Do your players use counterspell?

[Vysirez]

I've seen counterspelling used a few times in various games. Almost always though was via Reactive Counterspell. I have almost never seen a counterspell used as a readied action. Well mabye a couple times when we knew we were going after a powerful mage or cleric. Some of those spells can really mess things up.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I've seen it done twice by players: once a wizard decided there was no real need for him to get involved in the fight (we were winning handily) and readied a counterspell. He stopped a fireball from the other side. The second time, our bard readied a counterspell and stopped something nasty with a greater dispel magic. Not bad but usually there are better options.

Since we're on the subject, what do you all think of duelward? It seems like it might make counterspelling more advantageous if you have a chance to use it but it's a high opportunity cost spell unless you're very high level.

 

[mirivor]

I am on the verge of making Reactive Counterspell the standard countering system. Basically give to all casters for free.


By the way, I have NEVER seen counterspell used.

Later!

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The only time counterspelling really make sense is when you have more spellcasters on your side and you can predict a troublesome spell your opponent will cast. Not with Dispel Magic. You should counter with the exact spell to get 100% success.

The perfect example would be in Piratecat's story hour when the Defender's are fighting a very powerful dragon under 3.0 rules. When the dragon was down to less than ~half HPs, it was inevitable that it would cast Heal (which healed all damage in 3.0). The party cleric Readied his own Heal to counter.

The tactic is particularly suited to this occasion because the high SR of the dragon and difficult to predict other magical defenses and immunities made the normal method of hammering away with a direct damage spell the inferior choice. The counterspelling with the exact spell ignores all defenses of the target.

 

[Gossamerblade]

Our parties have always used Dispel Magic, rather than Counterspell (that Reaving Dispel from CA is fun!). But my Bard recently aquired a ring of counterspell vs. Silence that might be very handy. (taken from the body of an evil cleric that cast Silence on our party)

 

[dcollins]

The perfect example would be in Piratecat's story hour when the Defender's are fighting a very powerful dragon under 3.0 rules. When the dragon was down to less than ~half HPs, it was inevitable that it would cast Heal (which healed all damage in 3.0). The party cleric Readied his own Heal to counter.

Do you have a link to that narrative? In order to pull that off the cleric would need to be within touch range of the dragon! (Due to the target-in-range requirement).

If there's anything I could change about Counterspelling, it would be the need to target one opponent. If you just didn't have to do that (and instead had it more like the PHB example of readying an action to "cast charm person on the first hobgoblin to come within 25 feet"), then a counterspeller could at least cover a bunch of enemy spellcasters, and make the tactic at least arguably beneficial.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Not ever seen.

Why counterspell when you can more easily ready a fireball at the caster in question and do damage ON TOP OF forcing a DC: 45 Concentration check?

That's how I counterspell. The last time I tried to use that tactic, it was against a cleric. He made his Reflex save against my fireball and barely made his Concentration check. (If he had failed his save, he couldn't have Concentrated.) Alas, he was casting heal on an evil barbarian at the time.

You'll notice that, in this example, a wizard has a decent chance of disrupting a cleric's spells, and, oh yeah, injure him at the same time.

Spell Resistance, Spell Immunity, Energy Resistance/Protection, concealment, etc. A readied Fireball won't always be a good option. Many times it is, but not always.

True. In the above example, the cleric still managed to cast his spell. However, there's no way my wizard could have countered heal. I find readying an action to burn my opponent to be more useful than counterspelling all the time - at least I'll find out if the cleric had cast protection from fire (switch to lightning bolt) or spell resistance (switch to Otiluke's resilient sphere).

I often as a player have counter spelled usually with dispel magic bad guys to shut down thier ability to do things to the party. If you have one big spell caster surrounded by mooks it is often useful to counter spell him while the party wipes out the mooks after the Big bad caster fails to geta few spells off and loses those spells they get a little nervous.

Nah, I find it more useful to ready actions to burn the evil spellcaster and his mooks simultaneously.

I've seen it contemplated once. A newer DM asked me about it before a nasty encounter. He ended up not using it in the encounter, on the (correct) grounds that it sucked I think maybe the NPCs were thinking of counterspelling my wizard or something, but that only works if they observed my spellcasting and basically copied my spell list

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Checking out Warlocks lately, I've considered that maybe a Warlock could make a good counterspeller. With Dispel Magic at will, he can afford to bust one every round.

On the whole, though, even giving full caster level and dm at will, it's just never seemed like a good tactic. Said Warlock could just ready an action to whip an Eldritch Blast at the wizard he wants to counter ... get in good damage AND probably get a higher chance of disrupting the spell.

--fje

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Do you have a link to that narrative? In order to pull that off the cleric would need to be within touch range of the dragon! (Due to the target-in-range requirement).

In this case, the dragon was very purposely targetting the cleric for killing first. The cleric was in touch range whether he wanted to or not.

I will see if I can dig that up...

If there's anything I could change about Counterspelling, it would be the need to target one opponent. If you just didn't have to do that (and instead had it more like the PHB example of readying an action to "cast charm person on the first hobgoblin to come within 25 feet"), then a counterspeller could at least cover a bunch of enemy spellcasters, and make the tactic at least arguably beneficial.

Agreed. As written, vanilla counterspelling is too inflexible.

 

[Caliban]

I've been playing in the RPGA for over 5 years, and I've seen it used a few times. Maybe 5. More often it's the "ready to nuke when he casts".