Dispel magic can only dispel 3rd-level spells?

[John Lynch 106]

Quandary wrote:

I do think it would make sense for spells inherently based around Counter-act to explicitly reference "minimum spell level or as Heightened" to "remind" player the (Heightened) spell level is critical to it's function, and even use standard Heighten boilerplate format just to say "increases Counter-act level".

I mean, abstractly one can see Heighten as being no more relevant than for any other spell (i.e. if you really want Blur to stick and not be Dispelled, Heighten it even though it doesn't have any special Heighten effect) but since Counter-act is inherent to something like Dispel's effect it really is appropriate to highlight front and center. When other spells list explicit Heighten effects, it's an easy assumption to not consider Dispel for Heightening (like Blur isn't normally) because it doesn't list any Heighten effects. I mean, that is just the psychological consequence of making standard Heighten effect block standard, when it's not there people will think Heighten is irrelevant to it.

Since description is very short, I would hope they consider Errate to add that in to spell block.

I dont think they're going to errata it. It's just a pit trap for new players to PF2. For example: never would have occurred to me to heighten blur. Now I can see why that might be a good move tactically and use it in appropriate situations.

[thenobledrake]

I'm not sure that 'could have been clearer' is a useful benchmark, since something could theoretically always be clearer right up until we can sync up our brains with the writers' and know exactly what they were thinking.

'clear enough' seems like a good benchmark though - but it is one of a subjective nature, so no matter what someone is going to find something unclear. See this thread as evidence where plainly labelled, repeated when relevant, and properly indexed (heightening, found under spell, lists only the page that fully explains the rules with a nice big bold title) are being accused of a lack of clarity.

[Samurai]

Even though it is in the written description, what if they gave Dispel Magic and those other spells a new tag: "Counteract". Then in the section that describes what the tags mean, you can highlight that if you want to counteract a higher level effect, you can heighten the spell's level. That's why they made the tags in the first place, so you don't need to guess (though it isn't entirely consistent, "a fireball doesn't have an Attack tag, so does it make an invisible caster visible again?" You should be able to just say "Anything with the Attack tag will make you visible. Period, end of story.")

[thenobledrake]

A tag could be a workable solution, since that wouldn't take away space that is currently occupied by rules as a necessity of adding it.

However, tags aren't a master solution for everything. For example, the entire question "a fireball doesn't have the Attack tag, so does it make an invisible caster visible again?" isn't a question that would be solved by a tag - because the attack tag has no direct relationship to what ends invisibility (using a "hostile action"), and the root of the question (that being "what is or is not a hostile action?") would still remain.

...unless you re-write the invisibility spells so that they directly call tags into mention, then re-write everything else so that every action that can result in the loss of invisibility by being used in a hostile way always results in the loss of invisibility because it's got the right tag.

"Anything with the Attack tag will make you visible. Period, end of story. Epilogue: So will other actions that aren't attacks and aren't inherently hostile but you are using in a hostile manner in these specific circumstances."