Is a spell considered "ongoing" or "started" even if its effects are delayed ? (Mad foam rager)

Question

My questions is about, generally speaking if a spell is considered "ongoing" or if it has "started",in D&D 3.5, even if the effect of the spell is delayed, and in particular about the Mad foam rager feat.

Situation, in order of initiative: NPC wizard , player Wizard, player Barbarian

1. The NPC Wizard cast Charm on the raging Barbarian
2. The Barbarian fails its Will save
3. The DM describe that the barbarian feels calmer and that the bad guy looks not that threatening anymore.
4. The barbarian sense that something wrong (or simply saw the wizard use a wand against him and knows something's up even if he's not sure what exactly)
5. Barbarian uses the feat Mad foam rager to delay the effect of the spell as per description.

( Player's Handbook II, p. 80) As an immediate action, you can choose to delay the effect of a single attack, spell, or ability used against you. The damage or effect does not take hold until the end of your next turn.

6. The barbarian use a free action to shout to his ally wizard "I don't feel right, do that thing that kills magic effects that you usually do".

7. On his turn, the allied wizard cast succesfully Dispel Magic on the barbarian.

You can use dispel magic to end ongoing spells that have been cast on a creature or object, to temporarily suppress the magical abilities of a magic item, to end ongoing spells (or at least their effects) within an area, or to counter another spellcaster’s spell. A dispelled spell ends as if its duration had expired.

8. Barbarian attacks the Npc wizard.

What happens at the end of his turn, when effect of the spell is supposed to become active, has the dispel magic been effective in suppressing the charm spell?

Where I could not find a definitive answer is about the description of what dispel magic acts on (bolding mine), particularly what "ongoing" involves. If the spell is considered ongoing, even though its effect is delayed, then the barbarian should be free of the charm at the end of it's turn, but if it's not ongoing the dispel magic does nothing asteh spell as not started yet. Another way of framing the question is, on focusing on the definition part of dispel magic

A dispelled spell ends as if its duration had expired.

and ask, has the "duration" of the spell started when its effect was delayed by the Mad foam rager feat (before the barbarian turn)?

Edit: I've searched every forum I could think of, in SE RPG, for example, there are only 2 question about Mad Foam rager in the whole site.

Answer 1

Utterly undefined. Delaying effects is rare; I can’t actually think of any others beyond Mad Foam Rager that work so open-endedly. A crusader’s steely resolve delays damage by a round, but only damage, not entire effects. A few effects, such as a knight’s loyal beyond death and a frenzied berserker’s deathless frenzy, can delay death, but that is a very specific thing. I don’t know that there are any others.

Anyway, there certainly aren't any core rules for handling it, which means Mad Foam Rager should be providing those rules, and it does not. This is going to be purely a matter of ruling. But before getting into how I rule and why, you might want to consider that it’d be pretty easy for the wizard to just ready an action to cast dispel magic once Mad Foam Rager’s grace period is up, which would have nearly the same effect. Also, for certain effects, ongoing protection could be applied immediately—if that were dominate person instead, protection from evil would suppress it. Unlike “delaying,” we have reasonably clear rules for “suppressing.”

Which is actually where I’m going with my own ruling: just call it one round of suppression rather than a delay. That makes it clear what is going on, and how it works—the magic is applied, its duration is ticking down, it can be dispelled, and so on. This might improve the power of the feat somewhat—depending on how you define “delay”—but only on the margins. Losing a round of duration hardly matters in a game where effects almost always outlast a combat by many rounds—by the time an effect has arguably ended early, the fight is long-since over anyway. It will be quite strong against effects with 1-round durations, but those are quite rare except at the lowest levels of the game. At those levels, well, the barbarian is allowed to shine. And arguably, you save the wizard having to ready an action, but that often barely matters—and is an extra complication the game doesn’t need. Most importantly, those discrepancies are all “arguable”—meaning another ruling risks arguments. It’s not worth it. Suppression is clear, defined, and mostly works out in players’ favor anyway, so this ruling eliminates a ton of arguments.