The fact that you are extrapolating so many "exceptions", based on the assumption that the spell's specific listed duration is somehow not true, should be a good indication that it's not as complicated as you are trying to make it.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Trying to read a spell that describes itself as only working until the spell ends, as having somehow already ended on casting, is the true mental gymnastics. The spell text specifically and explicitly and in great detail describes itself as ongoing, regardless of the general one-word label that appears in its header. If a spell's header said "Casting Time: 1 Action" but then in its body told you "...or, this spell can be cast as a Reaction if X happens..." would you insist that it can't be cast as a Reaction, or that when you cast it using a reaction that that activity counts as using an Action?
Spell descriptions can be exceptions to their header info, and indeed very often are.
Trying to read a spell that describes itself as only working until the spell ends, as having somehow already ended on casting, is the true mental gymnastics. The spell text specifically and explicitly and in great detail describes itself as ongoing, regardless of the general one-word label that appears in its header. If a spell's header said "Casting Time: 1 Action" but then in its body told you "...or, this spell can be cast as a Reaction if X happens..." would you insist that it can't be cast as a Reaction, or that when you cast it using a reaction that that activity counts as using an Action?
Spell descriptions can be exceptions to their header info, and indeed very often are.
Of course I wouldn't argue that, but it also isn't the point now, is it? Secret Chest's stated duration is instantaneous, and it has been spelled out that this is the only thing that matters regarding Dispel Magic. Full stop.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
As Sigred is pointing out, you're overthinking it.
If Duration is Instantaneous, it cannot be Dispelled. If this was a "what I would rule as DM" thing, sure, we can get into the logics of it all, but it isn't, this is a "what is the RAW of it?" and the RAW has been detailed.
But sure, let's take a peek at the logic of it (which, I have already mentioned but hey, let's try saying it a different way):
It's already been compared to Find Familiar, and this is a perfect example. Find Familiar duration is Instantaneous, but it leaves behind a magical creature AND grants you and the familiar a magical bond. These are lasting magical effects even though the spell has technically ended. The familiar or the bond cannot be dispelled either. Secret Chest works the same way, it grants the specifics of an ability, then ends, leaving that magical effect behind. Same principle.
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Reading the text of the spell is not overthinking anything. If you are telling me to ignore the fact that the spell specifically tells you it HASNT ended, then that is a pretty good sign that you grasp that the text is actually against you on this one. A RAW reading is not whatever is simplest or most immediately intuitive, it is what the rule text in its totality describes.
Secret Chest says it (not just the magical effect, the SPELL) hasn’t ended. If it HAD ended, it makes it clear that that would mean the chest is gone forever. Ergo, there is a spell to dispel. And all chapter 10 says, is you cannot dispel an instant spell which has already ended (which Secret Chest is not such a spell).
The rules say what they say, Sectet Chest is an ongoing spell for Dispel Magic (and creates an ongoing effect, but you would need Antimagic Field to work that angle).
Technically, Secret Chest does not have a duration, its effects have a duration. I would probably treat the chest as a magic item, rather than an item with a spell cast on it.
...After 60 days, there is a cumulative 5 percent chance per day that the spell's effect ends. This effect ends if you cast this spell again, if the smaller replica chest is destroyed, or if you choose to end the spell as an action. If the spell ends and the larger chest is on the Ethereal Plane, it is irretrievably lost.
A spell's duration is the length of time the spell persists...
"Technically," Secret Chest is an Instantaneous spell that breaks the mold of its class, because it does have a duration. Its effects also linger, which you all have pointed out is not entirely unusual for other instant spells that create or alter things, but inarguably the spell itself specifically tells you that the SPELL ITSELF is ongoing.
What is so controversial about reading the spell's description and believing that it means what it says?
OK, put it this way: Instantaneous spells are not dispellable. It is an Instantaneous spell specifically so it cannot be dispelled.
As Pantagruel666 says: think of it as the spell creating a magic item. Magic items cannot be dispelled either.
RAW it cannot be dispelled. If you disagree and want to discuss that perhaps the Dungeon Master forum is better where you discuss how you'd want to rule it. This is the rules forum for discussing RAW.
By RAW the neither chest can be dispelled - which answers the OP's question.
I'm hopping out of this discussion because we're going round in circles.
