D&D 5E Losing Concentration

[Li Shenron]

Re: question: All the buff and hard-CC spells that require Concentration to maintain them.

Is someone confused here? My understanding is that, if you are, for example, maintaining Hold Person (requires Concentration), when you are struck, you must make a Con save to continue maintaining Concentration.

Thus making that save easier seems ill-advised. This on page 79 and 80, btw.

Yes, if Hold Person requires concentration, it can be disrupted by hitting the caster while the spell is active and force her to make a Constitution saving throw.

In this specific case, there's nothing ill-advised about having a Wizard apply her proficiency bonus to such save.
First of all, it's not all Wizards, but only those who chose to be proficient in concentration, which means they must have given up another skill proficiency.
Second, the proficiency bonus is useful only if someone actually attacks you, so your investment in this skills depends on whether your foes will make it matter.
Third (and this is specific for this spell only), Hold Person already grants the target one chance per round to end the effect. Easily disrupting the caster could make the spell too weak. But I guess there are better spells to think about in comparison.

We'll see how it works in practice, but it's even possible that the concentration rules have gone too far. If after a while everybody's tactic is going to be "attack the caster" because breaking concentration has become too easy, then we'll notice.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yes, if Hold Person requires concentration, it can be disrupted by hitting the caster while the spell is active and force her to make a Constitution saving throw.

In this specific case, there's nothing ill-advised about having a Wizard apply her proficiency bonus to such save.
First of all, it's not all Wizards, but only those who chose to be proficient in concentration, which means they must have given up another skill proficiency.
Second, the proficiency bonus is useful only if someone actually attacks you, so your investment in this skills depends on whether your foes will make it matter.
Third (and this is specific for this spell only), Hold Person already grants the target one chance per round to end the effect. Easily disrupting the caster could make the spell too weak. But I guess there are better spells to think about in comparison.

We'll see how it works in practice, but it's even possible that the concentration rules have gone too far. If after a while everybody's tactic is going to be "attack the caster" because breaking concentration has become too easy, then we'll notice.

There are worse spells, as you note. Dominate Person doesn't allow a save beyond the initial one. The ONLY way to break is to force that check or make it that the caster is killed/incapacitated. Further, as it's a WIS save, it's very likely that your target will fail the save (even if he has Advantage), if you target Fighters, Rogues and the like.

So you've changed a guy over to your side on the fight, with perhaps a 15-40% chance of failure, and now the only way to make you stop is to kill/incapacitate you, or make you break Concentration. Any hit of less than 20 points of damage only requires a DC10 check - with your proposal, you probably have a 15% chance to fail - especially as relatively few attacks in 5E are likely to deliver more than 20 points. Even being hit for say, 30 points, it's only DC 15, and you will still succeed, more likely than not (a barrage of small hits is the best way to break concentration, barring a giant one - but the latter may well kill the caster anyway, so that's win/win I guess).

Making Concentration into a skill is a terrible idea on other levels, too - for example, it takes away from the RP and other-pillar elements of skills, making you less able to engage with them, in favour of more combat power.

You say "not all wizards", but here's the thing - any caster interested in using CC spells or powerful buff spells would be pretty foolish to neglect a +2 to +6 bonus to their Concentration check. The only casters who wouldn't want it would be those who weren't going to use those spells anyway.

I don't expect we'll see anything like this, though, fortunately.

EDIT - Also, if you think making people not hit the caster is the goal (which seems very questionable), then making Concentration a skill does not help with that. It just means people want to KILL the caster or take him out of the fight with hard CC of their own, rather than just hitting him hard enough to break his spell. If anything, it makes casters more of a target.

 

[Sadras]

There are worse spells, as you note. Dominate Person doesn't allow a save beyond the initial one.

Someone should point this out to Ruin Explorer since he has blocked me but the above statement is incorrect. Personally I would like to see these supposed worse save or suck spells in 5e cause I'm just not seeing it.

From the Dominate Person spell

Each time the target takes damage, it makes a new Wisdom saving throw against the spell. If the saving throw succeeds, the spell ends.

 

[Li Shenron]

There are worse spells, as you note. Dominate Person doesn't allow a save beyond the initial one. The ONLY way to break is to force that check or make it that the caster is killed/incapacitated. Further, as it's a WIS save, it's very likely that your target will fail the save (even if he has Advantage), if you target Fighters, Rogues and the like.

