The sexiest spell? yes. --- Disclaimer No I do not own any of this. This all belongs to Geek and Sundry & Critical Role Critical Role can be found: youtube: ru-vid.com/show-UCpXB... twitch: / criticalrole
I can imagine it now Scanlan looks at vaxs the force around vecna blowing and lighting his face. Vax looks at scanlan confused Scanlan in tears mouths "I'm sorry" Looks at a teleporting vecna and sings his song with the pain of what hes doing behind it His purple arcane notes pulse towards vecna as it dissipates Scanlan falls to his knees .vax watching this happen with not a word spoken smiles and nods knowing that scanlan wanted to save him
That's why I'm not a fan of counterspell. It's just way to _boring._ And way to powerful at low levels imo. If you *always* had to roll for it I'd be happier, but even then it's so bland.
WufeiLord One game with my group we had a 3 way counterspell. Enemy cast spell. Bard counterspelled. Enemy counterspelled back. Warlock counterspelled back again.
Matt’s face at the 9th level counter-spell is amazing. He’s so shocked and surprised, and a little devastated because he knows this meets the end game in numerous ways
Spoilers......... Watch the matt colville on the finale and scanlan and sams counterspell, matt knew that scanlan was saving a wish spell to save liam, thats why he went oh shit
I just imagined that scene of sticth laughing with destruction on the background from that "send me the nicest angel you have" meme, but it's Scalan on top of the burning mansion
I almost feel bad for Vecna. Imagine, you're a boss-ass wizard, on the verge of godhood, and who stops you? Another epic level wizard? A powerful cleric? Nope. Some piece-of-shit with a f*cking flute.
Oooh. Do not like this take. Scanlan/Burt Reynolds is no PoS. He is a bard that has learned to use his music to twist, weave, and warp the skein of magic. He is, at this point, epic level. All of those counterspells were earned. He has experience using his abilities to disrupt spell casters. A lich who wants to be a god, but is not one yet, needs to put more underlings between itself and epic heroes. Because you can leave when Burt Reynolds tells you you can leave.
@@FinnMcRiangabra i think you're looking to much into that guys "bad take" cause honestly... it is a good take. Scanlan may have earned his status, but against Vecna? he is a piece of shit with a flute.
@Aidan Hall You're not wrong, but imagine a battlefield where casters would sling spells without risk of failure. The existence of counterspell helps balance spellcasting in a very important way.
@Aidan Hall I mean, I can't exactly hate on counterspell itself, or the casters that use it. It's a valid use of resources. Sure, DMs might get annoyed when their big spell gets shut down, but proper encounter planning should remedy that.
@@resdamalos I was so proud of having Shield ready to go when we went up against a mage, and when he cast magic missile at me, I was happy to cast Shield. DM: "But did you see it coming?" Me: "Uh, what?" DM: "It came from this direction, and you were looking over that way. Did you see it coming, so you even could react to it?" Me: Dang it! My DM and I have a fun time frustrating the heck out of my character with realistic stuff like that.
@@resdamalos tell that to WOTC because they are nerfing counter spell into the ground with new material. All enemies are starting to have a ton of "spell like abilities" that are just normal spells with a different name but with RAW they can't be counterspelled fireball was the first spell they gave this treatment.
@@brianhalligan9268 yep, my comment aged pretty badly I think. Five months ago this wasn't a problem, lol. That being said, it's not like every spell is going to be replaced with a spell-like ability, so there's still reason to have it in your kit
Can we talk about how at 7:17 Matt is smiling cause he thinks he's gonna get the teleport off since Scanlan already used his 8th level spell so he'd have to roll. Then his face drops when Sam says he's casting it at 9th level. Always gets me
To be fair, if he had wanted to gamble, it would have been reasonably safe. DC is 17, and Scanlan has a +6 charisma with Jack of all trades at a +3, so +9 equals a 65% success chance.
@@jonsimpson6240The question is: Do you really want to gamble the Chance of having a dark god of magic escape and come back as even more of a nightmare on a 65% roll?
That’s not why, Sam was saving that 9th level for wish to save vax and had talked to Matt about it before, Matt realizes that Scanlan gave up saving Vax to save the world, if you watch the VOD it brings Sam to tears
@@thefiresworddragon927 I assume if they didn't switch from pathfinder he would have been way worse than seen on cr. 5e races don't really mean a lot and bards are a really good class.
