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Galithar
2018-10-18, 08:08 PM
I'm going to start off by saying I HATE 5e's concentration rules. They feel very arbitrary in what spells require it and which don't. Arguing about whether it's good or bad, or why some spells need it isn't my point.

I'm working on creating my own Homebrew replacement for concentration. To do so, I need to look at the potential for game breaking munchkins to... Well, be game breaking munchkins. So please put on your best munchkin hats and give me the most powerful absurd combos you can come up with if you didn't have to obey concentration requirements.

Example: Blur, Shield of Faith, and Sanctuary.

Enemy has to pass a wisdom saving throw just to attack me, Succeeding they have disadvantage to hit my AC + 2.


What munchkinisms can you give me to think about?

pygmybatrider
2018-10-18, 08:24 PM
Off the top of my head:

Hex and Hunter’s Mark.

Haste and Tenser’s Transformation. And Expeditious Retreat.

Slow and Confusion.

Entangle and Spike Growth.

Any bonus action move-the-beam spell like Flaming Sphere with any action move-the-beam spell like Moonbeam or Call Lightning.

demonslayerelf
2018-10-19, 10:58 AM
Haste, Stoneskin, Tenser's Transformation

ANY AND ALL PALADIN AND RANGER SMITE SPELLS

Conjure spells(I'm gonna call a horde of elementals real quick, don't mind me, guys)

Wall Spells(I cast 5 walls of stone around this guy, then a wall of water to drown him)

Darkness(Lots of Darkness; Cast it around the entire battlefield) and a Drow/Warlock/True Sight spell.

noob
2018-10-19, 11:11 AM
A high level enough wizard can constantly have a horde of constantly active spells.

Man_Over_Game
2018-10-19, 11:25 AM
On the inverse side of things, Mage Slayer, Sleet Storm, Bladesingers, War Mages would lose out on a lot of the things that make them worthwhile.

Enlarge would be a problem. Fly. Haste and any magical Blade spell.

Barbarian casters would be very popular.

Or virtually every summon spell.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-10-19, 04:02 PM
Honestly, I don't think any of the mentioned combos are particularly game-breaking. Awesome spell combos have been a thing in every edition, but they're generally underwhelming in practice.

For instance:


Example: Blur, Shield of Faith, and Sanctuary.

Enemy has to pass a wisdom saving throw just to attack me, Succeeding they have disadvantage to hit my AC + 2.

This combo requires 2 1st-level spells from one spell list and 1 2nd-level spell from another, with a max duration of 1 minute for 2 of them, and blur is self-only. So two casters working together (or one caster who has spent resources on getting off-list spells) can protect one of the casters from attacks for 1 minute, at the cost of 3 spell slots, 3 spells prepared, 3 actions, and the inability to cast any directly offensive spells without ending sanctuary.

Congratulations, given 3 rounds' notice you can make 1 PC very hard to hit for 1 encounter. But this runs into the perennial problem of super-defensive tanks: if you are very difficult to harm but have no way to attack or control enemies (like a tanky melee-only 3e fighter, or a character under sanctuary), enemies can just ignore you and go after your squishy teammates.

Same goes for other combos. Flaming Sphere + Moonbeam? Woohoo, continuous damage every round in place of whatever else you could have been doing. Entangle + Spike Growth? Yay, add some damage to your debuff. 5x Wall of Stone + Wall of Water or 5x Darkness + True Sight? Yippee, you can kill an enemy who sits in the same place for 6 rounds, or obviously walks into a pre-prepared ambush.

Similar combos exist in 3e--multiple flaming spheres or flaming spheres plus Reserve Feats, layered debuffs, forcecage + cloudkill--yet you barely if ever see them used successfully in actual games because they take up a lot of resources and actions for proportionally little benefit. And while the math for monster HP, saving throw modifiers, etc. have changed between the two editions, the fundamental fact that such combos require enough of an advantage over your enemies to pull off that you were already in a very advantageous position without any combos at all hasn't changed at all.

