Despite playing Oblivion for 300+ hours with several characters, I still have no idea how to get "Dispel" spells to work. I know they have something to do with removing effects from you or from enemies, but using "dispel on self" spells while something is afflicting me (Silence etc.) seems to have no effect. Am I doing something wrong? :shrug:

The dispel has a magnitude that must be higher than that of the spell that was cast. More info here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Dispel

My character primarily uses dispel on self in a few ways:

She has a dispel 100 on self spell that she uses when she wants to extinguish her own light or night eye spells (because they are each 120 seconds and she normally doesn't need them that long - just for a quick search). She can also use the spell on herself to evaporate her own summon if, say the summon gets into a friendly fire argument with an ally.

She also carries very strong homemade dispel potions (she is an alchemy master so their strength is 111 and her preferred recipe is bergamot + graqes). A mage is in trouble if silenced, and silence prevents you from casting the dispel effect to eliminate the silence. So, the answer is to quaff a potion to eliminate the silence effect. As long as she can cast, she can use spells for any effect - therefore she finds the dispel potions invaluable.

She also has a dispel 100 (on others) on target spell but we have mixed results. It should, when cast on a summoner, cause his summon to evaporate - but it doesn't alway seem to work.

As Acadian mentioned, high level dispels are required to negate high level spells. Although I don't think Greater Power spells (once a day spells) can be dispelled.
I don't think dispel works on poisons either. Best use a cure poison spell for that. Or a cure poison potion if you happen to be hit with a silence poison.


I just did some quick testing and it appears you cannot dispel spells that are cast by scrolls. So some of the summoners may have had a summon scroll of some sort, in their inventory. From what I have observed with Oblivion's NPC combat AI, if they can, summoning is the first thing they do. So, unless the character is as skilled as Buffy in stealth (1 hit kill ), you may never find a summon scroll on an NPC the player killed. It's the first thing/ one of the first things NPC AI combat uses.

You can't cast while silenced. You need to use a potion of dispel in order to get that effect.