5:00 Can I just remind everyone of how brutal feeblemind is, assuming you don’t have the time or ability for someone to cast greater restoration on you? Let’s go over it’s effects again. It’s an intelligence save spell, where if you fail the save your intelligence and charisma become 1 (-5). You can repeat the save every 30 days. However, you’re repeating the save now with a -5 to the save, and the caster of feeblemind more than likely has a spell save above 15. You can’t crit on a saving throw. You are stuck like that PERMANENTLY assuming you don’t have proficiency in intelligence saves.
Well there's also bardic inspiration, but it's doubtful they would inspire you within 10 minutes (which is the duration) of you making the save unless they noted the time you were feebleminded. Although I see no such problems with a 5 charisma paladin with aura of protection.
COUNTERSPELL 3rd.level abjuration Casting Time: I reaction, which you take when you see a creature within 60 feet of you casting a spell Range: 60 feet Components: S Duration: Instantaneous Effect: Flippin' awesome!
@@_Cosmocat he rolled with disadvantage because he had 1 level of exhaustion from working through the whole night. And the "see a creature cast" part is likely RAI as " _percieve_ the creature cast" because otherwise spells that only have verbal components are not able to be countered at all Edit: in addition to that, Matt had Liam roll a perception check to discern if he was able to locate Avantika, which was enough. If she had been actually Invisible then he wouldn't have been able to counter her.
2:23 Sam is waiting the entire time KNOWING the counterspell is coming, you can see in his eyes he's just waiting for Matt to try it so he can shut it down with his own.
you can see taliesin realize it too. the moment he tries to get him to counterspell the attempt against pike, but he doesn't budge, and then they start to attempt to planeshift and that's when everything clicks into place
3:02 this sums up sam's usage of counterspell the entire vecna fight. the amount of PATIENCE you have to have to hold onto that counterspell, after the DM puts you through so much in an encounter, desperately trying to drain your spell slots and other resources. In mtg, an equivalent of holding onto a force of will until the last second
I can tell you have no no memory of anything from eps 1-18 and anything Orion related. Mainly cause I wasn’t note taking I was working on something while listening and I skipped Orion parts cause I felt second hand embarrassment.
You know I forgot Fjord had counterspell until just seeing this video. I wonder why he didn’t use it in the latest episode to help prevent some damage, but good thing Caleb remembered at a critical moment. Maybe Fjord didn’t want to use it just to stop a cantrip, or maybe forgot with all the craziness going on.
Counterspell is such a clutch spell that even Warlocks, with their limited spells known and spell slots, should take it. You may not always need it, but when you need it you NEED it.
Every time they cast counterspell is amazing but why is no one talking about their reactions after 12:27 ? I love how Liam and Marisha hug Travis like that, it's so wholesome!
I love at the moment where Scanlan chooses to cast the 9th level Counterspell instead of saving Vax, ever so quietly over everyone's cheers you can hear him say to Liam. "I was going to save Vax.." Defeated, he knows what comes next. Liam's reaction to that comment comes later in the episode, and I believe it makes it all the more painful for Vax to leave.
Imagine if Scanlan had cast Glibness on himself before the Vecna fight. Every Counterspell check he rolled would have been a minimum of 23, counterspelling any spell no matter the level. He could have saved his 9th level slot for that Wish he wanted for Vax. Oh well, it created a great story.
That's a slick idea, but I think he was limited to 6+ level spells against Vecna anyways, so spending an 8th level slot beforehand wouldn't help, he'd still run out.
I love how they learned their lessons with VM and now more people have counterspell I mean If they can do crazy stuff with cupcakes, imagine what they'll do with this kinda thing
12:28 this is so funny. "do you have counterspell?" After scanlan shows the might of counterspell in campaign 1, we now have 2 people with counterspell
Scanlan is the best at being sneaky about getting into spell range for Counterspell, he learned his lesson in the first fight against Vecna, this time he owns him. Vecna has to ask if his spells Resolve. 😉
That spell is overused and really encouraged bad player behavior. There are some PCs that refuse to describe what spell they are casting when they become aware that the DM pilots a mage with counterspell. If you don't have a good relationship with your DM, this is a really good way to put you at odds
i cannot believe the "9/Nein/Nine" thing started with Scanlan's most iconic action of sacrifice and defiance, like...... They were really meant to go through that journey, i guess
man its been two years and I watched the fight with Vecna live and i still found myself holding my breath and hanging off the edge of my seat re-watching those counter spells.
