Really permament?

[Artoomis]

Personally, I'd rule that Permanency effectively changes the level of the underlying spell to 5th level and combines it with permanency to have a "permanent" duratioh.

This seems the simplest approach.

The spell itself gives no great guidance on this, and Hyp's approach seems to me to be over-technical and more complicated in practice.

With my approach (that seems to be just as valid), the Tenacious Magic [Epic] feat woudl apply to Permanency, which seems fine given that this is an Epic feat only.

The Tenacious Magic [Epic] is obviously most effctive when used on "permanent" duration spells.

I don't know how my DM will rule, but it won't come up for 9 more levels anyway. I will have to ask, because in 6 or 7 levels may character can take Permanency and it will be worth it if Tenacious Magic [Epic] applies.

 

[Bad Paper]

As much as I enjoy Hypersmurf's line of reasoning, I weigh in a little closer to the side of Artoomis. The description for Permanency says, "This spell makes certain other spells permanent." And I guess it should have a duration of instantaneous, but that is probably a subtlety that Jonathan Tweet missed.

When you see a character's statblock, you will see things like "permanent arcane sight, permanent comprehend languages..." You will not see "arcane sight, permanency (arcane sight), comprehend languages, permanency (comprehend languages)..." So I'm going with Artoomis on this one.

However, in order to stave off the cheese that Artoomis is trying to squeeze out of Tenacious Magic, I would change the duration of Permanency to instantaneous, thus: "No, you can't have something really Permanent. Not yours."

 

[Sledge]

I don't agree...

Many durations are measured in rounds, minutes, hours, or some other increment. When the time is up, the magic goes away and the spell ends.

What is the duration of the spell? 11 minutes. How long has it been in effect? 1 year. Is the time up? You betcha. The magic goes away and the spell ends.

During that year the duration was permanent though. Permanency changes the duration, it doesn't extend it. I don't believe that any time under permanency would count as part of the duration. Is this supported by the rules? Actually they are silent on this topic. This isn't two concurrent effects we are discussing. This isn't a duration expiring during suppression. This is the meter being stopped on casting of permanency. Strictly speaking if permanency were separately removeable then removing permanency shouldn't revert the spell to its state when permanency was cast.
Fortunately as I said this debate is academic, because Tenacious Spell on permanency still doesn't work since the actual target of the dispelling would be the "Fly" or whatever, and not the permanency spell. In other words why remove the extended duration when you can remove the entire spell effect?

 

[Hypersmurf]

This is the meter being stopped on casting of permanency.

The meter doesn't stop; it just never reaches the "Too long!" mark.

But if the "Too long!" mark is suddenly dialled back to 11 minutes after the meter has been running for a year, you're past that mark.

-Hyp.

 

[Thanee]

Hmm... interesting. I would have thought, that there is only one spell effect after the casting of Permanency, not two.

Of course, the duration of permanent says otherwise, but I doubt that was the intention.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Artoomis]

...However, in order to stave off the cheese that Artoomis is trying to squeeze out of Tenacious Magic, I would change the duration of Permanency to instantaneous, thus: "No, you can't have something really Permanent. Not yours."

?? If it was instantaneous Permanacy would be even more powerful. It would be undispellable.

This way you have to take a feat.


Of course I, and many others, have issues with Permanency anyway.

Permanent Tongues, for example is 1,500 Exp Pts.

A slotless (undispellable) Wizardly (3rd level) Tongues item would be 3(Spell Lvl) x 5(Caster Lvl) x 2000 x 2(Slotless) = 60,000. It can be created for 2,400 Exp Pts and 30,000 gold plus one feat (Create Wondrous Items)

Making Comprehend Languages permanent 500 exp pts, but a slotless item cost 1 x 1 x 2000 x 2 = 4,000. It can be made for 16 exp pts and 2,000 gold plus one feat (Create Wondrous Items)

Gee, making permanent really permanent (not dispellable) seems like not a very big deal - about right for a feat.

I am not sure why any wizard would use Permanency over Create Wondrous Items. The cost is not that much different if one does not do too many of the higher-level spells, but it is all-too-easy to dispel Permanency.

I present this merely as ammunition for interpreting the rules my way. Since the rules leave room to interpret this either way, I would tend to rule in favor of the PCs because of the silliness of spending almost as much using Permanency as using Create Wondrous Items.

Even for the higher-level spell effects replacing it after a Greater Dispel Magic chomped it would end up costing more XP than an item would have been.

 

[Thanee]

?? If it was instantaneous Permanacy would be even more powerful. It would be undispellable.

I don't think you got that right... the Permanency itself would be instantaneous and no longer in effect. The permanent spell would be permanent and dispellable normally. But there would be only one spell effect, not two (the permanent spell and the Permanency spell).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Artoomis]

I don't think you got that right... the Permanency itself would be instantaneous and no longer in effect. The permanent spell would be permanent and dispellable normally. But there would be only one spell effect, not two (the permanent spell and the Permanency spell).

Bye
Thanee

I see where you are going, but of course that would be a rules contradiction as instantaneous effects are not dispellable.

I see what you mean, though, and I see how it could work that way.

Of course I don't see what I am attempting as being "cheese" anyway as Permanency is generally too expensive to cast as a dispellable effect.

 

[Infiniti2000]

(The other issue is that a Dispel could dispel Arcane Sight as well, so you'd need to make it Tenacious too, even apart from the duration issue. One of the weaknesses of Permanent spells is that they are subject to two dispel checks on a targeted dispel; if either the original spell or Permanency is dispelled, you'll probably lose the effect.)

How do you rule that given this bolded text in the permanency spell:

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

Doesn't it imply that spells cast on you are therefore not vulnerable to dispel magic as normal? What does that mean?

 

[Artoomis]

How do you rule that given this bolded text in the permanency spell:

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

Doesn't it imply that spells cast on you are therefore not vulnerable to dispel magic as normal? What does that mean?

You missed an earlier statment in the spell:

"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."