FASA Games, Inc.

So you are saying that the Horror Power, Animate Dead is not considered a spell -like ability. Do Nethermacers still have the Spell Version of Animate Dead to create Skeletons? Why wouldn't it work?

The horror power creates a spell-like effect and animates a corpse for a duration of time. After that time expires, the magic animating the body stops or is extended again by the horror using the talent again. Seems to me that this animating bond could be severed the same way the bond animating a Netermancers skeleton can be.

Why put limits on what heroes can do? Can you post the actual rules from ED4 for review?

I am working with what I have access to. A wizard using the Dispel Magic Spell could perform these actions in ED3. Are you saying it is no longer possible in ED4?

I'm not entirely certain what a "spell-like ability" is outside of the context of D&D 3E. Unless you are using the term to define all Horror powers, which only serves to confuse the issue: it is not a spell, nor is it a talent. There is a spell which approximates the effect, but it is not the same thing. The Horror power does not require an threads to be woven, it simply happens.

Since they are explicitly different in how the two abilities work, I don't see how they should be canceled in the same way.

To answer your hyperbolic/rhetorical question with one of my own: Why put limits on what anything can do ever; why not allow Dispel Magic to destroy very patterns themselves?

The Dispel Magic talent has been scaled back on what it can apply to because it was far too broad in scope previously. There could be arguments over applying it to blood magic and offering an easy out to a Blood Promise which was no longer convenient. It worked against every Horror power, which doesn't particularly fit with what Wizards are about and treading all over Nethermancers.

In previous editions, it would work as you describe Baravakar, as long as the GM ok'd it. That's what happened to the character from the Aethercon discussion, it was from an older edition (if I'm remembering correctly). Panda's anwers have been specific to 4th edition, as that's the topic in this thread.

I like that Dispel Magic has been scaled back from the previous editions, where it was very open to different interpretations by players and GMs. It will also let Surpress Curse see some actual use!

I can understand the feeling about waiting. We're a very small community here, and I'd love to see it grow, so I hope you are not frustrated with the answers.

Scaling back the use of it going from a threaded spell to a talent is OK in my book.