Concentration on multiple spells, The "dormant" spell tag.

[Horwath]

Concentration was added to 5E to stomp the power of full casters of 3.5e.

And that was a GOOD thing, mostly,

Problem is, too much spells got a Conc tag and some of them are simply not worth it, mostly some RP, travel buffs.

With adding "dormant" spell mechanic, you could concentrate on multiple spells, but only one would be active, rest of them would be non active, but not dispelled right away.

On your turn as a Bonus action you can switch to with spell is active and the rest are dormant.

Any spell that forces a save on the enemy(Banishment), or deals continuous damage(Heat metal) CANNOT be made dormant, those are lost immediately.

If you fail Con save to maintain concentration, you lose ALL your spells, active or dormant.
Might add that you make your Con save with disadvantage if you have a dormant spell to concentrate on in addition to an active one.


This would mostly benefit exploration and roleplay situation. Also it would let you keep summon monster spell, while your are exploring invisible or flying.

You could have Fly, Invisibility and Summon monster X casted by yourself,
1st use Fly to get over some natural or artificial obstacle, land in some cover, switch to Invisibility, sneak into position, and to prepare for battle, switch again to your Summon spell.

 

[James Gasik]

My big complaint is that, when I play, I want to layer buff spells on the martials as Gygax intended, but due to all the buffs having concentration (and most of them being pretty tame- wow, +1d4 damage on all attacks from Enlarge!), I can't really do that. So it feels like instead of solving caster self-buffing, it just made it so nobody gets buffs as there's almost definitely a better concentration spell you could be casting.

 

[Horwath]

My big complaint is that, when I play, I want to layer buff spells on the martials as Gygax intended, but due to all the buffs having concentration (and most of them being pretty tame- wow, +1d4 damage on all attacks from Enlarge!), I can't really do that. So it feels like instead of solving caster self-buffing, it just made it so nobody gets buffs as there's almost definitely a better concentration spell you could be casting.

layering buffs/debuffs breaks the game and it is good thing that is gone.

But with this suggestion, you could have Enlarge, then if needs be, cast some Conc based debuff in battle and after a round or few, return to Enlarge.

 

[Marc Radle]

The new Theurge class in Deep Magic 1 can concentrate on more than one spell!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deepmagic/deep-magic-2-spellcasters-emporium-for-5th-edition-games

 

[UngeheuerLich]

layering buffs/debuffs breaks the game and it is good thing that is gone.

But with this suggestion, you could have Enlarge, then if needs be, cast some Conc based debuff in battle and after a round or few, return to Enlarge.

I'd really like to transfer concentration to the receipient. So you may cast Enlarge on the fighter who might maintqin the buff for themselves.
That way it is one concenteation per person in the party. And you could still share buff spells.

I would call this mechanic:

Severe thread. Could at least be a metamagic feature.

 

[James Gasik]

layering buffs/debuffs breaks the game and it is good thing that is gone.

But with this suggestion, you could have Enlarge, then if needs be, cast some Conc based debuff in battle and after a round or few, return to Enlarge.

Would it really though? Most buffs are pretty conservative, and I figure the martials could use the help.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I like the idea that holding the buff on yourself would take concentration, but putting it on someone else doesn't.

That encourages teamwork.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

Concentration was added to 5E to stomp the power of full casters of 3.5e.

And that was a GOOD thing, mostly,

Problem is, too much spells got a Conc tag and some of them are simply not worth it, mostly some RP, travel buffs.

With adding "dormant" spell mechanic, you could concentrate on multiple spells, but only one would be active, rest of them would be non active, but not dispelled right away.

On your turn as a Bonus action you can switch to with spell is active and the rest are dormant.

Any spell that forces a save on the enemy(Banishment), or deals continuous damage(Heat metal) CANNOT be made dormant, those are lost immediately.

If you fail Con save to maintain concentration, you lose ALL your spells, active or dormant.
Might add that you make your Con save with disadvantage if you have a dormant spell to concentrate on in addition to an active one.


This would mostly benefit exploration and roleplay situation. Also it would let you keep summon monster spell, while your are exploring invisible or flying.

You could have Fly, Invisibility and Summon monster X casted by yourself,
1st use Fly to get over some natural or artificial obstacle, land in some cover, switch to Invisibility, sneak into position, and to prepare for battle, switch again to your Summon spell.

This idea of being able to have multiple concentration spells running, but all but one of them are dormant at any one time is REALLY interesting to me.

