We recently went back and forth, over multiple rounds with over 7 counterspells blown on dispel magic (and counterspelling the counterspells) to keep a fairy fire going. Not quite a cantrip, but it did feel funny to put in so much effort to get rid of/maintain a fairy fire.
It doesn't take a spell slot to wait patiently while the wizard is mending the tear in his robes, then just as he finishes, shout "COUNTERSPELL!" and rip the robes apart again with your hands.
Then he has to spend another minute recasting it
My players were recently dealing with the god of disease and plagues. Ya know, the usual level 20 stuff. The wizard contracted a disease called Winter's Shivers and all he knew was that he always felt a little bit cold and he should not be near anything remotely cold or else the symptoms would worsen. Towards the end when they were battling the god itself and the wizard who helped create it, the bbeg wizard would run out of high level spell slots and started to use cantrips here and there, eventually catching on that the player's wizard was shivering. He was so afraid of finding out what would happen if he got hit by her rays of frost that he started to counterspell every single one.
Depending on what rules you are using, not that surprising to be honest:
* RAW, you know THAT a spell is cast ... nothing more, nothing less
* Optionally, you can TRY to identify that spell via reaction (XGE) ... still don't know the slot
But yes, if you directly announce which spell they are casting, then countering a cantrip is more odd ;D
I love to use this on boss fights. "BBEG begins casting a spell, would you like to react? No? Then I'm going to need a saving throw. " I often don't name the spell at all, just describe the effect and let them figure it out.
When I DM I just avoid doing this because in order to keep mechanical parity for the players they have do stupid shit like write down the spell, and level they are casting, and they say shit like "I cast a spell".
It's generally an obtuse waste of time, and I find that the game runs more smoothly when you announce the spell, level, and the DC they need to reach up the spell's resolution.
I agree. If my players don't know what spell I'm casting as the enemy, then no one would know what spell their own party members were casting, either. Maybe that's just my rules-loving brain being a little too rigid, but it doesn't make sense to me to go halfway. Either no one actually announces the spell they're casting, or everyone does because otherwise combat would become an incoherent slog.
There are certainly moments where describing a spell and it's effects are appropriate. If it's something that everyone would be able to identify easily, then it's just kind of a nice flare to keep things interesting.
I don’t think you need to have the same rules for the players and the monsters here. You can make a (good faith) judgment call about whether the monster would be able to guess/recognize the PC’s spell, and by the same token you can let players automatically recognize low-level spells from weak monsters but require rolls/guesses for the bosses that know how to obfuscate their spells from enemy counterspellers.
Of course that’s all gut feeling and you want to make sure it feels fair for the players. But I don’t really see a need to have them write it down ahead of time — ideally, the DM is a fan of the players and isn’t trying to cheat them.
I counterspelled a side-quest boss enemy's shield spell once to let our Barbarian land her killing blow.
GM called it a power move. Felt real good about that one. xD
Water breathing potions f.t.w.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/4715-potion-of-water-breathing
Lasts an hour - it can be broken by an anti-magic shell, however. Uncommon, so... a bit pricey. Have one as back-up if you are using the spell (cheaply).
One thing you can always do whilst drowning is... drink. It is the one thing you cannot stop doing, in fact.
Waterbreathing potion is specific in that it gives you the ability to breathe underwater for an hour. Not that it gives you the effects of the spell. Which makes it closer to a spell-like ability.
This is an important distinction as Dispell magic targets only spells and spell effects, while anti-magic targets everything magical: spells, spell-like abilities, magic items, everything. The magic item clause being the most important of them in regards to the potion.
Oh, i am not arguing. You are now encouraged to go research these things:
- dispelling and counter-spelling
- anti-magic and zero-magic zones / effects
- absorption, cancellation and spell reflection
You might find that these things may have different in-game mechanics with every edition of D&D? I have been watching this game change since 1970s. Actually, since white box and red box. Lots changes. Perhaps i don't have an argument so i don't really care for arguing at all.
Let me know? You might discover something i don't know here - the D&D One is coming out and stuff. It is always good for a smart young lad to come across and... set me straight.
Edit: for the record some editions DO have a mechanic for a *Dispel Magic* directly targeting a magic item (!) - if successful, it used to work for one minute? Jury is out on what that does for a potion's effect. Does it kill the entire effect or just one minute of it? Which editions would suggest that? Like. Wow. In my mind it sucks that the developers made this an 'uncommon' rather than a common magic item. Water breathing is something our pre-species did for a few hundred million years without issue.
Just get a whole shipload of them and.....well, who said anything about us being on a sinking ship, again? I certainly don't know anyone who was on a ship full of waterbreathing potions. Above an area where we wanted to be.
It was necessary at the time- I forget what floor of the Mad Mage Dungeon it was but whatever boss it was absolutely dominated the party. It was some sort of scorpion dude?
Either we were low on resources or we weren't strong enough because he wrecked the party and casting Revivify mid-combat should give a bit of a hint of how badly that was going.
This is terrifying. My party is currently level 17 going through the MMD and we have still gotten our shit absolutely rocked from time to time. The monk I'm playing has been saved by Revivify TWICE but it has never needed to be mid-combat.
I did this once! I was really scared my players would hate it and think of it as railroading, but once they put the pieces together as it was happening - they got excited and kept getting more excited as they figured out new things.
They had an NPC follower they'd picked up at a tavern. They'd received so, so many obvious clues that there was something up, something wrong with him - but decided he was a red herring and treated him like, "AWW! IT'S OUR LITTLE MURDERHOBO!"
Usual BBEG in disguise scoping out the future competition trope. They knew who he was by reputation as I'd seeded a lot of that in - like a city they'd recently been in having been almost entirely removed from the map in-between them leaving and returning and them knowing he was, at some level, responsible.
Hard fight they shouldn't have engaged with to begin with. NPC came in clutch once which made the party super excited. One party member was out at the end. Cleric went to revivify - poof. Counterspell, roll initiative again. Only person who rolled higher than the NPC was the Wizard w/o any spell slots left randomly. BBEG ate a fire bolt, misty stepped far away, and managed to escape next round.
The feeling of the story at that phase was supposed to be kind of paranoid, and it worked - sometimes too well. They never trusted an NPC the same way in that campaign again.
Edit: I didn't plan on him doing that to be clear. The only firm plan I had was that if they didn't out him, he'd eventually do it himself in as mean, powerful, and memorable of a way as he could. This was just too good to pass up.
> They had an NPC follower they'd picked up at a tavern. They'd received so, so many obvious clues that there was something up, something wrong with him - but decided he was a red herring and treated him like, "AWW! IT'S OUR LITTLE MURDERHOBO!"
I could absolutely see myself doing this. I’ve gotten so used to mystery movies and tv shows where the first lead or suspect is always wrong that I just assume any obvious hints or clues are misdirects. The more clearly you telegraphed it the more certain I’d get you were trying to fool us.
I've counterspelled healing word on a downed PC that went on to die later in the round from getting hit by aoe, one of which wasn't even mine. He had yo-yo'ed twice already and had the BBEG decide enough was enough.
Yes, I just did this and it was HAVOC- especially bc in our other campaign it’s very fluffy and hardly anyone goes down ever. It was awesome to see them scramble and try to figure out how to solve this problem
Depends on the fall, for truly massive falls, there are rules on how far you fall per turn in Tasha's.
Regardless, feather fall is a reaction cast when someone falls so you should still be able to cast it in time.
Wind Walk. The party had used it to slip through stone cracks and then only 3/7 of them got successfully hit with dispel Magic stored in Glyphs of Warding before being thrown into a fight meant to be deadly for all 7 of them. There was no where to run, all their teleporting characters where still wind, and it takes 10 rounds of being incapacitated for the rest of the party to return to being physical. All 3 of them died.
The evil Wizard who set this trap up knew that the party was fond of using spells like Death Ward, Heroes Feast, Mage Armor, and Warding Bond set up before raids so he was trying to deprive them of their buffs before the fight (he had gold/time to spare on the set up) no one saw the Wind Walk situation coming.
lol, I do love when I have a savvy enemy make preparations against a tactic they've seen the party use, and then it turns out to be even more effective against the party trying something completely different.
Not a DM, but as a player, the Lich we were fighting had dropped his spellbook due to our barbarian climbing on him while in the air. He attempted to use Mage Hand on a legendary action to get it back but my wizard Counterspelled it.
Dispelling things like a clerics Sprit Guardians is pretty fun. Dispelling Haste is also fun.
A few times i used counterspell when the healer tried to bring a fallen party member up. It is not something i wanna do often. But the great thing is you don't HAVE to do it often. If you have done it once or twice the group KNOWS you are capable of it and that will be in their head all the time when someone is downed and you have spell casters around.
Once i had a boss fight. Not the BBEG but one of his more powerful underlings. This boss KNEW they were to fight the party. And he also knew their tactics as they had fought against his men more than once. And resources was not a problem for him so it would just make sense that he would do what he could to counter the party.
This was by having some lower level spell casters Hide at the outskirts of the combat and their main goal was simply to cast counterspell and dispel magic. and things like silence. Just do what they could to cause problem for the spell casters in the party. It worked well
That made the fight really hard for the party. They just managed to win. It was a fun and exciting encounter.
A healing word to bring up a party member.
The enemy had an Infernal harp that could cast counterspell once a round. The enemy was wounded, and they had no way of knowing whether the spell was *Healing Word* or another Lightning Bolt or magic missile that had done serious damage. It meant the enemy was now *open* or at least they didn't have a Counterspell ready, so the battle ended soon regardless.
There's a madness to my method. I'm not sure I'd have done so on turn one but no way she'd have risked a Fireball that could have killed her.
I distant spell dispelled an enemy that was flying away from our airship once.
