Matt Colville, in one of his videos (I can't recall which one) identified the problem with spellcasting monsters.
If you've ever DM'd, and especially if you did it early in 5th Edition's time (or in previous editions, I assume,) you have probably noticed that using a spellcasting monster for your party to face is harder than it looks.
Wizards and other magic spellcasters have often served as villains in fantasy. Indeed, if you look at a lot of older fantasy and folklore, magic itself tends to be associated with evil, and the notion of heroic wizards is relatively recent (some version of the Arthur legend suggests that Merlin was only able to use magic because he was meant to be an Antichrist but was baptized, which turned him good but allowed him to retain his magical powers, which is meant to explain that exception).
So, making your villains spellcasters makes a lot of sense as a trope. And a game like D&D should support that.
But there are a couple problems.
The first is just mental bandwidth. If you look through the spellcasting stat blocks in the Monster Manual - take the Archmage, for example - the very clear main action is to cast a spell each round in combat. But given that an Archmage is an 18th level spellcaster, that means that they have a massive number of wizard spells to choose from.
Now, I've been DMing D&D for nigh on eight years now, and so if I take a look at any single one of these spells, I can generally tell you what it does. I might need to double check the damage of Cone of Cold (turns out it's 8d8, not 10d8) but I have a pretty good sense of what they do (gigantic cone AoE spell that does cold damage and has a Con save).
But when it comes to actually running an Archmage, I'll be honest and say that I doubt I could do it justice. With 99 hit points, I really just do not expect I could make it live up to being a CR 12 challenge.
And the reason for this is that spellcasting is a player-facing ability. (That's the core of Colville's argument.)
When I'm playing my Wizard (who is not level 18, or even close to that, but I think the principle holds with a lower CR creature like a Lawmage, which is the equivalent of an 8th-level wizard) I'm spending my entire time playing using the spells I've collected in my spellbook. I have a game plan, like casting Summon Undead and then falling back on cantrips unless I need more damage or can hit a lot of targets with a Fireball, and always keeping a 2nd level slot for Misty Step in case I get surrounded, keeping Mage Armor up at all times but leaving a 1st level slot up for Shield.
But unless a DM is throwing the same stat block at the party over and over, they don't have a lot of time to familiarize themselves with the spell options presented. Furthermore, it's a ton of information to track.
As a player, you really only have to track your character's resources, which only change when you level up. As a DM, I'm usually tracking information for several creatures at once.
Spell slots are not too difficult when it's just your character. There's a place on your character sheet to do just that.
But imagine this scenario: I want to have my party face a Lich, and that Lich has an Archmage lieutenant, along with three Mages who are minions, and then, say, twenty zombies - a modest undead horde for our necromantic villain to have.
Can you imagine trying to keep track of all that? How many spell slots of each level each individual spellcaster has used?
Ok, so the solution presented in the revamped stat blocks of Monsters of the Multiverse is pretty elegant.
Take the Necromancer Wizard stat block, which is an update to the Necromancer from Volo's Guide to Monsters. The old version has only two abilities outside of their spellcasting, which are Withering Touch, an attack that takes a full action but deals a pitiful 2d4 damage (this is a CR 9 creature) and Grim Harvest, which works like the player feature. Instead, the creature is meant to use their 16 spell slots and 19 prepared spells (up to 6th level).
The new version, instead, has a three-pronged multiattack called Arcane Burst, which is a melee or ranged spell attack that does 4d10+3 (25 average) necrotic damage. They also get a once-a-day ability to summon 5 skeletons or zombies to act as minions as a bonus action.
As a DM, running this stat block is far, far easier. When the fight starts, they shoot off three of these Arcane Bursts and then summon a bunch of undead minions to attack the party.
And they haven't lost too much versatility. They still have spells, so if I want, I can have them instead perform other actions that are either about movement or inflicting the party with harmful conditions, or they get a one-a-day Circle of Death if they want to do a big, scary AoE (probably a good call for the opening round).
This is a stat block I can use.
But there's a problem:
Players who pick up Counterspell are going to have a lot of trouble using it on this creature, despite the fact that this is precisely the kind of creature that Counterspell is intended to deal with.
While Arcane Burst is a spell attack, it is not a "spell" in game terms. There's no talk of verbal, somatic, or material components. Counterspell cares about a spell's level, but while even cantrips are technically 0th level spells, Arcane Burst has no level to it.
So, except for when the Necromancer Wizard casts things like Circle of Death, Dimension Door, or Bestow Curse, the player with Counterspell is going to be sitting on it, feeling annoyed that their spell is useless.
Here's the dirty secret: my reaction to this is "good."
It's not that I don't like the fantasy of having a clash of wills and spells. But on a mechanical level, Counterspell kind of sucks.
If you've played Magic the Gathering, you know how frustrating it can be to play against a Blue control deck, where the strategy that the opposing player takes is simply to counter every spell you cast and use spare mana to draw cards, waiting for your deck to run out of steam and then rolling over you after you no longer have the power to do anything about it. It's not that you mind losing, per se, it's that you don't actually get to do the cool things your deck was built to do.
