D&D 5E Multiple Concentration

Stalker0 · Dec 13, 2017

shidaku said:
I liked the way 4E did it, and I feel that could be applied to 5E fairly easily.
You get one "concentration slot." Representing your simple mental ability to concentrate on something.
You may sacrifice your bonus action(s) and reaction(s) to concentrate on a two things.
You may sacrifice your Action(s) and movement to concentrate on three things.

I don't see it as unreasonable that a spellcaster may be so deep in concentration that they are unable to move, simply standing in one place channeling magic.

I think some some spell designs can take aspects of this and remove concentration from their durations. Examples:

1) A spell doesn't have concentration but requires your bonus action every turn to maintain.
2) I think a number of spells that provide a new save every round don't need to be concentration. The spell already has a good way to "throw it off" by making the next save.

Enevhar Aldarion · Dec 13, 2017

I am not a big fan of concentration, but I also do not want my games to look like video games, where a character could have 3 or 4 or 5 or more spells active at one time.

One thing that can be done to allow multiple concentrations, but at a penalty, is to require spells after the first to be cast with a higher level spell slot. So first concentration spell cast a normal level, then a second one requiring a spell slot one or two higher, and a third one requiring a spell slot two or three higher. This would keep low level casters from going nuts with the concentration spells while letting high level casters get away with more.

Or you could go the weaker route. The more spells the caster has to concentrate on, the less effective the spells are. They do less damage, or provide less protection, or last half the time, etc.

CapnZapp · Dec 13, 2017

never mind

DEFCON 1 · Dec 13, 2017

The actually issue isn't that letting PCs concentrate on multiple spells results in a problem... the issue is too many concentration spells in the party is what causes problems.

If you have a party of 4 PCs and all are casters of some type... you have 4 potential concentration spells active in any particular encounter. And the game was built such that it can reasonably handle that.

But if you have a party of 4 PCs and only one is a caster... by current rules you will only have one concentration spell active in any particular encounter. Which means you are 3 concentration spells short of having a buffed party that the game can handle. So if you as a DM decided to give that one single PC in this one specific campaign the ability to concentrate on two spells at a time (or heck, even probably three)... you're not going to have any real issues. Whether its three characters that throw around a Blur, Fly, and Web, or one character that does all three... the game can handle it.

What the game CAN'T handle is when you come up with a universal "Every caster can concentrate on two spells" rule and you find yourself with a party of 4 casters (or even worse when the party grows to 5, 6, 8 casters)... and you now have ALL PCs concentrating on two spells at a time. Once you do that... you have a game where you could potentially see upwards of eight to twelve concentration spell buffs and debuffs in every encounter. That's what screws things up and throw off encounters. DMs have to go to further and further bizarro lengths with more and more enemies in hopes of building encounters even coming close to what the party can put out.

So there's no reason why any DM should come up with a "one size fits all" rule that allows for multiple concentrations across all spellcasters in ALL their campaigns. Don't hamstring yourself that way. Take each group on a case by case basis. Or at the very least come up with a table rule that says something like "Only four concentration spells can be active at any one time" across the entire party... and then the players can figure out how and if they can reach that limit. At least then you don't have to worry about inundating the table with way too many spells active and throwing everything off.

ro · Dec 13, 2017

I recognize that concentration exists as a balancing mechanic to prevent spell combinations from becoming too powerful. However, there are so many concentration spells that many of them are hard to ever justify using when their power pales in comparison to the other options. Playing a spell-caster, you quickly become limited to the same few spells all the time. At the very least it would be nice if you could cast concentration spells as instantaneous spells without interrupting other concentration. That is my intent in suggesting this modification.

I have tried to simplify it, as some people seem to think this too complicated, but I have also added a benefit for familiars and animal companions.

Multiple Concentration

The first round of a concentration spell does not require concentration unless its duration is only one round, and casting a concentration spell does not interrupt other concentration spells.
At the start of your turn, you may choose to activate one spell you are concentrating on. That spell's effects are active that round. All other concentration spells are inactive.

When you make a saving throw to retain concentration, you do so for each spell separately.

Inactive Spells. While a spell is inactive, it becomes as an illusion that creatures can see through, and its other sensory qualities become faint to those creatures. A summoned creature can still move, but also becomes faint and cannot take other actions or reactions. It can still be attacked and take damage.

Familiars and Animal Companions. If you have a familiar or animal companion within 5 feet of you when you make a Constitution saving throw to retain concentration, it may use its reaction to give you advantage on the roll. If you would already have had advantage, you roll three d20's instead of two, and use the highest of the three rolls.

Trevor Songary · Dec 30, 2018

This is a really interesting thought process but it all seems rather unnecessary, from both sides.

There are a lot of spells that are now concentration spells that don't need to be (non-threat, utility spells...like light and mage hand). There are also a lot of spells that the rule works well for. The truth is, there should have been a better discussion around how and WHY concentration spells exist.

It's a very easy fix though. Just use the rules that already exist. If you want to use multiple concentration spells you have to make a Concentration check (DC 20 + total levels of spells cast). Problem fixed. Make it a check at the beginning of the casters turn, failure means the spells all fail.

It's balanced and fair to everyone (every other class has rules breaking abilities too, by the way).

Charlaquin · Dec 30, 2018

Stalker0 said:
I think it’s because there are a lot of concentration spells, especially if you use xanathars. Spells get left by the wayside because a player feels other spell x is just better and already uses their concentration.

