Allowing some Concentration Stacking - With big costs

schnee said:

Q1: What are you doing to buff the martial classes to balance out the increased power and action economy of spellcasters?

Q2: What situations are you putting in the game that are much more difficult due to no Concentration spells?

Q3: Are you using opponents with Concentration spells against them, so they see the power and utility of those effects rather than just the limitations?

Q4: Does it come down to a few spells, that are nerfed too much due to Concentration, that might be balanced enough with a bit of surgical homebrew? (Looking at you, Flame Blade.)

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I can only give [MENTION=16728]schnee[/MENTION] XP once for this post, so the only other way I can agree how important these questions are is to quote them and talk about them.

This definitely increases the power of casters. Are you planning on increasing the martial and monsters, or putting a corresponding debuff on casters?

If the debuff is only on when concentrating on more than one, it's not enough because the character has 100% of the power they had before, plus more options. There needs to be a debuff that occurs outside that time as well. (It could be something that lingers after use, that's still outside the time of use.)

Maybe losing concentration also causes 1 HP of damage per spell slot level as it grounds out in the caster. Not punitive, but a minor debuff for all casting and one that is a bigger deal with concentrating on more than one.

If there isn't a debuff, then we're looking at buffing martial characters (and to some degree half-casters), and then bringing foes up to snuff with the new, mightier PCs.

On the other hand, Q4 points out correctly that there are some spells that Concentration is just punitive on and a bit of rework could correct. If that's the major issue.

Whenever a Concentration spell is up, all other spells require a higher level slot to cast with no other benefit. You may have multiple concentration spells (up to your proficiency bonus) - each adds one slot level to other casting as well as needs to be saved separately from damage.

Buff and matching debuff. Yes, this does add in a real general debuff to all casters in return for the extra flexibility they get. Might be too harsh on half casters as well as the Eldritch Knight / Arcane Trickster.

This looks like a huge buff to casters with very little downside. You can maintain your highest level buff and as many lower level ones as you can afford to spend up cast slots on, which is a huge power jump and a straight buff - the caster can use single concentration spells just as before, but also has the option of stacking them by upcasting. The downside is that you get disadvantage on concentration rolls while casting it, and all spells go to one roll. You seem to think this is a really big disadvantage, but it's pretty easy to negate. War caster turns is from disadvantage to a normal roll, which is then easy to use lucky or diviner on. Alternately, resilient with a high con pushes you into territory where you're automatically making the saves, trivially so if you're a 6th level paladin or within 10 feet of one. I think you'd see a lot of casters in your world starting with a 15 con (17 for the +2 con races), taking resilient early, and stacking items that give plus to saves. Disadvantage doesn't matter on hits less than 21 if you can get +9 to your con save, and that's not an impossible target.

At the very least, you should need to 'simple' all of the spells, not just the lower-level ones, and should have to make a save for each, and lose all of the effects if any fail. And you should figure out how this works with cantrips that require concentration, since resistance suddenly looks very attractive to a caster.

Concentration as a caster limitation is one of the best changes from 3e, IMO. Changing it as suggested does nothing but change the optimization and buffs casting.
[MENTION=68748]Gladius Legis[/MENTION] had an interestind suggestion but I think that takes one of the benefits of Bestow Curse away. I would go with concentration spells cast using 3 slots higher than required removes concentration and is an additional requirement beyond other scaling.

Personally, I would be more inclined to add a feat...

Centered Caster: The spell caster can make a DC 10 concentration check to cast and maintain one additional concentration spell without breaking concentration on an existing spell. The caster must an additional concentration check at the end of each of his or her turns to maintain the second spell. The caster makes any other concentration checks at disadvantage on the second spell.

That gives an added bonus to sorcerers because of save proficiencies.

A feat for a controlled concentration buff seems far more reasonable as a trade-off.

In one of my homebrew settings I sort of allow Concentration stacking in that I have consumable magic items called Power Components. A Power Component is consumed in casting a spell, and it allows the caster to choose one method of enhancing the cast spell. One of the enhancements available is to remove the Concentration requirement of the spell. Each Power Component relates to a certain class of spells (Healing, Illusion, Fire, Plant etc.).

I would put it like this.

You can concentrate on more than one spell.

Sum of spell levels cannot exceed your max level spell.

I.E. 5th level caster can concentrate on 1 3rd level spell, 1 1st level and one 2nd level or 3 1st level spells.

If you concentrate on 2 spells at a time, you suffer disadventage,

If you concentrate on 3 or more spells it is auto-fail every concentration.


With warcaster is:

1 spell; advantage,

2 spells; normal,

3 spells; disadvantage,

4 or more spells; auto-fail.

schnee said:

Q2: What situations are you putting in the game that are much more difficult due to no Concentration spells?