In my 5e campaign, I gave the party bard a 5e version of a harmonizing weapon that gave him an extra concentration slot. Nothing broke, even though he started stocking up on all the cool Concentration spells he was otherwise avoiding and tried to find cool combos; sure, a few ambushes were slightly easier than they might otherwise have been, but when one player retired his barbarian and brought in a cleric, having four party casters instead of three (bard, warlock, wizard, and cleric) was much more noticeable and impactful than getting two or three extra buffs from the bard.

Galithar
2018-10-19, 04:07 PM
Hex and Hunter's Mark - Honestly I'd probably just let this slide, though the easy fix is a rider on those types of spells stating each creature may be affected by only one of these types of spells (from a single caster) at a time.

Haste and Tenser's Transformation - Powerful, but if it was truly overpowered wouldn't we see more casters teaming up to pull this off? I think at the level you could do this I wouldn't find it exceedingly game breaking. Both of those spells have negatives when they end due to their power so they have enough risk that I would likely be satisfied allowing them to operate together. Adding expeditious retreat is just like taking a Rogue Dip in my eyes. Bonus action Dash and sneak attack damage would help a strategy focused around combining these spells anyways. Adds to the potential, yes, but especially since it still uses their bonus action, action economy makes this less powerful.

Slow and Confusion - Powerful again, but the multitude of failed saves required to maintain them both gives anyone a decent chance to break out of at least one. Definitely worth looking at a way to ensure they can't be abused together though.

Entagle and Spike Growth - I'm not sure how these are supposed to work together? Both create difficult terrain, so overlapping doubling this does nothing. One prevents a creature from moving in failed saves and the other only damages them IF they move. Annoying to get locked down and then once freed take damage to move, sure. But casting entangle and then dropping concentration to put up Spike Growth after all targets are free is very similar in effect. I don't think this is a noteworthy issue unless I'm missing something?

Move-the-beam spells - This might be an issue, but is it actually any worse then say Sunbeam and Spiritual Weapon? Basically the same thing but Spritual Weapon already has no concentration.


Thanks for the suggestions though. Worth looking into as I come up with my revised rules.


Adding stoneskin to Tenser's/Haste - This is starting to get game breaking. The damage resistance added to the other effects makes this a lot more powerful, and Stoneskin just had a measly 100 gp cost and no negative on ending. Still, it takes 3 rounds to come online so smaller combats will be over already. Still might allow a wizard to out martial a martial class in a big fight though. I might have to look at the exact damage output comparison of level 11 (first level you could do this) fighters/barbarians and a Tenser's/Haste/Stoneskin Wizard. Seems like it could be dealt with by extending Tenser's can't cast spells to also include dismissing previously cast spells?

Smite spells - I think in general the number of rounds to stack smite spells is outweighed by the power of stacking them. They would still have duration so putting them up before a fight becomes more difficult as it has to be RIGHT before the fight. Doing it in combat means you can't attack while stacking them or they go off individually. Another easy fix though, just add a rider to each smite spell allowing only one to trigger per round.

Conjure spells - These are a bit difficult to manage, so I'd definitely have to limit them to one instance per caster. But allow other concentration spells with them. I don't want to have to deal with 50 or more summoned cr 1/8 creatures!!

Wall spells - Isn't this already a thing? Just from two casters? Wall of Force / Cloudkill. I don't think this balance issue comes from removing concentration because it's done with concentration in effect. It's more an issue of the power wall spells give a caster to control the field. I'm not sure how to address that without removing all use from wall spells, ideas?

Darkness - Is it not easier to just cast it on myself so it moves with me and only uses one spell slot? Also the number of turns required to do this? Knock yourself out I guess! Haha I don't see a problem with it especially since it can be countered with a little bit of light magic making that a large number of wasted spell slots.

This definitely requires some tweaking. Again I'm not just removing concentration, I'm adjusting it to be less arbitrarily restrictive.


As for loss of value of things like Warcaster, I thought of that too. It will go back to their face that I'm not just removing it, I'm creating a replacement.

My rough draft idea is that all concentration spells still are tagged as concentration. You still concentrate, and still make checks to maintain concentration. You are NOT limited in only concentrating on one thing though. This would also address Barbarian casters as raging would still prevent concentration.

