D&D 5E 5 Years in: Concentration

[Chaosmancer]

Is anyone actually using ready with spells in 5e? It almost always leads to losing the spell.

I have I think, but with a slight rules change.

A player can keep the spell readied on their next turn if that is their action.


I don't see a lot of readied actions in general, so it can be hard to remember you lose the spell, but I think continuing to ready is just fine.

 

[Nebulous]

All in all, I am VERY glad that 5e concentration rules prevent stacking buffs, but I almost wish it required to use your main action to keep concentrating, even if that would be very harsh.


Is anyone actually using ready with spells in 5e? It almost always leads to losing the spell.

I think the PF2 three action system would handle that well, using one of those to keep maintaining a spell. And I see the wizard ready spells a good bit, but it's usually very simple stuff "I firebolt when the first person comes through that door" so it's rarely something that could get interrupted.

 

[Undrave]

combined with the dearth of utility spells compared to 3.5,

Just use skills and good roleplaying, you don't need utility spells if you're creative.

There's room for a bit more nuance. I'd like to see a version of the bard that is perhaps able to break the limits, ie perhaps maintaining a number of concentration spells so long as they are woven into an ongoing song (perhaps make them less of a full caster to compensate).

Maybe there could be level of concentration? Like, a self-buff doesn't require a save to maintain it (Maybe you need to use a Bonus Action on your turn to maintain it instead?), but an effect on someone else does? You still wouldn't be able to stack them but you'd at least be less wary of using melee buffs in actual melee.

 

[Undrave]

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....

Depends on your metric for 'worked perfectly fine'...

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I use concentration by the book and we have gotten quite good at remembering to make saves on damage by marking tokens that are concentrating with Roll20 symbols.

I love how the mechanic allows for non-magical characters to disrupt magical effects. In some past editions it really feels like magic is king because magic can only be countered with magic. Finally casters have a reason to be afraid of the big burly barbarian when he comes charging.

But like many others I feel that it is too liberally applied to spells. Many spells are completely overlooked because they have concentration and don't deliver as much bang as other options. I really feel that spells that give you a weapon or an attack that uses your action on subsequent turns really don't need to be concentration. Vampiric Touch is the poster child. I've seen this spell cast exactly once, and then the player realized how lackluster it is. Having to spend your action to get the most out of it is already a big pill to swallow and on top of that it's vulnerable to being dropped by damage. Meanwhile Sacred Weapon is out there with a bonus action to activate and doesn't have concentration. What?!

One of these days I really should just do a full pass through the spell list to house rule concentration off some of the lesser used spells.

 

[Blue]

Nope. Nope. And nope.
Just tweaked the game a bit to better satisfy the people at my table. We liked the general idea of concentration/loss of concentration, just not exactly how it was implemented by WoTC. So we fixed it.

I am glad that you found a mix that works for your table

Can you explain how you removed a major restriction, have players going beyond the old restriction limit, yet it does not buff casters? It sounds like you are saying Concentration has no effect on caster power.

 

[Ashrym]

I am glad that you found a mix that works for your table

Can you explain how you removed a major restriction, have players going beyond the old restriction limit, yet it does not buff casters? It sounds like you are saying Concentration has no effect on caster power.

Your quote is crossed linked to me.

 

[Blue]

Your quote is crossed linked to me.

My fault, I had one tab open to reply to you, then opened another and wasn't careful enough about the resultant mix. It was for ccs, I've fixed it.

 

[ccs]

Depends on your metric for 'worked perfectly fine'...

It means that in 40 years of doing this I & those I've played with have never experienced any problems with it as we've all been smart enough to know how a sheet of paper + pencil works.

 

[Undrave]

It means that in 40 years of doing this I & those I've played with have never experienced any problems with it as we've all been smart enough to know how a sheet of paper + pencil works.

Oh sure, it's not that difficult to TRACK. Just not sure the result worked that well on the whole...