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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8661308" data-attributes="member: 6790260">It's an unfortunate dilemma in D&D design. If countering a spell actually advances play, then you basically never want to allow your opponents to cast spells if you have any chance of countering them, because hey, you've not only made them spend resources, you've actually had those resources hurt them. Under that situation, counterspell becomes a degenerate strategy, something everyone should always be doing all the time. But if you make it so it doesn't advance play, it just spins wheels, then it's pretty rare that "just spinning wheels" is actually worth anything. Especially since design has moved away from spells that auto-win fights, so eating one enemy spell (and losing a generally manageable amount of your allies' resources) in order to respond with a spell of your own is generally superior to trying to counterspell.There are, of course, going to be examples one can construct in either direction, e.g. enemies that use trivial/weak spells to expend your counterspells before using their powerful ones. But overall it ends up being just kind of dull. Not much happens.I do wonder how one might go about making a counterspell mechanic that was actually interesting without being overpowered.</blockquote>