Dispel Magic & Permanency?

[Wolffenjugend]

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.

Where did you read that? The Permanency spell in the PH is pretty clear that a Permanency cast on yourself can be dispelled, but only if the dispeller is higher level than the person casting Permanency.

 

[andargor]

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.

AFAIK, those spells are not on the list allowed from Permanency. Unless, of course, your DM allows it. If I remember, you have to pay for research costs if you want to apply Permanency to spells that are not on the list.

Andargor

 

[Kal Skid]

AFAIK, those spells are not on the list allowed from Permanency. Unless, of course, your DM allows it. If I remember, you have to pay for research costs if you want to apply Permanency to spells that are not on the list.

Andargor

Those spells are from Savage Species, and there is a list in that book with spells that can be made permanent. Girallon's Blessing and Fuse Arms is on it.

 

[James McMurray]

Tongues is a 3rd level spell for wizards. So for that wizard to make a constant, nonslotted item of tongues will cost:

SL 3 * CL 5 * 1.5 (duration) * 2000 (constant) * 2 (unslotted) = 90,000gp.

That's 45,000gp for materials and 3,600xp. Even if you make it slotted you're still paying 22,500gp and 1,800xp.

You end up spending much more gold and xp than you would making it permanent (1,500xp). In exchange you gain the ability to loan the item to your friend, and protection versus dispelling.

It might not be abad idea to allow a person to spend half the XP if they have the permanency take up an item slot.

 

[andargor]

Those spells are from Savage Species, and there is a list in that book with spells that can be made permanent. Girallon's Blessing and Fuse Arms is on it.

Sweet! Gotta check it out.

Andargor

 

[James McMurray]

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.

If playing in FR you could get him a Spellblade for Greater Dispel Magic to make him immune to targetted dispels. Then, if you don't give him any flashy spells, but gie yourself some, you'll more ikely be targetted. To protect against area dispels cast a 4th or 5th level long duration spell on him, and purposefully set your caster level low on it when its cast. A Heightened Eure Elements (spell level 4, caster level 7) would provide a decent buffer, but I'm sure there are other options that ould also be useful in and of themselves.

 

[Gilrion]

I agree, if you're spending XP it shouldn't be dispelled like a regular spell. Remember, a magical item may cost a bit more, but you have to target it specifically for the dispel to work. A area or targetted dispel (at yourself, plus all your other cast spells) will take out a permanent spell.

The way we use it is only higher caster level can dispel, and if it does, the spell is dispelled. However, you can cast the spell and permanency on yourself again at no XP cost at a later time. Personally, I would go with the magic item rule and suppress for 1d4 rounds, but this is another possibility, which my GM uses. Hope it helps.

 

[Pyrex]

One option I've been considering (but haven't playtested yet) is that each successive time a mage makes the same spell permanent on the same target the XP cost is halved.

i.e. the first time Bob makes See Invisible permanent on himself it costs 1000xp. Later, it's dispelled and he has to restore it. This time it costs 500xp. If it's dispelled again, he only has to pay 250xp to make it permanent a third time. And so on.

This way the most the character will ever spend is twice the original XP cost.

 

[UltimaGabe]

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.

Ah, my mistake. I read the last paragraph that says, "Spells cast on other creatures, objects, or locations (not on you) are vulnerable to dispel magic as normal." I had never used Permanency myself before, so I figured it was a change in 3.5 or something. Oops.

 

[irdeggman]

This issue has just been addressed in Sage Advice from Dragon Issue #317

"What happens when a personal, permanent spell effect is dispelled? For example, a wizard uses the permancy spell and pays 1,000 xp to make a darkvision spell permanent on herself. If an enemy spellcaster successfully dispels the darkvision spell, does the darkvision effect return after 1d4 rounds, as it would if the wizard were using a magic item?"

'No, when a permanent spell is dispelled, the effect is gone. If the wizard in your example wants another permanent darkvision effect, she has to cast darkvision and permanency again and spend another 1,000 xp.'

So basically it is not treated as a magic item and have its effect suppressed. Which when looking back over the spell description, I can read more clearly now. So it is better to have a wand if possible because it is only suppressed and not cancelled and it is cheaper to create, if the character's have the time that is.