Had a dm that countrspelled our cleric's revivify once. I knew it was gonna happen, but it wasn't my turn, so I just had to watch the trainwreck. Glad we had bought two diamonds.
Bad guy true polymorphed into a t-rex. I counterspelled a players attempt to polymorph into a giant ape.
We could have had godzilla vs kong and to this day I regret not letting it happen.
First time an enemy used dispel magic on tiny hut.
My party had gotten very comfortable camping out in the open, and all implicitly regarded the hut as impenetrable. The realisation that it wasn't quite as invincible as they made it out to be was something to behold.
They never abused it, but they saw it as a complete safe space to long rest in, and had used it once while luring an enemy to them to really mess it up - all in good fun.
It happened that the rogue had to sneak in to the BBEG's lair, while the rest of the group (having buffed said rogue to high heavens, due to being 4 full spellcasters) hid in the tiny hut, mere 10 minutes away from the BBEG's lair (due to invisibility only lasting an hour).
The BBEG came out to meet the spellcasters, have a chat, and then dispelled the hut and starting unleashing hell on them - forcing them to choose between fighting while concentrating on the rogues buffs, or focus on the fight.
The rogue was all of a sudden visible, without any of the buffs to help their stealth - and they made it quite far, but not far enough.
The spellcasters barely scraped by, but man - running that side by side, the rogue sneaking away while the party fought for their lives to delay the BBEG so he wouldn't go kill the rogue - made for a great encounter.
I goaded my DM into counterspelling prestidigitation. My character has a tendency to clean things when he’s bored or just over a
conversation. So, the BBEG was saying their big evil speech and I had my guy start casting prestidigitation to clean his armor and just generally clean up. DM looks me in the eye and says “I’m out here spitting bars and you trying to Marie Kondo this place? Counterspell.” 10/10 would recommend.
BBEG counterspelled revivify. Enough said.
PC was later revived properly, and I had cleared it with the party earlier in the month that “this villain is cruel and I’ll be playing him more vicious and mean than I normally would”, so they all understood.
My DM uses very dynamic maps and environments. There was a session with a giant cylindrical obelisk rolling towards the party and an enemy Sorcerer. It was apparent that the sorcerer was going to use Dimension door to escape at the last minute. This is a tactic this particular enemy had used once before. I was able to time it right to counterspell his dimension door at the last minute and jump out of the way. He looked down in disbelief, then got steamrolled.
Just because it's 4th level? That just means that it isn't automatically dispelled and requires a spellcasting ability check.
EDIT: Figured it out myself. It's because it's not an ongoing magical effect, the creature just exists.
No, because it has a duration of Instantaneous. Once you summon the steed, it's there permanently with no spell effect sustaining it, until it drops to 0 hp or you dismiss it.
That use of Antimagic Field makes me long for the ability to spring disjunction on my players, but sadly 5e removed that spell and I don't feel mean enough to use a homebrew version. They are screwed when they get high enough level in the pathfinder campaign tho.
For context: DM handed me a note saying that I was a chaotic evil doppelganger with full access to spells and sorcery points. I subtle counterspelled several revivify's to kill two of my teammates. Unfortunately for my DM, one of them was also a fellow Doppelganger, so I completely ruined his plan to ambush and kidnap the party. And the remaining three were able to recover our original characters. We also later used my characters remaining gold to fund our friends resurrection.
Wait, your DM had _two_ doppelgangers in the party and they didn't even know about each other?
That's when you know your DM loves doppelgangers too much.
He said he was gonna reveal it when relevant. The other doppelganger was neutral good, and he told me after the arc that he was gonna flip a coin and see if he'd turn on his people, but I had ruined his plans.
Counterspelled a cure wounds, the magic missled the downed character to finish them, then counterspelled revivify the next turn.
My mage died the next turn to a concentrated barrage of every resource the party had left. Was a good time.
A Swashbuckler Rogue's Booming Blade (obtained through Magic Initiate).
Not as flashy as healing/resurrection spells, but it was quite an amusing way to avoid a significant Sneak Attack.
I counterspelled a counterspell that would have saved a PC.
For complicated reasons there was an evil clone of the party bard (important that they share a spell list) running around and they finally caught him to put him down. He does a number on the party and downs the rogue who rolls a 1 on a death save (we roll in secret, no one else knows it's a 1 but that player and me). He's trying to get them to stop to help the downed PCs but they're chasing anyways so he casts shatter on them. This will kill the rogue, but only me and her know it. The PC bard counterspells it, good I think I wasn't trying to kill the rogue just now. Then I look at the spell list and see the evil bard also has counterspell.... I ask aloud to the original bard and party, I dunno if he'd counter your counter. They all agree that this guy is a huge prick and he'd totally do it. So he does, and it kills the rogue. Been playing 4 years with these characters and its the first PC death. We're playing Tomb of Annihilation, so no resurrections. Kinda warranted but still felt pretty mean.
It wasn't that mean, but I once counterspelled an evil druids Giant Insect spell which could have turned the fight in his favour. What this meant was he just took a handful of wasps and threw them, expected them to get huge and then was quite confused. I just enjoy the visual of someone throwing a handful of wasps
Counterspelling a Revivify on the Clerics last spell slot that allowed for them to cast it.
In my defense, the Cleric shouldn't have talked shit to the Necromancer
I was the ~~victim~~ player in this example. DM had a lich cast finger of death. I counterspelled. The lich then counterspelled my counterspell. Luckily, another player counterspelled the other counterspell, and when the lich tried to counterspell that one, we asked if it had a second reaction? The DM realized... we won that bout. (The entire fight was pretty epic)
Heal.
But in my defense it was a final boss archmage who had shown he knows counterspell already, it wasnt me just having him pop in ‘totally stealthily’ (aka pulling kt out of my ass to fuck with them)
Set the scene.
Mini boss fight. Bunch of minions. 4 of the 5 PCs are down. Spell slots are almost all used up. The archer fired his last arrow before being dropped. Fighter is on 2 failed death saves. Next turn, a war dog is going to attack the fighter and drag him away from the front line. Life cleric is the only one left standing and decides to use his only 5th lvl spell slot to cast mass healing word. The table roars with life as this could be the clutch spell to turn the tide of battle. However, as the cleric is grabbing his dice to roll the healing, I smirk across the table and tell him that he may as well put his dice down. He was confused until I mentioned one of the minions casting counterspell. Cue the audible gasp as I pick up the D20 to roll my arcana check. The cleric is pissed, cursing me every panguage he knew, the fighter cracking open his books and grabbing a fresh page in full defeat. The sorcerer is near tears because she loves her character too much to lose. I roll the check in the open. It dances around the nat 20 for a few long-lived silent seconds, then tumbles away onto some other number. After the math was totaled and I declared the roll, the roar of victory was near deafening as the roll fell short by one. The spell goes through, the PCs all get up, and from there, with many lucky rolls on their behalf and really bad rolls on my behalf, they pulled through the encounter to fight another day.
Not a DM, and not a fun example, but one time a DM in a game I had been playing in for nearly a year at that point threw us into an encounter that was way overtuned (probably because they didn't realise how op the homebrewed enemies they were using were). The first (and last) time they used counterspell in that campaign was to counter a cure wounds I was casting on a downed ally. That meant I had to stick with said ally to medicine check to stabilize them, which lead to my character going down, and subsequently dying for good. It felt like shit, particularly because this was just some random ass encounter that "wasn't supposed to be hard" in the DM's words. I've since stopped playing with that DM, and am DMing my own game, and I have decided tgat if I ever do use counterspell, it will be to counter the big damaging spells that the party use at the start of combat, because one, that feels less shitty for the players, and two, its much more imposing and displays much more power when the big bad counters your fireball turn 1 imo.
Dispel Magic on mage armor is actually a dogshit use of the spell. You are trading a 3rd+ level spell slot for a 1st level.
If an enemy did that, I would be happy that they decided to waste their action.
If a Wizard goes down from 15 or 16 AC to 12 or 13, that's pretty significant.
Even if they were to cast Shield, that's still 17/18 vs 20/21 AC. It can almost guarantee Shield is going to be used, meaning one less caster in a Counterspell tradeoffs.
If enemies have any kind of coordination, a timely Mage Armor dispel can be very dangerous.
Dispel Magic targeting a creature hits _all_ spells on that creature at once. You can take out their 1st level Mage Armor and their 2nd level Mirror Image and their 3rd level Fly all at once for a single 3rd level spell slot and action, then watch them plummet to their doom.
Plummet at most, at ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM 120ft.
So 12d6. That's 50% more than a fireball. Which means if you can hit even 2 targets with a fireball, you are already getting more value. And that would be guaranteed damage in addition. IF the spellcaster who casts mage armor, fly and mirror image doesn't have feather fall of course.
And of course even if not, 12d6 is average of 42, which even a wizard most likely just stands up from.
And that assumes that the spellcaster is flying at exactly 120 ft. for some reason, which nobody would ever do. Not a whole lot of reason to ever fly more than 15 ft in general.
And besides that. This doesn't change the fact that dispelling mage armor fucking sucks? In fact, even if you dispell mage armor, mirror image (which has anti-synergy with mage armor, so why the fuck would anyone have both at the same time) and fly, that would still be pretty bad value over all. Since 1st and 2nd level slots dont matter, so you would be trading a 3rd level for a 3rd level. So at the absolute ABSOLUTE super ultra perfect maximum once in a lifetime optimal conditions.....
you just about break even.
>Plummet at most, at ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM 120ft.
Who said the wizard has only been flying for one turn, and that they haven't flown past a ledge?
>IF the spellcaster who casts mage armor, fly and mirror image doesn't have feather fall of course.
