Concentration Rule Modification

[Lavok Rammstein]

I would like to see what the playground thinks of this. If this has been discussed before, my apologies.

The rule would be: If a spell allows the target or targets to make a saving throw on consecutive turns to end the spell effect, that spell does not require concentration.

Example: Ray of Enfeeblement. The target makes a saving throw at the end of each of its turns to end the effect and it is a concentration spell.

Is this homebrew rule game breaking? Do you see any spells that become overpowered?

[Baptor]

I would like to see what the playground thinks of this. If this has been discussed before, my apologies.

The rule would be: If a spell allows the target or targets to make a saving throw on consecutive turns to end the spell effect, that spell does not require concentration.

Example: Ray of Enfeeblement. The target makes a saving throw at the end of each of its turns to end the effect and it is a concentration spell.

Is this homebrew rule game breaking? Do you see any spells that become overpowered?

Eh, IMO as long as someone can't have 2 concentration spells going at once its really not going to break anything. Of course your rule as written would allow this.

I made my concentration saves a straight 50/50. Constitution gets too much love anyways and this favors the caster in most situations.

[HarrisonF]

This would be a pretty big buff to those spells. It would make a lot of bad spells usable and good spells great.

Examples:

Confusion: This would become really good. An AoE CC that doesn't use concentration would be awesome.

Hold Person: Becomes even better than it is now.


Why do you want to do this change? Do see those spells as underpowered?

[Pex]

A 5E infancy house rule that might work better for you is if a buff spell is a concentration spell the recipient is the one who concentrates for himself. For example, a cleric casts Bless on himself, the fighter, and the barbarian. If the cleric is damaged and loses concentration, the fighter and barbarian still have Bless on them for their own concentration. Since you can only concentrate on one spell at a time you still can only benefit from one concentration buff spell. However, this does free up the spellcaster to cast more buff spells on party members to improve buffing others as a spellcasting tactic.

[Rysto]

Hm. Wouldn't that mean that a caster couldn't have the Cleric bless them and also benefit from buffing themselves with something like Haste?

[pwykersotz]

Are your goals to avoid the spell having a massive chance to break and feel like a waste? If so, you'd have less impact by saying that spells which are concentration that have saves every round to break don't have an additional chance to break on damage. But if you keep them as technically requiring concentration, then you don't get people spamming spells that shouldn't stack.

[Ruslan]

A 5E infancy house rule that might work better for you is if a buff spell is a concentration spell the recipient is the one who concentrates for himself. ... this does free up the spellcaster to cast more buff spells on party members to improve buffing others as a spellcasting tactic.I completely endorse this. In fact, I play with this house rule, and it makes casters much better buffers and turns D&D into a much cooperative team game, rather than "lets see if my PC can outshine your PC" game.

[Pex]

Hm. Wouldn't that mean that a caster couldn't have the Cleric bless them and also benefit from buffing themselves with something like Haste?

Yes but a spellcaster can still choose to concentrate on the spell himself. It becomes a tactical choice, and it's perfectly fine for one instance be more efficient to have the recipient do the concentrating while another instance the spellcaster does.