D&D 5E Is Concentration Bugging You?

[Pvt. Winslow]

[MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION] here is something.

At our table, we interpret the "source of damage" wording to be per creature, as in a creature is one single source of damage. If a Dragon was to breath on you AND claw you, that's one single source of damage (the Dragon) so you only make one concentration roll.

If your DM interprets a source of damage to be a type of damage, or even worse, each attack, you are statistically speaking going to fail a lot more concentration rolls (until your bonus is +9 at least). I personally don't think that's the intention of the rule, but the wording is ambiguous.

Only issue I could see with this is if it was reversed and used on the PC's. The next time they fight say a monster caster with ability to use Stoneskin, they might be peeved if they only force a single concentration check per turn of actions, even if they hit the creature three times each.

 

[DaveDash]

Only issue I could see with this is if it was reversed and used on the PC's. The next time they fight say a monster caster with ability to use Stoneskin, they might be peeved if they only force a single concentration check per turn of actions, even if they hit the creature three times each.

And that's exactly how we play it. The Paladin doesn't mind so much, considering he hits like a mack truck.

I doubt the game was intended the other way, too many dice rolls and slows down the table working things out.

Also remember the players have to conserve resources and monster's don't. Less dice rolls work out in their favour, in the same vein as why critical fumbles aren't RAW anymore.

 

[Paraxis]

why critical fumbles aren't RAW anymore.

For what it is worth, critical fumbles never have been RAW in any edition of D&D.

 

[DaveDash]

For what it is worth, critical fumbles never have been RAW in any edition of D&D.

Good point. They used to be optional didn't they? Or am I completely imagining things?

 

[KarinsDad]

[MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION] here is something.

At our table, we interpret the "source of damage" wording to be per creature, as in a creature is one single source of damage. If a Dragon was to breath on you AND claw you, that's one single source of damage (the Dragon) so you only make one concentration roll.

If your DM interprets a source of damage to be a type of damage, or even worse, each attack, you are statistically speaking going to fail a lot more concentration rolls (until your bonus is +9 at least). I personally don't think that's the intention of the rule, but the wording is ambiguous.

Good point.

Although ambiguous, I do think that the game designers meant each separate set of damage. The same as damage resistance is used against each separate set of damage, the damage is not added up. Damage is not added up to get a grand total for anything else in the game (i.e. claw damage added to breath weapon damage added to trample), so since there are no explicit rules here to do that (to calculate total damage to get the DC), I suspect that the designers were not thinking of this here.

Someone should ask the devs, but I suspect that the answer is that a successful claw and bite attack will result in two Cons saves.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Someone should ask the devs, but I suspect that the answer is that a successful claw and bite attack will result in two Cons saves.

This is my understanding as well. There's nothing else in the game, that I can think of, that works with the "add up all the damage over a turn and then use the total" mechanic; I don't see anything to suggest that this is the exception.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

And that's exactly how we play it. The Paladin doesn't mind so much, considering he hits like a mack truck.

I doubt the game was intended the other way, too many dice rolls and slows down the table working things out.

Also remember the players have to conserve resources and monster's don't. Less dice rolls work out in their favour, in the same vein as why critical fumbles aren't RAW anymore.

I agree with the spirit of what you're saying. Keeping the dice rolls low on Concentration checks helps turns go by faster, and in many cases benefits the players, as they will lose Concentration less often. I'm not certain that it was intended to work that way be the developers though.

 

[DaveDash]

This is my understanding as well. There's nothing else in the game, that I can think of, that works with the "add up all the damage over a turn and then use the total" mechanic; I don't see anything to suggest that this is the exception.

I think they would have used different wording if that was the case, such as "After you have taken damage make concentration roll" instead of "You make one check per source of damage". Someone should ask.

In any case, I feel concentration works well at my table using the way we have gone with it.

 

[keterys]

I think I'd be tempted to say that you make a single Con save each round, and you only lose concentration once you take total damage equal to 10 + 2 * your result, with 1 autofailing and 20 autosucceeding as usual.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I preferred concentration rules in beta. There were no concentration checks at all to lose the spell, but still was only one concetration spell that could be maintained.

Yeah, half the time my group forgets about concentration checks. The limit of one is enough by itself for defensive buffs.

I suppose we might be different if there were lots of hold person style spells being fired off by NPCs. But that hasnt really happened.