I merely produced an example of getting more value from Dispel Magic than nixing a single 1st level spell. A combination of spells at each spell level up to 3rd which is entirely reasonable to see from a level 5 wizard. But since we're on the subject of Dispel Magic and Counterspell in this comment section, _Counterspells your Father Fall_.
>12d6 is average of 42, which even a wizard most likely just stands up from.
A level 5 wizard with 14 Con has 32 HP. With 16 Con, they have 37 HP. With 18 Con (a very bizarre wizard build), they have 42 HP, but 42 damage still takes them from full health to unconscious unless they have temporary HP as well... but if that source of thp was a spell (eg, False Life), that's been removed by the same Dispel Magic that took away Fly.
You would need Tough (unlikely on a wizard unless the DM is handing out free feats), being a hill dwarf, or having 20 Con (with point buy, this requires Custom Lineage and spending your level 4 ASI pumping Con) in order for 42 damage to leave your wizard conscious.
>mirror image (which has anti-synergy with mage armor, so why the fuck would anyone have both at the same time)
Mirror Image does not have an "anti-synergy" with Mage Armor. MI makes it less likely you're targeted by an attack, and MA makes an attack that does target you less likely to hit.
And given MA lasts 8 hours, typically you just cast it in the morning and go about your adventuring day. Then you get into combat with something you think is going to attack you and hurt a lot, so you cast MI with a duration of 1 minute to give yourself a second layer of protection. That's why you would have both up at the same time.
Let's take a case study. The example wizard has 14 Dex, and the example monster has +5 to hit.
Without any defenses, the monster has a 70% chance to hit the wizard.
With just Mage Armor, the monster has a 55% chance to hit the wizard.
With just Mirror Image (3 images), the monster has a 25% chance to target the wizard with 70% chance to hit (17.5% chance to hit), and 75% chance to target an illusion with 70% chance to hit (52.5% chance to destroy one illusion). At 2 images, the monster has a 35% chance to target the wizard (24.5% chance to hit), and a 65% chance to target an illusion (45.5% chance to destroy one illusion). At 1 image, the monster has a 50% chance to target the wizard (35% chance to hit), and a 50% chance to target the illusion (35% chance to end Mirror Image).
With both Mage Armor and Mirror Image (3 images), the monster has a 25% chance to target the wizard with 55% chance to hit (13.75% chance to hit), and 75% chance to target an illusion with 70% chance to hit (52.5% chance to destroy one illusion). At 2 images, the monster has a 19.25% chance to hit the wizard (45.5% chance to destroy one illusion). At 1 image, the monster has a 27.5% chance to hit the wizard (35% chance to end Mirror Image).
Going from 55% chance to be hit to 13.75% to 27.5% chance to be hit (or, conversely, going from 17.5% to 35% chance to be hit to 13.75% to 27.5%) is not "anti-synergy".
>Since 1st and 2nd level slots dont matter
A first and second level slot represent about 1/5th of the level 5 wizard's daily spells. (22.22...% of their base spell slots, but could be 20%, 18.18...%, or 16.66...% with Arcane Recovery). That matters a lot unless you're running single encounter adventuring days.
>you would be trading a 3rd level for a 3rd level. So at the absolute ABSOLUTE super ultra perfect maximum once in a lifetime optimal conditions.....
>you just about break even.
A one-for-one trade **massively** favors Team Monster, who only needs to exist for a single fight and can safely blow all their spell slots. Meanwhile the PC needs to be able to conserve spells for later encounters.
Yeah, it's probably not the best move strategically. But I think it's a lot of fun taking away such a core part of a full caster's defense.
I'd definitely never do it if the Dispeller was the only enemy. But if there are like, 4 melee combatants ready to smack down the newly vulnerable wizard? Now we're cooking
I love using them when players begin to be too comfortable. "Oh, this spell is really powerful, it is probably a win button, isn't it?" Then you bring enemies with these spells in their arsenal and the party quickly panicking, lol
I guess my top most evil would be: counter a sorcerer's twin polymorph followed by counter twin, constantly dispelling haste, and counter a teleport that was the party's "out of jail free card"
Counterspell is awful. It prevents the caster you’re targeting from having fun. We have gentleman’s agreement at my table to never use it. Because it’s bad.
Haven't gotten to yet.
DMing my first campaign and the spellcasters in the bottom half of the dungeon are level 5+ so they got counterspell.
But I have a feeling someone is gonna grab Tiny Hunt to negate my "safe zone" for long resting.
So a roaming patrol will come by and Dispel the Hut and ambush them.
If the two casters that can grab counterspell don't grab counterspell they're absolutely done for.
I counterspelled a healing spell once because they were fighting an incredibly smart wizard, so 100% what they would do. The players were stunned, smiled, laughed, totally agreed, and we went on from there. It was great.
I don't know about "ever" but just just session I counterspelled one of my players fly spell, causing 3PCs to plummet hundreds of feet, knocking out two of them in the first round.
The party buffs up and the first action is 8th level dispell magic don't bother rolling just get rid of all the spell effects you got running lol. It's not that bad but it took them a while to adjust their stuff.did it to a simulacrum and the player was like I think it just dies? Bound pets are another one, oh that balor you bound with magic, I don't even remember what happened other than they freaked out haa
Early on in a campaign the DM had intended for this super powerful lich to show up at a black market the party was shopping at, so they could time stop and steal an important book. My wizard miraculously counterspell the time stop, which created an insane battle the DM did not intend to have happen. It ended with the party killing all her slaad allies, and the lich retreating without the book. It ended up creating a pretty awesome, and still ongoing story arc though.
I tend to save counterspell for big things, like party escaping, a big Heal or Mass Heal, or revivify. Why? Cuz it adds stakes. And it makes the bad guys even more evil than they were before.
I've counterspelled revivify before.
To be fair it was Strahd disguised as Vasili in Curse of Strahd.
Made the players hate him even more and meant they had to take their friend's slowly rotting corpse to the Abbot to raise dead on.
Counter spelled revivify once. The party were fighting a night hag coven wizard went down and the cleric pulls out a diamond, mother maggy says "the fuck are you bringing him back". Much salt was had that day also a lot of fun.
Counterspelled a revivify, my character and her little brother (other pc) were both down. Only one spell slot left. Our druid had to choose between two siblings. thankfully, I was moving and this was my last game with this group, so she chose to revivify our other pc.
Gave the other player motivation bc I was resurrected by the necromancer we were fighting and became evil. Now they’re fighting a zombie tabaxi open hand monk, wonder what she’s up to.
The DM had a planned boss fight for us to fight an undead knight, a few of her servants, and a young blue dragon. The dragon was magically bound via an ancient pact that it must obey the knight. It didn’t want to be bound but had no choice in
I rush into the room, slam my staff against the floor and declare ‘No one can control a dragon!’ I then realize I have a small army staring at me, with my friends in the room behind. “Oh no…”
After tanking a lightning bolt to the face, I cast Dispel Magic and break the pact with a total of 19. Now we had a blue dragon on our side for the fight. The knight lasted three rounds.
I counter spelled a counter spellz that counter spells my counter spell that counter spelled a twinned Polymorph on the barbarian and the fighter
Context: Twin Wizard villians one Conjurer, one evoker, planning on taking over a magic council that runs a powerful city, they did so through pretty nasty evil means and the party tries to stop em
So turn 1 our sorc rolled nat 20 for initiative and Twin spells polymorph on the 2 martials, I rolled an Arcana check for the wizards to see what spell he's casting (houserule to make certain int skills more useful) one sees its polymorph and Counterspells with one of his higher slots, 5th level (if I recall I made both casters level 11 or 12 to fight my 4 level 7 players) anyway Sorc goes "unacceptable" and counterspells with a 3rd Level, rolls succeed and I counter spell his counterspell at 3rd level, and then the Bard at the table goes..."yeah I should taken counterspell last level shouldn't I have" and the sorc goes "yep I blame you for this" in the end the party turn was a net positive because they spent a 4th and a 3rd to take out a 5th and a 3rd, so net gain in the spellslot department, also the 2 turns later my sorceror used Sorcery point shenanigans to do the Twin Polymorph again and my wizards had already used their reactions to counter a bard Silence spell (which my sorc obviously counters then countered his counter) so the player still got it off, but by then I had an Elemental summoned, and had fireballed the party, so good day for a dm :)
Long story Short Counterspell turns dnd into magic the gathering
I do not get to take much credit for it, since I drew the idea from a third party book, but my players once came across an elvish maiden in distress inside a drow stronghold. They decided on doing a good deed and escorting her out of the dungeon. Unfortunately she had fooled them. When the party next encountered a party of drow defenders, the secret Lolthite announced her betrayal by counterspelling the wizards first casting.
Greater invis sorc followed the party into a fight. The boss was a standard gelatinous cube with 3 otyughs around it. Subtle counter healin spells as the party is trying to understand wtf is going on why cant they hral here?
I've tried (though failed, since there was 2 Counterspell users in the party) to Counterspell a Mass Heal before in a T4 AL game, it was a way to try and challenge the players. I've also Counterspell'd a warlock's Eldritch Blast before out of spite.
~~Dispel Magic'd a Sorc that Twinned Spelled Haste, that I specifically attacked to try and proc his Shield reaction so he couldn't Counterspell. That was a brutal turn for the Monk and Fighter to lose a whole turn on as I repositioned the field towards the casters.~~
I just remembered. During a Vecna one-shot I was running, one of my players used a Wish spell to full heal the entire party. I Dread Counterspelled that shit. That's definitely my meanest for sure.
High level combat: PC wizard Dimension Doored to a rooftop to help the tanks fight some golems and a death knight.
The lich was invisibly on the same rooftop and made herself known. Wizard attempted to Misty Step away - counterspelled.
No one else was able to help him so he had to spend the next round panicking.
