The nutshell timeline explanation is as follows:
1) In 1.69, dispels were Dispel CL + d20 vs Target Effect CL + 11, ties to the target (this was often written as CL +d20 vs CL +12, because ties to the non-rolling party is a bit of an oddity; if you tie a target's AC, you hit. If you tie a DC target, you make the save. If you tie a skill check DC, you pass, etc., but mathematically they were equivalent). A CL 22 (focusless) mords/gdispel would remove CL 30 effects 5% of the time: a 20 would dispel, a 19 would not.
2) When beamdog released EE, dispels were Dispel CL + d20 vs Target Effect CL + 11, ties to the dispeller. Beamdog viewed the above behavior, for better or worse, as a bug. Under the new state of affairs, a CL 22 focusless mords would remove CL 30 effects 10% of the time. A 19 would dispel, an 18 would not.
3) Then beamdog broke everything about the dispel code, and we had a couple of months where mundanes dispelled at CL 0.
Aniel emergency patched dispelling like 84502 times, but the intent, afaik, was always to get back to where things were before beamdog broke things (state 2, not state 1).
4) Aniel's quasi-final patch gets us back to a dispel system that resembles 2, but the formula has inadvertently reverted to state 1. This was caught eventually, and has now been fixed. We're at state 2 now, as was initially intended.
Any decision to revert further to state 1 should not be accomplished by accidental default, as was done, but rather by conscious decision that dispels in their present form are too potent.
As a mechanical aside: This is a very careful decision to have to make. The difference of a point or two either way has a huge impact on any class for which dispels are a core mechanic. I can fully understand why the team would want to avoid changing things
by accident. This update is best viewed as correcting an accidental and unintended nerf to dispels.
Arelith didn't boost anything how arelith dispel res works is in line with how it's worked for the duration of nwns existence
True for mundanes, not true for pale masters. PM needed a hell of a lot of fixing on the CL front. For the longest time, PM levels would count at half rate towards
spells per day, but would do fuckall for CL. So a Wiz 11/PM 16/Bard 3 build would cast and dispel at CL 11, but would have spells per day as a level 19 wizard. Vanilla NWN still works that way, afaik, and Arelith's solution to the issue is very much custom.
