Been playing with the same party for about a year and a half, almost T4. Last session our DM threw this weird Counterspell change in stating that he had been running it incorrectly. I wont try to understand the motivation or why he thinks this is better but to me it is a clear violation of RAW. Searched some Crawford Tweets but didnt find any answers there. Basically our DM is stating that Counterspell now requires two different reactions from two different PCs. The first reaction for the Arcana check to identify the spell being cast and the 2nd to effectively end the casting of the spell. The spell description states otherwise, the most obvious violation is of the action economy for which it very clearly states 1 Reaction.
Thoughts?
As a side note I did learn about a cool homebrew rule JC has for Counterspell. If the NPC is casting a spell that is on your list, you automatically identify it.
I don't recall which book it is, but I'm guessing XGtE, but it requires a reaction to figure out what spell is being cast. However, nothing in counterspell implies you have to know what spell you're counter-spelling. (Edit: In other words just blindly counterspelling enemy spells)
Most DMs just ignore the reaction to figure out what spell is being cast as it slows down the game asking if someone wants to counterspell after every single spell, and it doesn't really add anything to the game other than being a nerf to counterspell.
It's one of those challenges that gets run into sometimes depending on how your DM likes to run their game...
A DM is under no obligation to tell you what spell is being cast against you or what level it is. Most DMs usually do, because it's generally faster, but there's nothing that requires them to.
However, Counterspell doesn't require you to know what spell is being cast in order to counter it. All you need is to have visual line of sight to the creature casting a spell... keep in mind that all spellcasting has obvious visual signs unless something specifically states that it doesn't (such as the Subtle Spell metamagic)... a lot of DMs allow players to cast stuff like Minor Illusion or Disguise Self in the middle of a room and act like it's not incredibly obvious to everyone around what's happening, but RAW... The Vocal and Somatic components of spells are obviously magical to anyone familiar with spellcasting.
So, if your DM doesn't want you to know what spell is being cast before allowing you to cast Counterspell, they kind of have to plan for it. It's sort of like how Bardic Inspiration can only be used after rolling for a check before you know a result... if your DM immediately declares failure when you roll then you're technically not allowed to use Inspiration, but a good DM will give you some time after the die is rolled to decide before telling you the result. Similarly, if they want to make sure you're gambling when you use Counterspell, they would have to say, "Creature X begins to cast a spell," then wait a few seconds to let you decide whether or not you want to counterspell, and if you miss that opportunity, well, too bad.
I’ve always played that Passive Skill checks are a thing and with a high enough Passive Arcana you can automatically detect the spell being cast without a reaction. People are still encouraged to use a reaction to roll to assist (to get higher than the passive score) just in case someone else can Counterspell it. I’ve found it usually faster and it also benefits classes like Rogue and Bard as well as they get al sorts of bonuses to skills.
Been playing with the same party for about a year and a half, almost T4. Last session our DM threw this weird Counterspell change in stating that he had been running it incorrectly. I wont try to understand the motivation or why he thinks this is better but to me it is a clear violation of RAW. Searched some Crawford Tweets but didnt find any answers there. Basically our DM is stating that Counterspell now requires two different reactions from two different PCs. The first reaction for the Arcana check to identify the spell being cast and the 2nd to effectively end the casting of the spell. The spell description states otherwise, the most obvious violation is of the action economy for which it very clearly states 1 Reaction.
Thoughts?
As a side note I did learn about a cool homebrew rule JC has for Counterspell. If the NPC is casting a spell that is on your list, you automatically identify it.
This is several flavors of illegal - if your DM wants it to work this way, all of the following has to be homebrewed:
Counterspell does not normally require a spell to be identified in order to Counter it - you can counter an unidentified spell. Your DM would have to change this so it can only counter identified spells.
It's normally impossible to identify a spell you're Counterspelling, because the Counterspell trigger happens before the cast finishes, and identifying a spell is impossible until a cast finishes. Either your DM has to legalize identifying a spell before the cast is finished or he has to legalize Counterspelling a spell after the cast is finished.
Counterspell can't react to someone identifying a spell, reactions always happen after their trigger, and in general, the caster of the spell gets to choose in what order simultaneous triggers resolve, which means it's impossible to have two PCs react to the same trigger in the order they want to react in during an enemy turn (for the same reason that if NPCs try to react to you, you're in charge of deciding their order, and you'll always choose the order that's best for you and worst for them), and it's therefore impossible to Counterspell after your ally identifies. The "easiest" homebrew here is letting Counterspell react to your ally identifying a spell instead of the cast its RAW says it reacts to.
The rules for identifying a spell as a reaction are in Xanathar's, and they work how you'd expect: it's a reaction and it identifies a spell you saw cast, which means, since reactions happen after their trigger unless stated otherwise (and nothing is stated otherwise here), you only get to identify a spell after it's too late to Counterspell it.