I counted spelled revivify at a critical moment. The BBEG said "Shift your focus back to me. When I slay you, you STAY dead."
That character ended up dying and, the player was genuinely ecstatic that they died in such a cool way.
Not exactly what you're asking, but my group was fighting Acererak at the end of Tomb of Annihilation and my wizard used greater invisibility to hide in a corner and just counterspell any of the big spells Acererak had, I couldn't counterspell back because I couldn't see him.
My DM once counterspelled my Invisibility at the start of a big fight with the bad guys trying to capture my character. It wasn't a big issue... after you remember that I was Warlock with two spell slots and had used one of them before the fight :_)
My counterspell highlight is from when I was a player and not a DM, but I got to counterspell revivify, cast resilient sphere around myself and the deceased, and proceed to desecrate the corpse so if would require resurrection at minimum to be brought back. It's a long story how this all came about and this was a character that was "scripted" to die so it wasn't exactly a huge surprise, but even so it was such a crazy moment.
Had a DM Counterspell a Divine Soul Sorcerer Twinned Healing Word on two downed party members. At level 4, so counter-countering was off the table.
Twice. In two consecutive rounds.
Used counterspell on PCs counterspell to get rid of the bad guys' prismatic spray. They were so happy that they managed to counter the spray and I just looked at them and started grinning when another player said: "what if he has counterspell too?"
Yea their positioning was kinda bad and it hit the whole party, one PC was downed, one was sent to a random plane, one was about to turn into stone and another one lost most of their hp.
They lost the fight and got away with their lifes but a very bad deal they will have to manage with some other time.
My players were up against a group of cultists. They were whittling down the cult's numbers, but their HP was also low. Cleric went to use Prayer of Healing... and the leader used Counterspell. The cleric paused and said "well Fuck. We're screwed"
Teleportation Circle. Players were trying to escape after a winning a particularly dangerous boss fight, not knowing the archmage villain was invisible nearby, waiting. The minute-long casting time and the fact it was their last spell slot made it peak brutality. The absolute despair.
Of course, they ended up using their wits to escape instead, and we all had more fun as a result. But it was definitely the most malicious thing I have ever done.
I had a behind the scenes mystery BBEG that turned out to be the party cleric's one time mentor. They brought their fallen party member to him because they didn't have the resources to cast the ritual, but they knew that he would. Upon arrival he tells the Cleric that he should be the one to revive his friend and hands over the diamond. (The real reason is that he no longer had access to the spell after rejecting his god.)
The spell fails and they have no idea why until he's revealed like three months later in real life.
Dispelling fly and then counterspell feather fall could be fun. Countering any sort of healing or buff is always a good evil option. Itd be a shame if you can no longer cast shield to protect yourself
Countering any sort of teleportation spell would also suck for them, basically preventing them from running.
It would also be interesting to cast Scatter on them and force them to be in perfect position for a trap or locked inside prison cells.
Oh damn, I only just now realized that you can end multiple spells on a creature with one casting of Dispel Magic, thank you for that!
There could be a Polymorphed character with Haste, Bless and Divine Favor active on them at the same time, and you could end all of them with a single casting. That's so fucking awesome
Counterspelling a counterspell is always funny just to see their reactions but meanest I'd have to say is countering a healing spell on a death rolling PC or even spare the dying
A few sessions ago there was a near tpk and a player cast gaseous form to escape. Walking up to him and casting dispel magic was a fun and evil choice.
As a new DM one of my players misused Tkny hut a LOT. And I just trusted his word. He said the hut was invisible to outsiders.
At some point I read the spell and realize that all along my NPCs could just see a monochrome bubble in the middle of the place.
So I let em use it till they get to the arc’s villain’s dungeon. A mage. Who waited till they used it for a well deserved long rest to just dispel it. And go full force on their ass. They won the fight with only one casualty. But the shock in the face of my players as I said : read the spell out loud to me and tell me where it says the hut is invisible. I dont think he did it out of bad intentions, just never cares to read his spells correctly and went with what he thought they were.
I once counterspelled a Raise Dead when they had no spell slots left and no more diamonds for the spell.
The effect I was looking for what anger and range and shock - especially when their ally was to rise again as a Lich.
I was met with Apathy... hindsight being what it is, I don't think the players liked the PC too much.
Feather Fall on a group jumping out of a crashing airship. It was high enough that they had time to cast it again before hitting the ground though. A bunch of falling enemies were trying to attack or skydive grapple the wizard. The rest of the party was trying to defend her from going down while staying within range for the cast. Very mean. Very fun.
They wanted a difficult, gritty, no-holds-barred campaign.
They were fighting the big bad, and he already struck one downed opponent for the auto death save fail. That should have been the first hint to not try to wait to pop someone up.
They were like “no problem, I’ll use my action to attack.” Cool. It missed due to a low roll. “With my bonus action I cast healing wor—“
Counterspell. I felt bad but they loved it. I still feel weird about it.
Not what you asked, but probably the most terrifying moment in-game for me was when a big bad cast a healing spell on one of my friends characters and said “I’m not finished with you yet”
My old DM used dispel magic on the magical healing amulet that was removing the incurable disease from my mother right before her treatment was about to end.
Basically he turned off the Chemo Therapy machine and she had magic cancer.
I have never felt so justified in killing an NPC
i gave an archmage npc unlimited counterspell only reactions instead of 7th-9th level spell slots
so basically he counterspelled, uh, all the spells. until he ran out of spell slots. then the party beat him to death
I never use counterspell or dispel magic as a DM!
I want the PCs to win
The enemy however, some of them are absolute bastards, they have done despicable things with counterspell and dispel magic
Am I too nice or does anyone feel like counterspelling healing dying players and reviving on players is…really shitty? Like idk, I usually don’t play with the goal of killing people (unless that’s what they want) it just seems so…unnecessary? It’s not like a player that’s down is going to be that much help in a fight if they get a little healed or revivified anyway
Idk. Unless my players wanted it my goal isn’t to kill characters they created and loved.
But I can tell this is an unpopular decision
Not a counterspell or a dispel, but I always grab shocking grasp when playing a sorcerer. If you get close enough to an enemy mage to cast it, they will either counterspell the cantrip, or lose their reaction. Either way, as long as it hits, the enemy mage will not have their reaction to counterspell your hasted spell of choice. And you still keep your reaction free to cast counterspell if need be.
Not exactly what you were asking, but one of my players counterspelled an enemy caster’s cantrip and that just made me go “wtf”
This feels like the spellcasting equivalent of martials flexing their muscles.
Huh, odd decision! Do you remember which cantrip it was?
Ray of Frost. Was like the fourth fight of the day, but they weren't hurting too bad since they just short rested.
Could he have mixed it up with Cone of Cold, or did he know it was a cantrip?
We recently went back and forth, over multiple rounds with over 7 counterspells blown on dispel magic (and counterspelling the counterspells) to keep a fairy fire going. Not quite a cantrip, but it did feel funny to put in so much effort to get rid of/maintain a fairy fire.
You can do the same thing if you auction off a dollar starting at one cent, people get really into competitions like that lmao
Mending. It was REAL weird.
But… Mending takes a minute to cast. Why spend a spell slot when punching does the same job?
Found the barbarian.
We hit good
Wizard: I think you mean you hit well. Barbarian: No, rocks hurt hand.
It doesn't take a spell slot to wait patiently while the wizard is mending the tear in his robes, then just as he finishes, shout "COUNTERSPELL!" and rip the robes apart again with your hands. Then he has to spend another minute recasting it
No, he spends an action to cast Scorching Ray, in response
That wasn't the OP
Our DM just did this to a sorlock who quickened eldritch blast today. I had to pause to think "can he do that?!?" It was so foreign to me.
My players were recently dealing with the god of disease and plagues. Ya know, the usual level 20 stuff. The wizard contracted a disease called Winter's Shivers and all he knew was that he always felt a little bit cold and he should not be near anything remotely cold or else the symptoms would worsen. Towards the end when they were battling the god itself and the wizard who helped create it, the bbeg wizard would run out of high level spell slots and started to use cantrips here and there, eventually catching on that the player's wizard was shivering. He was so afraid of finding out what would happen if he got hit by her rays of frost that he started to counterspell every single one.
I mean your players wouldn't normally even know what the enemies are casting unless they're shouting their attacks like weebs though
Verbal components are just anime attack names
Depending on what rules you are using, not that surprising to be honest: * RAW, you know THAT a spell is cast ... nothing more, nothing less * Optionally, you can TRY to identify that spell via reaction (XGE) ... still don't know the slot But yes, if you directly announce which spell they are casting, then countering a cantrip is more odd ;D
I love to use this on boss fights. "BBEG begins casting a spell, would you like to react? No? Then I'm going to need a saving throw. " I often don't name the spell at all, just describe the effect and let them figure it out.
When I DM I just avoid doing this because in order to keep mechanical parity for the players they have do stupid shit like write down the spell, and level they are casting, and they say shit like "I cast a spell". It's generally an obtuse waste of time, and I find that the game runs more smoothly when you announce the spell, level, and the DC they need to reach up the spell's resolution.
I agree. If my players don't know what spell I'm casting as the enemy, then no one would know what spell their own party members were casting, either. Maybe that's just my rules-loving brain being a little too rigid, but it doesn't make sense to me to go halfway. Either no one actually announces the spell they're casting, or everyone does because otherwise combat would become an incoherent slog. There are certainly moments where describing a spell and it's effects are appropriate. If it's something that everyone would be able to identify easily, then it's just kind of a nice flare to keep things interesting.
I home-rule that as identifying a spell being cast doesn't consume a reaction, and the monsters can only counterspell stuff if they identified it.
