Dispel Magic & Permanency?

[Wolffenjugend]

Our wizard has a Tongues spell made permanent on himself. What happens when he has Dispel Magic cast on him? I couldn't find anything under Dispel Magic or Permanency.

I figure that the Dispel Magic could only temporarily suppress the Tongues spell since it has been made permanent. However, if the Permanency is dispelled, then does the Tongues go with it?

 

[James McMurray]

The Tongues' duration is changed to permanent, thus a successful dispel removes it competely, as with any other permanent spell.

Many DMs out there treat permanencied spells as magic items, eaning they are oly suppressed for 1d4 rounds instea of dispelled fully. This is compeltely a house rule though.

Permanency is really better for NPCs than PCs, because of the requirement to be higher level than the caster in order to dipel it. PCs are usually lower level than the casters they fight. Its also a good way to give the NPC abilities without giving them magic items.

 

[rkanodia]

Our wizard has a Tongues spell made permanent on himself. What happens when he has Dispel Magic cast on him? I couldn't find anything under Dispel Magic or Permanency.

I figure that the Dispel Magic could only temporarily suppress the Tongues spell since it has been made permanent. However, if the Permanency is dispelled, then does the Tongues go with it?

From the section of permanency about making spells permanent on yourself:

You cast the desired spell and then follow it with the permanency spell. You cannot cast these spells on other creatures. This application of permanency can be dispelled only by a caster of higher level than you were when you cast the spell.

So, if the enemy caster is higher level, he may very well lose the spell. Personally I prefer to treat such spells more like magic items, vulnerable to any kind of dispel but only temporarily. Permanency costs a lot of xp; you should get some solid returns for that.

 

[Vysirez]

From the section of permanency about making spells permanent on yourself:

So, if the enemy caster is higher level, he may very well lose the spell. Personally I prefer to treat such spells more like magic items, vulnerable to any kind of dispel but only temporarily. Permanency costs a lot of xp; you should get some solid returns for that.

However permanency usually costs less exp then making an equivalent magic item, not to mention the fact it costs no gold. So if you treat permenant spells like magic items then you are making it pretty darn powerful. Unless you raise the exp cost for perming spells.

 

[Epametheus]

Um, Permanancy costs significantly more XP than magic items do.

Ex: A wand of Tongues at minimum caster level (it's a 2nd level spell, unless I'm having a brain fart), costs 180 XP.

Casting Permanancy on a Tongues spells costs 1500 XP -- comparable to crafting enough wands to casts Tongues 400 times or so.

 

[MiB]

Permanency

I'm also facing the very same problem with one of my characters. At first glance, almost any spell on the permanency list seems like a good addition to my characters abilities.

i have been considering the same thing that you name above, but also there are some more points that make Permanency interesting:

- It doesn't cost much time to cast a permanency spell. The wand above would take you 5 days to make. In some campaigns this can be an issue

- Permanent spells cost you no item slots, many items that do the same require one.

- To create a wand of tongues, you must have tongues in your spellbook (which is afterwards pretty useless), to make it permanent, you only need a scroll, because you only have to cast it once.

However, I still haven't persuaded myself to use permanency. Loosing 1000 XP or more to a single Dispel Magic seems a high risk. The spell I'd do first is See Invisibility. Arcane sight is very stylish, but too expensive, Detect magic can easily be replaced by a wand and Darkvision can be cast with an Extend Spell metamagic to last long enough.

 

[Vysirez]

Um, Permanancy costs significantly more XP than magic items do.

Ex: A wand of Tongues at minimum caster level (it's a 2nd level spell, unless I'm having a brain fart), costs 180 XP.

Casting Permanancy on a Tongues spells costs 1500 XP -- comparable to crafting enough wands to casts Tongues 400 times or so.

You are right about that. Donno why I was thinking things were cheaper. Though to be onest comparing it to a wand isnt the best comparason. A continuous effect tongues item would cost 600exp and 15k gold. So closer then the wand example but permanency is still less then the spell. So I have to say I think it might be better to treat them like magic items. As long as you are careful what spells you let be made permanent.

 

[andargor]

I guess it is campaign dependent. For example, in our campaign both the party wizard and sorcerer have Resistance, Arcane Sight and Tongues permanent.

Arcane Sight alone has saved us from many a scrap, and it has not yet been dispelled after 4 or 5 levels of usage. So we figure it was worth the cost and the risk. A good ROI is you will.

Andargor

 

[UltimaGabe]

I have a character who's going to be gaining the Permanency spell next level, and so I became interested in this as well- after all, I don't wanna spend a ton of XP on something that could just be Dispelled. However, I was looking at the spell description yesterday, and I noticed something that gave me quite a bit of hope (although not quite as much as I was hoping for). If you use Permanency to cast a spell on yourself, such as Tongues or Arcane Sight, it cannot be dispelled. If you cast it on someone else, however, it can. So that means I wouldn't have to worry about it getting dispelled, but if I cast a Permanent Girallon's Blessing plus a Permanent Fuse Arms on my Fighter Cohort to give him a huge strength bonus, it could very well be dispelled. I might wanna wait until higher levels to do that.

 

[irdeggman]

I have a character who's going to be gaining the Permanency spell next level, and so I became interested in this as well- after all, I don't wanna spend a ton of XP on something that could just be Dispelled. However, I was looking at the spell description yesterday, and I noticed something that gave me quite a bit of hope (although not quite as much as I was hoping for). If you use Permanency to cast a spell on yourself, such as Tongues or Arcane Sight, it cannot be dispelled. If you cast it on someone else, however, it can. So that means I wouldn't have to worry about it getting dispelled, but if I cast a Permanent Girallon's Blessing plus a Permanent Fuse Arms on my Fighter Cohort to give him a huge strength bonus, it could very well be dispelled. I might wanna wait until higher levels to do that.

I think you are misreading the description under permanency. It says tha dispel magic works 'normally' on permanency spells cast on areas and other people but that it requires a caster with higher level than you to cast depsel magic on a permanency cast on yourself. Dispel magic (normally) has the potential to dispel any spell or effect cast regardless of the level of the character casting the dispel magic, it just has an incrementally more difficult DC to make to be successful.