Counterspelling

[HallowedOne]

I used to play Neverwinter NIghts before discovering DDO, and I say counterspelling was a VERY important ability for a mage there, since it can totally neutralize mage activity while your companions dish out everyone else. Think of a party that doesnt need to worry about Irresistable dances, displaments, glitterdusts and so on - thats what a counterspeller would provide.

Although the mechanics of DDO would make a counterspeller a lot stronger. Back on NwN, a wizard had limited spell preparation and sorcs had at most 8-9 spells of each lvl, whereas here you have mana, thus allowing a lot more counterspells than the usual since you have no limit of casting universal counterspells like Mordenkainen's Disjuncions, Dispel Magics or Greater Displ Magics.

And it would be awesome for pvp too

[Angelus_dead]

Absolutely. Counterspelling an opponent, watching his own spell erupt in his face in a flash of showy fireworks, while simultaneously taking him out of commission for a considerable duration, or even turning that same spell against him is both effective and entertaining.

User narrative. Can you name some example situations where it would work as you describe? That means the names of specific monsters and the dungeons they live in.

Surveying the situations that exist in DDO, I can't really find places where it would help, except in a way that's too powerful for the developers to permit. It comes down to trash mobs, elite trash mobs, and boss mobs.

1. Trash mob casters. You have around a 50% chance to beat a caster level check and prevent the enemy spell. You could instead have spent the same or fewer spellpoints to neutralize an equal or greater number of enemies, including non-casters, with more reliability and without waiting for them to try casting.

2. Elite trash mob casters. As above, except that the chance of it working goes down to around 25% or even 0%. The elite monsters also improve their resistance to conventional CC attacks, but less so.

3. Caster bosses. Opponents such as Jorgundahl, Abbot, and Horoth use spells that are exceptionally important to the encounter presenting the desired challenge. As demonstrated by the non-functionality of Purging The Pantheon, the developers cannot allow their spells to be interrupted with any kind of reliability. If their caster levels weren't already too high for counterspelling to be effective, they'll be made that high, or the boss will get protection in some other form.

As a sanity check: What level of enemy casters do you think a level X player character generally faces?

[Surrealistik]

Here are a couple pieces of advice:
1. Read the rules for this forum. You are in very direct violation, and anyone who feels like it can click on your name and submit you for banning.

I don't think so.

2. Evaluate your own behavior. It's not complicated: start at the top, read down, and look for the first sentence that hyperbolically insults someone or otherwise shows signs of being overcome by emotion. There is only one person who has written that way in this thread. It's pretty obvious that there was not a problem in this thread until you created one.

No Angy, see the difference between my statements and yours, is that your posts make the simple, readily transparent pretense of being impartial, though I certainly applaud your persistence in attempting to maintain a level of plausible deniability.

3. Compare against the formulation of some of my statements. Notice the crucial difference between these two phrases: "someone like you" or "someone acting like you are". The first makes a claim as to the nature of a person's core being, which is a far-reaching statement that implies a great deal of intimate interaction, or at least prolonged study. The second is simply passing judgment on a activities over a relatively brief period of time, which not only is easier to support logically, but which also isn't prohibited by forum rules.

I'm pretty indifferent as to the implications. From what I've seen thus far, I stand by the complete accuracy of my statements.

User narrative. Can you name some example situations where it would work as you describe? That means the names of specific monsters and the dungeons they live in.

Surveying the situations that exist in DDO, I can't really find places where it would help, except in a way that's too powerful for the developers to permit. It comes down to trash mobs, elite trash mobs, and boss mobs.

1. Trash mob casters. You have around a 50% chance to beat a caster level check and prevent the enemy spell. You could instead have spent the same or fewer spellpoints to neutralize an equal or greater number of enemies, including non-casters, with more reliability and without waiting for them to try casting.

Since when does counterspelling require you to explicitly wait? You are free to act as you please and toss around spells. It's only when the enemy caster actually tries to cast something that you intervene and attempt to stop him.

2. Elite trash mob casters. As above, except that the chance of it working goes down to around 25% or even 0%. The elite monsters also improve their resistance to conventional CC attacks, but less so.

Context specific behaviour can be used to make CSing viable should Enhancements not prove able to.

3. Caster bosses. Opponents such as Jorgundahl, Abbot, and Horoth use spells that are exceptionally important to the encounter presenting the desired challenge. As demonstrated by the non-functionality of Purging The Pantheon, the developers cannot allow their spells to be interrupted with any kind of reliability. If their caster levels weren't already too high for counterspelling to be effective, they'll be made that high, or the boss will get protection in some other form.

Preventing bosses from having their spells interrupted with consistency is perfectly fine, and as you've mentioned, consistent with design goals. At the same, CSing should at least prove useful, if not entirely reliable, and that can be achieved with context specific tweaks.

The bottom line is that context specific tweaks to CSing opposed caster level check modifiers can be used to account for inflated/disproportionate mob caster levels so that Counterspelling approaches the sweet spot of viability between over and underpowered in virtually any context without modifying existing content in a universal way that impacts other areas such as manually tweaking caster levels.

