Counterspelling with Buffs

[Mike_Lemmer]

This grew out of a conversation about the one-man buffs:

"Well, we're in Ravenloft right now, and this necromancer loves death touching us. Now we have 1-2 Death Wards available which would completely nullify that attack, but we can only cast them on one person apiece. The question is, which person?"

My solution is to let you counterspell by casting a buff on the target. Example: You ready an action to counterspell the cleric. The cleric casts Touch of Death. You don't have Touch of Death or Dispel Magic, but you do have Death Ward. You cast Death Ward on the cleric's target, getting off the buff before he can get off the touch. Touch of Death nullified.

A second solution would be an option to immediate cast certain spells, at a hefty penalty to duration:

If a spell has a casting time of a standard action or less, and a duration of 1 round/level or longer, you can cast it as an immediate action. If you cast a spell this way, its duration drops to 1 round.

Comments?

[Arbitrarity]

Ummm.. that's legal anyways. Just ready an action to cast, and the death ward goes up, then the touch hits to no effect. Readied actions occur first.

And immediate action casting is often broken, even for buffs. Sticking a ray of enfeeblement on your opponent as they cast, so they can't cast, and earlier using ray of exhaustion, so their str drops 1d6+10 (at level 8), then coup de gracing, makes for some cheapness. Stuff like that.

[Fax Celestis]

No, he's saying the immediate action casting (a) only works for buffs; and (b) only works as a counterspell.

[Arbitrarity]

Wait a sec: Both at once? That's not what I see. I see

If a spell has a casting time of a standard action or less, and a duration of 1 round/level or longer, you can cast it as an immediate action. If you cast a spell this way, its duration drops to 1 round.

That's not buffs, nor counterspelling. That's immediate actions.

His other "solution" is already RAW legal.

[Mike_Lemmer]

His other "solution" is already RAW legal.

The way I read it, it isn't, unless you can keep it as generic as "I ready to cast a spell when he casts a spell." Otherwise, you have to guess at which buff you need to ready casting for before you can identify the enemy's spell.