Casting Defensively a bit much?

[Olaf the Stout]

The other thing to remember is that if someone readies an action to whack the PC while he is casting the Concentration check gets a little more difficult. If he gets hit while casting (usually via a readied action) he has to make a DC (10 + damage dealt) Concentration check to still get his spell off.

If he cops 15 points of damage from a hit then suddenly that is a DC 25 Concentration check. That sort of DC isn't automatic for most spellcasters. I would try that if you think that casting in combat is overpowered.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Legildur]

Our playing groups came to a similar conclusion many years ago (probably playing 3.0 in fact). If you hunt around on these boards, you'll find a few house rules proposed (including some promulgated by WotC through one of their splatbooks).

The house rule we adopted was that Casting Defensively didn't negate the AOO, but allowed you to add your ranks in Concentration as a Dodge bonus to your AC. This means that your casters can still try it on, but they won't do it in the face of something particularly nasty unless they are forced to do so.

We also implemented a similar house rule for Tumbling - add ranks to AC.

Both house rules have been well received over the years with no hint of complaint or tweaking required.

 

[moritheil]

The other thing to remember is that if someone readies an action to whack the PC while he is casting the Concentration check gets a little more difficult. If he gets hit while casting (usually via a readied action) he has to make a DC (10 + damage dealt) Concentration check to still get his spell off.

If he cops 15 points of damage from a hit then suddenly that is a DC 25 Concentration check. That sort of DC isn't automatic for most spellcasters. I would try that if you think that casting in combat is overpowered.

Olaf the Stout

That usually gets a lot more difficult; at higher levels when casting defensively becomes trivial, taking a hit easily works out to a DC 70+ check, which is a guaranteed failure in most cases. Best of all, you don't have to be threatening them: an archer can draw a bead on the enemy wizard from across the battlefield and peg him right as he starts casting.

 

[Jack Simth]

Take the example of a Wizard with a Constitution of 12

A Wizard with a Con of 12 doesn't live long. At 1st, an arrow from a long bow has a chance of killing him outright (1d8 knocks unconcious on a 6, 7 or 8, disabled on a 5; if it crits, it's got a chance of killing him outright). Personally, I always arrange for a Con of at least 16 from 1st level if I can arrange it (and I usually can). And invest in +Con items post haste. Still, that's only a boost of 10% at 1st, about another 5% at 5th, about another 5% at 10th, and about another 5% at 15th. But really, any Wizard I build is liable to be at 90+% chance of success on casting defensively by level 11 or 12.

 

[Piratecat]

Cheer up PC, you can still smack your PCs on the NPCs turn. Or ready an action to interrupt their spellcasting

Every once in a while I counterspell them, just to watch them twitch a little. Using the counterspell feats to do this to a high level spell is vastly satisfying. "What do you mean 'mass heal didn't go off?'"

 

[starwed]

It definitely isn't the case that all spellcasters can do this automatically. I have a half-orc cleric that gets 1 skill point/level, so his concentration check isn't looking so hot.

 

[Folly]

The other thing to remember is that if someone readies an action to whack the PC while he is casting the Concentration check gets a little more difficult. If he gets hit while casting (usually via a readied action) he has to make a DC (10 + damage dealt) Concentration check to still get his spell off.

If he cops 15 points of damage from a hit then suddenly that is a DC 25 Concentration check. That sort of DC isn't automatic for most spellcasters. I would try that if you think that casting in combat is overpowered.

Olaf the Stout

The DC in this situation is actually 25+Spell Level. The entry for concentration is rather confusing in my opinion, but this is a place that they put rules in footnotes. The table listing the DCs in the concentration entry have a footnote on the Concentration DC column. The footnote says "If you are trying to cast, concentrate on, or direct a spell when the distraction occurs, add the level of the spell to the indicated DC."

 

[Nail]

Casting Defesively is a non-issue in our present game. When the warmage is casting defensively, he's already up in front taking melee damage from the bad guys. He goes down in a hurry.

0bsolete, don't miss the forest for the trees. The real cost of casting in melee is how badly you'll end when the bad guy's turn comes up. Don't sweat the small stuff.

 

[moritheil]

Every once in a while I counterspell them, just to watch them twitch a little. Using the counterspell feats to do this to a high level spell is vastly satisfying. "What do you mean 'mass heal didn't go off?'"

Do you mean dispel, or are you running with the interpretation that Heightened Spell + Improved Counterspell somehow doesn't take a much higher level slot? Or does it take the slot up anyhow, and still annoy the heck out of the players?

 

[Infiniti2000]

Our playing groups came to a similar conclusion many years ago (probably playing 3.0 in fact).

Can you please explain exactly what conclusion? I don't know who you're responding to and I haven't seen any conclusions that require a houserule to ban casting defensively.