If a Mentor Spirit provides a bonus for a certain spell category (such as Combat), foes this alos give bonus dice to Counterspelling against that category of spells?

If the above is answered "yes" would a general bonus to Counterspelling stack with a category bonus? For example, the Adversary gets +2 Counterspelling and +2 with Manipulation spells. Would this give a +4 for Counterspelling Manipulation spells?

This is really the only example of a Mentor Spirit providing bonuses that maight stack.

Hmmm, its a tricky situation to be certain... I'm inclined to say nom though it's merely a gut feeling on the matter. I always just implied that those bonuses were to casting only and had no effect on counterspelling/spell defense.

Anyone else have an opinion on whether or not a sell category bonus from a mentor spirit applies to counterspelling that category?

I'd say that they don't give a bonus for counterspelling simply because there is a bonus from some mentors specifically for counterspelling.

-Strobe

Yes, but to play devil's advocate, those mentor spirits give a bonus to counterspelling all categories of spells, which is much more useful than a bonus to merely one category of spells.

I'll be honest... my knee-jerk reaction initially was to say no. But the description of mentor spirit bonuses talks about Sorcery and Conjuring skills - and those are skill groups. So if a mentor spirit bonus works for spellcasting and ritual sorcery, why not counterspelling? So I would say yes.

The adversary mentor spirit is a thorny question. Strictly by the RAW, those bonuses would stack. If I had to make a ruling on it, though, I would probably house rule that mentor spirit bonuses work similarly to how foci work - you can only get one at a time. Yeah, this unfairly singles out a single mentor spirit, but +4 dice is a bit too much in my opinion. And again, this is how I would house rule it, not the RAW.

I’d say it’s clear that by default the bonus applies to counterspelling: