1d ago

Thoughts on Counterspell rework

I've been thinking on some changes for counterspell, for dnd and any other rpg that has counterspell.

My thought is moving counterspell from a spell into a game mechanic.

If a creature casts a spell that you also have the ability to cast that day, you can expend an appropriate spell slot to unravel their spell and counter it.

So just about anyone can counterspell but does limit it to creature that have spell slots. It makes casters think more about encounters that might come up that day and also push them to choose more obscure spells that are less likely to be countered.

Any thoughts? Arguments for or against? Other ideas you've tried?

5 comments

I would probably make spells easier to interrupt like they were in 3e.
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/castingSpells.htm
These two things were key:
Casting a spell provokes an opportunity attack
Taking any damage requires a check or you lose the spell
Now casting when the orc warlord is up in your face is a lot riskier.
I think I get why they got rid of this system. It was more to think about, and I think they wanted the game to generally be easier so more players could enjoy it. Certain classes of player don't want to think about tactics and positioning. They want to cast fireball. But as a result, the whole game is kind of shallower sometimes.
For mages countering mages, I'd probably give it a rework. It shouldn't just be its own spell. It should be an action. Maybe have a separate check to identify the spell, or maybe just tell the player to skip double rolls. Then make some sort of opposed check. Use the spell level delta (and if you had them roll to identify, how thematically opposite the spell is. Like a fire and ice spell, or shield v magic missile).

Thats pretty similar to what 3e (and iirc older) counterspell did. You had to cast the same spell in reverse to counter a spell. So to counter spell a fireball, you had to have a fireball prepared and "counterspell cast" your fireball. That said, there was some action economy problems in 3e that made it not worth it (you had to use an action to 'ready' a counterspell on a specific target, when the target cast a spell, you had to roll to identify the spell, and if they cast a spell you didnt know or have prepared, you were out of luck)
- Damn is that how it worked? I don't remember any of that, but it was a long time ago now.
  
  well, to be fair, almost no one used counterspells back then because of the many failure points, clunkiness, and the high chance of it being a complete waste of your turn. Better to just cast your own fireball first.

If remember correctly, DC20 does something similar but instead of the same spell you must use some other spell that would be a reasonable counter effect against the effect that the spell is trying to produce.