[Angelus_dead]

The bottom line is that context specific tweaks to CSing opposed caster level check modifiers can be used to account for inflated/disproportionate mob caster levels so that Counterspelling approaches the sweet spot of viability between over and underpowered in virtually any context without modifying existing content in a universal way that impacts other areas such as manually tweaking caster levels.

That's not a very useful kind of response, as it is similar to saying: "There's a way to make this idea work and it isn't difficult to figure out, but I can't explain it in detail and won't even provide one example". To say that doesn't mean it's impossible to provide examples, but it certainly doesn't reinforce the suggestion either.

As you may remember, this is handwavey design: expecting the details to be worked out by some unspecified person. It is common for game designers to complain of game producers who engage in such behavior. To be fairly productive, it helps to start with one or two solid concrete examples of how the desired system could work, so that there is at least an objective to aim towards.

For example, consider a quest where enemy spells are a substantial portion of the threat, such as Irestone Inlet or Offering of Blood.
1. Your party is in Irestone Inlet and you approach a group of 7 goblinoids, including 3 spellcasters. The sorcerer player starts to counterspell. How effective is it (success chance and duration), how fun is that, and what happens when they come back on elite?

2. Your party is in Offering of Blood and you open a door to reveal 6 scorrow and drow, including 2 spellcasters. The sorcerer player starts to counterspell. How effective is it, how fun is that, and what happens when they come back on elite and epic?

[Aspenor]

It's not worth the development time. Just as in PnP, a spellcaster has better things to do with their time than counterspell. It would be a ton of work with little to no benefit given.

[Angelus_dead]

It's not worth the development time. Just as in PnP, a spellcaster has better things to do with their time than counterspell. It would be a ton of work with little to no benefit given.

There are ways you could make something along the idea of Counterspell work reasonably, in a small handful of specific situations, and hopefully without undue developer effort or widespread rule complexity. The core concept is fine: "A crowd control effect which only works against spellcasters"

For example, look back at my old counterspell concept: preparing Dispel Magic (or similar) gives you an additional icon choice when casting it. The counterspell mode temporarily debuffs the casting of one enemy so that his spells either fail, or have reduced effectiveness.

Something like that shouldn't be too hard to program (it comes down to a -X penalty for Y seconds), and would be pretty handy say in Enter The Kobold for the Cleric to throw on a Living Meteor Swarm as soon as it spawns.

[Surrealistik]

That's not a very useful kind of response, as it is similar to saying: "There's a way to make this idea work and it isn't difficult to figure out, but I can't explain it in detail and won't even provide one example". To say that doesn't mean it's impossible to provide examples, but it certainly doesn't reinforce the suggestion either.

As you may remember, this is handwavey design: expecting the details to be worked out by some unspecified person. It is common for game designers to complain of game producers who engage in such behavior. To be fairly productive, it helps to start with one or two solid concrete examples of how the desired system could work, so that there is at least an objective to aim towards.

For example, consider a quest where enemy spells are a substantial portion of the threat, such as Irestone Inlet or Offering of Blood.
1. Your party is in Irestone Inlet and you approach a group of 7 goblinoids, including 3 spellcasters. The sorcerer player starts to counterspell. How effective is it (success chance and duration), how fun is that, and what happens when they come back on elite?

2. Your party is in Offering of Blood and you open a door to reveal 6 scorrow and drow, including 2 spellcasters. The sorcerer player starts to counterspell. How effective is it, how fun is that, and what happens when they come back on elite and epic?

In the sense that are details to be worked out, sure, that's obviously a given. I don't have the experience or empirical data to say with a measure of certainty the exact nature of the tweaks required; it is clearly impossible without playtesting which naturally yields the answers. The overall system and concept is solid, the rest is experimentation to determine what precisely is necessary to arrive at a golden mean. The rep hit is also as aesthetically appreciated as it is otherwise irrelevant to me; I find red a far more flattering colour.

It's not worth the development time. Just as in PnP, a spellcaster has better things to do with their time than counterspell. It would be a ton of work with little to no benefit given.

Counterspelling as laid out in my initial post involves asymmetrical control that much more severely impacts your opponent than you, can be highly time efficient (Quicken and/or Rapid Counterspelling), mana efficient (Efficient Counterspelling), and the preexisting penalties for being successfully counterspelled can be easily and substantially compounded (Suppressing/Punishing Counterspell). Further, you don't have to actively wait on an opponent in order to counterspell him; as long as the mode is active, you are free to act as you wish, though you will immediately begin to counter a selected opponent when he starts casting. That all said, it is supremely useful in many situations in the event that difficulties with reconciling bloated monster CLs can be worked out via context specific tweaks.

As for the rule complexity itself, it actually isn't that involved, and the coding would not be particularly difficult, requiring a simple nesting of several true/false checks, with accompanying behaviours. Targeted opponent begins casting a spell -> Is opponent using Quicken? If no, or if yes and counterspeller is using Quicken -> Is Counterspell mode active? Is sufficient SP available? If yes to both, stop current actions, deduct appropriate amount of SP, perform counterspelling animation, perform opposed CL check (apply appropriate context specific modifiers for difficulty setting/boss). -> Is CL check successful? If yes, terminate countered spell, play failure animation/sfx at counterspelled opponent, execute penalties. End.