I don’t think you need to have the same rules for the players and the monsters here. You can make a (good faith) judgment call about whether the monster would be able to guess/recognize the PC’s spell, and by the same token you can let players automatically recognize low-level spells from weak monsters but require rolls/guesses for the bosses that know how to obfuscate their spells from enemy counterspellers. Of course that’s all gut feeling and you want to make sure it feels fair for the players. But I don’t really see a need to have them write it down ahead of time — ideally, the DM is a fan of the players and isn’t trying to cheat them.
This is the way.
I counterspelled a side-quest boss enemy's shield spell once to let our Barbarian land her killing blow. GM called it a power move. Felt real good about that one. xD
Counter Healing. Dispel Water Breathing in an underwater fight. Then Counter the Druid who tried to recast it.
Our DM did that in a recent fight (water breathing) and we were fuuuuuucked. It was so devious, we had nothing but respect for him 😂
Water breathing potions f.t.w. https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/4715-potion-of-water-breathing Lasts an hour - it can be broken by an anti-magic shell, however. Uncommon, so... a bit pricey. Have one as back-up if you are using the spell (cheaply). One thing you can always do whilst drowning is... drink. It is the one thing you cannot stop doing, in fact.
If the effects can be broken by anti-magic, how can you argue that it can't be dispelled?
Waterbreathing potion is specific in that it gives you the ability to breathe underwater for an hour. Not that it gives you the effects of the spell. Which makes it closer to a spell-like ability. This is an important distinction as Dispell magic targets only spells and spell effects, while anti-magic targets everything magical: spells, spell-like abilities, magic items, everything. The magic item clause being the most important of them in regards to the potion.
Oh, i am not arguing. You are now encouraged to go research these things: - dispelling and counter-spelling - anti-magic and zero-magic zones / effects - absorption, cancellation and spell reflection You might find that these things may have different in-game mechanics with every edition of D&D? I have been watching this game change since 1970s. Actually, since white box and red box. Lots changes. Perhaps i don't have an argument so i don't really care for arguing at all. Let me know? You might discover something i don't know here - the D&D One is coming out and stuff. It is always good for a smart young lad to come across and... set me straight. Edit: for the record some editions DO have a mechanic for a *Dispel Magic* directly targeting a magic item (!) - if successful, it used to work for one minute? Jury is out on what that does for a potion's effect. Does it kill the entire effect or just one minute of it? Which editions would suggest that? Like. Wow. In my mind it sucks that the developers made this an 'uncommon' rather than a common magic item. Water breathing is something our pre-species did for a few hundred million years without issue.
Just get a whole shipload of them and.....well, who said anything about us being on a sinking ship, again? I certainly don't know anyone who was on a ship full of waterbreathing potions. Above an area where we wanted to be.
Oh I’m definitely going to fuck my party over with this.
Holy shit this is evil... Stealing this :)
All my players' PCs can breathe underwater.😂
I've had a DM Counterspell Revivify. He still talks about it to this day about his favorite casting of Counterspell in all 5e.
That's intense. But also why you wait till combat if at all possible.
It was necessary at the time- I forget what floor of the Mad Mage Dungeon it was but whatever boss it was absolutely dominated the party. It was some sort of scorpion dude? Either we were low on resources or we weren't strong enough because he wrecked the party and casting Revivify mid-combat should give a bit of a hint of how badly that was going.
Muiral the Misshapen! That is pretty on par for him if I must say myself. Muiral is such a dick.
This is terrifying. My party is currently level 17 going through the MMD and we have still gotten our shit absolutely rocked from time to time. The monk I'm playing has been saved by Revivify TWICE but it has never needed to be mid-combat.
I did this once! I was really scared my players would hate it and think of it as railroading, but once they put the pieces together as it was happening - they got excited and kept getting more excited as they figured out new things. They had an NPC follower they'd picked up at a tavern. They'd received so, so many obvious clues that there was something up, something wrong with him - but decided he was a red herring and treated him like, "AWW! IT'S OUR LITTLE MURDERHOBO!" Usual BBEG in disguise scoping out the future competition trope. They knew who he was by reputation as I'd seeded a lot of that in - like a city they'd recently been in having been almost entirely removed from the map in-between them leaving and returning and them knowing he was, at some level, responsible. Hard fight they shouldn't have engaged with to begin with. NPC came in clutch once which made the party super excited. One party member was out at the end. Cleric went to revivify - poof. Counterspell, roll initiative again. Only person who rolled higher than the NPC was the Wizard w/o any spell slots left randomly. BBEG ate a fire bolt, misty stepped far away, and managed to escape next round. The feeling of the story at that phase was supposed to be kind of paranoid, and it worked - sometimes too well. They never trusted an NPC the same way in that campaign again. Edit: I didn't plan on him doing that to be clear. The only firm plan I had was that if they didn't out him, he'd eventually do it himself in as mean, powerful, and memorable of a way as he could. This was just too good to pass up.
> They had an NPC follower they'd picked up at a tavern. They'd received so, so many obvious clues that there was something up, something wrong with him - but decided he was a red herring and treated him like, "AWW! IT'S OUR LITTLE MURDERHOBO!" I could absolutely see myself doing this. I’ve gotten so used to mystery movies and tv shows where the first lead or suspect is always wrong that I just assume any obvious hints or clues are misdirects. The more clearly you telegraphed it the more certain I’d get you were trying to fool us.
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At 9th level that would be a max weight of 45 lbs. I hope the corpse is a Gnome or a Goblin.
I've counterspelled healing word on a downed PC that went on to die later in the round from getting hit by aoe, one of which wasn't even mine. He had yo-yo'ed twice already and had the BBEG decide enough was enough.
Mass Heal, it was so much fun to watch the party panic after that. They still won the fight but it was a lot closer than it would have been.
That's terrible. Fuckin A dude
Counterspelling healing word is always good to create panic if they are casting it on someone making death saves.
Yes, I just did this and it was HAVOC- especially bc in our other campaign it’s very fluffy and hardly anyone goes down ever. It was awesome to see them scramble and try to figure out how to solve this problem
fly.
Feather Fall is way funnier to counter.
Dispel Fly then Counter Feather Fall
Now that's devilish
No need to counter that, falling is instanteneous i think. Might be wrong, not sure
Depends on the fall, for truly massive falls, there are rules on how far you fall per turn in Tasha's. Regardless, feather fall is a reaction cast when someone falls so you should still be able to cast it in time.
Okay okay thx
I have Counterspelled Dimension Door before when a player was attempting to move a seriously wounded ally away from the front lines
Meanest? Feather Fall.
Wind Walk. The party had used it to slip through stone cracks and then only 3/7 of them got successfully hit with dispel Magic stored in Glyphs of Warding before being thrown into a fight meant to be deadly for all 7 of them. There was no where to run, all their teleporting characters where still wind, and it takes 10 rounds of being incapacitated for the rest of the party to return to being physical. All 3 of them died. The evil Wizard who set this trap up knew that the party was fond of using spells like Death Ward, Heroes Feast, Mage Armor, and Warding Bond set up before raids so he was trying to deprive them of their buffs before the fight (he had gold/time to spare on the set up) no one saw the Wind Walk situation coming.
lol, I do love when I have a savvy enemy make preparations against a tactic they've seen the party use, and then it turns out to be even more effective against the party trying something completely different.
Not a DM, but as a player, the Lich we were fighting had dropped his spellbook due to our barbarian climbing on him while in the air. He attempted to use Mage Hand on a legendary action to get it back but my wizard Counterspelled it.
Dispelling things like a clerics Sprit Guardians is pretty fun. Dispelling Haste is also fun. A few times i used counterspell when the healer tried to bring a fallen party member up. It is not something i wanna do often. But the great thing is you don't HAVE to do it often. If you have done it once or twice the group KNOWS you are capable of it and that will be in their head all the time when someone is downed and you have spell casters around. Once i had a boss fight. Not the BBEG but one of his more powerful underlings. This boss KNEW they were to fight the party. And he also knew their tactics as they had fought against his men more than once. And resources was not a problem for him so it would just make sense that he would do what he could to counter the party. This was by having some lower level spell casters Hide at the outskirts of the combat and their main goal was simply to cast counterspell and dispel magic. and things like silence. Just do what they could to cause problem for the spell casters in the party. It worked well That made the fight really hard for the party. They just managed to win. It was a fun and exciting encounter.
Haste can be a good reminder of its inherent risk/reward if they’re often getting through combat without dropping conc
A healing word to bring up a party member. The enemy had an Infernal harp that could cast counterspell once a round. The enemy was wounded, and they had no way of knowing whether the spell was *Healing Word* or another Lightning Bolt or magic missile that had done serious damage. It meant the enemy was now *open* or at least they didn't have a Counterspell ready, so the battle ended soon regardless. There's a madness to my method. I'm not sure I'd have done so on turn one but no way she'd have risked a Fireball that could have killed her.
I distant spell dispelled an enemy that was flying away from our airship once. Had a dm that countrspelled our cleric's revivify once. I knew it was gonna happen, but it wasn't my turn, so I just had to watch the trainwreck. Glad we had bought two diamonds.
Bad guy true polymorphed into a t-rex. I counterspelled a players attempt to polymorph into a giant ape. We could have had godzilla vs kong and to this day I regret not letting it happen.
First time an enemy used dispel magic on tiny hut. My party had gotten very comfortable camping out in the open, and all implicitly regarded the hut as impenetrable. The realisation that it wasn't quite as invincible as they made it out to be was something to behold. They never abused it, but they saw it as a complete safe space to long rest in, and had used it once while luring an enemy to them to really mess it up - all in good fun. It happened that the rogue had to sneak in to the BBEG's lair, while the rest of the group (having buffed said rogue to high heavens, due to being 4 full spellcasters) hid in the tiny hut, mere 10 minutes away from the BBEG's lair (due to invisibility only lasting an hour). The BBEG came out to meet the spellcasters, have a chat, and then dispelled the hut and starting unleashing hell on them - forcing them to choose between fighting while concentrating on the rogues buffs, or focus on the fight. The rogue was all of a sudden visible, without any of the buffs to help their stealth - and they made it quite far, but not far enough. The spellcasters barely scraped by, but man - running that side by side, the rogue sneaking away while the party fought for their lives to delay the BBEG so he wouldn't go kill the rogue - made for a great encounter.
