Silence counterspell?

[Michael Morris]

Art of Magic vs. Silence.

Here's my fix.

Sequences
When only one caster is casting things are simple. The player’s turn arrives, they choose the spell, begin it and resolve it. However, ready actions complicate things.

If anyone chooses to use a ready action in response to step 3 of spellcasting a sequence is created: A sequence is a series of actions that occur on the same initiative and all of them follow these rules:

1. Sequence actions are resolved in the reverse order that they are declared in. Example: Teresa, Timmon and a hobgoblin are in combat. Timmon is guarding Teresa and has readied an action to attack anyone who attacks her. The hobgoblin has readied an action to attack any spellcaster. Teresa’s initiative comes up, and she casts magic missile at the hobgoblin. The hobgoblin takes its ready action and begins its attack on Teresa. Timmon takes his ready action to attack the hobgoblin. Now the actions are resolved: Timmon attacks and kills the hobgoblin. The hobgoblin, now dead, can’t act. Teresa loses her spell not because she was hurt but because the target is dead (she can’t change targets after the sequence has been set).
2. Spellcasters in a sequence can’t change their minds about targets as a result of other events in the sequence nor can they choose to abandon the spell. Example: Teresa casts fireball to hit some goblins surrounding Devon. She isn’t worried about hitting Devon because he has protection from elements (fire) in place. However, as she casts her spell an enemy caster uses sleight of mind to change her fireball into a cold spell. She can’t abandon her spell, and Devon is badly hurt.
3. If two characters try to react to the same trigger, the one with the lowest rolled initiative declares his action first. Example: Timmon and Teresa both have readied actions set to when some enemy begins a spell. Teresa has the better initiative, so she can decide what to do based on what Timmon does. She can’t wait to see the outcome of his action. Since she knows the enemy is casting a fireball at them she decides to counterspell. Her counterspell goes off before his attack, since the last declared action goes first.
4. Effect spreads (such as silence) and area emanations (such as cloudkill) can’t act while a sequence is being resolved and they can’t change their center points either – they must wait for the end of sequence to do so. Example: Teresa, Devon and a kobold sorcerer are in combat. The kobold begins a fireball, and both Teresa and Devon use a readied action set for when someone casts a spell. Teresa uses deflection, but fails her caster level check against the kobold. Devon casts silence on the kobold, but since that spell creates an emanation it waits until the sequence is over to act. The kobold gets off his fireball, hurting both our heroes. Now the silence takes hold, which means the creep won’t hit them again.
5. Once the last action of the sequence is declared, no more characters can perform ready actions until all the actions in the sequence are resolved. Spells however can continue to trigger as their conditions are met, and they are resolved as they trigger during the sequence. Example: Dranock has a contingency set to teleport him home if he goes to less than 20 hit points. He begins a chain lightning spell and Trishdare uses a ready action to hit him with a fireball. Teresa uses her ready action to cast deflection on his spell, changing the chain lightning target to Dranock himself. Teresa, who declared last, goes first, casting deflection. This triggers a lightning rift Dranock had put in place earlier. The spell lets Teresa deal 5d6 damage to Dranock. That is resolved, and Trishdare goes with his fireball. The Lightning Rift triggers again and Trishdare has it deal 3d6 damage to Dranock. Dranock at this point feels that casting lightning rift before the battle was a poor idea. Although he’s managed to make all his saves and concentration checks he’s down to 19 hit points. His contingency now triggers, teleporting him miles away. When he gets there he completes his deflected chain lightning, which roasts him quite succinctly.

That should help. You'll have to wait until this summer to see the rest, but I'll ask questions about this now if you wish.

 

[jgsugden]

This all goes away if you make silence's casting time 1 full round action. It was one of my first house rules in 3.0.

 

[Michael Morris]

This all goes away if you make silence's casting time 1 full round action. It was one of my first house rules in 3.0.

Sorry dude, but that don't work. That change doesn't prevent silence from being put on an object and that object from being tossed into the area of the enemy caster.

Short of grossly rewriting the spell this fix is the only way. As a side effect this switch also stops a host of other spells from being used as a counterspell. Note that the above fix addresses other issues between ready actions and spells that haven't been dealt with in the core.

 

[Wolffenjugend]

That's a little too complicated for my simple players. If silence becomes a problem (which I doubt it will IMC), I might just say that the spellcaster gets a Concentration check (to answer one of my other threads, hehehe) or a Spellcraft check at a difficult DC to pull it off before the silence takes effect. If it was a full-round spell, it would definitely be lost. I don't want to complicate things by devoting spells and feats and all sorts of other crazy stuff just to remedy the lowly silence spell...

 

[Scion]

Being deaf causes a 20% spell failure for vocal based spells correct? Why not just use the same here.

Sure it still sucks, but a 1/5 chance is definately not as bad as 100%, and it follows rules already in place sortof.

Still spell gets rid of arcane spell failure in armor for somatic spells. Still spell gets rid of the failure for places where you cant talk properly.

 

[ciaran00]

Am I missing something?

Apart from the silent dispels, YOU can only move 5 feet. The other guy can take his move action and possibly move out of range. He might quicken teleport out of range, too...

ciaran

 

[jgsugden]

Actually, the best fix might be for WotC to realize the problem and remove vocal components from a decent number of spells. Maybe 1/3 of all spells should be S, M instead of V, S, M. Then, silence would limit your options as a spellcaster instead of bringing it down to only a handful of spells.

Either that, or make silence a single target spell instead of an area of effect spell.

 

[Vaxalon]

My players never memorized huge amounts of silence, though I can see how a wand of silence could have made things difficult for spellcasters.

I would simply rule that any spell prevented by silence doesn't actually get discharged, it just isn't cast, so the spellcaster can step out of the area to cast on the following turn.

 

[allenw]

No it doesn't. It can be set to affect an area or an object, making it not subject to spell resistance in those modes.

I believe this to be incorrect; or, if correct by the RAW, against the designer's intent, and thus in need of a good swift Rule-0.
The Area or Object doesn't get spell resistance, and if cast on an Object you don't get to make noise with the Object using your Spell Resistance, but I'd certainly rule that your Spell Resistance works against the emanation, letting you speak (though anyone else may not be able to hear you).

 

[kwiqsilver]

I don't see it as being excessive. You can ready an action to magic missile a caster, which requires a Concentration check of 10 + damage + spell level, which is hard to make if the magic missiler is high enough level to be a threat.