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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7300102" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>The actually issue isn't that letting PCs concentrate on multiple spells results in a problem... the issue is too many concentration spells <em>in the party</em> is what causes problems.</p><p></p><p>If you have a party of 4 PCs and all are casters of some type... you have 4 potential concentration spells active in any particular encounter. And the game was built such that it can reasonably handle that.</p><p></p><p>But if you have a party of 4 PCs and only <strong>one</strong> is a caster... by current rules you will only have one concentration spell active in any particular encounter. Which means you are 3 concentration spells short of having a buffed party that the game can handle. So if you as a DM decided to give that one single PC in this <em>one specific campaign</em> the ability to concentrate on <strong>two</strong> spells at a time (or heck, even probably three)... you're not going to have any real issues. Whether its three characters that throw around a <em>Blur</em>, <em>Fly</em>, and <em>Web</em>, or one character that does all three... the game can handle it.</p><p></p><p>What the game CAN'T handle is when you come up with a universal "Every caster can concentrate on two spells" rule and you find yourself with a party of 4 casters (or even worse when the party grows to 5, 6, 8 casters)... and you now have ALL PCs concentrating on two spells at a time. Once you do that... you have a game where you could potentially see upwards of <em>eight to twelve</em> concentration spell buffs and debuffs in <strong>every</strong> encounter. That's what screws things up and throw off encounters. DMs have to go to further and further bizarro lengths with more and more enemies in hopes of building encounters even coming close to what the party can put out.</p><p></p><p>So there's no reason why any DM should come up with a "one size fits all" rule that allows for multiple concentrations across all spellcasters in ALL their campaigns. Don't hamstring yourself that way. Take each group on a case by case basis. Or at the very least come up with a table rule that says something like "Only four concentration spells can be active at any one time" across the entire party... and then the players can figure out how and if they can reach that limit. At least then you don't have to worry about inundating the table with way too many spells active and throwing everything off.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 7300102, member: 7006"] The actually issue isn't that letting PCs concentrate on multiple spells results in a problem... the issue is too many concentration spells [I]in the party[/I] is what causes problems. If you have a party of 4 PCs and all are casters of some type... you have 4 potential concentration spells active in any particular encounter. And the game was built such that it can reasonably handle that. But if you have a party of 4 PCs and only [B]one[/B] is a caster... by current rules you will only have one concentration spell active in any particular encounter. Which means you are 3 concentration spells short of having a buffed party that the game can handle. So if you as a DM decided to give that one single PC in this [I]one specific campaign[/I] the ability to concentrate on [B]two[/B] spells at a time (or heck, even probably three)... you're not going to have any real issues. Whether its three characters that throw around a [I]Blur[/I], [I]Fly[/I], and [I]Web[/I], or one character that does all three... the game can handle it. What the game CAN'T handle is when you come up with a universal "Every caster can concentrate on two spells" rule and you find yourself with a party of 4 casters (or even worse when the party grows to 5, 6, 8 casters)... and you now have ALL PCs concentrating on two spells at a time. Once you do that... you have a game where you could potentially see upwards of [I]eight to twelve[/I] concentration spell buffs and debuffs in [B]every[/B] encounter. That's what screws things up and throw off encounters. DMs have to go to further and further bizarro lengths with more and more enemies in hopes of building encounters even coming close to what the party can put out. So there's no reason why any DM should come up with a "one size fits all" rule that allows for multiple concentrations across all spellcasters in ALL their campaigns. Don't hamstring yourself that way. Take each group on a case by case basis. Or at the very least come up with a table rule that says something like "Only four concentration spells can be active at any one time" across the entire party... and then the players can figure out how and if they can reach that limit. At least then you don't have to worry about inundating the table with way too many spells active and throwing everything off. [/QUOTE]
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