this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
49 points (96.2% liked)

Dungeons and Dragons

11144 readers
80 users here now

A community for discussion of all things Dungeons and Dragons! This is the catch all community for anything relating to Dungeons and Dragons, though we encourage you to see out our Networked Communities listed below!

/c/DnD Network Communities

Other DnD and related Communities to follow*

DnD/RPG Podcasts

*Please Follow the rules of these individual communities, not all of them are strictly DnD related, but may be of interest to DnD Fans

Rules (Subject to Change)

Format: [Source Name] Article Title

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world
owenfromcanada@lemmy.world
49
DMs, how do you like to handle counterspell for enemies and players? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by DonnieDarkmode@lemm.ee to c/dnd@lemmy.world
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Just a note in case anyone is worried I’m adding a mage to every encounter, I very rarely use counterspell against my players; it’s one of the spells I consider to have high “fun-ruining” potential.

I’m struggling a bit to decide on how to handle this interaction in a way that feels fair. From my understanding RAW, a character doesn’t know what spell is being cast. I think you can use your reaction to make an arcana check to discern it, but of course then you can’t counterspell it. For enemy spellcasters I generally describe what’s being cast, instead of naming the spell right away, but it can slow combat down, and is a bit one-sided since when a player casts a spell they lead with “I cast X”. This leads to an imbalance where I’m aware of what’s needed to counterspell something while the players are not, and can cause some awkwardness trying to decide how to play around that without metagaming.

I can think of a few different ways to handle this, each with its own drawbacks, but I’m curious to hear what y’all do at your tables!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

The Pathfinder 2 way.

PF2 has the general Counteract mechanic:

Critical Success Counteract the target if its counteract level is no more than 3 levels higher than your effect’s counteract level.
Success Counteract the target if its counteract level is no more than 1 level higher than your effect’s counteract level.
Failure Counteract the target if its counteract level is lower than your effect’s counteract level.
Critical Failure You fail to counteract the target.

(critical success and failures being when you roll ten or more higher or lower than the DC)
You expend a spell slot containing the same spell and roll to counter the cast spell, with varying possible degrees of success.

You can later specialize it in various interesting ways with feats, for example one that lets you spend a prepared spell from merely the same school, or with a spell that is especially thematically appropriate, or redirect the countered spell, or just eat it.

It's a whole mechanic that you can build around, it's exciting when it happens, you feel like you've earned it. It's a reward for clever play as opposed to a button that you push.