Fireball fireball fireball and oh fireball
Uh…counterspell?
Best spell in the game.
Edit: also for clerics i’d pick spirit guardians over everything.
Playing a druid currently and I couldn’t count the number of vile glares I’ve gotten from the DM as I utter “I cast Dispell Magic”…
Spore Druid and Call Lightning is absolutely amazing. A level 3+ spell that you can cast infinite times without expending further spell slots? Oh hell yes, please!
My current wizard character didn’t take counterspell until the dm sent a wizard at us with it first. He had no one to blame but himself.
I have a house rule where a counter spelled counter spell is nullified but causes a roll on the wild magic table for both casters.
They need to think more creatively. You’re now focused on countering the enemy caster, and the party might be more distracted helping you to clear out the threat.
This is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of, and put some nice pressure down.
Nah, the group where I play the caster who could take Counterspell has a fairly green DM and I just don’t want to stress him out more by thwarting his plans.
With a veteran DM? Boy I am fucking them every which way front, back and sideways with creatively misused utility spells.
This says a lot about spells in 5e.
Yes, there are many great choices, but one choice is usually greater than others.
Come to Pathfinder, where all the spells are kind of okay I guess.
please don’t kill me
Pathfinder 2 is even worse in that regard. You have a few kind of okay ones and then a bunch you’ll essentially never use. The price of Pf2s strife for “balance”.
It’s probably my biggest pain point with the system. I have a buddy who only likes to play magicians. She’s miserable playing 2e because the cool evocative spells she gravitates towards just aren’t the narrow list of reliable, evergreen, and efficient spells that thrive in 2e’s ecosystem.
Hypnotic Pattern, Haste, and Revivify are all great choices too
But
Fireball, Fireball, and (Fireball for Light clerics) Spirit Guardians is understandable
Is hypnotic pattern actually good? I tried it, and it was mostly resisted every time I cast it, so I dumped it.
Is this some sort of DnD joke I’m too Pathfinder to understand?
It’s some kind of leveled spell joke I’m too GURPS to understand. Am I to believe that magic only works at arbitrary discrete levels? Surely any competent mage can vary the intensity of their spells with the mana they invest, no?
Energy can be measured in discrete quanta, there is no reason magic can’t.
To be fair though the fact that energy comes in packets does fuck me up
I have no trouble accepting that mana exists in quanta. What troubles me is the idea that mana clusters into meta-quanta like spell slots. Also that a spell like, say, Fireball, is totally unviable except with a specific meta-quantum of mana, at which point it does 8d6 damage.
Shouldn’t it be a simple matter to cast a weaker Fireball with less mana, or a more powerful one with more? I get that you need magic to summon fire, and a certain amount to summon 8d6-worth. But all or nothing? Why shouldn’t a 1st level slot summon 1d6 with a 5ft radius, a 2nd level slot 4d6 with a 10ft radius? One would imagine a gradient, even quantized, between Fire Bolt and Fireball.
No, this works in Pathfinder too. There is a very obvious meta and people follow it.
