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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8661245" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Monster spells can still be countered, dispelled, etc. Monster abilities that are not spells, such as Vecna’s Flight of the Damned or his Rotten Fate cannot be counterspelled, dispelled, etc. on account of them not being spells. This does, in a roundabout way, make anti-spell abilities like counterspell weaker, since most spellcasting NPCs and monsters now rely more on such not-quite-spell abilities than on actual spells, especially when it comes to damage output. Vecna’s spells, for example, probably don’t even factor into his CR calculation because he has higher average damage per round if he just spams Rotten Fate and Afterthought than if he mixes in some Lightning Bolts. As I understand, this is typical of MMotM monster design. The abilities that factor into CR are mostly not spells any more, which means Counterspell will rarely, if ever, be significantly impactful against monsters or NPCs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8661245, member: 6779196"] Monster [I]spells[/I] can still be countered, dispelled, etc. Monster abilities that are not spells, such as Vecna’s [I]Flight of the Damned[/I] or his [I]Rotten Fate[/I] cannot be counterspelled, dispelled, etc. on account of them not being spells. This does, in a roundabout way, make anti-spell abilities like counterspell weaker, since most spellcasting NPCs and monsters now rely more on such not-quite-spell abilities than on actual spells, especially when it comes to damage output. Vecna’s spells, for example, probably don’t even factor into his CR calculation because he has higher average damage per round if he just spams [I]Rotten Fate[/I] and [I]Afterthought[/I] than if he mixes in some Lightning Bolts. As I understand, this is typical of MMotM monster design. The abilities that factor into CR are mostly not spells any more, which means Counterspell will rarely, if ever, be significantly impactful against monsters or NPCs. [/QUOTE]

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