Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8548675" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I have run 5e wizards. I understand it. You are occupying a preparation 'slot', and if you cast the spell you are using up AT LEAST a level 3 slot to cast it. Believe me, the number of spells you can prep DOES get to be a problem pretty fast. Its quite adequate at low levels, but even an 18 starting INT wizard preps 5 spells at level 1, and at level 5, where he gets 3rd level slots he's able to prep 9 spells and has 9 slots! At 11th level, where you have 16 total slots you are memorizing at most 16 spells (with 2 ASIs). Granted, you could in theory (and actually often in practice) pick a lot of high level ones for those 16, but realistically you're likely to have more 3rd level spells in your book than you can afford to pick. That is my experience anyway.So, there IS an opportunity cost to prepare Counterspell, and then obviously casting it has a resource cost, though I suspect if it is used wisely it could be worth it. You will be sorely tempted to leave it out of your prepped spell list, and for potentially good reason. Level 3 is fairly rich in good flexible spells, and it is the last level where you really get an adequate number of slots. If its a choice of Haste, Lightning Bolt, Stinking Cloud, Fly, Gaseous Form, etc. or Counterspell, well they are all rather tempting, and you're getting 3-5 choices, at most.Beyond that, at least in the games I played in, FINDING spells was kind of problematic, so most of what I got was either my own research, or the freebies. So that's another opportunity cost. Not saying I wouldn't choose Counterspell, perhaps. It would kind of depend on the stuff I was thinking I might face. If it looked like it was a lot of evil wizards, well then it sounds better. If its a bunch of monsters, most of them don't cast spells. So, I think the thing is pretty balanced. In the right situation you will love Fireballs, or Fly, or whatever, or maybe Counterspell. I don't remember ever taking it, personally, but I MIGHT someday.</blockquote>

Verification