D&D 5E Can counter spell be counter spelled?

[HalfOrc HalfBiscuit]

2) Visibility. You can only counter a spell you see being cast. If the caster is invisible (especially improved invisibility), or casting from beyond the range of your darkvision, etc - you can't attempt to counter their spell. (Unless you have see invisibility, etc.)

If you have line of sight, but the spell does not have a somatic component, do you need to be able to hear the spellcaster in order to discern that he/she is not just talking?

 

[ThePolarBear]

Personally, I find the RAW much more logical than what you are proposing. What you are calling "sheer logic" and "sheer absurdity" are just opinions, not fact. It's just your opinion based on how you feel the game should work, which is absolutely fine for your home game. Just not in a discussion of how it is intended to work based on the written rules.

I do however find that:
Casting a spell as a bonus action does prevent you to counterspell, but casting a spell as an action does not;
Casting a spell while casting another spell is a thing;
Having the above go against pretty much every other part of the phb as much as interrupting actions and order of execution go

To be somewhat headscratching. It's so counterintuitive with regards to every other aspect of the rules that it seems like another ruleset.

If you have line of sight, but the spell does not have a somatic component, do you need to be able to hear the spellcaster in order to discern that he/she is not just talking?

For me (and it is "for me") casting a spell is more than just "talk,move,done". It includes effects that make casting a spell obvious - like glowing hands/components, crackles, smells - and masking this obviousness is also the strenght of Subtle spell, at least until Material components are not called for.
For me it's not really about being able to hear them... the spellcasting is obvious enought that you can distinguish the two things - talking and casting - without doubt.

To recognize the spell, on the other hand, hearing the words would certainly help.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I never realized until reading this that the 5e RAW would even allow something this hideous!

As far as I'm concerned if you stop casting your main spell to instead cast a Counterspell then your main spell is lost, and might go wild. Casting two spells at once is just ... wrong.

Even more wrong is a Lore Bard who is simultaneously using his mouth to supply the verbal components for Major Image (action), to play the kazoo that's acting as a bardic focus to replace the material components for Major Image (also the same action), to compose a heroic ballad inspiring his buddy with Bardic Inspiration (bonus action), and to insult (Cutting Words) the guy who's trying to Counterspell his Major Image to impair his counterspelling (reaction), all in the same round.

He must be talking faster than the guy in the Micro Machines commercial.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If you have line of sight, but the spell does not have a somatic component, do you need to be able to hear the spellcaster in order to discern that he/she is not just talking?

Depends on how the DM likes to run magic. At my table the ruling is, "You sense the spell building with your magical senses," so no, you don't have trouble distinguishing spells from talking.

 

[Lanefan]

Not necessarily. It wouldn't even take magic for such a thing to make sense.

Destroying is easier than creating, as a general rule of nature, so a potential rule of casting times might be that countering a spell takes half as long as the spell itself took to cast. If it takes two seconds to cast a Fireball, then it might only take one second to cast a Counterspell against that Fireball

I have no problem at all with Counterspell having the shortest casting time in the book, to allow it to work against any other spell...

in which case it might only take half a second to cast a Counterspell against a Counterspell against a Fireball.

...except itself. I do have a problem with it being able to be shorter than itself, as this implies that not all Counterspells are created equal. And it would only take one petulant player to say "But *I* cast the shorter version" and you've got a big-time headache....

If you then consider that spells take effect instantly after they are cast, then the casting time would logically also include flight time for that spell energy to reach its target; and if Counterspells are faster than the spells they are countering, then an easy way to visualize this is that Counterspell is literally intercepting a spell in-flight, and a Counter-Counterspell is intercepting the Counterspell before it reaches the first spell that it was targeting.

Again I'm behind this all the way except for one Counterspell being, in effect, beginning-to-end faster than another. I think the designers must have been looking at Magic: the Gathering when they dreamed this up, as that game does work on a last-in first-out model. But in D&D it's always been that any spell* takes 'x' amount of time to cast (e.g. 3 segments, 1 action, whatever; depending on edition) and that for any particular spell the 'x' time value is always the same e.g. a Fireball in 1e is always going to take 3 segments and in 5e will always take 1 action. This means that two spells that take the same amount of time to cast (which will [or should!] always be the case when it's the same spell being cast twice) will logically always go first-in first-out.

* - certainly any spell that affects combat. Some rituals (or ritual-like spells from older editions) have variable casting times; but I think we're talking only about combat here.

