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<blockquote data-quote="CM" data-source="post: 8531758" data-attributes="member: 18340">Disclosure: My players and I agreed (mostly) to ban Counterspell years ago. It's not fun for either side.As a fan of 4e monsters, I like the idea of self-contained spell blocks in monster stat blocks, but I dislike the idea that (for NPC type spellcasters at least) they are following some other type of magic rules that players can't counterspell. If it looks, smells, sounds, and burns like a fireball, call it a fireball. Now if it's an elemental that throws a flaming boulder that explodes, with effects identical to that of fireball, I understand and agree you can't counter that. If it's an NPC called an evoker with a burst of fire ability that flies 100 feet and explodes in a 20-foot radius, telling the player &quot;sorry, your counterspell fails&quot; is playing in bad faith.Now if there's some backstory as to why this happens - the enemy is using dark magic, the shadow weave, or has some other plot-based reason their spells are not counterable, that's fine for the story and can give the players a mystery to solve, but since Wizards is busy removing all of that sort of fluff from the creature stat blocks, the players should be able to trust that, in general, enemies follow the same basic world assumptions.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="CM, post: 8531758, member: 18340"] Disclosure: My players and I agreed (mostly) to ban [I]Counterspell[/I] years ago. It's not fun for either side. As a fan of 4e monsters, I like the idea of self-contained spell blocks in monster stat blocks, but I dislike the idea that (for NPC type spellcasters at least) they are following some other type of magic rules that players can't counterspell. If it looks, smells, sounds, and burns like a fireball, call it a fireball. Now if it's an elemental that throws a flaming boulder that explodes, with effects identical to that of fireball, I understand and agree you can't counter that. If it's an NPC called an [I]evoker[/I] with a [I]burst of fire[/I] ability that flies 100 feet and explodes in a 20-foot radius, telling the player "sorry, your counterspell fails" is playing in bad faith. Now if there's some backstory as to why this happens - the enemy is using dark magic, the shadow weave, or has some other plot-based reason their spells are not counterable, that's fine for the story and can give the players a mystery to solve, but since Wizards is busy removing all of that sort of fluff from the creature stat blocks, the players should be able to trust that, in general, enemies follow the same basic world assumptions. [/QUOTE]

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