Those super obvious situations where the monster's entire gimmick is almost entirely predicated on a specific spell or SLA, so you KNOW what they are going to do.But it's still a bad choice EVEN THEN. Hell, even if the caster is standing in a zone of truth and announces the spell they are about to cast, I still can't think of much reason to counterspell, unless maybe it's a save or die on a party member.
Because the whole adventuring day's worth of enemy spells almost always adds up to more slots than yours, so swapping 1:1 slots makes you relatively weaker. The thing is just going to use its same schtick spell again. And again. You're now draining all your resources on a treadmill of pointlessness and will be totally screwed when the next NPC caster shows up with fresh slots filled.
Well, I was partially thinking of the original situation- the deeper darkness of a shadow demon.
That is 50% miss chance for pretty much everyone, and the thing can make itself invisible (if it can't bring things down to complete darkness with deeper darkness), teleport, and pounce.
haste is considered a great spell since it boosts the attack/damage of the entire party, and allows them to move around the battlefield more easily. In that same vein, giving everyone the ability to not lose track of the enemy, and to prevent them from taking a massive reduction in their ability to hit it is rather nice move as well.
So it is hardly the worst course of action to take when it is something that troublesome.
Oh and arcanist with the Eldritch Font archetype makes for good dispellers. The lack of a spell prepared doesnt hurt as much as you are predominately focusing on dispel magic and your exploit. The extra spells per day are nice though as you will burn through them with counterspelling.
Also with Arcanists you can get real fun. With the ability to take over spells you may not need to counter them. You decide to let a spell through, then take it over on your tur., effectively saving you a spell slot (dispel arcanists have no shortages of points). Its really funny vs conjuration and extraplanars (since tjey tend to have summons as SLAs).
Oh and counter specialists are really helpful for martials (since they also tend to double as buff bots) since they can prevent things from teleporting away from the fighter...
Not sure about psychics though. Havent looked much ar them to see how they fair as counter specialists
I've never seen it, and it never seemed like a good tactic. I would be interested in hearing more about builds that are effective at this.
Generally I'm of the "ready to hurt them" school of counter spelling. Magic Missle has the obvious problem with shield, but there are plenty of other options.
In the final battle of a high level game I had a player with a ranger of all things not only have the insight to do it, but even had all the right stuff prepared.
It was against the Mythic Lich of Doom and there actually had been a lot of counterspelling going off all fight between the lich and the party wizard. The lich would spend his second turns in the round readying and wasting his immediates on his lich counterspell ability. The wizard had finally broken through with a greater dispel magic on the lich, but the next turn he threw up a Time Stop and rebuffed. The party cleric used a Miracle to undo that turn(s) of spells and left the lich basically naked. Good ole Dave who is known for not knowing what he's doing or how to play his character until it matters always seems to pull the perfect solution out of thin air, seemingly to make me want to pull my hair out, and actually readied and action to counterspell. Then he did, and countered the lich's last casing of Fickle Winds which opened up the door for the two archers and paladin to lay waste to him on the last turn.
It was a pretty epic fight, and I didn't even get into all the details, it was like 17 rounds long or something insane, several hour long fight.
All the characters were 20th level with everything maxed out as much as possible too.
When I GM, my NPCs counterspell all the time! Best way there is to nerf wizards.
When I GM, my NPCs counterspell all the time! Best way there is to nerf wizards.
You mean nerf enemy casters? If they're counterspelling, they're not casting. They've traded their ability to actually accomplish anything for the ability to make someone else not accomplish something.
I know I'd much rather face an enemy who doesn't do anything than one who chucks save or suck/dies and whatnot at me, as any class.
When I GM, my NPCs counterspell all the time! Best way there is to nerf wizards.You mean nerf enemy casters? If they're counterspelling, they're not casting. They've traded their ability to actually accomplish anything for the ability to make someone else not accomplish something.
I know I'd much rather face an enemy who doesn't do anything than one who chucks save or suck/dies and whatnot at me, as any class.
Kinda depends. Especially with an NPC arcanist, ypu can effectively lock down a party with a few counter specialized arcanists w/familiar.