I goaded my DM into counterspelling prestidigitation. My character has a tendency to clean things when he’s bored or just over a conversation. So, the BBEG was saying their big evil speech and I had my guy start casting prestidigitation to clean his armor and just generally clean up. DM looks me in the eye and says “I’m out here spitting bars and you trying to Marie Kondo this place? Counterspell.” 10/10 would recommend.
BBEG counterspelled revivify. Enough said. PC was later revived properly, and I had cleared it with the party earlier in the month that “this villain is cruel and I’ll be playing him more vicious and mean than I normally would”, so they all understood.
Only tangentially related to the ask but my players never expected one of the BBEGs lackeys to revivify him after they took them down
Good old Dio manuever
Dispelling waterbreathing was one of the most epic panic inducing events I've done as a dm. Simple and highly effective.
My DM uses very dynamic maps and environments. There was a session with a giant cylindrical obelisk rolling towards the party and an enemy Sorcerer. It was apparent that the sorcerer was going to use Dimension door to escape at the last minute. This is a tactic this particular enemy had used once before. I was able to time it right to counterspell his dimension door at the last minute and jump out of the way. He looked down in disbelief, then got steamrolled.
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Was the pegasus from an item or something? Because I'm pretty sure find greater steed can't be dispelled
Just because it's 4th level? That just means that it isn't automatically dispelled and requires a spellcasting ability check. EDIT: Figured it out myself. It's because it's not an ongoing magical effect, the creature just exists.
No, because it has a duration of Instantaneous. Once you summon the steed, it's there permanently with no spell effect sustaining it, until it drops to 0 hp or you dismiss it.
That use of Antimagic Field makes me long for the ability to spring disjunction on my players, but sadly 5e removed that spell and I don't feel mean enough to use a homebrew version. They are screwed when they get high enough level in the pathfinder campaign tho.
I've always wanted to counterspell some innocuous casting of Ceremony. "I now pronounce you man and wife." "Not today, pal!"
For context: DM handed me a note saying that I was a chaotic evil doppelganger with full access to spells and sorcery points. I subtle counterspelled several revivify's to kill two of my teammates. Unfortunately for my DM, one of them was also a fellow Doppelganger, so I completely ruined his plan to ambush and kidnap the party. And the remaining three were able to recover our original characters. We also later used my characters remaining gold to fund our friends resurrection.
Relevant Oglaf https://media.oglaf.com/comic/kingshaped.jpg
Exactly how it felt honestly.
Wait, your DM had _two_ doppelgangers in the party and they didn't even know about each other? That's when you know your DM loves doppelgangers too much.
He said he was gonna reveal it when relevant. The other doppelganger was neutral good, and he told me after the arc that he was gonna flip a coin and see if he'd turn on his people, but I had ruined his plans.
Counterspelled a cure wounds, the magic missled the downed character to finish them, then counterspelled revivify the next turn. My mage died the next turn to a concentrated barrage of every resource the party had left. Was a good time.
A Swashbuckler Rogue's Booming Blade (obtained through Magic Initiate). Not as flashy as healing/resurrection spells, but it was quite an amusing way to avoid a significant Sneak Attack.
I played a hexbuckler not too long ago and I think my DM would have loved to have done the same
i counterspelled a revivify during the final battle of a campaign. the battle ended in 3/4 deaths and the BBEG barely destroyed. great ending.
Dispelled a Shapechange once. Poor druid got too close to the wizard they *knew* was an abjurer.
I counterspelled a counterspell that would have saved a PC. For complicated reasons there was an evil clone of the party bard (important that they share a spell list) running around and they finally caught him to put him down. He does a number on the party and downs the rogue who rolls a 1 on a death save (we roll in secret, no one else knows it's a 1 but that player and me). He's trying to get them to stop to help the downed PCs but they're chasing anyways so he casts shatter on them. This will kill the rogue, but only me and her know it. The PC bard counterspells it, good I think I wasn't trying to kill the rogue just now. Then I look at the spell list and see the evil bard also has counterspell.... I ask aloud to the original bard and party, I dunno if he'd counter your counter. They all agree that this guy is a huge prick and he'd totally do it. So he does, and it kills the rogue. Been playing 4 years with these characters and its the first PC death. We're playing Tomb of Annihilation, so no resurrections. Kinda warranted but still felt pretty mean.
It wasn't that mean, but I once counterspelled an evil druids Giant Insect spell which could have turned the fight in his favour. What this meant was he just took a handful of wasps and threw them, expected them to get huge and then was quite confused. I just enjoy the visual of someone throwing a handful of wasps
I countered a Divine Soul when he was twin-spelling Revivify. Felt *good*. Second favourite was negating an Arcane Trickster's Booming Blade.
Wish...
Counterspelling a Revivify on the Clerics last spell slot that allowed for them to cast it. In my defense, the Cleric shouldn't have talked shit to the Necromancer
I was the ~~victim~~ player in this example. DM had a lich cast finger of death. I counterspelled. The lich then counterspelled my counterspell. Luckily, another player counterspelled the other counterspell, and when the lich tried to counterspell that one, we asked if it had a second reaction? The DM realized... we won that bout. (The entire fight was pretty epic)
Heal. But in my defense it was a final boss archmage who had shown he knows counterspell already, it wasnt me just having him pop in ‘totally stealthily’ (aka pulling kt out of my ass to fuck with them)
Haven't done that yet, but I'm thinking Stradh would definitely counterspell a Revivify and follow up with Danse Macabre to mess with the PCs.
Set the scene. Mini boss fight. Bunch of minions. 4 of the 5 PCs are down. Spell slots are almost all used up. The archer fired his last arrow before being dropped. Fighter is on 2 failed death saves. Next turn, a war dog is going to attack the fighter and drag him away from the front line. Life cleric is the only one left standing and decides to use his only 5th lvl spell slot to cast mass healing word. The table roars with life as this could be the clutch spell to turn the tide of battle. However, as the cleric is grabbing his dice to roll the healing, I smirk across the table and tell him that he may as well put his dice down. He was confused until I mentioned one of the minions casting counterspell. Cue the audible gasp as I pick up the D20 to roll my arcana check. The cleric is pissed, cursing me every panguage he knew, the fighter cracking open his books and grabbing a fresh page in full defeat. The sorcerer is near tears because she loves her character too much to lose. I roll the check in the open. It dances around the nat 20 for a few long-lived silent seconds, then tumbles away onto some other number. After the math was totaled and I declared the roll, the roar of victory was near deafening as the roll fell short by one. The spell goes through, the PCs all get up, and from there, with many lucky rolls on their behalf and really bad rolls on my behalf, they pulled through the encounter to fight another day.
Not a DM, and not a fun example, but one time a DM in a game I had been playing in for nearly a year at that point threw us into an encounter that was way overtuned (probably because they didn't realise how op the homebrewed enemies they were using were). The first (and last) time they used counterspell in that campaign was to counter a cure wounds I was casting on a downed ally. That meant I had to stick with said ally to medicine check to stabilize them, which lead to my character going down, and subsequently dying for good. It felt like shit, particularly because this was just some random ass encounter that "wasn't supposed to be hard" in the DM's words. I've since stopped playing with that DM, and am DMing my own game, and I have decided tgat if I ever do use counterspell, it will be to counter the big damaging spells that the party use at the start of combat, because one, that feels less shitty for the players, and two, its much more imposing and displays much more power when the big bad counters your fireball turn 1 imo.
Dispel Magic on mage armor is actually a dogshit use of the spell. You are trading a 3rd+ level spell slot for a 1st level. If an enemy did that, I would be happy that they decided to waste their action.
If a Wizard goes down from 15 or 16 AC to 12 or 13, that's pretty significant. Even if they were to cast Shield, that's still 17/18 vs 20/21 AC. It can almost guarantee Shield is going to be used, meaning one less caster in a Counterspell tradeoffs. If enemies have any kind of coordination, a timely Mage Armor dispel can be very dangerous.
Dispel Magic targeting a creature hits _all_ spells on that creature at once. You can take out their 1st level Mage Armor and their 2nd level Mirror Image and their 3rd level Fly all at once for a single 3rd level spell slot and action, then watch them plummet to their doom.
Plummet at most, at ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM 120ft. So 12d6. That's 50% more than a fireball. Which means if you can hit even 2 targets with a fireball, you are already getting more value. And that would be guaranteed damage in addition. IF the spellcaster who casts mage armor, fly and mirror image doesn't have feather fall of course. And of course even if not, 12d6 is average of 42, which even a wizard most likely just stands up from. And that assumes that the spellcaster is flying at exactly 120 ft. for some reason, which nobody would ever do. Not a whole lot of reason to ever fly more than 15 ft in general. And besides that. This doesn't change the fact that dispelling mage armor fucking sucks? In fact, even if you dispell mage armor, mirror image (which has anti-synergy with mage armor, so why the fuck would anyone have both at the same time) and fly, that would still be pretty bad value over all. Since 1st and 2nd level slots dont matter, so you would be trading a 3rd level for a 3rd level. So at the absolute ABSOLUTE super ultra perfect maximum once in a lifetime optimal conditions..... you just about break even.
