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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6682506" data-attributes="member: 1465">It is possible that the rules are silent on the matter of "do you know the identity of a spell being cast?", which is quite more general than the counterspell scenario.As a DM, I know that it's often very useful to obfuscate the nature of a spell. At least it helps a bit to improve the atmosphere of the game... as in 'you have been hit by a spell, but you have no idea what it was...' and then maybe you don't even tell the player yet what are the effects of it.OTOH, this can hardly be the standard for every single spell cast in the game, because it will become tedious quickly. It's a lot more sensible to just let the players know when a common spell such as Magic Missile or Fireball is being cast, especially when the effects make it obvious anyway.Counterspell is a more narrow scenario (you need to know only the spell level* so that you can choose whether to cast Counterspell with a 3rd level slot or with a higher one), but it has a possible complication in terms of quickness. Most players would expect that the countering happens before the spell's effects kick in (although narratively you could stretch that a bit and even say that it happens a fraction of time after the effects start but before they have significant consequences - assuming the countering has worked).Honestly, I would not enforce a rule that requires a check to identify the spell each time. Normally when I have an NPC cast a spell I just say "the evil Wizard casts Fireball at your party" unless I want to create that moment of atmosphere, typically because I am using a spell that we have never seen in the campaign. I am not going to change this just because the PC Wizard might want to Counterspell and then I shouldn't make it too easy or whatever... I will still say "Fireball" and let the Wizard PC decide if it's worth counterspelling or not. Once in a while, when introducing a new spell, I might do as I said before and not tell what it is. Whether I'd allow a check or not, it will be up to my mood at the moment.*Additional question: do you think that the Counterspell mention of 'spell level' (referring to the spell you want to counter) refers really to the spell minimum level or should it refer to the currently used slot level? If the evil Wizard casts a Fireball improved by using a 9th level slot, would you let Counterspell treat the Fireball as 3rd level ('spell level') or as 9th level ('slot level'). I think the latter is more interesting!</blockquote>

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