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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8227985" data-attributes="member: 93670">The problem with overuse of concentration on almost good spells is that it prevents the caster from using them together to keep the naughty word from hitting the fan while everyone is watching he trainwreck they all know is coming.  Take the marilith example [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER] brought up, if you've ever read their statblock or fought them you remember that as one of the few monsters built like a PC they are a serious threat to anyone they choose to squash thanks to a +9 to hit 40ft speed and seven attacks on top of teleport, parry (eats a reaction kickass!!!), magic weapons (probably pointless to PCs), magic resistance (advantage on all saves...), resistance to cold fire lightning & nonmagical BPS.  on a cr 16 creature with 18 ac the fighter/rogue/ranger/paladin etc does not need to roll all that high & that reaction parry only kicks in once per round  while a caster needs to beat str+9 con+10 wis+8 cha+10 dex+5 saves made with advantage for an effective str+14/con+15/wis+13/ dex+10.  Even if the caster bypasses the save it takes half damage from cold/fire/lightning & full damage from the fighter/rogue/etc's +1 weapon. This would be reasonable if  it was a highly unusual situation rather than dirt common monster design or if there were a lot of monsters that flipped the tables & put the martials behind the 8ball like the old wraith/ghoul/trog/etc  & creatures with dr25 10 15/x did but all of those creatures were generally removed  or neutered to no longer be much worry That marilinth should be the time that a wizard calls upon every spotlight & steps up onto a podium  as they buff/debuff/control the situation into something not so scary but concentration ensures even if prepared they can't do more than one.Lots of people talk about allowing multiple concentrations to be going, but there's a reason few ever talk about doing it & that's because the same concentration is used for spells that never should have been concentration as well as spells where concentration is likely to be an actual important limiter & sorting out which is which and tweaking spells that need tweaking is a lot of work thanks to the brainless application of concentration on so many spells and cantrips.Spell resistance is different fromn3.5 yes, it's actually more powerful in a lot of ways due to beating SR in 3.5 generally not being a huge hurdle unless the SR itself was the creature's strength.  The fact that it's different is reason to use it even more sparingly than before  You talk about how a wizard can simply cast a buff spell if a monster has good saves, sure if it's prepared, and it's even a useful buff, and that useful buff is at all useful to the situation at hand.... You may play & wotc may test with every encounter faced by PCs built from the ground up for an optimized steamroll through a given encounter knowing the encounter they are building for; that however is very much not the norm & has little place in discussions like this.  Those (de)buff spells need to have a wide enough scope of useful situations to justify taking a prep slot over something that does like web fireball & so on.  Exactly what buff spells are you casually throwing out as expected to be prepared?<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">enlarge? +1d4 damage for one ally & take up more squares so more things can attack at once in addition to the marlinth?.... Oh yea it's concentration too</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">enhance ability?  rofl.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dragon's breath so instead of taking a full set of attacks with +attrib bonus & +weapon mods on each attack it can take 3d6 save with advantage to a damage type selection loaded with types it resists?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Flame arrows? a concentration 1hr duration spell that adds +1d6 fire to twelve pieces of ammunition?  Because it's so good that even with a 1hr duration & concentration requirement it still needed to be limited to twelve pieces of ammunition...</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">gasseous form?.. this is unlikely to help at all</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">greater invis on the rogue?  Usefulish if advantage isn't obtained through other always on no cost means like pack tactics or flanking.. oh yea it's concentration too & has a 1 minute duration,</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Haste?  One of the better buffs yes, but it too is 1min duration & concentration.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">so on & so forth....</li> </ul>Don't jut say cast a (de)buff instead of web & save for half spells, be explicit & specifically name the go to (de)buffs either lacking concentration or that you think are so good that they justify all the lead thumbs on the scale.</blockquote>

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