Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 7065068" data-attributes="member: 12731">Concentration is really two restrictions baked into one:a) the "you can only cast one of these spells at a time" limitation. Let's call this Focus spells, you can only focus on one focus spell at a time.b) the "damage might lose you this spell" limitation. Let's call this Disruptable spells, whenever you take damage (etc) you must make a Disruption save or lose the spell.So a "concentration" spell is really a spell that is both a Focus spell and a Disruptable spell.Certain spells might reasonably be a Focus spell, but become utter <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> as a Disruption spell. Stoneskin is perhaps the simplest example. It is reasonable to prevent the spellcaster from stoneskinning everybody in the party. Having a spell designed to mitigate armor fall off when... you take damage(!) means nobody ever uses it in practice.Having a hard and unbreakable limit of one (1) focus spell and one (1) disruptable spell, that moreover must be one and the same spell, is a serious limit to what combinations you can pull off as a spellcaster, especially at higher levels. The Jester is not wrong in his desire to slightly lift the lid on this restriction.Of course, wholesale removal of the restrictions will quickly lead to spellcasters becoming far too powerful, d20 style. This is why it is so valuable to realize the Concentration = Focus + Disruption fact.The best solution would be to hand pick a couple Concentration spells and make them either Focus or Disruption but not both. This would greatly breathe new life into these spells without noticeably powering up the spellcaster.Obviously this presumes a general rule that moves the "only one spell" to Focus spells. All Concentration spells remain Focus spells, so this would only actually matter for the specific spells we relabel from Concentration to Focus or Disruption.Stoneskin is the perfect candidate for a Focus spell.Good example of Disruption spells would be mind-control spells which you already today can cast at many people (Hold Person) and where the main liability is "hurt the Sorceress so Redgar and Lidda snaps out of their trance". Spells where you can allow multiple castings since one failed save ruins them all. Spells where the spellcaster must stick around (and expose himself) and can't just debilitate the heroes and then teleport out for her henchmen to finish off. (Generally any disruption spell should specify some kind of "needs to maintain line of effect" restriction, though not the clumsy and trivially broken Witch Bolt kind) But mostly the thing is to be able to have "one at a time" spells without the "breaks any second now".</blockquote>

Verification