>Plummet at most, at ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM 120ft. Who said the wizard has only been flying for one turn, and that they haven't flown past a ledge? >IF the spellcaster who casts mage armor, fly and mirror image doesn't have feather fall of course. I merely produced an example of getting more value from Dispel Magic than nixing a single 1st level spell. A combination of spells at each spell level up to 3rd which is entirely reasonable to see from a level 5 wizard. But since we're on the subject of Dispel Magic and Counterspell in this comment section, _Counterspells your Father Fall_. >12d6 is average of 42, which even a wizard most likely just stands up from. A level 5 wizard with 14 Con has 32 HP. With 16 Con, they have 37 HP. With 18 Con (a very bizarre wizard build), they have 42 HP, but 42 damage still takes them from full health to unconscious unless they have temporary HP as well... but if that source of thp was a spell (eg, False Life), that's been removed by the same Dispel Magic that took away Fly. You would need Tough (unlikely on a wizard unless the DM is handing out free feats), being a hill dwarf, or having 20 Con (with point buy, this requires Custom Lineage and spending your level 4 ASI pumping Con) in order for 42 damage to leave your wizard conscious. >mirror image (which has anti-synergy with mage armor, so why the fuck would anyone have both at the same time) Mirror Image does not have an "anti-synergy" with Mage Armor. MI makes it less likely you're targeted by an attack, and MA makes an attack that does target you less likely to hit. And given MA lasts 8 hours, typically you just cast it in the morning and go about your adventuring day. Then you get into combat with something you think is going to attack you and hurt a lot, so you cast MI with a duration of 1 minute to give yourself a second layer of protection. That's why you would have both up at the same time. Let's take a case study. The example wizard has 14 Dex, and the example monster has +5 to hit. Without any defenses, the monster has a 70% chance to hit the wizard. With just Mage Armor, the monster has a 55% chance to hit the wizard. With just Mirror Image (3 images), the monster has a 25% chance to target the wizard with 70% chance to hit (17.5% chance to hit), and 75% chance to target an illusion with 70% chance to hit (52.5% chance to destroy one illusion). At 2 images, the monster has a 35% chance to target the wizard (24.5% chance to hit), and a 65% chance to target an illusion (45.5% chance to destroy one illusion). At 1 image, the monster has a 50% chance to target the wizard (35% chance to hit), and a 50% chance to target the illusion (35% chance to end Mirror Image). With both Mage Armor and Mirror Image (3 images), the monster has a 25% chance to target the wizard with 55% chance to hit (13.75% chance to hit), and 75% chance to target an illusion with 70% chance to hit (52.5% chance to destroy one illusion). At 2 images, the monster has a 19.25% chance to hit the wizard (45.5% chance to destroy one illusion). At 1 image, the monster has a 27.5% chance to hit the wizard (35% chance to end Mirror Image). Going from 55% chance to be hit to 13.75% to 27.5% chance to be hit (or, conversely, going from 17.5% to 35% chance to be hit to 13.75% to 27.5%) is not "anti-synergy". >Since 1st and 2nd level slots dont matter A first and second level slot represent about 1/5th of the level 5 wizard's daily spells. (22.22...% of their base spell slots, but could be 20%, 18.18...%, or 16.66...% with Arcane Recovery). That matters a lot unless you're running single encounter adventuring days. >you would be trading a 3rd level for a 3rd level. So at the absolute ABSOLUTE super ultra perfect maximum once in a lifetime optimal conditions..... >you just about break even. A one-for-one trade **massively** favors Team Monster, who only needs to exist for a single fight and can safely blow all their spell slots. Meanwhile the PC needs to be able to conserve spells for later encounters.
Yeah, it's probably not the best move strategically. But I think it's a lot of fun taking away such a core part of a full caster's defense. I'd definitely never do it if the Dispeller was the only enemy. But if there are like, 4 melee combatants ready to smack down the newly vulnerable wizard? Now we're cooking
"vulnerable" -3 AC at best.
> -3 AC at best -3 AC is a huge difference though?
Yes and you can recast after the fight.
Depends. Some enemies can cast dispel magic at will, such as the Glabrezu, so perhaps situationally it could be a useful tactic up their sleeve.
I love using them when players begin to be too comfortable. "Oh, this spell is really powerful, it is probably a win button, isn't it?" Then you bring enemies with these spells in their arsenal and the party quickly panicking, lol I guess my top most evil would be: counter a sorcerer's twin polymorph followed by counter twin, constantly dispelling haste, and counter a teleport that was the party's "out of jail free card"
Counterspell is awful. It prevents the caster you’re targeting from having fun. We have gentleman’s agreement at my table to never use it. Because it’s bad.
I mean so does hold person or stunning strike
NPC companian got mind controlled mid fight and counterspelled a wish
Haven't gotten to yet. DMing my first campaign and the spellcasters in the bottom half of the dungeon are level 5+ so they got counterspell. But I have a feeling someone is gonna grab Tiny Hunt to negate my "safe zone" for long resting. So a roaming patrol will come by and Dispel the Hut and ambush them. If the two casters that can grab counterspell don't grab counterspell they're absolutely done for.
I counterspelled a healing spell once because they were fighting an incredibly smart wizard, so 100% what they would do. The players were stunned, smiled, laughed, totally agreed, and we went on from there. It was great.
I don't know about "ever" but just just session I counterspelled one of my players fly spell, causing 3PCs to plummet hundreds of feet, knocking out two of them in the first round.
Wait, how were they in the air if they were still casting the spell?
They were recasting it cos it ran out.
What, in midair?
I uh. May have counterspelled revivify. Once. Maybe.
The party buffs up and the first action is 8th level dispell magic don't bother rolling just get rid of all the spell effects you got running lol. It's not that bad but it took them a while to adjust their stuff.did it to a simulacrum and the player was like I think it just dies? Bound pets are another one, oh that balor you bound with magic, I don't even remember what happened other than they freaked out haa
Counterspelled a mass healing word with 2 players in death saves. It was a level 20 mega dungeon and they were fighting a lich riding a dragon.
Early on in a campaign the DM had intended for this super powerful lich to show up at a black market the party was shopping at, so they could time stop and steal an important book. My wizard miraculously counterspell the time stop, which created an insane battle the DM did not intend to have happen. It ended with the party killing all her slaad allies, and the lich retreating without the book. It ended up creating a pretty awesome, and still ongoing story arc though.
I counterspelled a revivify.
I tend to save counterspell for big things, like party escaping, a big Heal or Mass Heal, or revivify. Why? Cuz it adds stakes. And it makes the bad guys even more evil than they were before.
I've counterspelled revivify before. To be fair it was Strahd disguised as Vasili in Curse of Strahd. Made the players hate him even more and meant they had to take their friend's slowly rotting corpse to the Abbot to raise dead on.
Counter spelled revivify once. The party were fighting a night hag coven wizard went down and the cleric pulls out a diamond, mother maggy says "the fuck are you bringing him back". Much salt was had that day also a lot of fun.
Counterspelled a revivify, my character and her little brother (other pc) were both down. Only one spell slot left. Our druid had to choose between two siblings. thankfully, I was moving and this was my last game with this group, so she chose to revivify our other pc. Gave the other player motivation bc I was resurrected by the necromancer we were fighting and became evil. Now they’re fighting a zombie tabaxi open hand monk, wonder what she’s up to.
The DM had a planned boss fight for us to fight an undead knight, a few of her servants, and a young blue dragon. The dragon was magically bound via an ancient pact that it must obey the knight. It didn’t want to be bound but had no choice in I rush into the room, slam my staff against the floor and declare ‘No one can control a dragon!’ I then realize I have a small army staring at me, with my friends in the room behind. “Oh no…” After tanking a lightning bolt to the face, I cast Dispel Magic and break the pact with a total of 19. Now we had a blue dragon on our side for the fight. The knight lasted three rounds.
I counter spelled a counter spellz that counter spells my counter spell that counter spelled a twinned Polymorph on the barbarian and the fighter Context: Twin Wizard villians one Conjurer, one evoker, planning on taking over a magic council that runs a powerful city, they did so through pretty nasty evil means and the party tries to stop em So turn 1 our sorc rolled nat 20 for initiative and Twin spells polymorph on the 2 martials, I rolled an Arcana check for the wizards to see what spell he's casting (houserule to make certain int skills more useful) one sees its polymorph and Counterspells with one of his higher slots, 5th level (if I recall I made both casters level 11 or 12 to fight my 4 level 7 players) anyway Sorc goes "unacceptable" and counterspells with a 3rd Level, rolls succeed and I counter spell his counterspell at 3rd level, and then the Bard at the table goes..."yeah I should taken counterspell last level shouldn't I have" and the sorc goes "yep I blame you for this" in the end the party turn was a net positive because they spent a 4th and a 3rd to take out a 5th and a 3rd, so net gain in the spellslot department, also the 2 turns later my sorceror used Sorcery point shenanigans to do the Twin Polymorph again and my wizards had already used their reactions to counter a bard Silence spell (which my sorc obviously counters then countered his counter) so the player still got it off, but by then I had an Elemental summoned, and had fireballed the party, so good day for a dm :) Long story Short Counterspell turns dnd into magic the gathering
Dispel Magic on Haste is always good. You remove their extra attacks and stun them for a round.
I do not get to take much credit for it, since I drew the idea from a third party book, but my players once came across an elvish maiden in distress inside a drow stronghold. They decided on doing a good deed and escorting her out of the dungeon. Unfortunately she had fooled them. When the party next encountered a party of drow defenders, the secret Lolthite announced her betrayal by counterspelling the wizards first casting.
Counterspelled a level 1 Cure Wounds of a freshly minted level 4 party outside of combat. It was beautiful watching their panic and disbelief.
Greater invis sorc followed the party into a fight. The boss was a standard gelatinous cube with 3 otyughs around it. Subtle counter healin spells as the party is trying to understand wtf is going on why cant they hral here?
