Counterspell and Counteract Effects Explained! - Pathfinder 2nd Edition

the demi lich looks you dead in the eye raises a bony palm begins chanting a spell do i recognize the spell he is casting uh go ahead and roll me arcana 34. yes actually you do recognize the verbal and somatic components he's performing to cast a burning hand spell up cast at sixth level i would like to attempt to counter his spell uh oh sure you can go ahead and try how do i do that counterspells and counteract checks what are they how do they work and why are they so dang confusing well in this video i'm going to start with a super simple answer and then get more and more detailed and more and more deep into the subject of counteract checks while they all function the same way there are a few different types of counteract checks from some that are more simple than others to some more complicated ones like the wizard and witch's counterspell but first let's go ahead and start with one single sentence that sums all of it up when you are counteracting something you are making a roll against that afflictions dc i use the word affliction because 90 of the time that is what is going to be counteracting except for the wizard of witches counterspell we'll get to that later so what do i mean by affliction well an affliction is a poison disease or curse all of these have obviously negative effects and durations but if you can counteract them you can remove them before their duration is up so how do you even go about making a counteract check well really you need a specific ability that lets you do it an easy simple example is the level 4 divine spell remove curse this spell is simple it lets you make a counteract check against a curse affecting the target simple as that so how do we go about doing this well the long and short of it is you make a spell attack roll against the dc of the curse this isn't technically a spell attack rule but it is your spell casting modifier plus proficiency added to a d20 rule so it's calculated the exact same way the dc of the affliction will depend obviously on the affliction itself but for the remove curse example let's say we're trying to remove the slayer's haunt curse from a target we can see that this has a dc of 19. if the original target failed that dc they were afflicted with this curse and now when we cast remove curse we have to beat that dc with our spell attack roll should we beat it it removes the curse entirely now it's not as simple as beat it or nothing like most things in pathfinder there are critical successes and critical failures and a lot of it depends on the level of the effect you're using if we get a normal success we can counteract the affliction if its level is no more than one level higher than our effect unless it is a spell the counteract level of something is always half its level rounded up so because the slayer's haunt is a curse level four its counteract level is only level two and since remove curse is a level four spell we would have no problem removing this even on a normal success but let's say we're trying to remove an even stronger curse let's say we're trying to remove reviling earth a curse level 12 which has a counteract level of 6 one half of its level while our remove curse spell unless we heighten it only is level four which means even on a normal success because the curse is two counteract levels higher than our spell we would still fail but should we critically succeed and beat reviling earth's dc 30 by 10 or more we could still counteract it even with a level 4 spell because on a critical success you can counteract an effect up to 3 levels higher than your ability let's look at a different example let's look back at the slayer's haunt which again only was a counteract level of two if we use our remove curse spell at fourth level and we fail and get less than that dc19 we still succeed because the fail outcome of a counteract check is you are still able to counteract the target if its level is lower than your effect so since our remove curse is level 4 and slayer's haunt only has a counteract level of level 2 even on a failure we still succeed this means if you're trying to remove something if you somehow know the counteract level of it it's always much better to use one level higher obviously that's not always an option and you might need to rely on an actual success or critical success but if you can use a counteract effect of even one level higher than the affliction itself your chances of success skyrocket and that's how it works for poisons diseases and curses they all have their own dc how much you beat it by fail by and the level of the spell or ability you're using to counteract it will affect your chances of success now let's jump in to counter spells now earlier i talked about the witch and the wizards counter spell feet now other classes do get counterspell as well but they actually get a different counter spell so we're going to start with the witch and the wizard which have the prepared counter spell now the witch and the wizards counterspell is tough to pull off because not only do you need to see the target casting a spell but the trigger is that the target is casting a spell that you have prepared so not only do you need to know that they're casting if they're casting magic missile you can only counteract it if you prepared magic missile that same day additionally if you've already spent that spell you can't use it to counteract it because it spends the spell slot that spell is prepared in now what's nice is you don't