Spells from innates and items

[gatperdut]

Does Dispel Magic from items or character innates (Bala's axe and Inquisitor/Yeslick, respectively, for example) behave identically as if it were cast as a memorized spell?

More broadly, do spell-like abilities behave as their "true" spell counterparts? 

[Bartimaeus]

13 hours ago, gatperdut said:

Does Dispel Magic from items or character innates (Bala's axe and Inquisitor/Yeslick, respectively, for example) behave identically as if it were cast as a memorized spell?

Dispelling magic as an on-hit effect by way of e.g. Bala's Axe does not cast the spell "Dispel Magic", it just...dispels magic if the saving throw is failed. In other words, it's not subject to the "what level is the character who cast it and what level is the character who is affected" mechanics. Casting the Dispel Magic spell from an item (e.g. Carsomyr) or the Inquisitor's innate, on the other hand, would be.

13 hours ago, gatperdut said:

More broadly, do spell-like abilities behave as their "true" spell counterparts? 

It's not clear to me whether you're playing with IR or not. If not, then I don't know for sure, as I don't remember how vanilla items handle spell-like abilities...but if you're playing with IR, I would say mostly, though with the caveat that most spell-like abilities do not scale with level and instead are set to always be cast at the same power no matter the circumstances.

[jmerry]

Yeslick's Dispel Magic is just like the divine and arcane Dispel Magic spells, except innate. Which means the level check is based on his innate caster level - the average of his cleric and fighter levels.

The activated ability of Bala's Axe (not the on-hit ability, which isn't a dispel anyway) casts priest Dispel Magic. Which means it's based on the wielder's divine caster level, and is almost always useless. Unless it's a Shaman, there's no way for an axe-wielder to have a decent divine caster level at anything other than epic levels in the standard rules.

All of this is unless a mod changes it specifically, or in the latter case changes priest Dispel Magic. (I have a tweak in my collection which changes the spell Bala's Axe casts to use the wielder's innate caster level.)

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, jmerry said:

The activated ability of Bala's Axe (not the on-hit ability, which isn't a dispel anyway) casts priest Dispel Magic. Which means it's based on the wielder's divine caster level, and is almost always useless. Unless it's a Shaman, there's no way for an axe-wielder to have a decent divine caster level at anything other than epic levels in the standard rules.

See, I don't remember vanilla items so much I didn't even know vanilla Bala's Axe had an activated ability instead of an on-hit effect. Whoops. An activated spell-like ability that you have to cast for a damned axe sure seems kind of silly to me, but them's the breaks with vanilla item design.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[gatperdut]

I don't use IR, but I could add it if it makes the behavior of non-spell spells more homogeneous with the idea behind SR (I don't even know how to call these non-spell spells).

But from what I'm reading in the replies, these other sources of "non-spell" spells aren't affected by SR, correct? I remember Keldorn rendering Dispelling Screen kind of moot, since his Inquisitor's Dispel Magic would go right through it instead of being consumed like it should I think it should  

Edited December 11, 2023 by gatperdut

[jmerry]

(Looks it up...) In the case of Bala's Axe, the vanilla abilities are replaced entirely by IR. No on-hit miscast effect, no activated ability, but now there's an on-hit dispel effect. Save to negate, but no level check. Also, it's nonmagical instead of being a +0 magic weapon.

Inquisitor dispel not being changed like other dispels to work with the new system ... that's a serious oversight that should be fixed. Also, that is a spell. It's an innate spell rather than an arcane or divine spell, but it's absolutely a spell by any reasonable standard.