Now, the way 5e RAW reads they've in fact made Counterspell's casting time variable; but with the variance not chooseable by the caster as it's locked in by the sequence in which it is cast with relation to other spells. They also seem to make it legal to cast while in process of casting another spell, which I think is an all-time D&D first. Why is this a fail? Because it...

- defies internal (game-world) logic as I've mentioned above
- is inconsistent with the rest of the game's design aesthetic (they've tried to reduce or eliminate exceptions and oddities, this is both)
- is inconsistent with how spell interruption otherwise works (usually a spell is lost if casting is interrupted [yeah yeah, combat casting, whatever] but here the caster can interrupt herself without problem then resume as if nothing happened)

This is one where I'd really like to ask someone like Mearls what they were thinking that led them to come up with this...or whether this was an intended result at all.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Even more wrong is a Lore Bard who is simultaneously using his mouth to supply the verbal components for Major Image (action), to play the kazoo that's acting as a bardic focus to replace the material components for Major Image (also the same action), to compose a heroic ballad inspiring his buddy with Bardic Inspiration (bonus action), and to insult (Cutting Words) the guy who's trying to Counterspell his Major Image to impair his counterspelling (reaction), all in the same round.

He must be talking faster than the guy in the Micro Machines commercial.

Yeah, that seems like a disaster. Even more so in that Major Image has to be maintained, doesn't it?

Lan-"edition by edition casting becomes easier, and each edition has more issues with overpowered casters than the one before...I wonder why"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Thinking about it, does the Counterspell argument (last-in first-out) apply to all reaction effects or just to Counterspells in particular? If it's to all, then the best move is always to Do Nothing until everyone else has reacted...leading to one "Canadian standoff" after another once people catch on. Bleah!

Lan-"...after you. No, you first. Please, I insist..."-efan

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Lan-"edition by edition casting becomes easier, and each edition has more issues with overpowered casters than the one before...I wonder why"-efan

I don't think this is true. 5E spellcasters are much, much weaker than AD&D 2nd edition spellcasters. Sure, in 5E you can theoretically kill the Tarrasque at 1st level instead of 7th, but that's mostly just because the Tarrasque is weaker now and the non-magical combat is more flexible (specifically, horses). But in 2nd edition, you could Magic Jar the Tarrasque at 9th level and take over its body forever.

There are a tiny handful of spells like Clone that are stronger and better in 5E than in 2nd edition, but 90%+ of the spells are weaker. (E.g. Stoneskin, Animate Dead, Prismatic Wall.) 5E has fewer problems with "overpowered casters" than AD&D typically did.

 

[Quickleaf]

Branching away from RAW for a second, but one house rule I've considered (if there was concern over counterspell battles becoming disruptive) is what I call Creative Counterspelling.

Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards (or possibly all "arcane casters") gain the ability at 5th-level to use a reaction to attempt to counterspell a spell they witness being cast. However, there is no counterspell, per se, instead it's up to the caster to creatively utilize spells they currently know (at the DM's discretion) to enact the counterspell.

For example, an enemy caster tries to use gust of wind to knock a Sorcerer PC over a cliff leading down to a river. The Sorcerer PC might attempt to counter using water walk so that as she is pushed over the edge, jets of water rise from the river to buoy her up, putting her back where she was. Or the Sorcerer PC might counter with the fly spell to roll with being pushed only to take off flying, or even control weather to absorb the gust of wind in a mini-cyclone extending from her hands.

It wouldn't work for every group cause there would be a lot of corner case scenarios and need forDM interpretation, but it might be a way tomake it more fun.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I guess my next question would be, "Is Counterspell a game wrecker?"

It feels like it shuts down any caster who does not also have Counterspell. But then, this is at a point where the enemy casters don't have spells of higher than 3rd level. Is this just the point where Counterspell peaks in power?

Seems like any enemy caster who lacks Counterspell is a chump whose only contribution to combat will be to drain the PC wizard of a few spells before dying.

... Do PCs automatically know what spell an NPC is casting? Or is a Knowledge: Arcana check or something similar required?

Will the Counterspeller always know exactly what an opponent is casting and whether or not a 3rd level Counterspell will be sufficient to counter it? Or if he is blowing his Counterspell on a cantrip?

My wizard preps it all the time. I think it's awesome because it directly pits two casters against each other and nothing says, "I'm a bad ass wizard", like shutting down an enemy's spell. It takes a reaction to do (so no Shield or the like that round) and burns a 3rd level+ spell slot and may not work depending on the spell being countered, ability check, et al. The same caster also has +13 Arcana (thanks, Expertise!) to be able to expertly identify spells being cast.