need to have it prepared on the same level if a target is casting magic missile level 2 and you only have magic missile level 1 you can still spend it to attempt to counteract it but remember that this will follow the same rules as the counteract checks from before this counteract is very similar to counteracting an affliction except it uses the target's spell casting dc against your spell attack roll basically this will get a little bit complicated but try to follow along let's say we have a wizard and a witch they both function the same way i'm just trying to make it clear who's doing what the witch casts burning hands level two and the wizard happens to have burning hands level one prepared the wizard can spend that level one spell slot of burning hands as a reaction when they do so they can attempt a counteract check against the witches spell casting dc let's say the witch has a spell casting dc of 19. the wizard uses the same formula as a spell attack rule spell casting modifier plus proficiency plus any other penalties or bonuses from something like guidance if he meets or beats 19 the witch's spellcasting dc he will successfully counteract the spell this causes the witch to lose her spell slot and the actions spent to cast it now should the wizard roll less than 19 then he fails and is not able to counteract the spell now let's switch it up a little bit similar to like we did with the afflictions let's say the witch is casting burning hands at first level and the wizard spends a level two burning hands spell slot to counteract it well now even if he normal fails his counteract check because his spell slot was a higher level it still counteracts the witch's burning hand spell even on a normal failure should he critically fail he will not successfully counteract it this leads me back to my original point when i was talking about afflictions where if it's possible use an effect that is higher level than the effect you're trying to counteract as it will heavily increase your odds of success now the sorcerer also gains counter spell but they gain spontaneous counter spell which is slightly different it follows the exact same counteract rules as the wizard so don't worry i won't go into a confusing witch wizard rant for another 10 minutes the only thing that changes is the trigger for sorcerer counter spells a sorcerer can counteract any spell in their repertoire because they don't have to prepare specific spells if they know a spell at a specific spell level they can spend that spell slot of that level to counteract an effect this means if they see burning hands level 2 being cast they can sacrifice any spell slot where they know burning hands to counteract the spell what could make this incredibly versatile is if the sorcerer knew burning hands as a signature spell then they could sacrifice a spell slot of any level specifically for burning hands because of how signature spells work but other than that once they sacrifice the spell slot they go through the same exact counteract rules with the same success fail critical success depending on the difference in spell and counteract levels and that is the gist of counteracting i really hope i was able to make it come across clear i'm sure there will be graphics on screen to hopefully help it make a little bit more sense it's really hard to articulate it's something that once you understand it it's really simple but trying to explain it is really difficult that's another reason it's really hard to portray through a book rather than through explanation and even through verbal explanation it is tough to get across but i hope i helped you guys understand a little better i hope you enjoyed this shorter video i know it's a topic people have wanted me to cover for a while so i can only hope i did it justice i want to give a huge shout out to my patrons i just want to say thank you guys for being so understanding of me taking it easy this week only uploading the two videos next week we should get back to normal though in the future normal might be cut down to four videos instead of five because i'm running patreon campaigns every other weekend and another campaign every other weekend and i'm part of two campaigns during the week time is definitely not something i have a lot of let alone the energy to get it all done so i might start doing four videos a week just to give myself some breathing room so thank you all so very much for watching if you're interested there are links in the description to my patreon where i release homebrew content once a month and occasionally you get a sneak peek of a video or some exclusive content and you also have links to my discord where we have an awesome community hanging out talking about stuff and you can also follow me on twitter where i sometimes post stupid stuff so thank you all so much for watching i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and until next time no nat ones

Channel: Nonat1s

Views: 17,928

Keywords: Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2e, Pathfinder Second Edition, Advanced Player's Guide, Pathfinder 2e APG, Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Level 1, Pathfinder 2e new features, Pathfinder 2e New Ancestries, Pathfinder 2e GMG, Pathfinder 2e Gamemastery Guide, Gamemastery Guide, Pathfinder 2e Curses, Pathfinder 2e Diseases, Pathfinder 2e Poisons, Pathfinder 2e Counterspell, Pathfinder 2e Counterspells, Pathfinder 2e Counteracting, Pathfinder 2e Counteract Effects

Id: u40Bputem54

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020