Been playing with the same party for about a year and a half, almost T4. Last session our DM threw this weird Counterspell change in stating that he had been running it incorrectly. I wont try to understand the motivation or why he thinks this is better but to me it is a clear violation of RAW. Searched some Crawford Tweets but didnt find any answers there. Basically our DM is stating that Counterspell now requires two different reactions from two different PCs. The first reaction for the Arcana check to identify the spell being cast and the 2nd to effectively end the casting of the spell. The spell description states otherwise, the most obvious violation is of the action economy for which it very clearly states 1 Reaction.
Thoughts?
As a side note I did learn about a cool homebrew rule JC has for Counterspell. If the NPC is casting a spell that is on your list, you automatically identify it.
Nothing in Counterspell says anything about requiring that you can identify the spell being cast. The only trigger is that you can see someone casting a spell within 60' of you. Now, if you see someone doing what you THINK is casting a spell, I suppose there's some wiggle room about what happens. I would certainly say you still burn your reaction, but I'm less sure about whether Counterspell gets cast and auto-fails, or if it doesn't actually get cast. The way your DM wants to run it makes Counterspell completely impossible to use if the caster is alone. If the spell needed an ally's reaction, that would be part of the casting cost and would be specified.
I've never thought about someone faking casting a spell just to get someone to waste a counter spell... That's friggin brilliant I'm totally stealing that.
“Fake” casting a spell doesn’t trigger or waste counterspell.
“Casting Time: 1 reaction, which you take when you see a creature within 60 feet of you casting a spell“
Reactions can only happen if the trigger has occurred. An NPC pretending to cast a spell wouldn’t actually satisfy the trigger requirements, as there are an order of operations that usually have to be followed with reactions. Even the ready action is limited by the trigger that was agreed upon as the action.
this can obviously be homebrewed, but frankly there are ways to tease out counterspells without actually “breaking” the rules.
granting the caster a few quickens might help. Baiting out a counterspell with an action casted cantrip, then Quickening a leveled spell might work appropriately. There are also creatures that can cast with legendary actions multiple times a round, which would limit how many spells get counterspelled due to reactions available.
some thought might need to be applied to how effective you want these tactics to be. A resource drained from an enemy isn’t nearly as impactful as a casters wasted slots. This may not be nearly as much of an issue depending on the adventuring day encounters.
Yeah, the RAW doesn't allow for pretending to cast a spell for the same reason it's impossible to not know a spell is being cast if you can witness the components - that is, it's possible not to observe the components (e.g. an S component performed in heavy fog), but if you observe the components, you know a spell is being cast, no matter how ignorant you theoretically are of spellcasting. By the same token, you can't be tricked into thinking a spell has been cast - someone not performing an actual S component won't trigger your auto-knowledge.
Of course, a DM might homebrew that away and let someone use Sleight of Hand or Deception or Performance to pretend to cast a spell, particularly if they want their setting to have charlatans in it.
Thank you for clarifying that. I'll have to think a bit more if I want to break the rules as a dm just to pull off this trick, but it's a healthy reminder that the rules of the game don't allow this kind of thing, so I need to keep that in mind to not just betray my players by breaking the rules just because I heard about a funny idea online.
Identifying a spell cast require an Intelligence (Arcana) check as an action or reaction, but Counterspell doesn't require you to know which spell is being cast to counter it.
It must be an active check, i don't use Passive check under such circumstance as they're usually used to represent the average result for a task done repeatedly or when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice.
So when a spell is cast it's up to the character to either use a reaction to identify it or counter it.
Been playing with the same party for about a year and a half, almost T4. Last session our DM threw this weird Counterspell change in stating that he had been running it incorrectly. I wont try to understand the motivation or why he thinks this is better but to me it is a clear violation of RAW. Searched some Crawford Tweets but didnt find any answers there. Basically our DM is stating that Counterspell now requires two different reactions from two different PCs. The first reaction for the Arcana check to identify the spell being cast and the 2nd to effectively end the casting of the spell. The spell description states otherwise, the most obvious violation is of the action economy for which it very clearly states 1 Reaction.
Thoughts?
As a side note I did learn about a cool homebrew rule JC has for Counterspell. If the NPC is casting a spell that is on your list, you automatically identify it.
Your DM is half correct.
I don't recall which book it is, but I'm guessing XGtE, but it requires a reaction to figure out what spell is being cast. However, nothing in counterspell implies you have to know what spell you're counter-spelling. (Edit: In other words just blindly counterspelling enemy spells)
Most DMs just ignore the reaction to figure out what spell is being cast as it slows down the game asking if someone wants to counterspell after every single spell, and it doesn't really add anything to the game other than being a nerf to counterspell.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
It's one of those challenges that gets run into sometimes depending on how your DM likes to run their game...
A DM is under no obligation to tell you what spell is being cast against you or what level it is. Most DMs usually do, because it's generally faster, but there's nothing that requires them to.
