changed by magic. Because there is a spell involved, Dispel can disrupt it temporarily, but not suppress it entirely.

Permanency doesn't have the same effect on something's nature. It does the equivalent of magically putting a spell on repeat. Since the Permanency spell is what's active, it can be targeted by Dispel. Repeat turns off, and the spell expires. If you want to break the magical nature of an item, you need something more powerful - Disjunction.

[Beni-Kujaku]

"Spells cast on other creatures, objects, or locations (not on you) are vulnerable to dispel magic as normal."

Why does dispel magic Permanently dispel Permanency but not magic items? Also if it does dispel spells made permanent on others then why not the caster?
If we're dispelling spells it shouldn't matter if they were cast on someone/something else or the person casting the Permanency spell. If it's dispellable it dispellable.
I'm looking for some sort of logic other than game balance for dispel magic, permanency, and magic items.

On magic items: the magic is woven within the item itself, so Dispelling it only dispels the surface level, and the item "recasts" the spell on itself afterwards from the energy that is still inside (the XP that you used to create it). And also for balance. It is much easier to cast a spell than it is to create a magic item. If you could just destroy magic items with a dispel magic, it would be very much not worth it to create magic items in the first place.

On you versus on others: no logical explanation that I know. It wasn't the case in 2e, but it is the same in 3.0, 3.5 and Pathfinder. I believe it was a poorly written way to distinguish the spells you could only Permanency on yourself, like Arcane Sight (who can only be dispelled by a higher-level caster), from those you can cast on others, like Enlarge Person (who could be dispelled normally), but it ended up meaning that spells that you can cast on others but that you cast on yourself cannot be dispelled at all. Even if we go be this supposed RAI (that spells that can be cast on others or objects can be dispelled normally), there is little reason to make a difference. The balance issue was probably to prevent people from getting easy access to permanent spells before they could do it themselves, but even that is dubious (scrolls exist, after all). A logical, if dubious and hair-splitting, explanation would be that the permanent spells cast on yourself are rendered permanent using your own life energy (XP), which makes them quite litterally a part of yourself, that you couldn't dispel, the same way you couldn't remove permanently a race or a class feature, or with a lot of difficulty (being a higher level caster for the spell, or being an undead and preventing the person from getting Restored, for the class features). On other people, it is something that doesn't belong, like a graft. So there is something like a reject and you can dispel it more easily (yeah, I know that makes little sense, but the spell makes little sense to begin with, so heh.).

[icefractal]

I assume the "cast on self vs others" thing was to balance the "hire a much higher level caster to make things Permanent on you" issue. While I don't know how many GMs actually run it this way (I don't) spellcasting services are technically very cheap at the high end and overly expensive at the low end.

Does an archmage at the peak of their power have anything better to do than cast spells on you for 200-1800 gp a pop? Apparently they don't.

Now that said, the set of spells you can get with Permanency isn't that amazing. It doesn't really break anything for a low-mid level PC to have them, even if they were treated as magic items for dispelling purposes.

[Thunder999]

In fairness most PC archmages absolutely would sell spells like that in downtime for extra gold, it's just that NPCs don't generally seem to be buying.

[icefractal]

As a low or maybe mid level caster - sure, I'd be happy to sell some spellcasting services.

At 20th level? I don't think so. Even if you don't have a way to get unlimited gold, the amount we're talking about is pretty small potatoes. I'm pretty sure you get much higher returns prospecting in the Plane of Earth or shaking down some demons, if you're short on cash.

Last high-level caster I played, if some random person asked me to cast some buff spells on them, the response would usually be one of:
A) "Sure, here you go" (for free)
B) "I will if you agree to be indexed" (have all your knowledge non-destructively copied to my mind-banks)
C) "No" (and offering a few hundred gold wouldn't change my mind)

[Beni-Kujaku]

I assume the "cast on self vs others" thing was to balance the "hire a much higher level caster to make things Permanent on you" issue. While I don't know how many GMs actually run it this way (I don't) spellcasting services are technically very cheap at the high end and overly expensive at the low end.

Does an archmage at the peak of their power have anything better to do than cast spells on you for 200-1800 gp a pop? Apparently they don't.

Now that said, the set of spells you can get with Permanency isn't that amazing. It doesn't really break anything for a low-mid level PC to have them, even if they were treated as magic items for dispelling purposes.

You know how many spells a wizard has? A 20th level specialized wizard with 22 int would make 5x100+7x200+7x400+6x600+6x800+6x1000+6x1200+5x1400 +5x1600+5x1800=50300 gp on a good day. That means they make their whole ECL in a bit under 2 weeks. If we consider a demand a bit lower, you could make it one month. I believe that no, Archmages don't have anything better to do in their downtime, because they make approximately the money necessary to feed a whole town by themselves.

As a low or maybe mid level caster - sure, I'd be happy to sell some spellcasting services.

At 20th level? I don't think so. Even if you don't have a way to get unlimited gold, the amount we're talking about is pretty small potatoes. I'm pretty sure you get much higher returns prospecting in the Plane of Earth or shaking down some demons, if you're short on cash.

Last high-level caster I played, if some random person asked me to cast some buff spells on them, the response would usually be one of:
A) "Sure, here you go" (for free)
B) "I will if you agree to be indexed" (have all your knowledge non-destructively copied to my mind-banks)
C) "No" (and offering a few hundred gold wouldn't change my mind)

Sure, killing a level-appropriate encounter a day is around twice this amount. But really, making half the money without the need to do anything than cast spells (remember it's 1 hour of work per day, no more), when half the money is already so ludicrously high, and without the risk to... you know... roll a fumble and die in the middle of Baator, seems like a pretty sweet deal to me. That even helps the community! Not all wizards want to continue adventuring, you know. Some would just retire after saving the world twice or in-between savings. And in a world without research subventions and where most wizards are scholars, you have to have a way to make a lot of money without moving from your lab and without the risk for science to lose your brain.

[icefractal]

Yeah, but why do that yourself when you can make simulacra of other mages and have them do the selling spells? Or insta-fabricate high-quality art? Or bring back diamonds from the plane of earth? Or sell massive quantities of salt?

Most of the economic tricks don't get used by PCs in practice, because they break any game balance around gear. But if that's put aside, there are a lot of ways to make money fast, with the primary limiting factor being demand, and most of them don't require a 20th level caster devoting their own time and availability to it.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Yeah, but why do that yourself when you can make simulacra of other mages and have them do the selling spells? Or insta-fabricate high-quality art? Or bring back diamonds from the plane of earth? Or sell massive quantities of salt?

Most of the economic tricks don't get used by PCs in practice, because they break any game balance around gear. But if that's put aside, there are a lot of ways to make money fast, with the primary limiting factor being demand, and most of them don't require a 20th level caster devoting their own time and availability to it.

Because that costs unnecessary XP? (the thing that you specifically dedicated your life to gain, and are now fed up with) Because high-quality art doesn't just "make" itself, even with fabricate, you have to think far and wide what can be considered beautiful (I believe that would take wisdom and charisma way more than intelligence)? Because the Plane of Earth is really not the most charitable place, and you don't know how many Elder Elementals you would have to kill before finding a diamond? For the salt, I have no answer, because that spell is broken on so many aspects that if it was possible, then the whole d&d world's economy would collapse in a matter of weeks (I don't mean that it wouldn't collapse even without that spell, but most infinite money tricks require either high level spells or metagaming that wouldn't be possible inside the game's world, not "literally one level 4 spell that doesn't require XP when it should").
In the end, I don't say that every high level wizard would sell spells, but that it is the simplest way for a wizard to make a lot of money by himself without doing anything and being in any danger at all.