D&D 5E Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

[Minigiant]

It really didn't.

Disruption Protocol

{U}{U} • Instant • As an additional cost to cast this spell, tap an untapped artifact you control or pay {1}. Counter target spell. • Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty (NEO) #51 • Illustrated by Pauline Voss • Magic: The Gathering, MTG

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Dissipate

{1}{U}{U} • Instant • Counter target spell. If that spell is countered this way, exile it instead of putting it into its owner's graveyard. • Innistrad: Midnight Hunt (MID) #49 • Illustrated by David Palumbo • Magic: The Gathering, MTG

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Those are both Standard legal, along with FORTY other results that are countering.

You have to tap an artifact to cast the first one.

How many artifacts do wizards have in D&D?

And lol 3 mana double U Counterspell. Might as well be infinite.

 

[Pedantic]

I actually think 3e has lessons for the counterspelling situation. You either had to prepare specifically the spell the opponent used or a noted opposite spell (i.e. haste and slow), or you could take the improved feat and use any spell from the same school, or you could use dispel magic, which resulted in am opposed caster level check and was kind of a crapshoot.

Once you jumped through that hoop, counterspelling required a readied action, eating up your turn. You could throw in the Ractive Counterspell feat to skip the readied action, but you still lost your next turn.

Counterspelling was thus an action stalemate, not action positive, and because you prepared each individual spell, something of a gamble you'd run out of applicable slots and an interesting edge for sorcerers. 5e's only edge here is that it's probably good to let spellcasters roll if they want to try and stop more powerful spell effects than they could cast, and it's a little crazy to require casters to three feats deep to not preemptively burn their actions each round.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Well Monks can, but that point aside, I see no reason they need to have magic damage. They should not automatically be able to damage something, the whole point of damage immunity is to force characters to use other options.

There are class options that would enable them to damage even enemies that are completely immune to P/B/S and that is rare. Saying all martials should have this is like saying all wizards should get magic missile for free in case they come across a Devil that is immune to Firebolt and Fireball. If you want magic missile choose it .... likewise, if your fighter, Barbarian or Rogue want to be able to damage creatures immune to weapons without using things like oil or holy water then take the options from those classes that give you that ability.

If we give martials magic damage automatically then I think we should make monsters that are immunt to non-magic P/B/S just be immune to all P/B/S (magic or not).

If you're writing every character class to bypass magic damage resistance by level 4, why are you putting it on monsters in the first place? There's like 1 story beat that's possible as a result, where a foe is a problem in the level 3-4 range, and then becomes something you can take down. Everywhere else it just becomes wasted text.

my thoughts on giving them natural magic damage for weapons was because the other classes have magic damage options; they have alternative solutions when their nonmagic weapons fail, but AFAIK the core class build of these four (i'm including monk even though it already gets the feature anyway just cause it's in the martial class group and if it didn't have the feature already it wouldn't) DON'T have alternate magic damage options without depending on having magic weapons or on other classes to support them.

 

[Scribe]

You have to tap an artifact to cast the first one.

How many artifacts do wizards have in D&D?

And lol 3 mana double U Counterspell. Might as well be infinite.

For eternal formats, yeah, 3cmc is high. For various Standard formats? Its fine. Modern decks played 3cmc counters, hell Modern decks played Cryptic.

I'm sure you are aware though.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't know if you have experience and context for "Reactive Blue Deck" players in MtG, but where counterspell exists, is the competitive space of both mtg and d&d.

It feels no better or worse than being crit or otherwise impacted.

There is also a reason why people call for WotC to Ban Islands

 

[Scribe]

There is also a reason why people call for WotC to Ban Islands

Yes, because those people have wrong views on what good gameplay and design looks like.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Like I said. MTG figured it out decades ago and works for the same company.

Forget Counterspell. Cast Negate.

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?format=%7C%5B%22Standard%22%5D&text=+%5B%22counter%20target%22%5D

So you basically provide an alternative to countering on one party or the other? That could work.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Full answer: Yes

 

[Maxperson]

Yes it is.

Counterspell just makes fights worse(much more boring). It would be better to just have both sides agree to scratch off all of their 3rd level spell slots and then start the fight at round 1. That way you get an interesting fight and both sides feel the effect of counterspell.

 

[Maxperson]

D&D could just ask the MTG people.

D&D is 25 years behind MTG on counterspelling and mage duels.

Sure. Let's ask everyone who has the victim of counterspell/control decks about how much fun that duel was.