1 concentration spell active - RAW for checks
2 concentration spells active - RAW but disadvantage on concentration checks, both effects end of you fail a check.
3+ concentration spells - As above, but +5 DC per concentration spell. So minimum DC would be 15 if damage exceeds 20 it would go up from 15 per 2 damage. So taking 30 damage would be a DC 20 check at disadvantage.

Not perfect I'm sure, so please point out anything I'm missing. It's not as simple as RAW, but that wasn't my goal to begin with.

I'm also aware this increases the power of casters. I'm looking at ways to balance Martials to this increased ability, but that's after I work out what I like in regards to concentration.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-10-20, 02:30 PM
This definitely requires some tweaking. Again I'm not just removing concentration, I'm adjusting it to be less arbitrarily restrictive.

[...]

My rough draft idea is that all concentration spells still are tagged as concentration. You still concentrate, and still make checks to maintain concentration.

Why keep concentration at all, if you realize that it's arbitrarily restrictive and that the big scary combos it's supposed to prevent aren't actually big and scary, and you want to allow concentrating on multiple effects anyway?

Concentration makes sense for some spells that you actively control (changing illusions, moving flaming spheres and such), and could be extended to things like passively controlling summons if you don't want to deal with spamming those for bookkeeping reasons, but for the most part it doesn't serve the intended mechanical purpose of balancing out "strong" spells, nor does it match the flavor of D&D magic where magic is not intrinsic to the caster and spells are independent of the caster once cast.

The only way I could see concentrating on a spell still making sense in this scenario would be something like actively concentrating on a spell to extend its duration--your conjure elemental spell normally lasts for 1 hour, and you can cast it to get an elemental for 1 hour and do whatever you want in the meantime, but you could concentrate on the spell to have it stick around for multiple hours, for instance. That sort of active concentration would make more sense as to why you can only do that for a limited number of spells and why disrupting your concentration would cause the spell to end, and would retain the usefulness of War Caster and similar because helping to maintain multiple buffs for longer would be pretty valuable.

Mith
2018-10-20, 02:38 PM
Why keep concentration at all, if you realize that it's arbitrarily restrictive and that the big scary combos it's supposed to prevent aren't actually big and scary, and you want to allow concentrating on multiple effects anyway?

Concentration makes sense for some spells that you actively control (changing illusions, moving flaming spheres and such), and could be extended to things like passively controlling summons if you don't want to deal with spamming those for bookkeeping reasons, but for the most part it doesn't serve the intended mechanical purpose of balancing out "strong" spells, nor does it match the flavor of D&D magic where magic is not intrinsic to the caster and spells are independent of the caster once cast.

The only way I could see concentrating on a spell still making sense in this scenario would be something like actively concentrating on a spell to extend its duration--your conjure elemental spell normally lasts for 1 hour, and you can cast it to get an elemental for 1 hour and do whatever you want in the meantime, but you could concentrate on the spell to have it stick around for multiple hours, for instance. That sort of active concentration would make more sense as to why you can only do that for a limited number of spells and why disrupting your concentration would cause the spell to end, and would retain the usefulness of War Caster and similar because helping to maintain multiple buffs for longer would be pretty valuable.

So with your proposed fix is to have no Concentration effects for the normal duration, but the ability to hold a spell past the regular duration for a longer period of time? Say Caster modifier times duration?

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-10-20, 03:34 PM
So with your proposed fix is to have no Concentration effects for the normal duration, but the ability to hold a spell past the regular duration for a longer period of time? Say Caster modifier times duration?

Pretty much. Or indefinitely while the caster is conscious but with increasing-DC concentration checks, or however you want to implement that.

Both 4e and 5e have the problem that the designers are afraid to let spells last too long or affect too large an area--the 1e conjure elemental had the elemental remain indefinitely until dispelled (requiring concentration to have it avoid attacking you, since it summoned a 16-HD monster with a 5th-level spell, but you could totally conjure up a fire elemental in the middle of your enemies and walk away) where the 5e version just lasts for an hour, a 3e fireball has a max range of 600 feet when you get it and only grows longer from there whereas the 5e version caps out at 150 feet, and so forth--because they assume that long durations and ranges are inherently powerful rather than looking at the effects themselves.

