Level Up (A5E) "Fixing" the wizard to help it's poor imitators

[tetrasodium]

Stoneskin, Barskin, Hail of Thorns, any smite spells - they must not have Concentration.

add to that bestow curse is a 1min concentration spell, remove curse is a spell to break it if you can't wait a full minute. Nearly all of the crowd/battlefield control & debuff spells are concentration spells that use a spell slot and lack something like hex's bonus action move it
Then you have nonsense like flaming sphere & minute meteors that both chew up bonus actions and have a short 1 min duration or very limited number of uses(6) with slightly longer 10min duration. Is it balanced by the bonus action or not & if not what's the point of both concentration and short duration and spell slot usage when the (2d6) damage is nothing to write home about. That says nothing about spells like enhance ability that are made almost completely worthless compared to nearly any other spell using a slot of that level by applying concentration to them like enhance ability

 

[ThatGuySteve]

Stoneskin, Barskin, Hail of Thorns, any smite spells - they must not have Concentration.

I'd get rid of the costly component for Stoneskin, rather than remove concentration. Otherwise every enemy caster you fight will have it up and need a Dispel Magic to remove.

There is certainly some balancing to be done as there are some clear winners and losers at each level. But it needs to be very careful, not to be raising effectiveness of all spells up to the top end of the spectrum, making casters more powerful. Some of the best spells need to come down a bit as well.

 

[TheSword]

Stoneskin, Barskin, Hail of Thorns, any smite spells - they must not have Concentration.

What, on the grounds that you don’t think they’re good enough?

Stoneskin isn’t meant to be cast on the wizard to keep them alive. They have non-concentration protections like mirror image and fire shield for that, they would also stack with Stoneskin. Stoneskin turns every fighter, Paladin and ranger into a barbarian. You want them to be able to do that more than once?

Paladins have to choose between dropping shield of faith or making a creature visible, blind, frightened - whilst making an attack. This seems fair. You want Paladins to be stronger??

Removing concentration from Hail of Thorns would be tantamount to giving Druids the smite ability. They have the choice between having higher AC or extra damage when hiding in their meat sack I’m cool with that choice. Again you want moon druids to be stronger?

There are hundreds of spells. Concentration is the balance. You cant expect every spells to be the best, that’s impossible. If you take Concentration of these, then these become the new auto take spells and then something else becomes not as good.

Its all about wanting more power.

 

[TheSword]

add to that bestow curse is a 1min concentration spell, remove curse is a spell to break it if you can't wait a full minute. Nearly all of the crowd/battlefield control & debuff spells are concentration spells that use a spell slot and lack something like hex's bonus action move it
Then you have nonsense like flaming sphere & minute meteors that both chew up bonus actions and have a short 1 min duration or very limited number of uses(6) with slightly longer 10min duration. Is it balanced by the bonus action or not & if not what's the point of both concentration and short duration and spell slot usage when the (2d6) damage is nothing to write home about. That says nothing about spells like enhance ability that are made almost completely worthless compared to nearly any other spell using a slot of that level by applying concentration to them like enhance ability

Flaming sphere is not 2d6 damage because you upcast it and are then doing 4d6 extra damage every round, to anything it hits and anything that ends it’s turn within 5ft which could be up to 7 creatures. That’s every turn for as long as you concentrate. If you can’t make that work, then that’s on you.

Anything that’s giving you additional damage ahead of what you could normally do, either as a bonus action (smites) or ongoing for multiple rounds (meteors, flaming sphere, bigbys) is going to have concentration.

It’s an awesome mechanic, that makes casters think about tactics rather than having a 5 round win button based on whether they can prepare for a combat or not.

 

[tetrasodium]

Flaming sphere is not 2d6 damage because you upcast it and are then doing 4d6 extra damage every round, to anything it hits and anything that ends it’s turn within 5ft which could be up to 7 creatures. That’s every turn for as long as you concentrate. If you can’t make that work, then that’s on you.

Anything that’s giving you additional damage ahead of what you could normally do, either as a bonus action (smites) or ongoing for multiple rounds (meteors, flaming sphere, bigbys) is going to have concentration.

It’s an awesome mechanic, that makes casters think about tactics rather than having a 5 round win button based on whether they can prepare for a combat or not.

I'm not sure why you'd start in your quixotic quest to claim that concentration is not an overused mechanic by focusing only on the damage & damage+effect spells mentioned with such a weak argument & ignoring everything else.


It's a second level spell castable at 4th level for 2d6 fire...

Yes you can upcast it to 4d6 using a 4th level spell slot at level 8 or higher to get that to the "4d6" fire number you cite

are you seriously claiming that this is an "win button" when rogue is doing more than that every round or that any of these are a "win button".