You keep the ability to fly about, counter any ability to fly up to you, gain control of any spells they my try and throw at ypu that are controllable. On top of that, layering anti magic fields on.familairs hidong around... just 2 can be quite nasty and tpugh to deal with without archers...
A counterspell spell in the vein of Magic: The Gathering, where counterspelling is all it can do and it's cast as an immediate action, seems like an awfully reasonable 4th- or 5th-level spell. As a matter of fact, having thought of it, I'm really surprised neither Wizards of the Coast nor Paizo thought of/implemented it before.
Alternatively, how about a feat that enabled you to counterspell using the same spell of your own as an immediate action?
Actually there was quite a few. Duel Ward (5° level, counterspell as immediate and +4 to check) and the more powerfull version Battlemagic Perception (3° level, counterspell as free) published later when they realized the first was totally not worth it.
Additionally, in 3.5 the Arcanist Counterspell exploit was a feat called Reactive Counterspell.
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Did I just stumble on a thread of people saying "this nice thing for casters really isn't a nice thing?" Woah, this never happens! I think I stumbled into the bizarro world of the paizo forums!
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I have seen counter spelling a couple of times.
One time it was from a PC wizard. There was a sorcerer in the party as well. The sorcerer would go on the offensive. The wizard readied an action to counter spell......and counter spelled an Evard's Black Tentacle spell. Yep it was worth it.
I then took the tactic and used it once to counter an Evard's black tentacle myself as well.
Sometimes you simply don't want a spell to happen.
Did I just stumble on a thread of people saying "this nice thing for casters really isn't a nice thing?" Woah, this never happens! I think I stumbled into the bizarro world of the paizo forums!
It's a nice thing for casters to use against other casters. It not being useful also is nice for casters, since they can also be on the receiving end. It's a bit of a moot point as far as non-casters go, since a good counter-spelling mechanic could be used to both shutting down critical martial buffs and shutting down effects that lock mundanes out of combat.
EDIT:
I have seen counter spelling a couple of times....
Wouldn't the Wizard be better off tossing Fireballs? At level 7 a fireball will deal about 25 damage. Readied against Black Tentacles you are looking at a DC39 concentration check to keep the spell...yeah, no. Plus you don't need to worry about dispel checks or having the right spells - just ready and nuke. Heck, you can even counter with things like Snowball and Magic Missile - A CL7 Magic Missile is likely to cause a DC28 concentration check against the Black Tentacles, which is more likely to work than a dispel check.
Did I just stumble on a thread of people saying "this nice thing for casters really isn't a nice thing?" Woah, this never happens! I think I stumbled into the bizarro world of the paizo forums!
Nope, you stumbled on a thread of people saying "I wish there was a way to counteract spellcaster without having to OTK them"
I was wondering, has anyone ever seen a character actually counterspell something?
You have to know (and have prepared if you're a prepared caster) any spell you want to counter and expend one of your own uses of that spell. But in order to do that you have to ready an action. So you have to gamble your own turn on the chance that your opponent is going to cast a spell that you have ready and that has you within its range on their next turn and then still have to succeed at a spellcraft check.
This seems like such an unlikely gamble that I don't ever see a counterspell happen in an actual game of Pathfinder. And in my hisory of playing 3rd edition since 3.0 through PF I have never seen anyone even attempt to counterspell anything.
So what about you? Have you ever seen someone attempt a counterspell? Did it work? Was it worth it?
You don't have to use the same spell, you can use Dispel Magic as well.
yes, have seen it, many times.
I had a gunslinger(musketMaster) who liked to counterspell via the readied action(doubleBarrelShotgun).
It happens from time to time in games I run.
I see it constantly in my Wrath of the Righteous game. Archmage Wizard does it to basically every spell using Flexible Counter. It's amusing that it makes the spellcasters sort of meaningless in fights but all those spell likes which cannot be countered matter a bunch. He just burns through mythic points fairly quick with it.
Hm.... i wonder how a psychic would do... since they can latch a dispel effect on a spell.