Between short durations and Concentration you're strongly discouraged from stacking buffs and control spells in 5e, but most of them are fairly tame and you have fewer spell slots overall so there's really no reason to do that. And of course plenty of weak spells require Concentration while plenty of strong spells don't, so it's really a crapshoot as to whether those spells were labeled appropriately anyway.

Alabenson
2018-10-20, 04:23 PM
I thought of a fairly simple concentration fix early on in 5e but never actually did anything with it. Essentially, instead of concentration you would instead would have it so no creature could be affected by more than 1 formerly concentration spell produced by the same caster at the same time. This way, the wizard could have fly on himself, haste on the fighter and invisibility on the rogue, but wouldn't be able to put all 3 spells on himself. The benefit as I see it is that it would help promote buffing your teammates while still eliminating the ability to stack buffs, which seems like was the goal of concentration in the first place.

Galithar
2018-10-20, 05:51 PM
The reason I don't want to just drop concentration all together is because forcing someone to drop concentration is a valid counter strategy.
The enemy barbarian is Raging, and hasted and invisible? Go stab his wizard and he'll be stunned for a round and you can see him again.
Removing concentration completely makes dispell magic and counterspell the only way to counter magic. That's taking options away from the players and NPCs/Monsters which is the opposite of my intent. The intent is to create more viable options by eliminating what I see as arbitrary restrictions.

Sorcerer's might feel their toes getting stepped in a little because the wizard can haste your barbarian and rogue, but the wizard has two concentration spells up and uses two slots. The sorcerer can do it with one Twinned.

And while I don't think those examples are exceedingly bad, the idea of putting them all together gets bad. Plus I'm sure there is something that hasn't been brought up that's closer to an instant game break then just a really strong Wizard.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-10-20, 07:31 PM
The reason I don't want to just drop concentration all together is because forcing someone to drop concentration is a valid counter strategy.
The enemy barbarian is Raging, and hasted and invisible? Go stab his wizard and he'll be stunned for a round and you can see him again.

Firstly, sure, that's a valid strategy, but why should that work against haste and invisibility but not, say, shillelagh and mirror image? Both pairs of spells enhance your attacks and make you hard to find and hit, but the former require concentration and the latter don't. Which effects require concentration and which don't are entirely arbitrary.

Secondly, "gank the caster" is already a common strategy because casters have a disproportionate impact in combat compared to noncasters, so making noncasters protecting their casters even more vital would tend to limit options, not increase them.

Thirdly, given the above, protecting against such tactics is pretty simple. Nothing requires a caster to maintain line of sight and line of effect to creatures he's buffed, so the NPC barbarian's NPC wizard buddy could easily be invisible as well, or several rooms and several dozen yards away. Only PC casters are going to always have their casters and noncasters close to each other, making them more likely to suffer the downsides of the gank-the-mage strategy.


Removing concentration completely makes dispell magic and counterspell the only way to counter magic. That's taking options away from the players and NPCs/Monsters which is the opposite of my intent. The intent is to create more viable options by eliminating what I see as arbitrary restrictions.

Conversely, with counterspell being extremely efficient action-wise and resource-wise compared to 3e--it only requires a reaction instead of requiring you to ready and spend your own actions, you can counter a spell of any level or school with the same spell instead of requiring the same spell or Improved Counterspell and a higher-level slot, and caster level isn't involved in any way so a 5th-level wizard can counter a 15th-level wizard's 8th-level spell with a non-trivial chance of success (+4ish Int vs. DC 18, 35% chance) compared to 3e (+5 CL vs. DC 26, impossible)--countering magic can actually be too easy at times. Any party with an arcane caster--and many parties have multiple, being larger than 4 PCs or favoring something besides fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric--can interfere with enemy casters fairly easily without impacting their own spell output at all.

If countering magic is a main concern, then honestly bringing back spellcasting provoking AoOs from 3e instead of that only being a benefit of Mage Slayer would do a lot more. Interrupting concentration only disables buffs and debuffs, but AoOing casters disables any kind of spell and discourages them from being close to enemies without making protecting them the martial characters' top priority.