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I want to re-state this point, since I was a bit too terse the first time and I don't think it came across.

Q2: What situations are you putting in the game that are much more difficult due to the players refusing to take Concentration spells due to their rash judgment of the mechanic?

Short answer:

Because, your home brew is well-intentioned but misguided. Spellcasters are powerful and flexible enough right now. They need to think like team members and not shackled gods.

Long answer:

As someone who's played Moldvay Basic, AD&D 1e, 3e, 4e and 5e, I've seen a lot of different takes on the game. And, frankly, 5e fulfills the 'promise' of D&D about as well as I could have hoped for; a good mix of accessibility, balance, and archaic complexity that's fun to master.

I stand behind this: the NUMBER ONE biggest improvement in 5e over all previous editions is Concentration. For once, spellcasters have a limitation that allows spells to be awesome and wide-ranging and fun and powerful AND limited enough to make them work alongside martial and skill characters.

Look at what a medium level spellcaster can accomplish in one round:
- Sleet Storm / Lightning Bolt
- Spirit Guardians / Spiritual Weapon / Guiding Bolt
- Conjure Animals (8 dire wolves) / Erupting Earth
- Hunger of Hadar / Eldritch Blast (to one or multiple targets)

Players who feel that isn't good enough need to understand the absolute necessity of each archetype to have awesome strengths and frustrating limitations.

They want multiple Concentration spells to put together some awesome combo, but are forgetting: this is a team game. They should be about as effective towards the overall success of the group, per round, as a Barbarian getting a full attack with Reckless and Rage, a Rogue pulling off a meaty sneak attack then picking the lock of the door that has them trapped, a Champion steadily hacking away while covering the squishier party member with Protection, etcetera.

You know how you get multiple Concentration spells to pull off an awesome combo? Get two spellcaster players to coordinate. That's how it works in a team game.

I approve of this subject matter. I believe 5E does a poor job of presenting archmages - there should be ways to bend and break most rules re: magic once you're high enough level.

Especially for NPCs. The NPC "Archmage" stat block is so pale it isn't even funny. Sure it commands respect - from a single-digit levelled party. In my mind NPCs like Vizeran (Out of the Abyss) or Mordenkainen (Curse of Strahd) needs much more loving attention than that feeble effort. Most critically, the ability to break the limits of concentration and action economy. (The ability to break attunement limits is mainly a concern for characters with many strong items, or player characters in other words).

That said, I have had poor reception for my efforts here. The community has changed from one curious and receptive to "power crunch" (the reason I joined back in '03 ) to one almost hostile to it. Every time I bring up the weaksauce effort that is 5E high-level play people react negatively, instead of acknowledging this basic fact and agreeing things could and should be done to improve the crunchy player's high-level experience.

Just like you're doing here, but most importantly we should expect and want WotC to do it for us, finally bringing high-level 5E play back up to a minimum acceptable level of crunch, depth and challenge.

Good luck with your thread

Anecdata: I allow Concentration stacking, and it works like this: "Sure, I'll allow you to cast and maintain an additional concentration spell. But you'll have to succeed on a Constitution check, DC 15. If you fail, you lose the new spell (wasting its spell slot) AND drop concentration on your current spells."

The theory here is that a DC 15 Con check will succeed at most 55% of the time, if you have Con +5, which few casters have. So for most casters, the expected outcome is losing both spells. BUT it's possible to beat those odds if you spend Inspiration or gather some other general check bonuses (such as guidance).

I've offered this option to my current group at least 10 times. We've been playing for a year, from level 1-19. The option has only been taken once, to great effect, during a desperate boss fight. The rest of the time, the players are too afraid of losing spell slots and actions.

77IM said:

The theory here is that a DC 15 Con check will succeed at most 55% of the time, if you have Con +5, which few casters have.

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Please calibrate your rules for the minmaxed scenario. That's vitally important to game balance.

In other words, let's assume a character with Constitution 20 that is proficient in Constitution ability checks* with at least a bonus of +2 (or 1d4) and the ability to gain advantage on the roll. That character will have a relevant bonus of +12. The probability of making a DC 15 check is thus 99%. (The probability of rolling two d20s and rolling 3 or better on both is exactly 99%)

*) Yes, I am aware this should probably be proficiency in Constitution saves, but since 77IM wrote checks, I'm going with checks for the time being.

At least add the level of the highest levelled spell to your DC.

Example: combining a level 1 spell with a level 3 spell sets the DC at 15+3=18.

I would also clarify that this sets the minimum DC for concentration saves. That is, even if you only take a single point of damage, the Concentration save DC is minimum 15 (or 18, in my example). Failure means you lose both spells of course.

Good luck with your rule.