Complex Concentration Question

[Hypersmurf]

IMO the spell ends immediately. The duration rules say in part, "Anything that could break your concentration when casting a spell can also break your concentration while you’re maintaining one, causing the spell to end." I think that becoming Dazed during casting (e.g. by a readied daze spell) would prevent you from completing the spell, and therefore by extension, becoming Dazed at another time will end any spell you're maintaining.

There is some wiggle room, though. The Dazed condition doesn't specifically say that it "breaks your concentration," so you could argue that the rule I quoted above does not apply.

Yeah - a readied Daze spell wouldn't prevent your casting by breaking your concentration; it would prevent your casting by rendering you unable to take the action required to cast the spell.

As a poor analogy, imagine a caster with 3 hit points, who is hit with an AoO provoked by his casting for 4 points of damage. He easily makes the Concentration check, but his spell fails anyway, since he is unconscious before it is completed. It's not the loss of concentration that caused the spell to fail; it was the inability to actually finish his Cast a Spell action.

So, let's say we have a caster who has cast Gate (Planar Travel). He is concentrating to keep the Gate open. He is struck for 4 points of damage, and needs to make a DC14 Concentration check - no problem. However, he's also knocked unconscious.

Before his turn next round, his buddy the Cleric casts Heal.

On his turn next round, he can take a standard action to maintain concentration.

At the point he's knocked unconscious (having succeeded on the Concentration check provoked by the damage he took), does the Gate close?

The event that can explicitly end concentration during casting (taking damage) didn't, since he made his check; the unconsciousness could prevent him taking the standard action, but the Heal spell removed that problem before it became an issue. If he took the standard action this round and next round, and made his Concentration check vs the damage taken, is there actually anything about the brief unconsciousness that would end the spell?

-Hyp.

 

[Kelleris]

So you think the harmonic chorus should still be in effect until the beginning of my next turn?

 

[thorun09]

Don't forget the facts...

Many other PC's are in the room, and unable to cast because of the enormous concentration check. While the spell has a chance to be very effective against the high level wizard hiding behind the murder hole at the rear of the room, if he were to make his concentration check the spell would become more of a hindrance to the party than to the individual combat between the arcane spellcasters. Perhaps it would be wise to think alternatively, you have distorted his speech, perhaps look towards his other senses as well. Remember, if the first idea fails, try a second.

Bobbo

 

[Hypersmurf]

So you think the harmonic chorus should still be in effect until the beginning of my next turn?

I think the answer to 'Does Daze immediately break concentration, or does it only end if you fail to take a standard action each round?' and the answer to 'Does unconsciousness immediately break concentration, or does it only end if you fail to take a standard action each round?' are the same.

-Hyp.

 

[Kelleris]

Many other PC's are in the room, and unable to cast because of the enormous concentration check. While the spell has a chance to be very effective against the high level wizard hiding behind the murder hole at the rear of the room, if he were to make his concentration check the spell would become more of a hindrance to the party than to the individual combat between the arcane spellcasters. Perhaps it would be wise to think alternatively, you have distorted his speech, perhaps look towards his other senses as well. Remember, if the first idea fails, try a second.

I may have distorted his speech... In any case, don't forget that there's also an enemy cleric and a guy who could otherwise be using the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords to summon, IIRC, a greater earth elemental with maximum hit points. So I'd call it a wash at worst. Still, if I get through the next round, I'll have my familiar use dimension door to pop up behind the guy in that murder hole, and, uhm... I'm not sure yet. Maybe a ray of dizziness followed by readying a greater dispel magic to counterspell or something. Maybe an insidious rhythm if I can get one to stick, since it does the same thing as the cacophony (spell-wise anyway) to a single target.

Or maybe I'll leave the cacophony up unless we need emergency healing and use its secondary effect of empowering sonic damage to lay the sonic smack down when (okay, if) I get the evil magey guy under control. A sculpted cacophonic blast into a creaking cacophony does, let's see, almost 79 damage on average, and I could use it to "counterspell" Mr. Mage-Guy by beaning him with it if he tries to cast, and use the other 3 cubes to spot-nuke any of the baddies that are in position to do some real harm.

Hmm, I'll come up with something. I'll lean towards dropping the cacophony ASAP, though, since it's probably annoying to our cleric (I think that's the only spellcaster we have that's hugely hurt by the cacophony), but then she can still fight.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

It's more a problem with the nature of the combat mechanics.

Due to the turn-based round-robin that lets everyone do their thing, it's hard to visualize things as they might really happen. Logically, if you go unconscious, you'd lose a spell you're concentrating on. If you ignore a spell you're supposed to be concentrating on, you'd lose it as well. Do you lose the spell when you decide to not concentrate on it? Or do you lose it when your turn is over and the spell realizes it wasn't concentrated upon that round? What if you delayed, do you lose the spell when you declare the delay, or when you do something else? Or when you decide to do something else? What if you cast a spell, then move, then next round, you move, and then concentrate? Is that close enough for concentrating on a spell? If so, then how far apart is too long and you lose the spell?

Hmm, that ran a bit longer than I'd intended..

 

[Deset Gled]

I think the answer to 'Does Daze immediately break concentration, or does it only end if you fail to take a standard action each round?' and the answer to 'Does unconsciousness immediately break concentration, or does it only end if you fail to take a standard action each round?' are the same.

-Hyp.

Consider these two quotes from the SRD:

Anything that could break your concentration when casting a spell can also break your concentration while you’re maintaining one, causing the spell to end.

and

When you begin a spell that takes 1 round or longer to cast, you must continue the concentration from the current round to just before your turn in the next round (at least). If you lose concentration before the casting is complete, you lose the spell.

It seems to me that you should have to continue to concentrate between rounds to maintain the spell, as being dazed or unconsious between rounds falls under the category of "anything that could break your concentration when casting a spell".

If we're being pendantic, it could be the case that this would only apply if the spell initially had a casting time of 1 round or longer, but I think that's going just a little too far. That, and I just plain hate the Celerity spells, so I would be tempted to be as hard on the player as possible.