Just ready an action to damage them with a spell as they cast so yhey got to pass a concentration check AND have stuff dispelled on themm
The rules for counterspelling are so specific and stupid that I honestly just house-ruled it out. If you've identified the spell and can cast either that spell, Dispel Magic or Greater Dispel Magic, I let you counterspell as an immediate action with a caster level check. With Improved Counterspell, I let you do it so long as it's a spell of the same level or higher and of the same school of magic.
Still not perfect, but I find it preferable to the actual system in the game.
What if Universalist wizards got Improved Counterspell for free? They've always been the weakest school, as far as I can tell, so it wouldn't overpower them grotesquely.
Build a sorcerer with Dispel Magic and take a look at these...
Some interesting feats from Kobold Press:
- Opportunity Counterspell: counterspell as immediate action
- Counterspell Feedback: spell countered deals damage to caster
- Usurp Spell: gain benefit from countered spell
- Dispel Mastery: +3 to checks
From Rite Publishing:
- Focused Dispelling: +4 to dispel checks
- Improved version: can reroll 1/day
Trait:
- Spell Duel Prodigy: +2 to identify and counter a spell being cast
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For a wizard or other primary spellcaster it seems like bad action economy. (unless you can do it faster with the arcanist etc) You're giving up your turn to maybe cancel what they do on their turn.
I have considered (though never played) building a bard to be awesome at counter-spelling. It's a much more valid option for a bard as, while full caster level, their actual casting is inferior.
In addition, they're helping their allies just by being there using inspire courage and using ooc buffs, so readying an action to dispel isn't really removing them from the combat for the round.
Frankly though - counter-spelling is another reason that I think that most spells should be pushed up to a full-round action. You could spellcraft what spell they're casting and if you have it, counter it 100% on your turn.
Do you mean a 1 round action?
In my old game, the party's oracle had readied counterspelling for a particular enemy type in an urgathoa cult. He wanted to counterspell any of their uses of Finger of Death.
Also, I counterspelled his Black Tentacles. get dunked on
I've seen counterspells from time to time. There was a spell back in 3.5 which made them a lot easier to use...maybe Spell Ward or something...
I think one of the main reason counterspells don't get used a lot is that spellcasters aren't very common enemies in a lot of adventures. A lot of monsters have spell like abilities, but I don't think those can be counterspelled (or at least I haven't seen somebody do it)
Did I just stumble on a thread of people saying "this nice thing for casters really isn't a nice thing?" Woah, this never happens! I think I stumbled into the bizarro world of the paizo forums!
Well, counterspelling if it were more powerful in general, would actually be an indirect nice thing for martials. Even though its casters who get the ability, it's also casters that are the only ones affected by it. Spells would be cast successfully less frequently.
Very rarely, and the caster was a spontaneous one using a Dispel. Happened only against known heavy spellcasters to shut down their offensive (like Mokmurian in RotRL and a certain lich).
f they're counterspelling, they're not casting. They've traded their ability to actually accomplish anything for the ability to make someone else not accomplish something.
Unless the enemies have more casters on their team (say, low-level bodyguard clerics, or just Arcanists), or the parties rely on their wizard's save-or-die spells in every fight (like most high-level parties).
Can you counterspell a spell with a wand or scroll of the same spell? How about with a spell like ability?
f they're counterspelling, they're not casting. They've traded their ability to actually accomplish anything for the ability to make someone else not accomplish something.Unless the enemies have more casters on their team (say, low-level bodyguard clerics, or just Arcanists), or the parties rely on their wizard's save-or-die spells in every fight (like most high-level parties).
Low level bodyguard clerics won't identify the spells. So, problem solved.
And if by luck they manage to identify it, they will have to use a very high level spell for them (Dispel magic) and even then have very low chance of counterspelling (50%, -5% per level behind the PC level).
If you have a PC who is 10th level against several 5th level clerics, we're looking at 11.25% chance of counterspelling a 5th level spell (if it is possible to counterspell it). It raises at 50% chance if 6 clerics try at the same time...