That said, I don’t think the limit should be changed. As you said, it’s a very important restriction. But I understand people’s desire to get their cake and eat it too

Part of it is that there are a lot of spells that require concentration that don’t seem like they would cause problems if they didn’t. It makes sense to not allow, say, Haste and Fly together. But it is a little annoying that nearly every Paladin spell requires concentration, and a lot of them only give you a one-off damage buff to an attack you make before the spell ends. This kind of makes the Smite spells feel like they cost two spell slots, because if you’ve got Shield of Faith up, you have to drop it if you want to cast Searing Smite. It’s even worse with fluff cantrips like Control Flames. It’s beyond stupid that you have to drop Barkskin if you want to make your torch burn green.

I love Concentration, I think it’s a brilliant mechanic that allows us to have powerful buff spells without breaking caster/martial balance. But I do think WotC is sometimes a little overzealous with putting a convention requirement on perfectly innocuous spells that merely happen to have a non-instantaneous duration.

Charlaquin · Dec 30, 2018

DEFCON 1 said:
The actually issue isn't that letting PCs concentrate on multiple spells results in a problem... the issue is too many concentration spells in the party is what causes problems.

If you have a party of 4 PCs and all are casters of some type... you have 4 potential concentration spells active in any particular encounter. And the game was built such that it can reasonably handle that.

But if you have a party of 4 PCs and only one is a caster... by current rules you will only have one concentration spell active in any particular encounter. Which means you are 3 concentration spells short of having a buffed party that the game can handle. So if you as a DM decided to give that one single PC in this one specific campaign the ability to concentrate on two spells at a time (or heck, even probably three)... you're not going to have any real issues. Whether its three characters that throw around a Blur, Fly, and Web, or one character that does all three... the game can handle it.

What the game CAN'T handle is when you come up with a universal "Every caster can concentrate on two spells" rule and you find yourself with a party of 4 casters (or even worse when the party grows to 5, 6, 8 casters)... and you now have ALL PCs concentrating on two spells at a time. Once you do that... you have a game where you could potentially see upwards of eight to twelve concentration spell buffs and debuffs in every encounter. That's what screws things up and throw off encounters. DMs have to go to further and further bizarro lengths with more and more enemies in hopes of building encounters even coming close to what the party can put out.

So there's no reason why any DM should come up with a "one size fits all" rule that allows for multiple concentrations across all spellcasters in ALL their campaigns. Don't hamstring yourself that way. Take each group on a case by case basis. Or at the very least come up with a table rule that says something like "Only four concentration spells can be active at any one time" across the entire party... and then the players can figure out how and if they can reach that limit. At least then you don't have to worry about inundating the table with way too many spells active and throwing everything off.

Interesting. Taking this as a given, it seems like a good house rule might be to allow casters to sort of “pass off” concentration to other party members. Let the fighter concentrate to maintain the Haste spell the wizard cast on her while the wizard concentrates on moving his flaming sphere around the battlefield. Let the monk concentrate on maintaining Bless spell the Cleric cast on the party while the Cleric concentrates on keeping Spirit Guardians up. If one concentration spell per party member is the sweet spot for buff spell balance, why not just allow each party member to concentrate on one spell, regardless of who cast them?

Quartz · Dec 30, 2018

Charlaquin said:
But it is a little annoying that nearly every Paladin spell requires concentration, and a lot of them only give you a one-off damage buff to an attack you make before the spell ends. This kind of makes the Smite spells feel like they cost two spell slots, because if you’ve got Shield of Faith up, you have to drop it if you want to cast Searing Smite.

That's quite not correct. You just expend a spell slot (PHB p.84) when you smite; you don't have to cast a spell. Spells like Searing Smite have an ongoing effect when cast for which Concentration is justified.

DEFCON 1 · Dec 30, 2018

Charlaquin said:
Interesting. Taking this as a given, it seems like a good house rule might be to allow casters to sort of “pass off” concentration to other party members. Let the fighter concentrate to maintain the Haste spell the wizard cast on her while the wizard concentrates on moving his flaming sphere around the battlefield. Let the monk concentrate on maintaining Bless spell the Cleric cast on the party while the Cleric concentrates on keeping Spirit Guardians up. If one concentration spell per party member is the sweet spot for buff spell balance, why not just allow each party member to concentrate on one spell, regardless of who cast them?

That is absolutely a valid and easy house rule to implement-- rather than each spellcaster may only concentrate on one spell at a time... instead you make it that each character in a party may only have a single concentration spell on them at a time and they are the ones who concentrate to maintain it.

Now this will bring up the occasional oddball case wherein party-buff spells won't all disappear at once-- if Fly is on several people, it could drop off of members one at a time as each one loses concentration (rather than the normal way of Fly dropping off everyone at the same time when the caster loses it). But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Just keep in mind that if you incorporate a rule like this, maintaining concentration will perhaps be easier/more difficult for certain characters. Warrior types might have an easier time because they will have higher CON saves to maintain... but if melee, they will also have to make more saves due to take damage more often so it might be more difficult.

On a separate note... I myself have incorporated my own house rule for my current Eberron campaign regarding concentration. I allow casters to maintain two concentration spells at a time, but one has to be a buff spell to the caster or one single party member while the other must be an external debuff / attack spell against enemies. So a caster could concentrate on Enlarge/Reduce on the fighter while still throwing out a Fog Cloud or Web for example. Both spells are concentrated on separately, so any damage taken must have two CON saves made to maintain. Any on the off-chance the caster casts a "party buff" spell that buffs both themselves and other members of the party... that counts as both concentration slots.

It hasn't really come up much yet so I have not needed to check in on how it works thus far... but if it goes all screwy, the idea of individual party members concentrating on their spells that have been cast upon them is an interesting alternative.

D&D 5E Multiple Concentration

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