D&D 5E Homebrew: Removing Concentration From The Less Popular Spells

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah I see damage higher than 20 pretty often. And there is no such thing as “anything a caster might risk getting caught dead in reach of”, in any game I run. Everyone is at risk, enemies know how to fight casters and backfield archers/skulkers, etc.

Also, a lot of concentration is half casters and hexblades and other gish types who are often in the front line.

I wouldn’t recommend treating failing a save as any different from getting hit by an attack, but the crit rule could work.
Could also increase the DC by the spell slots level at which the spell was cast.
As for my casters, I have never seen resilient taken, but we often have war casters. More often I see Skilled, Ritual Caster (on half casters), Spell Sniper, of feats unrelated to casting at all, like Actor and Keen Mind.

IME, people who like taking feats hate taking feats that just do a boring number thing. “If I wanted to boost my numerical supremacy, I’d just take the ASI.”

We also make ASIs pretty much obsolete, though, to be fair. We roll stats, give a bonus feat at level 1, and every time you get a feat from your class you get a +1 to a stat of your choice. No one takes ASIs.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah I see damage higher than 20 pretty often. And there is no such thing as “anything a caster might risk getting caught dead in reach of”, in any game I run. Everyone is at risk, enemies know how to fight casters and backfield archers/skulkers, etc.

Also, a lot of concentration is half casters and hexblades and other gish types who are often in the front line.

I wouldn’t recommend treating failing a save as any different from getting hit by an attack, but the crit rule could work.
Could also increase the DC by the spell slots level at which the spell was cast.
As for my casters, I have never seen resilient taken, but we often have war casters. More often I see Skilled, Ritual Caster (on half casters), Spell Sniper, of feats unrelated to casting at all, like Actor and Keen Mind.

IME, people who like taking feats hate taking feats that just do a boring number thing. “If I wanted to boost my numerical supremacy, I’d just take the ASI.”

I do like the idea of tying the DC into the spell level and I've tinkered with DC = 8 plus twice the level and DC = 10 plus the level (both still incorporating half damage, whichever is higher, etc.).

Actually, the only two casting-types that have CON save proficiency are the Eldritch Knight and the Sorcerer. Which means anyone else started off as either a Barbarian or non-EK fighter and MCed into a spell caster or would need Resilient to get CON save proficiency. I am certain that is why more characters default to War Caster; they already likely want to have their hands full if front-liners.

We've never had a single played take Skilled or Actor, but Ritual Caster, Spell Sniper, and Keen Mind once or maybe twice. Of course, we've only ever had one character with GWM and one with Sharpshooter (both by the same player, shocking huh? ).

We have some take ASI's since in some cases the increased modifier is more useful all-around that a feat. It isn't common, but happens often enough.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I do like the idea of tying the DC into the spell level and I've tinkered with DC = 8 plus twice the level and DC = 10 plus the level (both still incorporating half damage, whichever is higher, etc.).

Actually, the only two casting-types that have CON save proficiency are the Eldritch Knight and the Sorcerer. Which means anyone else started off as either a Barbarian or non-EK fighter and MCed into a spell caster or would need Resilient to get CON save proficiency. I am certain that is why more characters default to War Caster; they already likely want to have their hands full if front-liners.

We've never had a single played take Skilled or Actor, but Ritual Caster, Spell Sniper, and Keen Mind once or maybe twice. Of course, we've only ever had one character with GWM and one with Sharpshooter (both by the same player, shocking huh? ).

We have some take ASI's since in some cases the increased modifier is more useful all-around that a feat. It isn't common, but happens often enough.

Man that’s wild. I can say with certainty that Skilled is the most taken feat in my group.
I think we’ve seen GWM once. Same player also took savage attacker, though, so it wasn’t a desire to optimize! They just like representing their concept with mechanical feedback.

 

[tetrasodium]

I do like the idea of tying the DC into the spell level and I've tinkered with DC = 8 plus twice the level and DC = 10 plus the level (both still incorporating half damage, whichever is higher, etc.).

It wasn't just that, there used to be a lot of full round cast time spells although summon monster & antilife/antiplant shell are the only two I can recall. Casting those spells & spells with even longer cast times were also subject to a check to avoid losing the spell slot & getting nothing. If Wotc ever released a full list of the deliberately overpowered spells rather than just admitting a couple it would be easy to just change all of those spells to full round action subject to 3.5 style interrupt from damage while casting & deal with any specific edge cases one by one to do interesting things to the magic system without as much worry about the salt deliberately thrown into the magic system to thwart making changes to 5e

 

[GlassJaw]

Sorry I'm a little late to the discussion but I'm definitely pro-Concentration but agree that it was overused during design.

