Wizards, counter spells and initiative.

[kenc]

A question relating to your situation... Stone Skin requires diamond dust (250gp's worth) as a material component. When you counterspell that spell, do you need to have (and use) the same material components?

AR

That never came up since I used dispell magic to counter the stoneskin. A much harder dispell but doable.

From what I can recall without access to the books is that it is the spell energy that dispells and you are not actually casting the spell, I could be wrong here though and will have to look it up later.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

You still have to be lucky to counterspell with Dispel Magic, since you'll always have about 50% chance of it going either way.

IMO, it's probably more effective to ready a damaging spell on a caster when he starts casting instead of a Dispel Magic, since you'll have a good chance of disrupting the spell AND you'll damage the wizard.

AR