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For the record, the spell goodberry and find familiar are similar is similar to this; they create an item/creature with a magical effect/ability that lasts much longer than the spells duration. So this is not really a one off, but the desired outcome of these types of spells
For the record, the spell goodberry and find familiar are similar is similar to this; they create an item/creature with a magical effect/ability that lasts much longer than the spells duration. So this is not really a one off, but the desired outcome of these types of spells
Find Familiar is actually very similar to Secret Chest; both of them grant the ability to stow something away by spending an action, and recall it by spending another action, though one stows things in a pocket dimension and the other stows them on the ethereal plane.
It is somewhat unclear where the chest is actually located on the Ethereal plane, though. If it's in the border ethereal you can see it with See Invisibility and loot it with Etherealness. That's probably not the intent; while 5e doesn't go into detail, 3.5e mentioned that "an extraplanar expedition might be mounted to find it", which probably means the Deep Ethereal.
Chapter 10 does not say "no spell with a printed duration of 'Instantaneous' may be ended with Dispel Magic".
Duration
A spell's duration is the length of time the spell persists. A duration can be expressed in rounds, minutes, hours, or even years. Some spells specify that their effects last until the spells are dispelled or destroyed.
Instantaneous
Many spells are instantaneous. The spell harms, heals, creates, or alters a creature or an object in a way that can't be dispelled, because its magic exists only for an instant.
RAW: For an instant-duration spell, the (1) harming, (2) healing, (3) creation, or (4) altering of of a creature or object can't be dispelled, because its magic exists only for an instant.
I hate to be hair splitty (nah, I love it), but that is a very limited statement and the following are either true or in no way prohibited by faithfully reading that language above:
Whether or not you can dispel the harming/healing/creation/altering of a creature or object (i.e. the magical "effect"), nothing has said you cannot dispel the spell itself. Ordinarily it will be a given that there will be no spell to dispel, because most Instantaneous spells actually end after casting. Secret Chest is a specific exception by describing itself as not ending, and thus the spell itself (not its magical effect) is still around and seems to meet the requirements of Dispel Magic. Nothing in Chapter 10 claims that there is any type of spell that cannot be dispelled, Instantaneous or otherwise, that section only says that Instant "harming, healing, creation, or alteration" can't be dispelled.
You can't dispel the harm/creation/altering of a creature because "its magic only exists for an instant." If a spell specifically provides that its magic does not only exist for an instant and that a magical effect is reliant on ongoing magic, Chapter 10 has not claimed thta that magic can't be dispelled. Secret Chest's replica may or may not satisfy this if you really truly feel that the chest itself has been transformed into a non-magical special item that is now a conduit to the other chest... but that really feels like bending over backwords to take an unreasonable reading of how that spell describes itself.
Secret Chest doesn't "harm, heal, create, or alter" any creature or object. The chest is still a chest, the replica is still a replica, but there is an ongoing magical tether between the two that allows the caster to magically summon the chest. The section quoted above doesn't claim that ongoing magical tethers or lingering transportation magic or whatehaveyou can't be dispelled.
A spell's duration is ultimately "the length of time the spell persists." In a perfect world this would match the word printed in the spell block, yes... clearly an errata is needed because the spell block cannot be reconciled with the spell's description. But short of an errata, we aren't left with there being no RAW reading of the spell... we just are forced to fall back on more close reading and analysis to find what the most RAW reading of the spell is. The most-RAW reading the spell is to read the spell's description, which lays out in great detail that it is not an instant duration spell because the spell itself (not just its magical effect) persists.
Goodberry and Find Familiar may be similar in that they are Instantaneous duration spells that create something that lasts.... but they are very different by in no way describing themselves as having an "until the spell ends" condition. Secret Chest goes out of its way to say it's still an active spell. Goodberry doesn't do that, and Find Familiar does that kind of, but without ever saying that the spell is in danger of "ending." What's true for Secret Chest's interaction with Dispel Magic is not necessarily a slippery slope that will swallow Goodberry or Find Familiar (though I do maintain that all those spells fall prey to an Antimagic Field).
Soo... you can see in clear print that instantaneous duration spells cannot be dispelled, but you still want to argue that it's not true?
The absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. We do have evidence of absence here. The general rule is that spells with an instantaneous duration are not eligible to be dispelled. In order for a specific rule to override this one, you should be looking for a line in the spell's description that says you can dispel it. There is no such line in Secret Chest.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Nothing in the text, here or in Dispel Magic, says that "instantaneous duration spells cannot be dispelled." Your own imprecise reading is adding that. Chapter 10 says that the type of healing, harming, creation, or alteration of a creature or object that is accomplished with instantaneous spells which don't leave lasting magic can't be dispelled. I'm sorry that the rules didn't provide the rule that you would like to exist, or which you think the writers intended to write, but it just doesn't say "instantaneous duration spells cannot be dispelled."
