Skill Focus: Concentration vs Combat Casting

[Nifft]

5% of the time you'll wish you had combat casting. So the question is, are you casting defensively 20 times for every 1 regulat concentration check you have to make?

Wrong. It's a skill check, and the DC scales slower than the skill in question.

Above a certain level, you cannot fail to cast defensively. However, the other distracting conditions (e.g. spell DC and damage) do scale up with your level.

Combat Casting is like Toughness: it's nice to have at 1st level, but in the long term, you will not be happy with that choice.

Cheers, -- N

 

[frankthedm]

I can only see the point for a game that has house rules that make casting defensively opposed by those threatening you.

In 3.0 Combat casting’s +4 was solid compared to skill focus’s +2, though the utility of it was dubious. In 3.5, with skill focus being +3, there almost no reason in the core rules to take CC other than for PRC requirements.

Combat Casting suffered because those who said Skill Focus was too weak at +2 won that argument in the 3.5 upgrade. Somewhat like how Protection from Energy lost power in comparison to Resist Energy because energy resistance went from per round in 3.0 to per attack in 3.5.

 

[moritheil]

Combat casting: useful against a static DC that is trivial by a certain level.

Skill Focus: always useful, since you will often get hit with damage while casting.