Targeted Dispel Magic w/ Chain Metamagic

[EOL]

I play D&D every Tuesday. Half the Tuesdays I DM the other half my friend DM's and I play. The other DM (who of course plays in my campaign) is violently oppossed to the Chain Spell Metamagic Feat. One of the abuses he always mentions is a chained, targetted dispel magic. This may be more a fear that I would use it on him while he's a player, refer to this thread for more details: Problems wih Greater Magic Weapon

In any event, this leaves me with the following questions:

1- Disregarding the specific question of a targeted dispel magis is the Chain Spell feat unbalanced?
2- Can a targeted dispel magic be chained?
3- If so each additional spell in the chain is weaker in terms of damage or saving throw, but dispel is based on a level check how weaker should the level check be on the secondary dispels?
4- Can you think of any other abuses of the chain spell feat?

 

[Crothian]

First, why is this abusive? It's in the rules and you are spending a much higher slot. The disple magic gets slightly weaker and that balances things out pretty well.

 

[CRGreathouse]

How many levels higher is a chained spell? How much are you losinng from greater dispel?

 

[Crothian]

Chain spell is in T&B. It uses spell slot 3 levels higher then the the spell being modified.

 

[EOL]

Nowhere in the description of Chain Spell does it mention who something based on a caster level check would be weakened. It only mentions damage and saving throws. Dispel Magic doesn't have a save and doesn't do damage. So can it even be chained and if so what degree of weakening on the secondary spells would be appropriate.

And yes as Crothain said it uses a slot 3 levels higher.

 

[Crothian]

Chain spells grant 's a +4 to save for all other targets besides the first. So, the caster level check would have a -4. So, it would max out at +6 (10 , normal max, minus 4). I think this keeps to the spirit of the metamagic feat.

 

[CRGreathouse]

So a Chained dispel magic has less of your level than greater dispelling, and much less if you use the above house rule. I'll consider doing so myself, if any of my players take Chain Spell.

 

[EOL]

Let's try an example assume that a 15th level NPC caster is facing a PC group of 6 characters with 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2 spells running on each character respectively. So the NPC has the choice of casting a +15 caster level targeted greater dispel against the most heavily spelled character the one with 5 or of casting a +10 against the one with 5 and a +6 against everything else. Lets assume that all spells have a caster level of 12. In this case we have the following results:

Targeted Greater Dispel would on average take out 3.25 spells (.65*5 spells)

Chained Targeted Dispel would on average take out 5.2 spells (.4*5 + .2*(4+4+3+3+2))

So you can see where a Chained targeted dispel against a heavily buffed party would be more effective than a single targeted Greater Dispel. I'm not saying what this means whether that makes it unbalanced or not. I'm just putting some numbers out there.

 

[Crothian]

THanks for putting out the numbers. It really depends on the party. Our party the Druid might have a spell or 3 cast upon himself, the Bard may have one. The other two guys rarely get enchanted. However, it seems many parties to cast about three or so spells on each member. I think a chained dispel could really teach the parties a lesson.

I like it cause I'm not a big fan of buffing up the party with spells. I think this is a weak area of the game as a party can greatly increase their power.

 

[CRGreathouse]

The Chained dispel magic should be more effective, as it requires a feat tyo do... that's a major cost.