Near-Epic magic item devaluation

[Felonious Monk]

Another bonus for going the VoP route.

 

[rhammer2]

There's no denying that MD is a very powerful spell. I had a chance to use it in a high level three night event, it was devistating against a party member that tuned on the group.

I my own games I've house ruled its power down some. It will still destroy all active spells, but it only disrupts the functioning of magic items for 1 to 4 days.

IMC, the prevalent player tactic is the basic buff-and-smash, especially the cleric. The fighter types depend heavily upon magic items, and the mages hide behind layer upon layer of protections.

For ages, tergetted dispels have been the only thing that allowed my monsters to stand any chance without bumping them up to ECLs high above the party. Thus, the party makes rings of dispelling. Classed NPCs survive better, but generally end up resorting to the same tactics as the players.

It was with significant glee that I prepared a BBEG with Mordy's disjunction. But then I hesitated... this one little spell is going to provoke half an hour of dice rolling as each and every magic item in the party makes a DC 25 will save. The highest will save in the party is the cleric at +18 - the fighters are liable to lose everything.

A paladin with low +30s is going to lose one or two items, tops, but at 20th level most dedicated fighters (incedentally, the most item dependant class) are going to lose the shirts of damage reduction off their backs.

BUT - it's in the PHB. Is this supposed to happen? I can see the PCs trading in what remains of their magic items for Tomes (inherant, cant be dispelled) and the fighters comitting seppuku with their Ex- +5 masterwork greatswords. Suddenly its a low magic campagin world for nonspellcasters, while the wizards and sorcerors are mostly unaffected.

I havent heard any great outcry over this spell, but it screams for nerfing to me.

 

[Wish]

I have three big problems with it:

1) It's automatic.
2) It has a huge area of effect.
3) It hoses the PCs no matter which side uses it. If the bad guys use it, obviously the PCs are hosed. But if the PCs use it, they've just blown up most of the treasure for the encounter. Either way, it's a bad outcome for the PCs. That's the surest sign of an unbalanced spell.

In my game, it's banned, and we use Reaving Dispel (great new spell from Complete Arcane) and Chained Greater Dispel Magic for high level magic removal.