If I'm running an encounter with a Lich (which I've never actually done, but let's just think of this as the ultimate spellcaster monster) I'm not generally going to have a lot of spellcasting minions, for the reasons I discussed above (though again, with the changes, I might feel more comfortable doing so with the new caster statblocks). If my party has someone with Counterspell, it's a very good strategic play for them to park themselves within 60 feet of that Lich and just try with every reaction to counter the spells the Lich casts.
Even if the Lich is casting spells higher than 3rd level, there's a good chance that the counter-mage is going to succeed on their checks. With a +5 to your spellcasting ability modifier, you have a 50% chance to counter 6th level spells. That means even a Lich - the absolute legend of scary, monstrous spellcasters, has a grand total of three spell slots to cast things that are more likely to go through than not against a mid-level Sorcerer with 20 Charisma, and even if they cast something at 9th level, that Sorcerer still succeeds on their counter with a roll of 14 or higher, which means a 35% chance. And if they have an Artificer with 20 Intelligence, saving their own reactions to Flash of Genius these crucial rolls, that effectively allows them to succeed on rolls of 9 or higher.
And that means the Lich is doing almost nothing to the party on rounds when it's counterspelled, which the party is then incentivized to make every round. They can either use their action for Paralyzing Touch - a scary effect, but not one that does much damage - or use legendary actions to cast cantrips or Disrupt Life (ok, that's not bad for a legendary action, but it's definitely not enough damage for a full round from a CR 21 or 22 monster). The lich winds up looking like a chump (we won't get into its low HP here, as that's not really part of the discussion).
So, my inelegant solution would be to just ban Counterspell in my campaigns. And, given the direction spellcasting monsters are going, that might not even see much complaint by players.
But maybe there's a way to fix it.
I think the biggest problem with Counterspell is that the difficulty of its success is more or less independent of the creature casting the original spell.
I mean, countering the Greater Invisibility of a Mage should be easier than countering the Greater Invisibility of an Archmage, right? (Let's say for the sake of argument that we modified our Archmage to have that spell prepared.) The latter is supposed to be a great master of magic. Now, sure, they could counterspell this counterspell, but so, in theory, could the Mage. This feels inelegant and clunky.
Instead, what if we proposed a different solution?
Counterspell is meant to be the use of one's magic to quickly disrupt the casting of another's spell. We use our spellcasting ability - whatever it may be - as the ability check to see if we can disrupt a spell that's more powerful than the one we're casting in response.
Rather than having that contend with the level of the spell, why don't we have it contend with the will of its caster?
In this case, we'd say that when you attempt to counter a spell, the spellcaster makes a saving throw against this attempt to disrupt their casting. (And we would count this as a magical effect targeting the creature, so that magic resistance and even legendary resistance could come into play.)
Now, what saving throw do they make?
There are two simple proposals: first is to simply go with the standard "will save" and make it a Wisdom saving throw. But this, I think, would make Clerics and Druids (and NPCs like them) much harder to counter. Another option would be to make them Constitution saving throws, treating it almost like a concentration saving throw, to maintain focus while casting the spell.
(Of the two, I think I prefer the latter, but let's look at the final proposal, which I think I like the best.)
The third option, however, is instead that they make a saving throw against your save DC, but it's the saving throw affiliated with their spellcasting ability. So, an Archdruid would make a Wisdom saving throw, while an Archmage would use an Intelligence saving throw.
Let's look at the math now.
Say you're a 10th level Wizard with Counterspell. You've maxed out your Intelligence to 20, and you have a Proficiency bonus of 4, so your spell save DC is now 17.
You're fighting an evil Archmage, who has a number of apprentice students. One of their minions, a Mage, casts Cone of Cold at your party. You whip out a counterspell. Now, the Mage has to make an Intelligence save, and has a +6 bonus to their save. They have a 50% chance of success, meaning with the flip of a coin, you might have just saved your party from a big blast of damage.
However, on another round, things are looking rough for the evil archmage, and he's decided to peace out, teleporting away. This is your third encounter with him, and you want to take him down, so you counterspell the teleport. But the archmage's magic is complex and sophisticated. As you try to slash at the weave of his spell, he must work to engineer it so that it is resilient to your disruption - but he's well-practiced at this sort of thing. To beat your 17, with his +9 bonus to intelligence saves, he needs to roll only an 8, giving him a 65% chance of getting away - or rather, a 87.75% chance, as, because of the way that he has inured himself to the magic of those who would seek to harm him, he has advantage on the roll.
Now, to be fair, I don't love it when my reaction spells don't work. If I use the Shield spell, I expect the DM to tell me the actual roll to hit me before I expend the spell slot, so I know that it will work. And, especially with the way that Counterspell is becoming less relevant due to the spellcasting stat block redesigns, this is perhaps adding insult to injury to this spell and the players who pick it.
This is, in nearly all cases, a nerf to be sure. But I think it might actually make Counterspell a more dramatic and fun spell to use. Indeed, when based on a saving throw (especially if it uses a save that favors the defender) I'd feel a lot less guilty using Counterspell against my players.
There are other possibilities - rather than a saving throw, you could make the current version's ability check an opposed roll against the opposed spellcaster's spellcasting ability. But I think as is, the reliability of Counterspell is what makes me kind of hate it as a DM, and why I don't think I'd want to pick it up on my Wizard. (That's ok, there are tons of 3rd level spells that I'll be collecting instead).
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