Spellcasting, with no AoO???

[Ds Da Man]

My groups younger member pointed out recently that, under concentration, you can attempt casting a spell, in a threatened area, and if successful at a concentration check (DC 15+spell level), YOU PROVOKE NO AoO!!!! This seems to be very unbalancing. Most mid to high level spellcasters have max ranks in concentration, and a roll like 18 is nothing. Has this been errated, if not, then should it have been?

 

[hong]

That's what defensive casting is for. If you want to interrupt them, use readied attacks or grappling.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

It works well for me.

Automatic success only occurs at relatively high level anyway, and only for characters who were willing to invest a lot of skill points in concentration. For a wizard it's a no brainer but for other classes the cost of opportunity is higher.

 

[CRGreathouse]

There's no problem. Remember that if they fail the check they lose the spell - the spell slot is gone for the day and their round is wasted.

 

[EOL]

As others have mentioned the easiest way to get around this is to have the monsters ready attacks or grapples if the mage starts casting a spell, then they have to make a much higher concentration check.

If your still bothered by the eventual "zero chance of failure" you could implement the optional exploding die (sort of) rule in the DMG. If the player rolls a 1 then it turns into a -10 (and a 20 into a 30) that way it will be a long time before even a high level mage has no chance of failure. There will be at least a 5% chance for a long time.

I've been playing 3e since it was introduced and I haven't found it to be unbalancing at all.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Hum, I wouldn't recommend readying an action to grapple the wizard.

What are you gonna do? Move next to the spellcaster and instead of attacking you'll ready an action? Huh?

If you have an opportunity, start the grapple immediately!

 

[kreynolds]

Unfortunately for the DM in all of us, you can't do a darned thing about a caster that casts a quickened spell.

 

[Petrosian]

Actually a point of clarification...

you said if you make the roll you get no AoO...

thats wrong.

CASTING DEFNSIVELY means no AoO period.

All the roll does is determine if the spell goes off or fails.

So even on a roll of 1, no AoO if casting defensively.

 

[hong]

Unfortunately for the DM in all of us, you can't do a darned thing about a caster that casts a quickened spell.

? Readied attacks with the trigger "when he casts a spell" would still go off.

 

[IceBear]

I'm with hong on this one. There was a long debate a few weeks ago on this, and the consenus seemed to be that you could take an AoO against someone who cast a quickened spell, so thus, you could determine when someone was casting a quickened spell and thus you could determine the trigger for a readied action.

Someone, I think Spikey, came up with some method using Spot, etc to help determine if a PC could determine someone was casting a quickened spell at a distance.

IceBear