Shattered Kingdoms

I was going to say some time ago that dispel magic should have an effect against MR enchants much like impairment spells do damage to individual saves. Something like a 10 MR penalty every time it is successfully cast against a target. Easy to reason away that it is suppressing the runes by damaging the magic on them. It's called dispel magic, after all.

Apparently this is a QQ thread and your not mad at ethereal form, your mad at wudan. Sorcs have so very few offensive spells that don't take forever to cast (time enough for you to get merced) that ethereal form is their only real option. Now before we begin the tear down my post onslaught, I am not say sorcs don't have offensive capabilities, what with charm person and petrification. The fact of the matter is, if you prepare for a specific class/build you should be able to take them. Someone posted something about a spec holding etherealform and charm and still being able to cast dispel earlier too... Not without some high int, I will say that much.

Quoted for the most common sense thing I have read in this thread.

When game balance and "realism" step into the ring, game balance should always win. In this case, there is already a precedent in game for things on the corporeal plane affecting ethereal persons but not vice versa even though it might not seem "realistic."

I'd be fine with dispel only working in one direction. Also mostly fine as is. Definitely not ok with there being no way to dispel an ethereal character.

From a gameplay balance perspective, the best balance is to allow dispel from a non-ethereal caster to be able to affect everyone, but to allow dispel from an ethereal caster to only affect ethereal targets. You can whine about realism, but it's magic anyway, and you can already be prevented from walking through or even opening an unlocked ethereal-warded door from the ethereal plane, so whatever, there's your realism too.

It's always been very overpowered from a gameplay perspective that you can dispel non-ethereal opponents from the ethereal plane, but it used to always come with an appreciable chance that you might get dispelled yourself. Now, dispelling from the ethereal plane is infinitely more viable now that sorcerers can enchant for MR easily which allows them to be 100% dispel-proof. Buffs are extremely important in PvP, which makes dispel magic in PvP one of the most important offensive "malediction" type spells, and with impairment coupled with the fact that it's now much more difficult to achieve a desirable will save, dispel is one of the best spells regardless of whether you're in the ethereal plane or not.

As to Arelgama's statement:Sorcerers have an absurd amount of potential, especially now that enchants got hit with the nerf bat. Color spray will still completely wreck unenchanted groups, and now that MP and AP are separate enchants, acid blast should do plenty of damage. Even moreso, since sorcs have every reason to max art nowadays, it's likely that the vast majority of their damage spells won't get half-saved against. Double petrification scrolls recite instantly too. That's also not even considering the vast array of damage dealing/crowd controlling magical devices. Saying that ethereal form is their only real option just because petrification takes too long to cast is like saying that because bash lags mercenaries for two rounds, a merc's only real option is to recall.

Fine, game balance it is then. How about make MR be plane specific. An ethereal sorc enchanted for MR resists spells cast by other ethereal characters, but does not resist spells that would affect them from non-ethereal characters, so dispel and holy word, and others that I'm forgetting. The ethereal sorc would be forced non-ethereal, but then at that point, he would be resisting spells as normal. That's where Lathron beats him to death, or whatever.

*shrug*

There's no reason to make it overly complicated.

I'm not trying to. Okay, fine, make non-ethereal characters able to dispel ethereal characters, but not the other way around. You're still going to have sorcs fully kitted out with MR, so what will you gain by the change? Nothing. Great thanks.

My point is that you don't seem to have a problem with ethereal characters using dispel on non-ethereal characters, but instead you have a problem with ethereal characters decked out in MR casting dispel on non-ethereal characters.

No, it's very overpowering to be able to cast dispel on anyone you want while ethereal, regardless of the gear you happen to be wearing. While etherealform is certainly not a complete safety net, it protects necros and sorcs from their biggest threat (physical damage) and can only be countered by other people dispelling them, which means that there are a lot of scenarios where you can go ethereal and be able to PK with dispel and charm damage completely risk-free. You should be forced to stay in the physical plane if you want to cast offensive spells at your opponents.