Chapter 10 does not say "no spell with a printed duration of 'Instantaneous' may be ended with Dispel Magic".
Duration
A spell's duration is the length of time the spell persists. A duration can be expressed in rounds, minutes, hours, or even years. Some spells specify that their effects last until the spells are dispelled or destroyed.
Instantaneous
Many spells are instantaneous. The spell harms, heals, creates, or alters a creature or an object in a way that can't be dispelled, because its magic exists only for an instant.
Leaving the bolded section that you added to highlight why you are reading things incorrectly. The red text is all that matters. This is literally saying that a spell with an instantaneous duration cannotbe dispelled. You can rearrange that entire sentence however you like, but it will always carry the same meaning: Instantaneous spells cannot be dispelled.
Secret Chestdoes not say that it can be dispelled. The burden of proof is on you to locate a positive affirmation in order to back up your claim of an exception.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
It literally does not say that a spell cannot be dispelled. As we all know by this point from reading Dispel Magic over and over, there is a big difference between (1) dispelling a spell and (2) dispelling a magical effect created by a spell. Chapter 10 talks about (2), not (1).
Secret Chest says very clearly that the spell is still around after you've cast it, and there's no possible way to read that as saying anything other than that. Dispel Magic says very clearly that you can dispel spells. No spell anywhere says that "this spell can be dispelled by Dispel Magic," because that's the job of Dispel Magic to describe, so that's a lame argument.
Secret Chest is a spell that lasts. Dispel Magic dispels spells. That's the end of the story.
Sure thing, Champ. You're the only one whom thinks so.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
It is impossible to dispel a spell with duration 'Instantaneous' because you can only dispel a spell before it has ended (causing it to end), and a spell with a duration of 'instantaneous' ends immediately on casting, though it can produce lasting effects.
If you fireball a forest, the fireball is instantaneous, but the forest fire it starts will persist. That does not mean you can dispel the forest fire.
Stepping outside of RAW for a moment.... it's probably RAI that you can Dispel the chest, because it's almost identical to its wording in 3.5, and in 3.5 the spell had a 60-day-or-less duration and was vulnerable to dispelling. It's a stretch to say that we should look at prior editions to interpret 5E spells, I know, but is there any reason to think that the designer's intended to specifically change that one thing about the spell when so much else is identical (and indeed even uses the same wording)?
You hide a chest on the Ethereal Plane for as long as sixty days and can retrieve it at will. The chest can contain up to 1 cubic foot of material per caster level (regardless of the chest’s actual size, which is about 3 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet). If any living creatures are in the chest, there is a 75% chance that the spell simply fails. Once the chest is hidden, you can retrieve it by concentrating (a standard action), and it appears next to you.
The chest must be exceptionally well crafted and expensive, constructed for you by master crafters. The cost of such a chest is never less than 5,000 gp. Once it is constructed, you must make a tiny replica (of the same materials and perfect in every detail), so that the miniature of the chest appears to be a perfect copy. (The replica costs 50 gp.) You can have but one pair of these chests at any given time—even a wish spell does not allow more. The chests are nonmagical and can be fitted with locks, wards, and so on, just as any normal chest can be.
To hide the chest, you cast the spell while touching both the chest and the replica. The chest vanishes into the Ethereal Plane. You need the replica to recall the chest. After sixty days, there is a cumulative chance of 5% per day that the chest is irretrievably lost. If the miniature of the chest is lost or destroyed, there is no way, not even with a wish spell, that the large chest can be summoned back, although an extraplanar expedition might be mounted to find it.
Living things in the chest eat, sleep, and age normally, and they die if they run out of food, air, water, or whatever they need to survive.
It is impossible to dispel a spell with duration 'Instantaneous' because you can only dispel a spell before it has ended (causing it to end), and a spell with a duration of 'instantaneous' ends immediately on casting, though it can produce lasting effects.
If you fireball a forest, the fireball is instantaneous, but the forest fire it starts will persist. That does not mean you can dispel the forest fire.
