Countercasting/Counterspell

[Sir_Geoffery]

In the thread about the 5ft step Alchemistmerlin said something about counterspells not working very well.

This was a weakness in 3.0 and I can't believe they haven't fixed it in 3.5.

The best countermagic I saw was in Magic of Faerun 3.0:

Improved Counterspell (now in the core rules in 3.5)

Can counter any spell with a spell of the same school provided the counterspell is at least one level higher.

Reactive Counterspell
Requires: Improved Counterspell, Improved Initiative (which every good wizard should have)

You can cast a counterspell in response to someone else's casting without needing to ready an action once per round.

This is good for a wizard who has much to gain by protecting his team from incoming fire. e.g. watching over an army. In any drawn out engagement though you are using more magical fire power than your opponent so it isn't great.

Counterspells do have the advantage that it means armies don't instantly die to fireballs provided they have their own mage to do the counterspelling even if they aren't so hot in BBEG vs. party engangments.

For those who fancy something a bit more flashy for personal defence I came up with this homebrew feat:

Spell Block
[Metamagic]
Requires Quickened Spell

Cast any defensive spell you have prepared as a quickened spell even when it is not your turn. This spell is reduced to a duration of instant in that it will protect you against a single attack or spell.

The level of the spell is not changed. The spell does not have to be specially prepared as a spellblock in advance. You may only cast 1 quickened spell per round.

(I would probably allow the non-damaging wall spells with this because it's cool but grease or anything that actually harms or causes lasting inconveniance to your attacker e.g. by knocking them over is out).

Useful if you're caught off guard by a fireball or need to block that power attack but do it too often any you will be out of spells very quickly.

[MrNexx]

What I came up with (I can't find it right now, which is annoying me) is a set of spells which were designed around the counterspelling function of Dispel Magic... essentially, they were Abjuration spells which added up to a certain amount to the caster level check (+5 for level 1, +10 for level 2, +15 for level 4, +20 for level 6, +25 for level 8) to be used when counter-spelling, but they were useless for anything other than counterspelling... they couldn't dispell in-place magic or anything like that.

Great for sorcerers, somewhat useful for wizards.