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Message: <blockquote data-quote="two" data-source="post: 3541955" data-attributes="member: 9002">If the enemy is casting first level spells... you already won the battle! As for mirror images, we play like most people they are in the same square as the caster, so this is not a problem.  As for 8 enemy mages - well, if the party is against 8 mages, they are all relatively low level.  Silence takes one or two out per round; let fireball take the rest. Silence is one of those really strange spells that does not look powerful to somebody flipping through the book.  However, if the party uses teamwork and has some tactical sense it can get out of hand, very quickly.I had a party that stumbled across the spell, and pretty soon had a cohort bard equipped with a Silence wand.  The bard would inspire courage first round, and spend the rest of his time readying silence vs. enemy casters (unless they were going up vs. known casters, in which case the bard didn't inspire courage first, just readied a silence).It was, in a word, brutally effective.I counted one evening the cohort bard nullified over 10 spells 3rd level or higher, caused chaos as the enemy attempted to flee the silence radius, etc.  The party would typically rush the spellcaster after the first silence/counter, leaving the enemy spellcaster in the silence radius with a melee guy in his face.  5' step back?  Still in the silence radius.  Move and cast?  PC gets AOO, often a grapple or trip.  Really bad stuff.My typical GM counters were:  spread out casters, silenced spells, attacking the damn cohort bard, etc.  But you can only do so much of that without getting meta-gamey. How can you justify attacking a bard who has not yet done anything (round 1, the bard is readying...)  And how many "silence" meta-feats do the enemy casters have - which in any case lowers the spell level hitting the party?In the end it was a real pain; the PC cleric got into the "silence" game too when they went against heavy enemy casters.  It turned into "how can the GM get some spells off against us" battle of wills.Not very fun.Very effective for the party, however.  I rewarded them with XP and gave Silence a will save. They still use it occasionally, but it is not the default "do every combat" routine.A wand of silence for a party 5+ is very cheap, assuming all the PCs contribute a little.  Which they did; not having enemy spells hitting you is worth a lot in the long run.</blockquote>

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