Example Situation:
A level 17 priest has several spells cast on him, including Resistance III (+15 to RR), Shield, Aura of Resistance, Aura of Power. The Priest has a base RR vs channeling of 20, and +10 vs Channeling item. So, his RR vs Channeling is now 20 + 10 + 15 (Resistance III) + 15 (Aura of Resistance), i.e. +60.
Another caster throws a Dispel Channeling I spell at this priest. The dispeller is level 10.
Dispel Channeling I reads: "Any active [channeling] spell on the target must make an RR (use the caster's level as the spell level) or be dispelled."
Aura of Power reads: "All spell or spell-effects entereing the area of effect must make an RR..."
Questions:
1/ Does the Dispel Magic have to make an RR against the Aura of Power? If it fails, does that mean that none of the target's spells have to make an RR as they're within the Aura of Power AE? My hunch here is that the two spells must do a plain level vs level fight out as described in RMSS and RMFRP on conflicting spells. Your thoughts?
2/ When spells make an RR, what bonuses do they get, if any? My players argue that the spells should get the same RR mod as the person they're cast on. So, in this case the priest has a +60 vs Chan modifier, so spells resist the Dispel at +60? I don't agree with this. I believe that the spells should not get modifiers for these resist rolls.
3/ Dispel Channeling I is a Force spell, indicating a BAR is made. SO, this suggests the spells resisting the Dispel are likely to end up with penalties (assuming a half-decent BAR). My players feel that this makes it too easy to dispel spells. Im the example above, the level 10 priest has a Spell List Skill Total of +19, so adds 19 to his BAR. On an average roll of 50, the total BAR is 69, giving a -25 RR penalty for channeling against 'Other'. The spells, cast at level 17, have to make a basic roll of 38 to resist, but with that average -25 RR penalty, they each need to roll 63 or more.
My players point out that with a single cast of an 8th level spell, a 10th level caster can dispel, on average, about 2 in 3 spells cast by a level 17 caster. I have to agree with them that this does seem to make dispelling seem a little easy.
At the same time, we play a magic-poor campaign (there are few spellcasters in the world), so more often than not the players do NOT meet enemies capable of dispelling them, so have come to take their defensive spells for granted and didn't really like it when the enemy dispeller started making a big change to the dynamics of that particular fight...