However, Counterspell doesn't require you to know what spell is being cast in order to counter it. All you need is to have visual line of sight to the creature casting a spell... keep in mind that all spellcasting has obvious visual signs unless something specifically states that it doesn't (such as the Subtle Spell metamagic)... a lot of DMs allow players to cast stuff like Minor Illusion or Disguise Self in the middle of a room and act like it's not incredibly obvious to everyone around what's happening, but RAW... The Vocal and Somatic components of spells are obviously magical to anyone familiar with spellcasting.
So, if your DM doesn't want you to know what spell is being cast before allowing you to cast Counterspell, they kind of have to plan for it. It's sort of like how Bardic Inspiration can only be used after rolling for a check before you know a result... if your DM immediately declares failure when you roll then you're technically not allowed to use Inspiration, but a good DM will give you some time after the die is rolled to decide before telling you the result. Similarly, if they want to make sure you're gambling when you use Counterspell, they would have to say, "Creature X begins to cast a spell," then wait a few seconds to let you decide whether or not you want to counterspell, and if you miss that opportunity, well, too bad.
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I’ve always played that Passive Skill checks are a thing and with a high enough Passive Arcana you can automatically detect the spell being cast without a reaction. People are still encouraged to use a reaction to roll to assist (to get higher than the passive score) just in case someone else can Counterspell it. I’ve found it usually faster and it also benefits classes like Rogue and Bard as well as they get al sorts of bonuses to skills.
This is several flavors of illegal - if your DM wants it to work this way, all of the following has to be homebrewed:
The rules for identifying a spell as a reaction are in Xanathar's, and they work how you'd expect: it's a reaction and it identifies a spell you saw cast, which means, since reactions happen after their trigger unless stated otherwise (and nothing is stated otherwise here), you only get to identify a spell after it's too late to Counterspell it.
Nothing in Counterspell says anything about requiring that you can identify the spell being cast. The only trigger is that you can see someone casting a spell within 60' of you. Now, if you see someone doing what you THINK is casting a spell, I suppose there's some wiggle room about what happens. I would certainly say you still burn your reaction, but I'm less sure about whether Counterspell gets cast and auto-fails, or if it doesn't actually get cast. The way your DM wants to run it makes Counterspell completely impossible to use if the caster is alone. If the spell needed an ally's reaction, that would be part of the casting cost and would be specified.
I've never thought about someone faking casting a spell just to get someone to waste a counter spell... That's friggin brilliant I'm totally stealing that.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
“Fake” casting a spell doesn’t trigger or waste counterspell.
“Casting Time: 1 reaction, which you take when you see a creature within 60 feet of you casting a spell“
Reactions can only happen if the trigger has occurred. An NPC pretending to cast a spell wouldn’t actually satisfy the trigger requirements, as there are an order of operations that usually have to be followed with reactions. Even the ready action is limited by the trigger that was agreed upon as the action.
this can obviously be homebrewed, but frankly there are ways to tease out counterspells without actually “breaking” the rules.
granting the caster a few quickens might help. Baiting out a counterspell with an action casted cantrip, then Quickening a leveled spell might work appropriately. There are also creatures that can cast with legendary actions multiple times a round, which would limit how many spells get counterspelled due to reactions available.
some thought might need to be applied to how effective you want these tactics to be. A resource drained from an enemy isn’t nearly as impactful as a casters wasted slots. This may not be nearly as much of an issue depending on the adventuring day encounters.
Yeah, the RAW doesn't allow for pretending to cast a spell for the same reason it's impossible to not know a spell is being cast if you can witness the components - that is, it's possible not to observe the components (e.g. an S component performed in heavy fog), but if you observe the components, you know a spell is being cast, no matter how ignorant you theoretically are of spellcasting. By the same token, you can't be tricked into thinking a spell has been cast - someone not performing an actual S component won't trigger your auto-knowledge.
Of course, a DM might homebrew that away and let someone use Sleight of Hand or Deception or Performance to pretend to cast a spell, particularly if they want their setting to have charlatans in it.
Thank you for clarifying that. I'll have to think a bit more if I want to break the rules as a dm just to pull off this trick, but it's a healthy reminder that the rules of the game don't allow this kind of thing, so I need to keep that in mind to not just betray my players by breaking the rules just because I heard about a funny idea online.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Identifying a spell cast require an Intelligence (Arcana) check as an action or reaction, but Counterspell doesn't require you to know which spell is being cast to counter it.
It must be an active check, i don't use Passive check under such circumstance as they're usually used to represent the average result for a task done repeatedly or when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice.
So when a spell is cast it's up to the character to either use a reaction to identify it or counter it.
On a side note, how exactly does he expect people to take 2 reactions? You only get one.
anyways, pretty sure OP's question has been answered by now
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Thanks for all the responses guys, very helpful.
We havent had a ton of combat but Im currently 0/3 on CS with the new ruling.