D&D 5E Removing the Concentration Damage Save: Houseruling the Affected Feats and Abilities

jodyjohnson said:

Tweaking Concentration is not going to make 'casters too powerful' any more than expanding Banishment to effect any creature, or overpowering Fireball and Lightning Bolt intentionally, or adding in Counterspell and starting the whole Reaction/obfuscation mini-game.

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FrogReaver said:

And Individual posters should generally be encouraged to voice their opinions about possible mechanics changes that are posted on a message board.

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Kobold Avenger said:

I'm very much for keeping most of Concentration in place with it's ruling that a caster can only concentrate on such spell at a time, and the responsibility of remembering the spell is in effect with the player who cast it. I'm not keeping the Saving Throw to maintain concentration when one takes damage, because it's too fiddly, it's often forgotten and various other reasons.

So with the damage save gone, there's at least 2 feats and 1 subclass ability that would be affected by this houseruling: Mage Hunter, War Caster and the Conjurer's ability Focused Conjuration.

There may be abilities in other books or for classes that are in development like the Mystic, but the only ones I can think of that depend on the damage save are those 3 abilities from the PHB.

So Mage Hunter might be the easiest to house rule in my mind, instead of imposing disadvantage the damage save, you inflict an extra 1d6 damage on casters who are concentrating.

The advantage of the save for War Caster was probably one of the big reasons many would take the feat. It could be replaced with +1 AC bonus while concentrating, but I feel it would step on the War Mage's (Durable Magic) toes. Maybe it could be temp hit points instead, or maybe it's replacement could have nothing to do with concentration at all.

Finally the Conjurers Focused Conjuration that needs to be completely replaced as it's invalidated by the house rule. Maybe summoned creatures get bonus AC (temp HP already taken), or maybe the conjurer can teleport/change the position of a conjuration/creature once during it's duration as an action.

Any ideas on how to deal with those 3 abilities? Are there any other such abilities that I haven't caught which deal with the concentration damage save?

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• You gain advantage on attack rolls against creatures you can see that are concentrating on spells.
• Whenever you hit a creature that is concentrating on a spell, that creature must make a Constitution save or lose concentration on that spell. The DC for this saving throw is 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength or Dexterity modifier.

• You gain +1 Constitution to a maximum of 20 Constitution.
• Your ranged spell attacks are not automatically made with disadvantage because the target is within 5 feet.
• You add your spellcasting ability bonus to the damage rolls to any one target damaged by cantrips you cast. If you have cantrips from more than one class or feature, use the same spellcasting ability you would use for attack rolls or saving throws with that cantrip. If you already add an ability bonus to your damage rolls for spells or cantrips, instead add that amount plus 1 when casting those cantrips.

• When you cast a Wizard Conjuration spell that you know, if that spell has a spell casting time of 1 minute or less, you may choose to cast that spell s though it had a casting time of 1 action instead. Once you use this ability, you may not use it again until you complete a short or long rest.

Kobold Avenger said:

It's an often overlooked mechanic that has never existed in D&D until the current one. It has already unleashed unintended consequences of ensuring that casters will almost never buff themselves, it has the unintended circumstance making Protection from Energy fairly useless against surviving a burning building when you're probably better off using the lower level spell that grants fire resistance as a reaction. It has the unintended circumstance of making it a better idea for a Paladin to cast their melee damage spells on the Rogue instead of themselves, when it's them that should be wading into combat with the blessing of their divine power.

I'm well aware of the "tactical" implications of removing the damage save, and I feel it's not a big deal at all.

And it's not a lot of unintended consequences to the mechanics, there's like 3 so far I've counted that's it. And feats are optional to begin with.

A subclass of the Mystic may have gotten something along the lines of, "oh waitaminute there's that rule" but it's still in development and they haven't ever made that many things beyond those 3 abilities in the PHB.

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Blue said:

Are you saying that it won't make casters any more powerful at all? Or is this a strawman that until you cross some threshold where casters are 'too powerful' that any relative shifts in power are meaningless?

Because there already seems to be a lot of feeling that casters are more powerful than non-casters. Widing that gap is the wrong direction.

You're for tweaking, including the concentration rules. Would you play in a game where any damage automatically broke concentration? Or would a relative weakening without breaking the game have meaning?

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