Hello,
I'm having some difficulty making sense of Unraveling Infusion and I cant seem to find the answer. I did find this topic but the answers are inconclusive. Mainly I want to know if you can use it to dispel magical effects that cover an area, like magical darkness or magical fog (as created by spells like Darkness or Fog Cloud). The question of course comes from our last session, where my character used Unraveling Infusion to dispel a magical fog that would have made the encounter much harder, but without the fog it was relatively easy.
I did quite a bit of research about it (sorry about the long post). First, if we take a look at the text of the infusion itself:
1.) "Your kinetic blast burns so hot that it melts away your foe’s magical effects." - this looks like its just a flavorful description of the effect, however it does state "foe's magical effects", which surely includes any effect that your foe produces via magic.
2.) "Whenever your infused blast hits a foe and penetrates its spell resistance, you can attempt a caster level check as if using a targeted dispel magic before determining whether the foe takes damage from the blast."
- It now says that it "hits a foe".... The topic I linked above has 1 answer that says that it can only target a creature, and therefore you cant use it to target objects, a square on the ground, magical effects, etc etc. However, the OP of that topic replies that a strict "word per word" ruling would mean that you cant use it on your allies (which seems too harsh, seeing how allies would also take the blasts damage, or at least half of it, if you used it on them - which seems punishing enough), and that the "foe's magical effects" from the first sentence means that it includes AoE spells cast by foes. And I personally agree with those points, however I'm not sure if Mark/Paizo intended it to work this way.
- I havent even asked the DM about SR, though it doesnt really matter: firstly, we werent in combat so I could have rolled a hundred times if needed, it'd just take longer. Secondly, it was a fog, I'm pretty sure it didnt have any SR. Doors, walls, and other objects usually dont have SR, and I dont think magical effects have SR either (for example, does magical darkness have a SR rating? Never heard of anything like that. It doesnt need to have a SR rating because you cant "attack" or otherwise affect "darkness" - you cant cast a Fireball at it, or damage it with said Fireball. The only thing you can do is dispell it, and that doesnt go against SR, it goes against CL). So, does this mean that Unraveling cant target Darkness because Darkness doesnt have SR? No, I dont think so, because most creatures dont have SR and yet you can obviously target them.
- Caster level check was done according to the rules (and I even rolled high enough on the first try).
- It says it works as if using a Targeted Dispel Magic. The spell says that it can be used as a Targeted version or as a Counterspell. However, only the last paragraph covers the Counterspell use, everything else is about the Targeted version, which lists all possible uses, including AoE spells:
a.) it says: "You can also use a targeted dispel to specifically end one spell affecting the target or one spell affecting an area (such as a wall of fire)." - and that's exactly what I've done. I've even looked up how dispelling AoE effects works, specifically if you can target any point/square of the effect, or do you need to target the central square/point of origin. And the asnwer is that you can target any square/point/edge of the AoE, because for example if the enemy casts Darkness, you cant even see the point of origin, and thus dispelling it would be almost impossible (unless you had some way of seeing through magical darkness).
b.) it also says: "You must name the specific spell effect to be targeted in this way." - this could be understood to mean that you have to correctly identify the effect (via Spellcraft) if you want to dispel it, but I looked it up and this is not true. You only need to make a Spellcraft check when you want to Counterspell, not when you want to Dispel. So this sentence just means that you have to proclaim in advance which spell you want to dispel (as opposed to the first use of the spell, which says you first try to dispel the strongest effect, and if you fail, you can try with the next one, and so on - which is reinforced by the continuation of the text that says: "No other spells or effects on the target are dispelled if your check is not high enough to end the targeted effect". So, its a case of "I want to dispel this darkness and nothing else", and not a case of "Well, I dont know what kind of magic produced this darkness, so I cant try to get rid of it").
So, it seems like we played by the rules. The only unclear part is the part about targets under my 2nd point. The text does say that it works "whenever your infused blast hits a foe", but (as usual, sadly) this is a far too vague/broad description: this is an infusion, which you add to your blast. Its not an "attack" on its own, or anything like that, the description is clear that you ADD it to a blast. And its also pretty clear that your blast can be aimed at anything. It can be aimed at creatures (friendly or not), it can be aimed at objects (evil or not), can be aimed at empty squares (floors or ceilings and everything inbetween). Basically they can be aimed at anything that you could aim at with any other weapon (ranged or melee or spell).
But, can a blast be aimed at a magical effect like Darkness? Well, I dont think so - can you aim at Darkness with a bow? Or with a sword? Or with a Fireball? The answer in my opinion is NO, you cant try to hit Darkness with a sword (or bow or Fireball). I mean you can, but it'll go straight through (and possibly hit something else that is hiding in the dark), because there isnt any interaction that exists between swords/bows/Fireballs and areas of Darkness. Or, to be more specific, areas of Fog. Can you cut a Fog? Or Fireball it? No, you cant.
But! You can affect it with certain specific spells, the most obvious one being Dispel Magic. In the case of Fog, other spells can affect it too, like Gust of Wind. Spells like these DO have very obvious, intended and rule-enforced interactions with Fog, Darkness, etc.
So, the issue comes from the fact that we have a Blast, which acts as a regular attack and DOESNT interact with Darkness, but when we add the Unraveling Infusion, it now suddenly wants to simultaneously act like an "attack"/effect that DOES interact with Darkness. Should it be allowed to do so? I'm leaning more towards yes. Why? Because if a Magus can imbue their sword (with the help of Spellstrike Gloves) to deliver ranged spells when it hits stuff (Sword also being an attack that cant normally target Darkness), and if I'm not mistaken Alchemists and Wizard, possibly others, can achieve a similar effect, then why couldnt a Kineticist imbue their blast to do the same?
But still, it all seems to come down to the "hits a foe" line. Yeah, a blast would normally (and most often) hit a foe. Does that mean it cant hit anything else? No. Does that mean it can normally hit Darkness? No. Does that mean that it cant hit Darkness even when imbued with an infusion whose purpose is clearly to copy (some part of) Dispel Magic in an effort to do some dispelling? No, I dont think so. Especially if we also take into account the first line that says "foe's magical effects".
But then again, this (obviously) makes it pretty damn powerful, even (or especially) outside of combat, where you can take your time and keep rolling until you roll high enough. Technically, you could spend however long you wanted on a certain effect, you could also walk around the place and blast the walls, the hallways, the any other magical things you see.... as long as the caster's CL isnt at least 11 points higher than yours (or 13 points if you halve your damage), you WILL eventually dispel their magic....
Thoughts?
