Author Topic: (D)ismissable spells, and now-undead spellcasters.  (Read 1765 times)

Offline ksbsnowowl

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(D)ismissable spells, and now-undead spellcasters.
« on: November 30, 2013, 03:16:44 PM »
The enchantment spell Binding can get a ridiculously high caster level of 62, just within Core, even without things like circle magic.  Such a spell is undispellable via Greater Dispel Magic, or even the higher-capped Reaving dispel. Heck, even the example Epic spell that caps your CL bonus at 40 would be unable to dispel it without some other stacking effect to boost your caster level check.

However, a caster automatically succeeds at dispelling his own spells.  Add to this the fact that Binding is (D)ismissable, and it becomes apparent that the best way to get rid of such an effect is to compel the original caster to simply dismiss the effect.  If the caster is alive, it is merely a matter of locating the caster, and dominating him.  However, it becomes slightly more problematic if the creature is dead.  He can refuse any attempt to raise him from the dead.

However, he can't do anything about another caster raising him as undead.  If the type of undead the caster is raised as still has the personality and memories of the base creature, such as a Spectral Mage from Magic of Faerun, could the resulting undead dismiss any spells that it cast while it was alive?

Offline Maat Mons

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Re: (D)ismissable spells, and now-undead spellcasters.
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2013, 03:30:28 PM »
Disjunction doesn't require any sort of check to end an ongoing spell effect. 

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: (D)ismissable spells, and now-undead spellcasters.
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2013, 03:44:43 PM »
True. It also doesn't answer the question  ;)

Offline Quillwraith

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Re: (D)ismissable spells, and now-undead spellcasters.
« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2013, 04:38:05 PM »
Applied templates seem to indicates that the creature still counts as itself, methinks.

Undead that are not templates seem a bit trickier. I'd rule yes, but I don't really know.

Offline Chemus

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Re: (D)ismissable spells, and now-undead spellcasters.
« Reply #4 on: November 30, 2013, 04:40:49 PM »
Undead seem to reference the original creature, but I'd only rule that the spell would be dismissible if the undead retained some or all of it's spellcasting abilities related to the class that granted the spell you wanna dispel. (long sentence is long)
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Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: (D)ismissable spells, and now-undead spellcasters.
« Reply #5 on: November 30, 2013, 04:44:07 PM »
Applied templates seem to indicates that the creature still counts as itself, methinks.

Undead that are not templates seem a bit trickier. I'd rule yes, but I don't really know.
Well, in a lot of cases, such as a wight or a zombie, the resultant undead wouldn't have the spellcasting know-how to dismiss the spell.  At least that's how I see it, and why I specified a template such as Spectral Mage, where the resulting creature specifically still has it's spellcasting ability.