I wouldn't want to tie the functionality to specific spells or a specific class, because that takes Designer-level rewrites, but a feat...

I would consider a feat that allows only self-buffs with concentration to be able to be dormant. This removes direct debuffs and damage spells from being able to be dormant, but still lets your buff durations continue if you want to cast an offensive concentration spell for a little while.

 

[codo]

No, no double concentration ever. I understand that limits aren't fun, but sometimes they are necessary for the good of the game. As long as D&D is a game that includes both spellcasters and nonspellcasters as supposed equals, there has to be some restrictions on casters.

5e finally imposed a good, hard limit on spellcasters and they need to keep it in place. As long as there are fighters and rouges in the game, spellcasters just shouldn't be able to break the game in several ways at once. They should not be allowed to cast fly and invisibility at the same time. It just exponentially increases the power of concentration spells.

That being said, there could be some spells currently requiring concentration that may not need it. Particularly spells that can be used to buff weapon users. I don't see much problem letting a caster buff a martial weapon user and have a concentration spell up at once.

 

[Shardstone]

The dormant tag could be dope though. I'd like to see it used some how. Maybe when a Concentration spell is dormant, it has no effects and requires no concentration, but as a bonus action you can trigger it later? Probably within a number of days equal to 1 + the spell slot level used to cast the spell.

That'd be a FUN mechanic for monsters and NPCs at least, lots of narrative possiblilites. Thanks for the inspo!

 

[James Gasik]

No, no double concentration ever. I understand that limits aren't fun, but sometimes they are necessary for the good of the game. As long as D&D is a game that includes both spellcasters and nonspellcasters as supposed equals, there has to be some restrictions on casters.

5e finally imposed a good, hard limit on spellcasters and they need to keep it in place. As long as there are fighters and rouges in the game, spellcasters just shouldn't be able to break the game in several ways at once. They should not be allowed to cast fly and invisibility at the same time. It just exponentially increases the power of concentration spells.

That being said, there could be some spells currently requiring concentration that may not need it. Particularly spells that can be used to buff weapon users. I don't see much problem letting a caster buff a martial weapon user and have a concentration spell up at once.

As much as I don't like how concentration works in play, this is my primary complaint, that the mechanic actively prevents me from buffing martials with spells effectively, which is part of what I feel casters should be doing to make that martial/caster divide less onerous.

What really bothers me about concentration is that the developers stated it was put into place to prevent the sort of self-buffing juggernauts that plagued 3e (at least in theory; in practice, without divine metamagic and persist spell, buffing one's self was kind of time consuming in most of my actual experience). But then you look at what spells have it, and which ones don't, and it doesn't always make sense. It's especially onerous on melee casters like Clerics, who are naturally going to be targeted a lot, and so there's several spells that they're like "nope, not going to bother with that, lol").

But then, in addition to slapping concentration on a ton of spells (and not making every long casting time spell a ritual for...uh reasons...), they occasionally create rules patches to make concentration easier! It's like, pick a lane, guys. Either commit to the bit, or admit you don't really like it that much and find something else to replace it with!

 

[tetrasodium]

Concentration is more like a bandaid homebrew hack than what you would expect from an industry leading 800 pound gorrilla like wotc. Dormant spells feels more like an effort to hack a workaround around bad design without actually doing anything about the problem or the results of that bad design, "Something was done so nothing more can be done". Others have already pointed out the very real problems caused by concentration, excessive concentration, & excessive buff layering but there are examples of other mechanics that both scale and empower buffiung without the buff layering problems.

One great example of a system that solved & avoided both problems was anarchy online's NCU system. Any spell with a duration longer than instant (buff/debuff/DoT/HoT/etc) consumed a set amount of the target's NCU while it remained & characters could upgrade their NCU as they improved equipment or gained levels.

 

[GreyLord]

I actually like Concentration as it is.

I think Dormant (as suggested above) would actually still add too much power to casters. One of the reasons being is that as it is now, casters must make choices and lose spells if they choose that path. This would let them retain more power overall. Sure, they can't have both active at the same time, but they still HAVE the spell.

That's basically adding power to casters when, in some ways, the rules are trying to bring other classes up already...this would make that bar even harder.

Just my opinion on it.

 

[GMMichael]

Does -Dormant- mean I can cast all my concentration spells first thing in the morning, and then just switch between them whenever I need them?

 

[Horwath]

Does -Dormant- mean I can cast all my concentration spells first thing in the morning, and then just switch between them whenever I need them?

no, the duration continues as normal.