Sure It's "useful" damage just like the 2d6 & 4d6 of all those other classes& nobody is claiming otherwise, but not so over the top that it needs a short duration and a spell slot and concentration and a regular bonus action... It's flaming (2d6 fire) sphere, not disintegrating sphere or burning rooting sphere. There are multiple threads on revising fighter who is one of those examples, you might want to take your "If you can’t make that work, then that’s on you " over to those & point out how they can use that "win button" every round of every fight goes over in those now that you've tested it out over here.


Since you bring up the Bigbys referenced by someone else too.. Yes it also can do 2d6+casting mod plus grapple as one of the things it can do(grasping hand option) each round for the short 1 minute duration and use a bonus action and 5th level spell slot and maintain concentration. Hardly the "win button" condition you make it out to be. given how all those other classes up there can do the same every round of every fight without a spell slot usage.

Going back to all of the other spells crippled or made useless by the excessive & needless application of concentration, once concentration is applied the balancing needs to shift from "is this effect balanced against the action, slot cost. & duration" to "Is this effect & action cost balanced against the fact that the caster has so much of their arsenal blocked off when using it given the slot cost, action cost, & durations the spell allows" & wotc did not do that when they took effect(s) over time spells that were balanced entirely around duration & slot cost then added concentration while shifting move action costs consuming something the caster generally had no need for otherwise to bonus action costs the caster very much could be using every round for something else just like the other classes with their bonus action. Wotc's method maps fine using very specific types of spells such as direct damage/instant nukes where the only balancing factors are "does it do enough damage to one target or an area of targets when cast to justify the spell slot", there's no question of additional over timeor nondamage effects & it's very easy to "balance". A Damage over Time (DoT) is a little easier to balance, but when you allow an unrepentant munchkin design things like this & design concentration to wall off anything else a caster could be doing so that a 20d8 no save second level spell is only rising to the level of being kinda broken without cooler heads saying "well no bob that really hurts casters who aren't just blasters & you can't do that even if it makes a blaster feel really awesome".

 

[TheSword]

I'm not sure why you'd start in your quixotic quest to claim that concentration is not an overused mechanic by focusing only on the damage & damage+effect spells mentioned with such a weak argument & ignoring everything else.


It's a second level spell castable at 4th level for 2d6 fire...
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Yes you can upcast it to 4d6 using a 4th level spell slot at level 8 or higher to get that to the "4d6" fire number you cite
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are you seriously claiming that this is an "win button" when rogue is doing more than that every round or that any of these are a "win button".
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Sure It's "useful" damage just like the 2d6 & 4d6 of all those other classes& nobody is claiming otherwise, but not so over the top that it needs a short duration and a spell slot and concentration and a regular bonus action... It's flaming (2d6 fire) sphere, not disintegrating sphere or burning rooting sphere. There are multiple threads on revising fighter who is one of those examples, you might want to take your "If you can’t make that work, then that’s on you " over to those & point out how they can use that "win button" every round of every fight goes over in those now that you've tested it out over here.


Since you bring up the Bigbys referenced by someone else too.. Yes it also can do 2d6+casting mod plus grapple as one of the things it can do(grasping hand option) each round for the short 1 minute duration and use a bonus action and 5th level spell slot and maintain concentration. Hardly the "win button" condition you make it out to be. given how all those other classes up there can do the same every round of every fight without a spell slot usage. Going back to all of the other spells crippled or made useless by the excessive & needless application of concentration, once concentration is applied the balancing needs to shift from "is this effect balanced against the action, slot cost. & duration" to "Is this effect & action cost balanced against the fact that the caster has so much of their arsenal blocked off when using it given the slot cost, action cost, & durations the spell allows" & wotc did not do that when they took X over time spells that were balanced entirely around duration & slot cost then added concentration while shifting move action costs consuming something the caster generally had no need for otherwise to bonus action costs the caster very much could be using every round for something else just like the other classes with their bonus action. Wotc's method maps fine using very specific types of spells such as direct damage/instant nukes where the only balancing factors are "does it do enough damage to one target or an area of targets when cast to justify the spell slot", there's no question of additional over timeor nondamage effects & it's very easy to "balance". A Damage over Time (DoT) is a little easier to balance, but when you allow an unrepentant munchkin design things like this & design concentration to wall off anything else a caster could be doing so that a 20d8 no save second level spell is only rising to the level of being kinda broken without cooler heads saying "well no bob that really hurts casters who aren't just blasters & you can't do that even if it makes a blaster feel really awesome".

I think you have somewhat missed the point. The win button is the 3e/pathfinder opportunity to spend 5 rounds buffing and per-casting spells in order to make the coming fight a cake-walk. Usually followed by a rest. Yawn.

It’s ironic that you call my support for the mechanism as quixotic when Concentration is a very real and present part of the game and part of the game right now. Concentration isn’t going anywhere, so dreaming it would disappear is probably more quixotic. It’s a great word though. It reminds me of the novel Zaragoz.

