D&D 5E 5 Years in: Concentration

[Jfdlsjfd]

I found your example to be contrived in showing absurdly low damage to try to emotionally support your point. Fireballs can't go that low, and if they are fighting foes that are throwing fireballs then a melee attack is unlikely to only do 2 damage even with rolling minimum. The exact same thing could have been:

The wizard fails a save vs. Call Lightning for 18, gets critted by an Ogre for 20, and makes a save vs. Fireball and also takes 20.

It's the same three DC 10 saves. But it sounds a lot different.

Though you're right on the latter part, please not the OP didn't mention any fireball. Firebolt is a cantrip, and even if 2 is a bad roll, it's possible.

I think his goal was to show that rolling at each damage, even very low, makes it virtually impossible to keep concentration if a party is focusing fire on the BBEG, even if they don't do enough damage to drop him. (I found this situation to be more common than the reverse, but maybe I'm going soft on my players).

 

[Blue]

I like the idea of concentration in general, but there are some issues:

• Since concentration is limited to one spell, casters tend to cast only the "best" concentration spells, meaning there are tons of spells in the PHB that nobody ever bothers taking.
• Concentration encourages cowardly play from casters. It's better to hide behind a corner after casting your spell than to risk taking any hits at all and losing concentration.
• Since concentration is easily lost when taking damage, self-buff spells that could help out in melee are pretty useless to most casters who don't have a way of boosting their con saves.

I don't see as much of the second or third points at the tables I play at.

Squishies like Wizards and Sorcerers are already defensive-minded due to low AC and low HPs - they continue to act risk adverse regardless of Concentration. And every cleric is up there in the mix with their Bless or Spirit Guardians or something up.

Also, it's pretty hard to lose concentration. It's a known thing that it exists, plus it helps a lot with the lower HPs of the caster classes, so the lowest I'll see is a +2 CON and no proficiency in CON saves. (Or CON +1 and Proficiency, which is even better.) That's succeeding on an 8 or higher, which is 65% of the time. A hair shy of 2/3 of the time. For those like sorcerers, or starting with a level of fighter for armor, they have CON proficiency and it's starting better than that. Well before the time that the foes start to do over 20 points of damage, those without CON proficiency will have had a chance for either Resilient (CON) to get it, or Warcaster for advantage.

 

[Ashrym]

I don't see as much of the second or third points at the tables I play at.

Squishies like Wizards and Sorcerers are already defensive-minded due to low AC and low HPs - they continue to act risk adverse regardless of Concentration. And every cleric is up there in the mix with their Bless or Spirit Guardians or something up.

Also, it's pretty hard to lose concentration. It's a known thing that it exists, plus it helps a lot with the lower HPs of the caster classes, so the lowest I'll see is a +2 CON and no proficiency in CON saves. (Or CON +1 and Proficiency, which is even better.) That's succeeding on an 8 or higher, which is 65% of the time. A hair shy of 2/3 of the time. For those like sorcerers, or starting with a level of fighter for armor, they have CON proficiency and it's starting better than that. Well before the time that the foes start to do over 20 points of damage, those without CON proficiency will have had a chance for either Resilient (CON) to get it, or Warcaster for advantage.

That depends on a few things though. AC can definitely prevent some checks in the first place but that creates some additional divides.

On one end an artificer or EK can build high AC early AND starts with CON save proficiency. On the other end druids, wizards, bards, and warlocks start without save proficiency or high AC. Those classes can take steps but those always carry opportunity costs in the process.

In other cases sorcerers start with proficiencies and other casters have better / easier AC options.

Warlock spell casting relies more on at-will abilities but bard, druid, and wizard spells have a lot of status effects. These are some the most versatile classes in the game and it looks to me like it's intentional they also seem the most susceptible to concentration requirements. Even features like ritual casting create that dropped concentration.

IME some classes lose concentration a lot more often than others.

 

[Blue]

That depends on a few things though. AC can definitely prevent some checks in the first place but that creates some additional divides.

On one end an artificer or EK can build high AC early AND starts with CON save proficiency. On the other end druids, wizards, bards, and warlocks start without save proficiency or high AC. Those classes can take steps but those always carry opportunity costs in the process.

In other cases sorcerers start with proficiencies and other casters have better / easier AC options.

Warlock spell casting relies more on at-will abilities but bard, druid, and wizard spells have a lot of status effects. These are some the most versatile classes in the game and it looks to me like it's intentional they also seem the most susceptible to concentration requirements. Even features like ritual casting create that dropped concentration.

IME some classes lose concentration a lot more often than others.

I'm sorry, I'm not seeing how any of this addresses your two points.

Your first point was that Concentration makes casters play like cowards and hide to preserve Concentration. The discussion was that low HP/AC will play like that anyhow, and ones that are hard to hit I am still seeing out there, with the example of Clerics with Bless or Spirit Guardians.

Your second point was that it is very easy to lose concentration. Pointing out that there is a range across classes does not mean that that range goes into "very easy" to lose. I gave early play examples showing the worst part of the range starts at "moderately tough" to lose and talked about how it can go up from there.

And yes there is an opportunity cost whenever you pick one option over another, for example taking a feat to improve it. However, when you have a known weakness, taking a counter for that give you better return on that opportunity that many other things. Just like a heavy armor fighter with 1500gp in their pocket could spent it on any number of things, but often upgrading to plate armor would be their best choice. There is an opportunity costs that they did not buy something else, but that does not make it the wrong choice.

Look at the current thread about feat choices in DnDBeyond, and see how Warcaster is extremely common. ASIs and feats are natural part of the character growth. Protecting Concentration for those who are on the lower part of the range is common character grown.