@@jonsimpson6240 I agree. It seems that DMs need a pocket caster in every encounter to balance the counterspelling. I like the spells ease of use compared to older editions, but I also wish it was a little less easy to use, if you know what I'm saying.
@@jonsimpson6240 if there's a daisy chain that broke the encounter, either the enemy have too many spell casters in the first place, or your spell was going to break the encounter anyways. A proper environment is a 1 for 1 on each side. This way, everyone can daisy chain the counterspell, playing a guessing game of what spell slot the enemy used or gamble, while also being possible that no spells gets countered at all.
@@FFXfever basically, there were enough enemies that could counterspell to remove the ability of the players to cast, even when the players were proactive about counterspelling. It was a tad frustrating.
In my campaign, to prevent everyone just using counterspell, if you counterspell a counterspell, it works, but at the point between the 2 mages a random effect from the wild magic table takes effect.
Yeah. Counterspell for leveled spells and guidance for cantrips are the best, unless you have a bunch of invocations on top of eldritch blast. Also, fun bard trick for a Vecna level combat: cast 8th level glibness beforehand. Even a 3rd level counterspell will automatically wipe out a 9th level spell for the whole combat if your Cha is 18+ (it makes your lowest roll on Cha checks 15, before adding your modifier).
That's a great plan generally, but should mention that Vecna in particular was unaffected by spells leveled 5 or less, so Scanlan would have run out of usable slots either way.
@@elbruces He succeed to Counterspell Vecna with a 3rd lvl spell. Probably that Matt ruled that his immunity didn't protect his spells to being countered
@@elbruces I think he was using globe of invulnerability to allow the immunity to spells 5th level and lower. So counter spells which dont target Vecna, but do target Vecnas spells are fair game
some people (usually DM's) dislike counterspell, but I really like it as both a player and a DM, the counterspell chains are really fun when you have 2 casters in the party and the bad guy also has counterspell. I remember distinctly a triple counterspell chain where the enemy tried to Polymorph to get away, our Sorcerer counterspelled, the enemy mage countercounterspelled, and our Wizard countercountercounterspelled. Gooood times
Counterspell is one of those spells that when the party takes it, the DM has to prepare accordingly. On the reverse, the DM really shouldn't have more then one character able to cast it per encounter, due to the insane chains that can result. If you get more then one countered counterspell, either the DM or the Party has invested too many resources. If nothing else, Campaign 1 highlighted how useful late-game Bards are as a support class. when given the right abilities.
Nigga what? If one enemy casts (for example) Teleport, the Bard counterspells, another enemy counterspells the Bard, then the Wizard should 100% counterspell the 2nd enemy. Not sure why you think that would be a waste, because it all depends on the situation and the original spell being cast
bruh i disagree, its hilarious thinking of 3 spell casters fighting, one casts a 9th level spell and then everyone counterspells everyone and just standing there. onlookers just saw 3 dudes walk over to each other and do weird things like throwing bat poo, muttering weird words and wiggle their fingers then just stand there out of breath
Yeah I mean with jack of all trades and Scanlan’s +6 charisma, he would’ve had a +9 to his counterspell roll. Since teleport is a 7th level spell, he would’ve needed to roll an 8 or higher to be successful. Which is still very much a gamble; and if he failed, then Vecna was gone forever
@@yooooo8600 well, not forever. Matt said after the fact that if they didn't seal Vecna there and then, he would have come back with near-omniscience and much more powerful
Liam's first counter spell was my mood when playing CoS and I counterspelled Strahd's Cloud Kill and Fireball one right after the other (the DM homebrewed him a bit for our party since we were a bit of a large group for CoS)
Liam saying "Counterspell" then rolling that well with disadvantage followed by what for lack of a better term is "coming to grips with the power of a GOD" is awesome.
Total MVP for that final fight Scanlan. Sam killed it and the fact he was devasted using the 9th level he was saving to use to save vax, was heartbreaking. What a player.
I love the one (not in this video) where Liam’s in the bathroom and there’s a case of bad guy tries to do something, Fjord (I think) counterspells, bad guy counterspells the counterspell and Sam’s like: ”Liam would totally have Caleb counterspell it if he were here”. Then Liam makes it back just in time and they all shout at him to ”Counterspell the counterspell of the counterspell!” and he barely misses a beat and does it. I wish I remembered which episode it was in…