Besides the previous poster's remark, disrupting the spell is not the only way to deal with such spells, because ending a spell is not the only solution. It's the most effective (and usually most boring), but not the only.

Anyway YMMV and all that, but I've never experienced a Hold Person or Dominate Person spoil the fun even when they had only the initial save.

On the contrary, if I have a concern about these spells now, is that maybe there are so high chances of ending the effect in one round (or less). I don't want to find out that in a year or so nobody bothers about these spells because they are not worth.

Making Concentration into a skill is a terrible idea on other levels, too - for example, it takes away from the RP and other-pillar elements of skills, making you less able to engage with them, in favour of more combat power.

That would be a benefit. Right now, the Wizard class has 6 skills to pick from (3 of which are knowledge). With Concentration, it would have 7. More choice is good.

You say "not all wizards", but here's the thing - any caster interested in using CC spells or powerful buff spells would be pretty foolish to neglect a +2 to +6 bonus to their Concentration check. The only casters who wouldn't want it would be those who weren't going to use those spells anyway.

As I said, I rather think a Concentration proficiency would be on average less worth than Insight, Investigation or Arcana. There are so many spells not requiring concentration anyway.

EDIT - Also, if you think making people not hit the caster is the goal (which seems very questionable), then making Concentration a skill does not help with that. It just means people want to KILL the caster or take him out of the fight with hard CC of their own, rather than just hitting him hard enough to break his spell. If anything, it makes casters more of a target.

That's definitely not the goal.

The goal is to allow an additional option in the game i.e. to allow some Wizard player to make her concentration-based spells more reliable. If (and only if) it turns out that those spells are really still good enough, then there's no need for this skill.

But if there's a 35% chance of disrupting such spell as you say, then to me it sounds too easy for party of 3 (i.e. 4 but excluding the victim of the spell itself) to barrage the Wizard with attacks and succeed at disrupting it before the next round.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But if there's a 35% chance of disrupting such spell as you say, then to me it sounds too easy for party of 3 (i.e. 4 but excluding the victim of the spell itself) to barrage the Wizard with attacks and succeed at disrupting it before the next round.

To do that they have to ignore ALL OTHER OPPONENTS ENTIRELY, and are still not 100% likely to succeed. With 15%, they likely fail.

You think that's fine?

 

[Obryn]

I think adding proficiency bonuses to concentration would be a terrible idea.

As a balancing mechanic, it feels pretty solid. Messing with it - getting bonuses, getting to concentrate on multiple spells, etc. - throws that balance out the window and dramatically escalates the caster's power. Having a defensive buff and Hold Person up at the same time would creep us back towards caster supremacy. Moreso than now.

I've seen hints that the design team knows this, so I'm hopeful the game won't be broken this way, yet.

 

[Xodis]

I haven't had a chance to fully go thru the rules but does a caster get their spellcasting ability modifier as a bonus to concentration? If so thats up to a +5 bonus which will really tilt the odds in their favor. There is also the inclusion of feats that may play a needed role. Something like...

Disabler: Proficient in disabling your foes.
Advantage on all concentration checks to maintain disabling spells.
Targets have disadvantage to save VS. your disabling spells.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Disabler: Proficient in disabling your foes.
Advantage on all concentration checks to maintain disabling spells.
Targets have disadvantage to save VS. your disabling spells.

That Feat would pretty much define "broken", I'd suggest!

 

[fba827]

(Off topic tangent)

when I read the thread topic, all I could hear in my head was r.e.m. Singing " losing con-cent ration" to the tune of " losing my religion")

Anyway, sorry, had to share. We now return you to you regularly scheduled thread already in progress

( end thread tangent)

 

[Obryn]

I haven't had a chance to fully go thru the rules but does a caster get their spellcasting ability modifier as a bonus to concentration? If so thats up to a +5 bonus which will really tilt the odds in their favor. There is also the inclusion of feats that may play a needed role. Something like...

Disabler: Proficient in disabling your foes.
Advantage on all concentration checks to maintain disabling spells.
Targets have disadvantage to save VS. your disabling spells.

:O

No no no no no don't do this thing