Dispel Evil and Good: A Hodgepodge of Suck
Spell Level: 5
School: Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Components: V, S, M (Holy water or powdered silver and iron)
Shimmering energy surrounds and protects you from fey, undead, and creatures originating from beyond the Material Plane. For the duration, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead have disadvantage on attack rolls against you. You can end the spell early by using either of the following special functions.
Break Enchantment. As your action, you touch a creature you can reach that is charmed, frightened, or possessed by a celestial, an elemental, a fey, a fiend, or an undead. The creature you touch is no longer charmed, frightened, or possessed by such creatures.
Dismissal. As your action, make a melee spell attack against a celestial, an elemental, a fey, a fiend, or an undead you can reach. On a hit, you attempt to drive the creature back to its home plane. The creature must succeed on a Charisma saving throw or be sent back to its home plane (if it isn’t there already). If they aren’t on their home plane, undead are sent to the Shadowfell, and fey are sent to the Feywild.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Have you ever wanted to cast Banishment and Protection from Evil and Good at the same time? If so, may I introduce Dispel Evil and Good, a worse combined version of both!
To start, the imposed disadvantage dispel provides lasts 1 minute instead of the 10 minutes Protection from Evil and Good offers. Unlike Protection from Evil and Good, Dispel Evil and Good doesn’t affect aberrations, which is weird, right? I’d expect the 5th level version to be able to shunt extraplanar aberrations like slaad and mind flayers back wherever they came from, but nope, aberrations are unaffected. It feels like a mistake they just never fixed out of playtesting. You’re getting the same effect, affecting less creatures, for a shorter duration of time when comparing the 5th level Dispel Evil and Good to the 1st level Protection from Evil and Good.
Dispel Evil and Good’s break enchantment effect will end up feeling worse than the basic guards Protection from Evil and Good offers. Protection from Evil and Good is preventative; once a creature is shielded, they can not be affected by fears, charms, and possessions, full stop. Break enchantment lets you spend actions to dispel those same conditions, which could affect more people, but realistically will not. If you cast Dispel Evil and Good, you can still be charmed or possessed, both of which likely will prevent you from using this spell to cure yourself. The worst part is if you want to use this spell reactively, it takes TWO actions, one to cast and one to touch, to actually break a single instance of the effects. If you don’t know what you’re fighting can do, there is no chance you’d waste two full turns reactively trying to fix a problem you could have solved with a single action and casting greater restoration (at the same level), or something as simple as heroism to prevent fears and offer bonus hit points. You aren’t casting Dispel Evil and Good for break enchantment, because you’d be better off casting a suite of other spells instead.
But fear not, the bulk of this spell's power is finally here: dismissal. If you can both land a melee spell attack and have that creature fail a charisma save, you can permanently remove celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead from fights so long as they didn’t originate on the material. This tends to affect celestials, elementals, and fiends consistently, usually works on fey, and rarely works on undead. That lich was probably born and raised on the material, and their army of skeletons and zombies are native here too. Because the spell requires concentration and it uses a melee spell attack to deliver their dismissal, you have to put yourself in a place where dropping concentration is likely to occur should you fail. This makes it extremely high risk to even attempt. Sure, you COULD banish the raging tornado of sentient volcanic ash back to the elemental plane of fire, but if you fail you’re in for a fiery beating so bad your grandchildren will come out coughing up soot. Dismissal can end some encounters with a single touch, much like how Banishment can. The odds of you getting more than one dismissal off per cast is laughable, though, and I wouldn’t take the spell with that dream in mind.
With all the downsides, if you can get dismissal to remove a crucial demon or celestial from a fight, you’ll find it to be Banishment with a slight upside which can appeal to some. Otherwise, the spell functions slightly worse than its first level counterpart does. Do you want to spend a 5th level slot on a first level effect? If not, just take Protection from Evil and Good and spend your 5th level slot on something worthwhile.
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