DF Felltower: Why can't you temporarily suppress magic?

Over the course of Felltower, the question of countering magic has come up. Canonically in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, there is no way for PCs to temporarily suspend an enchantment. If magic is permanent, the effect remains and is not subject to the relatively simple and easy counters of Dispel Magic and Counterspell. Curse-like effects are often removable with Remove Curse, and you can dispel/counter non-permanent magic.

But it's deliberate that the spell list doesn't include Suspend Enchantment. Because of this, these things are generally true:

Dispel Magic doesn't harm created undead, contructs, or permanent enchantments (wether on items or locations.) It does generally have the potential to end the magic behind spells like Animate Shadow or Animate Object or Create Warrior. Some spells have very specific counters, and thus aren't subject to Dispel Magic - examples include Flesh to Stone and Entombment.

Counterspell can only directly counter spells, not magic effects in general, and are subject to the revised rules we use.

Ward is only useful defensively, and again, only against spells, not enchantments and magical effects that just happen to be possible to create with a spell. Just because you may potentially be able to Ward against Burning Touch doesn't mean all touch-based fire attacks from magical creatures are subject to Ward.

Remove Curse is effective against a special set of spells and effects - they're called out specifically in the descriptions of the individual spells.



Why?

Because enchantments should be special. They should not be subject to a high-skill caster or a good roll to end. Magic-based obstacles should be solved with cleverness or sucking up the effects, not by just spamming out Dispel Magic.

In additional, magical creatures - undead, constructs, mana-dependent beings, etc. - shouldn't be singled out for a special generic damage / save-or-die spell (such as allowing Dispel Magic to damage or outright kill such creatures). And if even some are, that means step one should always be casting Dispel Magic to see if it'll damage or kill such creatures. The spell would go from a way to counter temporary magic to doing that plus potentially killing otherwise potentially problem-causing foes. Don't know what to do with a critter? Start with Dispel Magic.

Therefore I don't even allow it on a critical - the "I rolled a 3, so a miracle occurs!" that is the equivalent of post-1st edition D&D/AD&D's "I rolled a 20." Allowing such would encourage people to just keep trying to same spells over and over and over, hoping/praying for a 3. Once that's possible, generally, people will just try Dispel Magic on everything unti it works. I've seen this with our special rule on Missile Shield that allows a 3 or 4 to penetrate it (if you had an effective 1+ skill in the first place, of course) - people just keep plugging away, hoping for that low roll that will solve the problem without them needing to find a different solution. I like that rule enough to keep it, but allowing it does push people to a thoughtless repetition of a failed tactic until they've rolled a 3 to see if it "really" doesn't work.

With that in mind, players can be sure that only NMZs really mess with their enchanted items, magical creatures won't just take damage from one spell that automatically acts as a damage spell / off button, and that spells designed to counter spells aren't the answer to fantasy problems that aren't instantly amenable to "I hit it really hard in the hit points."



Related:

Revised Dispel Magic (and for people who groan that a 1-hex spell was 3 seconds, 2 with Skill 20, is now 5 seconds, 3 seconds with skill 20, thus making the spell "useless" for combat . . . feel free to not cast it!)