Agreed for the most part, nobody's asking to dispel a forest fire. But tell me how you read the actual words of Secret Chest, which tells you explicitly that the spell hasn't ended in its final paragraph, and then still give me that as a response? You're just repeating generalities, how does the language of this spell specifically lead you to the conclusion that the spell has "ended immediately on casting"? If you're telling me that the wording of the spell is wrong and should be errata'd, why is that any more likely than that the possibility that the word in the spell block header is wrong and should be errata'd?
The fact that you are extrapolating so many "exceptions", based on the assumption that the spell's specific listed duration is somehow not true, should be a good indication that it's not as complicated as you are trying to make it.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Trying to read a spell that describes itself as only working until the spell ends, as having somehow already ended on casting, is the true mental gymnastics. The spell text specifically and explicitly and in great detail describes itself as ongoing, regardless of the general one-word label that appears in its header. If a spell's header said "Casting Time: 1 Action" but then in its body told you "...or, this spell can be cast as a Reaction if X happens..." would you insist that it can't be cast as a Reaction, or that when you cast it using a reaction that that activity counts as using an Action?
Spell descriptions can be exceptions to their header info, and indeed very often are.
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Of course I wouldn't argue that, but it also isn't the point now, is it? Secret Chest's stated duration is instantaneous, and it has been spelled out that this is the only thing that matters regarding Dispel Magic. Full stop.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
As Sigred is pointing out, you're overthinking it.
If Duration is Instantaneous, it cannot be Dispelled. If this was a "what I would rule as DM" thing, sure, we can get into the logics of it all, but it isn't, this is a "what is the RAW of it?" and the RAW has been detailed.
But sure, let's take a peek at the logic of it (which, I have already mentioned but hey, let's try saying it a different way):
It's already been compared to Find Familiar, and this is a perfect example. Find Familiar duration is Instantaneous, but it leaves behind a magical creature AND grants you and the familiar a magical bond. These are lasting magical effects even though the spell has technically ended. The familiar or the bond cannot be dispelled either. Secret Chest works the same way, it grants the specifics of an ability, then ends, leaving that magical effect behind. Same principle.
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Reading the text of the spell is not overthinking anything. If you are telling me to ignore the fact that the spell specifically tells you it HASNT ended, then that is a pretty good sign that you grasp that the text is actually against you on this one. A RAW reading is not whatever is simplest or most immediately intuitive, it is what the rule text in its totality describes.
Secret Chest says it (not just the magical effect, the SPELL) hasn’t ended. If it HAD ended, it makes it clear that that would mean the chest is gone forever. Ergo, there is a spell to dispel. And all chapter 10 says, is you cannot dispel an instant spell which has already ended (which Secret Chest is not such a spell).
The rules say what they say, Sectet Chest is an ongoing spell for Dispel Magic (and creates an ongoing effect, but you would need Antimagic Field to work that angle).
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Technically, Secret Chest does not have a duration, its effects have a duration. I would probably treat the chest as a magic item, rather than an item with a spell cast on it.
From Secret Chest:
From Merriam-Webster:
From Chapter 10:
"Technically," Secret Chest is an Instantaneous spell that breaks the mold of its class, because it does have a duration. Its effects also linger, which you all have pointed out is not entirely unusual for other instant spells that create or alter things, but inarguably the spell itself specifically tells you that the SPELL ITSELF is ongoing.
What is so controversial about reading the spell's description and believing that it means what it says?
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OK, put it this way: Instantaneous spells are not dispellable. It is an Instantaneous spell specifically so it cannot be dispelled.
As Pantagruel666 says: think of it as the spell creating a magic item. Magic items cannot be dispelled either.
RAW it cannot be dispelled. If you disagree and want to discuss that perhaps the Dungeon Master forum is better where you discuss how you'd want to rule it. This is the rules forum for discussing RAW.
By RAW the neither chest can be dispelled - which answers the OP's question.
I'm hopping out of this discussion because we're going round in circles.
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For the record, the spell goodberry and find familiar are similar is similar to this; they create an item/creature with a magical effect/ability that lasts much longer than the spells duration. So this is not really a one off, but the desired outcome of these types of spells
Find Familiar is actually very similar to Secret Chest; both of them grant the ability to stow something away by spending an action, and recall it by spending another action, though one stows things in a pocket dimension and the other stows them on the ethereal plane.
It is somewhat unclear where the chest is actually located on the Ethereal plane, though. If it's in the border ethereal you can see it with See Invisibility and loot it with Etherealness. That's probably not the intent; while 5e doesn't go into detail, 3.5e mentioned that "an extraplanar expedition might be mounted to find it", which probably means the Deep Ethereal.
