jmucchiello wrote:DCCRPG is supposed to have the 3e initiative system. Well, that's the system. You are of course free to house rule it. But IMO it is not well designed for interrupting spellcasting. The earlier systems involving segments and casting time simulate that much better. (Even if the rules in 1e are completely inconsistent.)
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That is exactly why I do not like the 3e system. With a caster able to cast a spell as a single action on their initiative, you run into all sorts of non-story like combat effects. I would like to see almost any book where a caster gets a spell off immediately in combat w/out a casting time or the hero's struggling to disrupt the spell. Let me re-phrase that... any major spell (i.e. > 1st level).
In 1e, that was a 1 segment casting time spell.
In 3e, everything except summoning spells was one standard action. With Josephs earlier desire not to add attack of opportunities to the game, it makes it nearly impossible to disrupt a spell via melee combat without going back to the old segmented casting method. Plus, in 3e it was laughably easy to avoid an AOO by taking a 5' step before casting a spell.
That is why I consider 3e initiative to be a classic failure of an initiative system. It simplified things to a point that it further broke the game.
(as a side point, I like d10 initiatives. It make a dex bonus actually mean something in initiative order. Especially since there are no feats in DCC RPG to boost your initiative roll).
If you want to bring forward to feel of appendix N (and other literature books), you need to get away from or modify the 3e initiative system. Once you get away from it, then you can get some really cool possible counter spells. It could vary by your patron...
1. One patrons version of a counter spell causes pricking pain to the opposing caster disrupting their concentration (i.e. - on their spell casting roll)
2. One version stretches the casting time out by disrupting the gathering of arcane energies. (i.e. keeps the spell in limbo as both casters keep casting until the battle of wills in won and the spell either fails or is successful)
There can be other ideas here on ways to counter spell, but the point is that there needs to be a way to work that into the initiative system.
So in summary, if you want to use 3e initiative system then you need to use the entirety of the 3e combat system. That does included AOO's. Because it is all linked together.