D&D (2024) Concentration on multiple spells, The "dormant" spell tag.

[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.