Editing Kyuad - Acquiring Stone Discussion (section)

=== Possible Solution ===
* I suggest that the following replaces the words in the item's description that currently read, "It also grants a type of insight into the spells others cast for the purpose of counterspelling."
** "It also gives a +5 bonus on dispel checks when used to counterspell, and it makes it so that every round the user can counterspell once as a free action."
*** ''Balance Issues'': What limits this so that casters still have a chance against Kyuad?  
**** First off, it requires that Kyuad notice the spell being cast, and that he's close enough to counterspell.  If he's in a focused fight in a dungeon, he'll probably notice.  On the battlefield of Firsthold, he wasn't close enough to those legates.  Anything cast from further than Medium range can't be countered with dispel magic (many evocations, for instance).
**** More than one caster means spells still "go off".  The easiest one for Kyuad to counter is the one that gets countered, but the rest go through just fine.
**** Midnight is a low-magic setting.  This just isn't going to come up very often.  It hasn't even once so far.
**** Easy way around this: Quicken Spell.  I don't think it's in the rules anywhere, but a Quickened Spell really ''should'' be cast fast enough that it doesn't give someone a chance to counter it.  There are other metamagic feats and solutions that prevent Kyuad from knowing a spell is being cast too.
**** His chance of success is 100% '''ONLY IF''' the caster being countered is level 8 and didn't cast a spell Kyuad knows, ''and'' Kyuad uses ''greater'' dispel magic; '''OR''' if the caster being countered used a spell Kyuad knows.  Kyuad doesn't know a ''lot'' of spells.
**** If Zal is there the caster's just going to be silenced anyway.
**** In D&D part of the balancing factor to things like this is that paladins (and rangers and the like) and multiclassed casters usually don't have a CL equal to character level.  In Midnight, everyone who can cast anything has a CL equal to character level.  This makes it harder to dispel everything than it would be in D&D.
***** Honestly, this seems like so many limitations that it's not worthy of Aradil giving it to our group.  The fact that it returns the SE for the counter and SE for the spell countered makes up for this.