RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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At a recent convention, I encountered about 4-5 people (over the course of three slots) who believed that dismissal only worked on summoned creatures, not on creatures who traveled to the material plane "manually" (such as demons who crawled through the Worldwound). I know I've encountered this thought prior to that convention, as well.
Once you read the spell description, it's obvious that the only qualifier for targeting is that the creature is extraplanar, which has nothing to do with whether they were summoned or not.
So I'm just curious, where do so many people get the idea that dismissal is just a summon-dispeller? Was it different in 3.5? Is there some other spell that works the way they think dismissal works?
I'm asking mostly to shorten the conversation in the future; "you're thinking of [spell]" or "they changed it from 3.5" is quicker than just continually insisting until they're willing to look at the spell description.
Plus it's always nice to understand people. :)
They're probably just confused by other things that only work on summoned monsters like protection from evil or dispel magic.
To my knowledge, it has never operated that way in any edition.
I guess they are just people who make assumptions and don't read thoroughly enough.
I've met a lot of half-way literate (thanks to ADD, dyslexia, or sheer laziness) roleplayers who will read half a sentence or paragraph, assume they know the rest and stop reading before they get to the end. These people rarely have more than a "gist" of what is going on with the rules.
Also, it's been my experience that home groups almost always follow RAW more closely then most organized convention games (though, theoretically, it's supposed to be the other way around).