D&D (2024) Is Counterspell less frustrating now?

[Maxperson]

Sounds like excellent opportunity to give the spell flavor!

Maybe your player could do one of those memes where the wizard casts "Medical Complication" on an enemy casting a spell.

Not laughing at you. I just had visions of a spell called Medical Complications and thought of my mother and her hypochondria.

 

[Maxperson]

Technically, it says "You attempt to interrupt a creature in the process of casting a spell." And that causes the spell to fail. Exactly how, doesn't really matter though it imposes no other condition or game effect. So I'd definitely say it's being cast on a target creature.

Any reaction interrupts the creature, though. Interruption doesn't inherently target the creature.

 

[Stalker0]

If they're going to keep the save, it needs to be Legendary Resistance proof, or you're never going to get to counter anything that actually matters to counter. The three DM Auto-Cheats just mean they get off whatever they want.

This is....the entire point of LR, its for boss monsters to actually get to act in combat. Whether its losing their action to a paralysis, or losing their action to a counterspell...LR is there to ensure the boss monster gets to actually act and effect the combat.

Now I'll be the first one to say that I think LR is a "kludgy mechanic", but to argue that it shouldn't do its job is silly to me, this is EXACTLY the kind of stuff LR was designed for.

 

[Stalker0]

Agreed. But I'll go a step further. The Counterspell description goes on to say "The creature must make a Constitution saving throw."

I think if the spell forces the creature to make a Con save, the creature is the one being targeted. Also, didn't JC say that it requires a Con save because it matches the mechanics for Concentration for being disrupted?

Spell descriptions don't have a "target" line in the stat block. Sounds like the spell description just needs to be tidied up to clarify the target, and needs a bit of flavor to explain that it is trying to disrupt the magic. I'm sure it's doable.

Agreed, no reason not to add a target line in the spell for added clarity, that's what its there for.

 

[tetrasodium]

This is....the entire point of LR, its for boss monsters to actually get to act in combat. Whether its losing their action to a paralysis, or losing their action to a counterspell...LR is there to ensure the boss monster gets to actually act and effect the combat.

Now I'll be the first one to say that I think LR is a "kludgy mechanic", but to argue that it shouldn't do its job is silly to me, this is EXACTLY the kind of stuff LR was designed for.

It's bad at that and adds a lot of unfun influence into play. What works even better than the bbeg just deciding to no-sell a failed save is making it hard to even get to the bbeg needing to roll the save or consider the save for x impact of those shutdown save or lose type spells and doing it in a way that encourages the casting of more cooperative/force multiplier/reciprocity leaning spells when the bbeg type is in the encounter.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I never really cared about Counterspell used against the legendary enemies, mostly cared about losing my spells to Counterspell as a PC which I find really annoying that trying to pull off the big spell when everything was in perfect positions was lost because the enemies had a caster with Counterspell. So I like that it's just the action lost, and not the action and a 5th level spell slot.

 

[Stalker0]

It's bad at that and adds a lot of unfun influence into play. What works even better than the bbeg just deciding to no-sell a failed save is making it hard to even get to the bbeg needing to roll the save or consider the save for x impact of those shutdown save or lose type spells and doing it in a way that encourages the casting of more cooperative/force multiplier/reciprocity leaning spells when the bbeg type is in the encounter.

Again I am all for people wanting to rewrite LR, but as long as LR is the mechanic for boss monsters to keep their actions against powerful spells, and Counterspell denies a boss monster their action, then Counterspell should be affected by LR. It’s just that simple

 

[tetrasodium]

Again I am all for people wanting to rewrite LR, but as long as LR is the mechanic for boss monsters to keep their actions against powerful spells, and Counterspell denies a boss monster their action, then Counterspell should be affected by LR. It’s just that simple

The trouble is that they removed all of the hooks that would have allowed simply rewriting Legendary Resist to much of anything other than legendary resist as it is. 5e has been bad about designing against someone playing it in a way deemed wrong by importing solutions from past editions.

 

[Clint_L]

Every other spell or ability can be blocked by legendary resistance.

Why should counterspell be special?

Wrong. Tons of spells and abilities ignore legendary resistance. Counterspell is hardly unique. For example, dispel magic also ignores it. A spell as basic as fire bolt ignores it. All legendary resistance does is let you automatically succeed on a saving throw, so no saving throw, no legendary resistance.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't know if this was brought up (I'm still on page 5 of the thread), and I don't know if there's even an enemy who can cast spells who has this ability or not offhand, so this might be a total hypothetical-

It strikes me as odd that a creature with magic resistance granting advantage on saves vs. magic/spells would be harder to counterspell. Maybe that makes sense to some people, but that's my first impression.