 

[Blue]

In previous campaigns we've: played it as written, based the # of spells you can concentrate on to = your Prof. bonus, ignored it completely, put in alot of work reassigning what spells use it, etc.

But in the end? What I've settled on for when I DM is pretty much just tracking the durations. I mean, that worked perfectly fine for all the previous editions....
What I have added though is the basic concentration . Anytime you'd need a concentration check? You roll for each "C" spell you've got running.

Question 1, when playing with it by the book, did you find casters underpowered compared to non casters? Just want to estalish a baseline if you thing casters need a boost.

Question 2 (rhetorical), did you find that there was ever cases where casters wanted more than one spell with Concentration. I think this should be pretty self explanitory the answer is yes. So we can assume that this increased the power of the casters.

Question 3, if you found casters on-par or better than non-casters (question #1), did you in some way nerf casters / buff non-casters, or are have you just increased the power of one class of characters that were already of good balance, making them more powerful?

 

[Ashrym]

I'm sorry, I'm not seeing how any of this addresses your two points.

Your first point was that Concentration makes casters play like cowards and hide to preserve Concentration. The discussion was that low HP/AC will play like that anyhow, and ones that are hard to hit I am still seeing out there, with the example of Clerics with Bless or Spirit Guardians.

Your second point was that it is very easy to lose concentration. Pointing out that there is a range across classes does not mean that that range goes into "very easy" to lose. I gave early play examples showing the worst part of the range starts at "moderately tough" to lose and talked about how it can go up from there.

And yes there is an opportunity cost whenever you pick one option over another, for example taking a feat to improve it. However, when you have a known weakness, taking a counter for that give you better return on that opportunity that many other things. Just like a heavy armor fighter with 1500gp in their pocket could spent it on any number of things, but often upgrading to plate armor would be their best choice. There is an opportunity costs that they did not buy something else, but that does not make it the wrong choice.

Look at the current thread about feat choices in DnDBeyond, and see how Warcaster is extremely common. ASIs and feats are natural part of the character growth. Protecting Concentration for those who are on the lower part of the range is common character grown.

I think you have me confused with another poster. I never made a comment on acting in cowardice. I was mostly responding to what I bolded.

What I'm saying is we take the typical low level lower AC bards, druids, or wizards and concentration drops one in three hits. The lower AC increases the likelihood of getting hit.

The bard, druid, or wizard who gets attacked 3 times over 2 rounds can very easily lose concentration because they have about a 2/3 chance of getting hit one any attack and 1/3 chance of failing the concentration check on each hit.

How often they get attacked is a huge contributor to losing a concentration spell to cehecks. Taking a level of fighter for the AC and saves would help but that requires giving up different saves that can also cost concentration under different circumstances plus delays spell levels.

I definitely do not see splashing fighter first as typical and since I don't see that it's not going to generate a lot of sustained concentration spells.

 

[dave2008]

No one took it LOL. I guess we were so used to the system as is, we have learned to deal with the present concentration restrictions.

It is like Reactive ( a feat allowing two reactions per round), good in theory and strong, but no one took it.

It isn't harsh also because once you take War Caster, you remove the disadvantage.

But that requires another feat, just to get you back to even. Still seems expensive to me. However, I don't have an issue with concentration at the moment as my players don't use any concentration spells!

 

[DND_Reborn]

But that requires another feat, just to get you back to even. Still seems expensive to me. However, I don't have an issue with concentration at the moment as my players don't use any concentration spells!

Maybe this would get them to use some?

 

[Blue]

I think you have me confused with another poster. I never made a comment on acting in cowardice. I was mostly responding to what I bolded.

What I'm saying is we take the typical low level lower AC bards, druids, or wizards and concentration drops one in three hits. The lower AC increases the likelihood of getting hit.

The bard, druid, or wizard who gets attacked 3 times over 2 rounds can very easily lose concentration because they have about a 2/3 chance of getting hit one any attack and 1/3 chance of failing the concentration check on each hit.

How often they get attacked is a huge contributor to losing a concentration spell to cehecks. Taking a level of fighter for the AC and saves would help but that requires giving up different saves that can also cost concentration under different circumstances plus delays spell levels.

I definitely do not see splashing fighter first as typical and since I don't see that it's not going to generate a lot of sustained concentration spells.

Ah, I thought you were the person who I was responding to. I really enjoy the new ENworld software, but losing threaded messages sometimes makes it confusing. My apologies, I should have double checked.

I get a different final view when I use your numbers. Let's take your each attack has a 2/3 chance of hitting and a 1/3 chance of breaking Concentration when hit, that means each attack has a 2/9 chance to break concentration.

(Losing it 1/3 of the time to a DC 10 is basically the worst case - characters with CON save proficiency will be doing better. I use it as a lower bound.)

Three attacks means that there's a (7/9)^3 = 47% chance to keep concentration. Close to half isn't near "very easily lose concentration". And even if lost, that's still it up for a while.

And in a real combat, hopefully the front liners are keeping attackers off those squishies, and those Concentration spells are helping kill foes so less total attacks, doing crowd control so less can act, debuffing so they aren't as good as that, or otherwise having an effect. Especially if you have a party with two casters, like a cleric and a wizard or bard, even the smartest of foes can't focus fire on both at the same time to generate a lot of save attempts.

 

[werecorpse]

Imo the RAW concentration mechanic seems important for balance for some spells (like Spirit Guardians) but more burdensome for others which have other non dispel magic ways to end (like invisibility). I have gone through the PHB spells and made most (but not all) able to be cast without concentration if cast using a spell slot 1 to 2 levels higher on the basis that such upcasting doesn’t add any other upcasting benefits.

I posted about this in an earlier thread.

I find that for the vast majority of cases in play casters prefer to just wear the concentration requirement. (Although I suspect that’s partly because they don’t remember all the upcast rules)