Holy Sword: Duration or Effect Buff?

[Voice of Kerensky]

Holy sword (and holy avenger), on paper, looks pretty solid. But in reality, this spell is largely a waste of a spell slot.

+5 enhancement (a paladin can cast GMW; seeing as you need to be at least level 15 paladin to cast holy sword, you can already get +5 from GMW long term)
16 SR (pretty useless against any decent level caster/mob)
1d6 divine damage vs evil (the one actually useful thing the sword does)
50% (says 25, but it's actually 50) chance of dispel magic on hit.

The kicker here is the dispel. It sounds good. It used to be amazing, prior to 1.69. 1.69, however, utterly killed it.

The caster level for the dispel from holy avenger is 10.
The calculation for a dispel is 1d20 + CL (attacker) vs 12 + CL (defender).
Dispel does not have auto success or auto fail.

So the maximum result for the dispel from HA is 30; a caster level of 19 will result in 31. This means that anyone or anyone creature with a caster level of 19 or higher is immune to the dispel from HA. Given that Holy Sword is a higher level spell (15+, typically speaking), you will often be encountering CL 19+ creatures when you go out adventuring at that level and beyond. Essentially, the dispel is a gimmick that's only useful against things that, in most cases, you should be able to beat down anyhow.

The ultimate result is that, taken into consideration you almost certainly have access to +5 enhance from GMW, Holy Sword is basically a 1d6 divine damage bonus vs evil that lasts round/level, as it currently exists.

[tenorgeneral]

Personally, I agree with this assessment.  I think it'd be better to leave the on-hit dispel off of Holy Sword and Holy Avengers in favor of an ability linked to the sword that is an area of effect greater dispel usable unltd times per day.  This is exactly what Holy Avengers do in 3.5, and if coded to only be the area of effect, would not allow people to target single casters.  It could even be worked so that the dispel only targets hostiles, though that might be more work.

The other thing that I think is pretty important is returning the Holy property of Holy Avengers to its 2d6 damage vs. Evil, as 1d6 Divine is lower even than tier 3 elemental and in some cases divine damage output.  Also I was fairly certain SR from a holy Avenger was 5+ paladin level, which should be at least 21, given that paladins on CD generally get Holy Avengers at 16th level or thereabouts.

[Voice of Kerensky]

Sort of bumping and sort of adding a suggesting to this, as it never really got any response.

I think the best solution here is simply to give it turn/level duration. That way it's worth keeping it around as a "covers half a dungeon, maybe" sort of buff, but a full time holy avenger sword still has value for not wearing off and not occupying a spell slot.

A top circle buff that essentially boils down to being 1d6 divine vs evil in the vast majority of circumstances should at least get turn/level.