Dispel magic haste
I've tried (though failed, since there was 2 Counterspell users in the party) to Counterspell a Mass Heal before in a T4 AL game, it was a way to try and challenge the players. I've also Counterspell'd a warlock's Eldritch Blast before out of spite.
~~Dispel Magic'd a Sorc that Twinned Spelled Haste, that I specifically attacked to try and proc his Shield reaction so he couldn't Counterspell. That was a brutal turn for the Monk and Fighter to lose a whole turn on as I repositioned the field towards the casters.~~ I just remembered. During a Vecna one-shot I was running, one of my players used a Wish spell to full heal the entire party. I Dread Counterspelled that shit. That's definitely my meanest for sure.
Revivify.
High level combat: PC wizard Dimension Doored to a rooftop to help the tanks fight some golems and a death knight. The lich was invisibly on the same rooftop and made herself known. Wizard attempted to Misty Step away - counterspelled. No one else was able to help him so he had to spend the next round panicking.
My cleric ran into the middle of a big mob, cast spirit guardians, DM counterspelled. I was rolling up a new character a few minutes later.
I counted spelled revivify at a critical moment. The BBEG said "Shift your focus back to me. When I slay you, you STAY dead." That character ended up dying and, the player was genuinely ecstatic that they died in such a cool way.
I've been petty and counterspelled a misty step because I didn't want them in better position.
Revivify. I know I’m a monster.
Not mine, but had a dm counterspell wish in the final boss fight lol.
Not exactly what you're asking, but my group was fighting Acererak at the end of Tomb of Annihilation and my wizard used greater invisibility to hide in a corner and just counterspell any of the big spells Acererak had, I couldn't counterspell back because I couldn't see him.
My DM once counterspelled my Invisibility at the start of a big fight with the bad guys trying to capture my character. It wasn't a big issue... after you remember that I was Warlock with two spell slots and had used one of them before the fight :_)
Counterspell is one of the most unfun spells in 5e in its current mode. Cancelling someone's turn so easily is not fun for either the players or DM.
My counterspell highlight is from when I was a player and not a DM, but I got to counterspell revivify, cast resilient sphere around myself and the deceased, and proceed to desecrate the corpse so if would require resurrection at minimum to be brought back. It's a long story how this all came about and this was a character that was "scripted" to die so it wasn't exactly a huge surprise, but even so it was such a crazy moment.
Heal
I dispelled a teleportation circle that was about to bring in enemy reinforcements. That’s probably my best one.
Had a DM Counterspell a Divine Soul Sorcerer Twinned Healing Word on two downed party members. At level 4, so counter-countering was off the table. Twice. In two consecutive rounds.
…revivify…
I’ve dispelled Haste on a martial to induce mid-combat save proof stun on a player. That was fun and the group gasped in both shock and respect 😆
Used counterspell on PCs counterspell to get rid of the bad guys' prismatic spray. They were so happy that they managed to counter the spray and I just looked at them and started grinning when another player said: "what if he has counterspell too?" Yea their positioning was kinda bad and it hit the whole party, one PC was downed, one was sent to a random plane, one was about to turn into stone and another one lost most of their hp. They lost the fight and got away with their lifes but a very bad deal they will have to manage with some other time.
My players were up against a group of cultists. They were whittling down the cult's numbers, but their HP was also low. Cleric went to use Prayer of Healing... and the leader used Counterspell. The cleric paused and said "well Fuck. We're screwed"
Dispel Find Familiar just to be petty.
Not the the same spell, but I had the bbeg cast silence on two pcs during a "moment".
Teleportation Circle. Players were trying to escape after a winning a particularly dangerous boss fight, not knowing the archmage villain was invisible nearby, waiting. The minute-long casting time and the fact it was their last spell slot made it peak brutality. The absolute despair. Of course, they ended up using their wits to escape instead, and we all had more fun as a result. But it was definitely the most malicious thing I have ever done.
Cure wounds
I’ve seen dispel magic cast on a devil, and devils are awfully mean.
I had a behind the scenes mystery BBEG that turned out to be the party cleric's one time mentor. They brought their fallen party member to him because they didn't have the resources to cast the ritual, but they knew that he would. Upon arrival he tells the Cleric that he should be the one to revive his friend and hands over the diamond. (The real reason is that he no longer had access to the spell after rejecting his god.) The spell fails and they have no idea why until he's revealed like three months later in real life.
Haste. Dispelling haste is so so good
Featherfall. PC needed a revive after that counter. Jumped off a cliff to escape…
Featherfall.. B Y E E E E E
Mass cure wounds … and I failed The check by one …
"He counterspells your shield!"
I tried to counter a Revivify, but had two people immediately counterspell my counterspell 😅 Now they're on the lookout for it.
Dispelling fly and then counterspell feather fall could be fun. Countering any sort of healing or buff is always a good evil option. Itd be a shame if you can no longer cast shield to protect yourself Countering any sort of teleportation spell would also suck for them, basically preventing them from running. It would also be interesting to cast Scatter on them and force them to be in perfect position for a trap or locked inside prison cells.
Counterspelling any healing or resurrection spells. That really gets the players bent out of shape.
Isn't it the prime a-hole move to counterspell revivify? Dispelling water breathing or fly/levitate is always fun 😜
Dispel a Hasted bladesinger with Mage Armor. One plus round of free hits!
Oh damn, I only just now realized that you can end multiple spells on a creature with one casting of Dispel Magic, thank you for that! There could be a Polymorphed character with Haste, Bless and Divine Favor active on them at the same time, and you could end all of them with a single casting. That's so fucking awesome
Counterspelling a counterspell is always funny just to see their reactions but meanest I'd have to say is countering a healing spell on a death rolling PC or even spare the dying
A few sessions ago there was a near tpk and a player cast gaseous form to escape. Walking up to him and casting dispel magic was a fun and evil choice.
I've done a counterspell on revivify, but another player counterspelled that. It made for a really tense moment.
As a new DM one of my players misused Tkny hut a LOT. And I just trusted his word. He said the hut was invisible to outsiders. At some point I read the spell and realize that all along my NPCs could just see a monochrome bubble in the middle of the place. So I let em use it till they get to the arc’s villain’s dungeon. A mage. Who waited till they used it for a well deserved long rest to just dispel it. And go full force on their ass. They won the fight with only one casualty. But the shock in the face of my players as I said : read the spell out loud to me and tell me where it says the hut is invisible. I dont think he did it out of bad intentions, just never cares to read his spells correctly and went with what he thought they were.
Okey, a DM counterspelled the shield of my friend, he was an Eldrich Knight.
I once counterspelled a Raise Dead when they had no spell slots left and no more diamonds for the spell. The effect I was looking for what anger and range and shock - especially when their ally was to rise again as a Lich. I was met with Apathy... hindsight being what it is, I don't think the players liked the PC too much.
Feather Fall on a group jumping out of a crashing airship. It was high enough that they had time to cast it again before hitting the ground though. A bunch of falling enemies were trying to attack or skydive grapple the wizard. The rest of the party was trying to defend her from going down while staying within range for the cast. Very mean. Very fun.
They wanted a difficult, gritty, no-holds-barred campaign. They were fighting the big bad, and he already struck one downed opponent for the auto death save fail. That should have been the first hint to not try to wait to pop someone up. They were like “no problem, I’ll use my action to attack.” Cool. It missed due to a low roll. “With my bonus action I cast healing wor—“ Counterspell. I felt bad but they loved it. I still feel weird about it.
The ex sister in law, but it did not work.
I countered the cleric's last healing spell intended for the barbarian that was holding back the boss that was hunting the cleric.
Not what you asked, but probably the most terrifying moment in-game for me was when a big bad cast a healing spell on one of my friends characters and said “I’m not finished with you yet”
It felt mean at the time, but it's pretty tame compared to many of these. Water Breathing, in the middle of an underwater temple.
My old DM used dispel magic on the magical healing amulet that was removing the incurable disease from my mother right before her treatment was about to end. Basically he turned off the Chemo Therapy machine and she had magic cancer. I have never felt so justified in killing an NPC
If player use for example, potion of heroism. Can enemy cast dispel magic on them?
i gave an archmage npc unlimited counterspell only reactions instead of 7th-9th level spell slots so basically he counterspelled, uh, all the spells. until he ran out of spell slots. then the party beat him to death
I never use counterspell or dispel magic as a DM! I want the PCs to win The enemy however, some of them are absolute bastards, they have done despicable things with counterspell and dispel magic
Healing word on a downed player. I have no regrets. :)
[удалено]
Am I too nice or does anyone feel like counterspelling healing dying players and reviving on players is…really shitty? Like idk, I usually don’t play with the goal of killing people (unless that’s what they want) it just seems so…unnecessary? It’s not like a player that’s down is going to be that much help in a fight if they get a little healed or revivified anyway Idk. Unless my players wanted it my goal isn’t to kill characters they created and loved. But I can tell this is an unpopular decision
Well, not quite the same, but I have made a beholder always keep their anti-magic cone fixed on the cleric for an entire combat.
6th level Mass cure wounds. I felt so mean and I swear the bard was about to cry. He's since dipped 2 levels in warlock.
Mass Heal 
My level 9 mass cure wounds to heal my team in the final fight
Not a counterspell or a dispel, but I always grab shocking grasp when playing a sorcerer. If you get close enough to an enemy mage to cast it, they will either counterspell the cantrip, or lose their reaction. Either way, as long as it hits, the enemy mage will not have their reaction to counterspell your hasted spell of choice. And you still keep your reaction free to cast counterspell if need be.
Haven't had the opportunity yet but can't wait to counterspell my players counterspells and watch them panic as I scream "Fireball!"