Rogues can stab one person per round (more with serious contortion) it’s also their major class feature and they have other severe limitations. You’re suggesting flaming sphere needs a boost because rogues are so good? Flaming sphere affects multiple foes every round and is one of many many spells a wizard can cast. Melfs Meteors is a fair use of a bonus action and at least as good as an off hand attack attacking up 4 people for 4d6 damage.

Bigbys hand is great fun, flexible, characterful and you can still cast other spells at the same time. One of my favourite spells.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think you have somewhat missed the point. The win button is the 3e/pathfinder opportunity to spend 5 rounds buffing and per-casting spells in order to make the coming fight a cake-walk. Usually followed by a rest. Yawn.

Nobody is arguing that was not allowed to problematic levels in the past, saying that concentration is a massively overused & poorly applied solution that causes serious problems of its own does not change that.... did you perhaps start posting on page 1 of a thread you didn't really read? If you want to start a thread talking about why a problem nobody disagrees was a problem was actually a problem you are welcome to... but you are badly lost in this thread.

It’s ironic that you call my support for the mechanism as quixotic when Concentration is a very real and present part of the game and part of the game right now. Concentration isn’t going anywhere, so dreaming it would disappear is probably more quixotic. It’s a great word though. It reminds me of the novel Zaragoz.

Things will change, the spells with concentration applied to them, the spell themselves, how concentration works, & some of the classes could be some of those things or there would be little reason in reprinting so much of the phb for an "advanced 5e".

Rogues can stab one person per round (more with serious contortion) it’s also their major class feature and they have other severe limitations. You’re suggesting flaming sphere needs a boost because rogues are so good? Flaming sphere affects multiple foes every round and is one of many many spells a wizard can cast. Melfs Meteors is a fair use of a bonus action and at least as good as an off hand attack attacking up 4 people for 4d6 damage.

Bigbys hand is great fun, flexible, characterful and you can still cast other spells at the same time. One of my favourite spells.

This is a thread largely about the wizard/sorcerer/warlock not druid, but it's interesting that you think sneak attack is a "major class feature" of the rogue but spellcasting & the spells of their spell lost is not a "major class feature" for a caster....

 

[Giauz]

Is there any way for the magic user to or to help the magic user to guard against breaking concentration? Maybe the entire party could be involved in making sure a spell goes off.

 

[TheSword]

Nobody is arguing that was not allowed to problematic levels in the past, saying that concentration is a massively overused & poorly applied solution that causes serious problems of its own does not change that.... did you perhaps start posting on page 1 of a thread you didn't really read? If you want to start a thread talking about why a problem nobody disagrees was a problem was actually a problem you are welcome to... but you are badly lost in this thread.

I’m happy to agree to disagree on the subject. I am surprised you expect your suggestions to change the game to be accepted blindly though.

I’m not the only one who feels the same way about concentration. It has largely been well received.

Things will change, the spells with concentration applied to them, the spell themselves, how concentration works, & some of the classes could be some of those things or there would be little reason in reprinting so much of the phb for an "advanced 5e".

You weren’t talking about a little change. I think your suggestion was to throw out the spell list and several of the limitations on those spells. We’ll see, time will tell if you’re right.

This is a thread largely about the wizard/sorcerer/warlock not druid, but it's interesting that you think sneak attack is a "major class feature" of the rogue but spellcasting & the spells of their spell lost is not a "major class feature" for a caster....

It was suggested some spells HAD to have concentration removed... Thorn Spray was one of them. I responded.

No class exists in a vacuum though. I think the flaming sphere spell is a very small part of the wizards spell casting ability. My estimation would be somewhere between 2-20% of their spellcasting ability depending on their level. Possibly less. I can’t say the same for sneak attack. It is binary. You have it or you don’t.

 

[tetrasodium]

Is there any way for the magic user to or to help the magic user to guard against breaking concentration? Maybe the entire party could be involved in making sure a spell goes off.

There is con save proficiency from resiliency & warcaster to give a bonus/advantage on it. Also xge war mage has a 10th level feature that gives you +2 on top of what was already probably just a dc10 check while conjurer has a level 10 feature exempting them from losing concentration on a conjuration spell... The problem is rarely having concentration broken so much as the fact that you can only have 1 concentration spell. If a caster is making a concentration save significantly above dc10 they are usually far more worried about the massive chunk of hp they lost because it doesn't even hit dc11/12/13/14 until they take a single 22/24/26/28 point hit. A warlock has a d8 hit die for an average 5hp/level & a draconic sorcerer effectively has the same for an average 4+1hp/level & give or take depending on con have about 50hp at level 10 when "I just lost about half my health" is likely the more pressing concern. For a wizard or non-draconic sorcerer getting an average 4+con/level those big hits are even more crushing on their smaller hp pool.