D&D 5E Ditching concentration - did you do it?

[Bacon Bits]

You must have played your casters very poorly.

In my experience, if the DM wants you in melee, you're in melee. No amount of player skill or magical spells will compensate for consistently ham-handed encounter design. I played a campaign where I was a fighter/wizard that preferred archery to melee. Except we never had an encounter begin at longer than a charge away. The last straw (that is, when I asked to be able to switch to melee instead of archery) was when the party was travelling over open, treeless tundra and we encountered frost giants. We noticed them 30' away. They had not been hiding.

Walking around invisible in my experience is generally suicide, too, because it's so tempting to the DM to capture you or separate you somehow. The rest of the party has to play it like they don't know you're gone. We had a guy bell himself like a cat, but that didn't work too well, either. I recall another campaign where, if you were invisible, the DM made you write your actions on note cards to pass to him. The party entered a large open cavern, which suddenly filled with dozens of very large spiders that started blanketing the entire area with webs. The visible party made their saves and fled from the chamber. The cleric waited a round and I asked, "Has everyone made it through?" Two of the party said, "Yes," and nobody said, "No." I sealed the passage with stone shape or wall of stone or something similar. Of course, we had forgotten about the invisible wizard, who had failed his saved and been stuck in webbing. The unusual part was actually that the wizard had entered the room at all. Normally, he stayed outside the room until the rest of the party had fully explored the place, but for whatever reason, he didn't do that this time.

 

[Celtavian]

In my experience, if the DM wants you in melee, you're in melee. No amount of player skill or magical spells will compensate for consistently ham-handed encounter design. I played a campaign where I was a fighter/wizard that preferred archery to melee. Except we never had an encounter begin at longer than a charge away. The last straw (that is, when I asked to be able to switch to melee instead of archery) was when the party was travelling over open, treeless tundra and we encountered frost giants. We noticed them 30' away. They had not been hiding.

Walking around invisible in my experience is generally suicide, too, because it's so tempting to the DM to capture you or separate you somehow. The rest of the party has to play it like they don't know you're gone. We had a guy bell himself like a cat, but that didn't work too well, either. I recall another campaign where, if you were invisible, the DM made you write your actions on note cards to pass to him. The party entered a large open cavern, which suddenly filled with dozens of very large spiders that started blanketing the entire area with webs. The visible party made their saves and fled from the chamber. The cleric waited a round and I asked, "Has everyone made it through?" Two of the party said, "Yes," and nobody said, "No." I sealed the passage with stone shape or wall of stone or something similar. Of course, we had forgotten about the invisible wizard, who had failed his saved and been stuck in webbing. The unusual part was actually that the wizard had entered the room at all. Normally, he stayed outside the room until the rest of the party had fully explored the place, but for whatever reason, he didn't do that this time.

I don't play with DMs that play that way. I'm a very take control player. I make sure we employ a scout. I plan spell strategy carefully. If I were playing a DM that tried to disallow my tactics from working the vast majority of the time, we wouldn't be playing together very long. A DM should respect player tactics. I understand a DM using counter-tactics now and again, but you can't justify that all the time. Smart tactical play should not be something a DM overlooks.

Walking around invisible all the time is anything but suicide. Just because some DM might decide to toss in an occasional challenge doesn't mean walking around invisible isn't going to be advantageous 90% or more of the time. A wizard that can't escape a web is a pretty poor wizard and a party that can't fight off a big group of spiders a pretty weak party. Of course, these must have been special spiders if a party that can cast wall of stone or stone shape had to run.

Most of the DMs that I've run with had to increase encounters to such a level that it was nearly impossible to achieve victory against a party with me in it as a caster. Usually by creating magic items, special abilities, or unique creatures far outside the rules. I don't mind it because I like a good challenge. Though sometimes having a character die to an impossible challenge is pretty annoying. Then again achieving victory against seemingly impossible odds and tactics feels great.

 

[Gabriel Pendragon]

Not having concentration is a stupid idea. Without concentration there is nothing stopping people from stacking the same spell multiple times for insane effects, or nothing stopping people from covering the entire field with stand here and die effects. Like using friends on everyone all the time. Stacking guidance until they can auto succeed at any task. An army of mage hands to do god knows what, but 10 lbs limit stacks up pretty fast. Stacking resistance for auto success on a save. that is just the crazy things you can do with cantrips, upping that to higher level spells can really do crazy broken things. If people really want multiple concentration spells going at once, talk your friends into playing magic users. While individual characters are supposed to do cool things, groups are supposed to do amazing wonders of awesome.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Without concentration there is nothing stopping people from stacking the same spell multiple times for insane effects

That isn't at all true, since what stops the stacking you refer to is not the concentration rules, but the Combining Magical Effects rules that specifically state the effects of the same spell cast multiple times don't combine.

Of course, I agree with your statement that not having concentration (without replacing it with some other rules that result in the same things that concentration rules make happen) is stupid - but giving nonsensical reasons for why you believe what you believe isn't going to persuade anyone to believe what you believe.

 

[Gabriel Pendragon]

Forgot about that rule, but it still allows using the same spell on multiple targets, in which those many targets can all help each other perform a single task with basically the same effect as if you loaded it onto the same target many times. That rule only stops a couple of my cantrip examples from working, though the helping rules makes them still work with a work around. Nor does it prevent AoE effects from coating a battle field.
Another big issue is that the duration is based on how long you hold concentration or until something specific happens, to even consider balancing one would have to make a reasonable duration other than concentration on all concentration spells.