I'm all for removing Concentration from some spells but the trick isn't whether the spell you remove Concentration is now balanced. It's whether it's balanced alongside spells that remain Concentration.

So removing Concentration from Bane will probably result in Bane seeing more action. But is Bane balanced when used at the same time as Bless or Hold Person? Maybe but probably worth considering more carefully.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Man that’s wild. I can say with certainty that Skilled is the most taken feat in my group.
I think we’ve seen GWM once. Same player also took savage attacker, though, so it wasn’t a desire to optimize! They just like representing their concept with mechanical feedback.

No, characters generally have enough skills without it due to gaining them from subclasses. Otherwise 4-6 skills is good and allows people to not have tons of overlap. So, Skilled just isn't needed at our table.

I would say the most common at our table are Alert, Mobile, and Observant. Boosting Initiative and perception is big, and increasing speed as well. War Caster and Resilient are popular for casters for the obvious reasons.

 

[FrogReaver]

Sorry I'm a little late to the discussion but I'm definitely pro-Concentration but agree that it was overused during design.

I'm all for removing Concentration from some spells but the trick isn't whether the spell you remove Concentration is now balanced. It's whether it's balanced alongside spells that remain Concentration.

So removing Concentration from Bane will probably result in Bane seeing more action. But is Bane balanced when used at the same time as Bless or Hold Person? Maybe but probably worth considering more carefully.

The problem I see is the cascading effect. Remove concentration from 10 spells. That’s 10 opportunities for stacking. Then it’s is bane and bless and xyz OP together.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

i use a modified version of the idea of an ego score (in 3.5...i know i know...not the edition all the kids are talking about but hear me out) to decide how many spells one can concentrate on simultaneously.

What i do is i take int, cha, and wis, add the mods together, take what the mod would be:

Lets say youve got 16 16 and 16. That'd be a mod of 9.

I then divide by the character tier the highest spell you would be concentrating on would become available to you at and round up. Lets say the highest spell you are concentrating on is a 9th level spell. Thats tier 4 so:

Mod 9 divided by 4 is 2.25. Rounded up thats 3. So you would be able to concentrate on a net 3 spells if the highest spell you were concentrating on was 9.

Lets say the highest spell is 6:

9 divided by 3 is 3 which rounded up is 3. 3 net spells.

Highest spell level is 1:

(high combined mod for that level but doesnt matter. Just explaining the math. But the following would be unlikely.)

9 divided by 1 is 9 rounded up is 9. 9 net spells. You might not have that many. Probably you also wouldnt have a high enough combined mod for it either though. So doesnt matter.

Concentration roll to maintain has to be rolled sperately for each spell. The more spells being concentrated on simultaneously also the higher the likelyhood for catastrophic spell failure (you pay the price for the risk)

This tends to work best in a game where you level slowly. Then numbers dont change frequently. But i dm in a way that levels slow so this works well.

for clarification we play with 4 tiers.

I dont know if any of you find this interesting but weve had great fun with it.

 

[GlassJaw]

The problem I see is the cascading effect. Remove concentration from 10 spells. That’s 10 opportunities for stacking. Then it’s is bane and bless and xyz OP together.

Right. But it's not inherently bad a thing, it just can't be done in a vacuum. If you remove Concentration from a spell, you have to look at in reference to many other spells.

There are 2 components to Concentration being overused:
1. Losing the spell when taking damage, and
2. Certain spells not being used because they can't be stacked.

The first is pretty easy to solve. Simply don't require the Con check when taking damage but keep the stacking rule in effect. I've actually seen this where it was applied to spells that are typically used by melee casters to give those characters a boost. There was even a new name for it but I forgot what it was.

The second is obviously much more difficult to solve.

 

[Laurefindel]

On Concentration checks;

It would be easy enough to distinguish concentration spells that have a target of self (or target yourself with a "one creature you touch/see within range" spell) from all other concentration spells. That distinction would make it easy to rule that casters don't have to risk losing concentration on spells affecting themselves (e.g. stoneskin, flame blade, aura of X, invisibility, etc.), but are still at risk with spells cast on anything else (e.g. stoneskin or invibility cast on someone else, conjure X, call lightning, various illusion spells etc.)

I'd have to see whether this is too crude, but it would solve the case of most "melee" wizard spells without dropping spell disruption completely.