RangerWickett
Legend
When I ran the playtest for the War of the Burning Sky adventure path, I had one player who really loved Magic, and wanted to dive headfirst into spell dueling. Some clever techniques he developed:
- The Pump Fake. Make a Deception check to pretend to cast a spell (as a bonus action), and if you beat their Wisdom check to detect your trick, they cast their counterspell to soon, letting you cast your real spell. (We used to play basketball, and he'd do this all the time, feigning a jump shot so we'd go up to block, but waiting to actually jump until we were coming back down.)
- The Tree. Duck behind cover and cast your spell where your opponent has no line of sight.
- The Gunslinger. Step out of cover but ready an action to cast acid arrow the moment your opponent starts to cast anything. Get into a staredown as each waits for the other to move first. (Hopefully your opponent doesn't realize that the spell you cast when you were behind a tree was invisibility, on the party's rogue, who should be stabbing your opponent right about . . . now.)
- The Phantasmal Tree. As above, but the spell you cast is an illusion of yourself. Next turn direct that illusion to pop out and pretend to cast a spell, drawing your opponent's counterspell. Then step out and hit the opponent with your real spell.