 

[Celtavian]

Not having concentration is a stupid idea. Without concentration there is nothing stopping people from stacking the same spell multiple times for insane effects, or nothing stopping people from covering the entire field with stand here and die effects. Like using friends on everyone all the time. Stacking guidance until they can auto succeed at any task. An army of mage hands to do god knows what, but 10 lbs limit stacks up pretty fast. Stacking resistance for auto success on a save. that is just the crazy things you can do with cantrips, upping that to higher level spells can really do crazy broken things. If people really want multiple concentration spells going at once, talk your friends into playing magic users. While individual characters are supposed to do cool things, groups are supposed to do amazing wonders of awesome.

This didn't happen in prior editions when magic items would allow you to do something like that. Concentration stops parties from stacking tons of different spells on an entire party to make them virtually invincible. Stops them from summoning a bunch of creatures. Stops them from megabuffing before encounters. Concentration not only reduces power, but also makes combats faster by reducing the number of spells that need to be tracked. That's the main reason I didn't throw it out. Older edition buff and spell tracking always slowed the game down as well as providing a force multiplier the vast majority of monsters couldn't hope to match.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...it still allows using the same spell on multiple targets, in which those many targets can all help each other perform a single task with basically the same effect as if you loaded it onto the same target many times.

You seem to be having a knee-jerk reaction that isn't actually based on any facts, even though you are arriving at a conclusion that makes sense (that being that concentration is very important)

That rule only stops a couple of my cantrip examples from working

Let's look at each:

"Friends on everyone all the time": The friends cantrip specifies it can't be used on anyone that is hostile toward you. It also states that when the spell ends the target becomes hostile toward you... so you are either only ever spending your actions casting friends so everyone likes you and you never really have the time to interact with them to meaningfully capitalize on them being friendly, or the spell ends on someone at some point and you can't re-cast it upon them. So neither "everyone" nor "all the time" are actually feasible in a practical sense, concentration rules used or otherwise.

"Stacking guidance": The one person actually performing a task gets the spell's benefit once, anyone assisting that person would do so via the help action, and the result would be identical no matter how many people helped (as advantage doesn't stack up), whether the helpers had their own guidance spell or not (as there is no roll to successfully use the help action).

"An army of mage hands": The mage hand spell specifies it ends if you cast it again, so no matter whether the concentration rules and combining magical effects rules are used or ignored, you can only get multiple mage hands working in concert by having multiple casters.

"Stacking resistance": This one is the only one that actually needs the combining magical effects rules to stop it from being stacked up for extra benefit.

Nor does it prevent AoE effects from coating a battle field.

The relatively tight limit on spell slots would still stop that from being a feasible strategy for a single caster to use.

Another big issue is that the duration is based on how long you hold concentration or until something specific happens, to even consider balancing one would have to make a reasonable duration other than concentration on all concentration spells.

All concentration spells have reasonable durations - they just also have concentration which means they can end even sooner. It's not like without concentration rules in place you could just have an indefinite cloudkill floating around.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't play with DMs that play that way. I'm a very take control player. I make sure we employ a scout. I plan spell strategy carefully. If I were playing a DM that tried to disallow my tactics from working the vast majority of the time, we wouldn't be playing together very long. A DM should respect player tactics. I understand a DM using counter-tactics now and again, but you can't justify that all the time. Smart tactical play should not be something a DM overlooks.

I hope you understand that many readers will not be impressed by a player who effectively is saying "my greatest playing tactic is to switch out the DMs that don't allow my awesomesauce player moves".

I would suggest you adopt a pinch of humiliation here. Could it be that the reason you feel so cocksure is because you have had lenient DMs while Aaron and Bacon have not?

Anyway, you might consider taking another tack here. As an observer not invested in this particular argument, you come across as entitled and petulant, whether or not you mean to.

Best regards,
Zapp

 

[Maxperson]

For me whether to add, remove or change something boils down to this. Does it make the game more enjoyable for the players? If yes, add, remove or change the rule. If it makes it less enjoyable, leave the rule alone. If it doesn't do either, I err on the side of not making the change.

 

[jodyjohnson]

The Concentration rules are born out of the "Buff Suite/5 Minute Workday" style of play that developed over the years.

The cycle was allowed to begin by the emergence of the "5 Minute workday" which happened at our table within hours of beginning AD&D in 1981. Some players adapted to AD&D's lethality by avoiding combat and others, like our group, wanted to have combat. So play quickly devolved into a fight and rest pattern because AD&D was very lethal and usually there was no reason to press on at less than full strength. As players gained additional spell slots but not great gains in survivabililty/recovery, many of the extra spell slots were shifted to buffing spells. Which of course fed the cycle of the 5MWD.

3rd edition presented a big jump in slots available (especially through wands or other magic items) and HP recovery (CLW Wands). However, the 5MWD was still rewarded with survival and the ability to take on greater challenges (which greatly accelerated XP acquisition).

Many groups that never started the 5MWD cycle may have never shifting into a heavy buffing mode of play. Since by definition they needed to ration their spells more.

You can play without the Concentration rule, but it is dependent on not then getting into a 5MWD style of play which would make it feasible to start a heavy buffing cycle that may eventually feedback into an undesireable style of play.

5e tries to encourage multiple encounters per day but can only mechanically enforce limited buffing (Concentration).
If your group is fine with not doing the 5MWD then I could see not using Concentration working fine (with appropriate chances to some spells i.e. cantrips).

However, there are a number of players that for them 'smart play' requires a 5MWD and maxing buffing if allowed.