The players could have expected this: they’ve noticed that the dragon has lair and legendary actions. It’s clearly dangerous, and it’s smart. The dragon presumably needed line of sight to the caster, an unused reaction, and had to be within 60 feet.
BUT the DM hadn’t used the spell before. So the players don’t realize Counterspell is a thing baddies do. I dunno.
In my current campaign, my caster is really engaged. He watches for enemy casters to use their reactions. He tracks line of sight and distance. But he’s been Counterspelled often enough to know it’s necessary.
(This is my table, I don’t expect others to enjoy this style of play, but as a DM, my final battles will not use mechanics the players aren’t familiar with)
It also seems kind of spiteful? Revivify seems like an odd thing to counterspell, much better to stop a big damage spell or heal. Revivify only revives with 1 hp, so a strong breeze would put the barbarian back down. The party would have to commit multiple actions to healing him up while he runs for his life.
Instead, one of the players basically has to sit out for the finale of the campaign. Assuming the party succeeds, he can’t conclude the story with everyone else and the player just zones out during the epilogue.
I think a good twist mechanic is one you can react and adapt to. If the dragon countered a random damage spell, the players are introduced to the twist in a less consequential way and can now adjust their strategy to the new information. Here, they are punished for something they didn’t even know could happen (unless they have meta knowledge from other campaigns, which you should never assume) and can’t do anything except shrug and accept that their friend is dead.
my final battles will not use mechanics the players aren’t familiar with
This seems kinda boring.
I pretty much expect a big bad to pull some off the wall crap I’m not expecting, otherwise what makes them big & bad?
The morale shattering of getting a revival countered would make the party come up with something new, instead of trying their same formula over & over. Remember the magic mcguffin they’ve been saving for a ‘situation’? This is exactly the time to break out the one-shot items!
What would the result of this be? Non-D&D player here.
A counter spell prevents other magic users from casting their spell. It can be used by a magic user to block a spell to various degrees of success. This DM didn’t use it with any villains in the campaign, except once, to block a resurrection in the final battle.
He killed a guy’s charector, then basically re-killed him right after.