Chapter 10 does not say "no spell with a printed duration of 'Instantaneous' may be ended with Dispel Magic".
RAW: For an instant-duration spell, the (1) harming, (2) healing, (3) creation, or (4) altering of of a creature or object can't be dispelled, because its magic exists only for an instant.
I hate to be hair splitty (nah, I love it), but that is a very limited statement and the following are either true or in no way prohibited by faithfully reading that language above:
Goodberry and Find Familiar may be similar in that they are Instantaneous duration spells that create something that lasts.... but they are very different by in no way describing themselves as having an "until the spell ends" condition. Secret Chest goes out of its way to say it's still an active spell. Goodberry doesn't do that, and Find Familiar does that kind of, but without ever saying that the spell is in danger of "ending." What's true for Secret Chest's interaction with Dispel Magic is not necessarily a slippery slope that will swallow Goodberry or Find Familiar (though I do maintain that all those spells fall prey to an Antimagic Field).
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Soo... you can see in clear print that instantaneous duration spells cannot be dispelled, but you still want to argue that it's not true?
The absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. We do have evidence of absence here. The general rule is that spells with an instantaneous duration are not eligible to be dispelled. In order for a specific rule to override this one, you should be looking for a line in the spell's description that says you can dispel it. There is no such line in Secret Chest.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Nothing in the text, here or in Dispel Magic, says that "instantaneous duration spells cannot be dispelled." Your own imprecise reading is adding that. Chapter 10 says that the type of healing, harming, creation, or alteration of a creature or object that is accomplished with instantaneous spells which don't leave lasting magic can't be dispelled. I'm sorry that the rules didn't provide the rule that you would like to exist, or which you think the writers intended to write, but it just doesn't say "instantaneous duration spells cannot be dispelled."
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Leaving the bolded section that you added to highlight why you are reading things incorrectly. The red text is all that matters. This is literally saying that a spell with an instantaneous duration cannot be dispelled. You can rearrange that entire sentence however you like, but it will always carry the same meaning: Instantaneous spells cannot be dispelled.
Secret Chest does not say that it can be dispelled. The burden of proof is on you to locate a positive affirmation in order to back up your claim of an exception.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
It literally does not say that a spell cannot be dispelled. As we all know by this point from reading Dispel Magic over and over, there is a big difference between (1) dispelling a spell and (2) dispelling a magical effect created by a spell. Chapter 10 talks about (2), not (1).
Secret Chest says very clearly that the spell is still around after you've cast it, and there's no possible way to read that as saying anything other than that. Dispel Magic says very clearly that you can dispel spells. No spell anywhere says that "this spell can be dispelled by Dispel Magic," because that's the job of Dispel Magic to describe, so that's a lame argument.
Secret Chest is a spell that lasts. Dispel Magic dispels spells. That's the end of the story.
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Sure thing, Champ. You're the only one whom thinks so.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
It is impossible to dispel a spell with duration 'Instantaneous' because you can only dispel a spell before it has ended (causing it to end), and a spell with a duration of 'instantaneous' ends immediately on casting, though it can produce lasting effects.
If you fireball a forest, the fireball is instantaneous, but the forest fire it starts will persist. That does not mean you can dispel the forest fire.
Stepping outside of RAW for a moment.... it's probably RAI that you can Dispel the chest, because it's almost identical to its wording in 3.5, and in 3.5 the spell had a 60-day-or-less duration and was vulnerable to dispelling. It's a stretch to say that we should look at prior editions to interpret 5E spells, I know, but is there any reason to think that the designer's intended to specifically change that one thing about the spell when so much else is identical (and indeed even uses the same wording)?
(Woof this formatting, Secret Chest is here)
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Also lol Cyb3R agreed with me like three months ago, so maybe I'm not the "only one"? :)
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Agreed for the most part, nobody's asking to dispel a forest fire. But tell me how you read the actual words of Secret Chest, which tells you explicitly that the spell hasn't ended in its final paragraph, and then still give me that as a response? You're just repeating generalities, how does the language of this spell specifically lead you to the conclusion that the spell has "ended immediately on casting"? If you're telling me that the wording of the spell is wrong and should be errata'd, why is that any more likely than that the possibility that the word in the spell block header is wrong and should be errata'd?
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