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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6547700" data-attributes="member: 1465">I think you raise excellent points...At some point in the playtest Mearls mentioned that they were going to have TWO separate things called &quot;concentration&quot; (to avoid stacking buffs) and &quot;focus&quot; (hold spells vs damage or distractions). Merging the two sounded like the proverbial catching of two birds with one stone, but it has its own issues.I don't have much experience of 5e in play yet, but you say that your group forgets about checking vs damage and that's exactly my concern. In 3e there were few spells needing concentration, and that IIRC meant spending your action in concentrating every round, i.e. you could not do anything but a single move: this was harsh (but few spells only) but you couldn't easily forget you were concentrating on a spell! Now the rule is more forgiving, but you have to keep in mind all the time that whatever damage you take (and maybe also non-damaging spells or other distractions) should force a concentration check if you have a concentration spell ongoing... it may not always be so automatic to remember, particularly because it's not generally going to be the last spell you have cast.Also as you say, stacking buffs was explicitly wanted gone from the game, but that was a concern related to having a single (N)PC with multiple stacking effects. Casting the same spell on multiple PCs was never a big deal, especially when it required multiple copies prepared beforehand. However I can accept this loss of utility, I am more concerned with forgetting the checks. People keep praising the new concentration rules, and I am a bit surprised that they seem to remember with ease...Note that technically the &quot;stacking buffs&quot; problem isn't even eliminated entirely... there might still be enough non-concentration buffs in the game, and multiple PCs can stack-buffs on one ally as long as they only cast one concentration spell each.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 6547700, member: 1465"] I think you raise excellent points... At some point in the playtest Mearls mentioned that they were going to have TWO separate things called "concentration" (to avoid stacking buffs) and "focus" (hold spells vs damage or distractions). Merging the two sounded like the proverbial catching of two birds with one stone, but it has its own issues. I don't have much experience of 5e in play yet, but you say that your group forgets about checking vs damage and that's exactly my concern. In 3e there were few spells needing concentration, and that IIRC meant spending your action in concentrating every round, i.e. you could not do anything but a single move: this was harsh (but few spells only) but you couldn't easily forget you were concentrating on a spell! Now the rule is more forgiving, but you have to keep in mind all the time that whatever damage you take (and maybe also non-damaging spells or other distractions) should force a concentration check if you have a concentration spell ongoing... it may not always be so automatic to remember, particularly because it's not generally going to be the [I]last[/I] spell you have cast. Also as you say, stacking buffs was explicitly wanted gone from the game, but that was a concern related to having a single (N)PC with multiple stacking effects. Casting the same spell on multiple PCs was never a big deal, especially when it required multiple copies prepared beforehand. However I can accept this loss of utility, I am more concerned with forgetting the checks. People keep praising the new concentration rules, and I am a bit surprised that they seem to remember with ease... Note that technically the "stacking buffs" problem isn't even eliminated entirely... there might still be enough non-concentration buffs in the game, and multiple PCs can stack-buffs on one ally as long as they only cast one concentration spell [I]each[/I]. [/QUOTE]

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