Galithar
2018-10-20, 08:42 PM
Thanks for the point of view, but none of that actually accomplishes my goal of creating a more dynamic risk/reward of casting lingering spells.

Also, for response to why these and not these for concentration as part of this rule change I would be going through and adjusting which spells are concentration based on what I think is appropriate, it is my Homebrew rule afterall. :P

This is not some minor change it has very large balance implications and removing concentration cannot be done without applying some form of balance.

AoO on casting is the closest to a balance, but it does nothing for after the spell is cast. Nor does it actually stop any spells.

Saying that concentration is tactically limiting to non-caster just isn't true. Of course they are going to protect their non-casters, that's why barbarians get a d12 for HP and wizards only get a d6. Squishies need protected whether they are concentrating on something or not. And it would be tactically limiting to NOT have that threat. If PC casters aren't squishy then NPC casters shouldn't be squishy which means there is no advantage to try to target them down. This doesn't change with or without concentration.

PairO'Dice Lost
2018-10-21, 12:06 AM
Also, for response to why these and not these for concentration as part of this rule change I would be going through and adjusting which spells are concentration based on what I think is appropriate, it is my Homebrew rule afterall. :P

See, that's quite different from the initial statement of "all concentration spells still are tagged as concentration," and makes keeping concentration not an entirely terrible idea. :smallwink:


Saying that concentration is tactically limiting to non-caster just isn't true. Of course they are going to protect their non-casters, that's why barbarians get a d12 for HP and wizards only get a d6. Squishies need protected whether they are concentrating on something or not. And it would be tactically limiting to NOT have that threat. If PC casters aren't squishy then NPC casters shouldn't be squishy which means there is no advantage to try to target them down. This doesn't change with or without concentration.

Casters need some amount of protection, sure--though not nearly as much as they used to given relatively free movement, higher HP, and so forth--and it's bad if a caster fails a concentration check and makes you lose your haste or whatever other buff. But the more impact failing that concentration check has, the more tempting a target the caster makes, because now making the wizard fail the check doesn't just lose your fighter his haste, it makes the fighter lose haste and fly, and the barbarian lose his haste and fly, and the rogue his haste and invisibility, and...

In AD&D and 3e, the caster handing out more buffs gave the party more options because (A) more buffs for the caster makes him less squishy and thereby less in need of protecting, freeing up the martial types a bit more, and (B) more buffs for the martial types gives them more options, mobility, and effectiveness. But in those editions, you can drop the caster and the fighter, barbarian, and rogue can keep on truckin' just fine. In a scenario where killing the caster drops all the buffs, suddenly you have an obvious weak link in the chain that has to be protected, and rather than freeing up the noncasters to do their thing more easily it restricts their actions.


Thanks for the point of view, but none of that actually accomplishes my goal of creating a more dynamic risk/reward of casting lingering spells.
[...]
AoO on casting is the closest to a balance, but it does nothing for after the spell is cast. Nor does it actually stop any spells.

This is actually the first time that risk/reward for buffing has come up, and is a very different scenario than making countering magic easier. In fact, the easier it is to counter magic, the less it's a risk/reward tradeoff and the more it's just a risk--a buffer wizard faced with a half-dozen archers who can plink away at him with impunity, or a blaster wizard faced with a trio of counterspellers, isn't making a risk/reward calculation when casting spells, he'd just be stupid to try to cast when his spells would be so easily negated.

What specifically are you trying to accomplish with this change? Is your concern that your players cast too few Concentration spells because of the risk of losing them, and you want to entice them into it by loosening restrictions? Is your concern that the your party's casters are only buffing themselves because they only have one Concentration slot, and you want to encourage them to buff the rest of the party? Is your concern that it's too hard to fail concentration checks, and you want your party's casters to put themselves in a position where they might over-buff and make failing that check a real risk? Is your concern that concentration is a ham-fisted attempt at balance that doesn't work, and you want to replace it with some totally different method of balancing ongoing spells?

All of those are totally different concerns, with totally different solutions. Thus far you've mentioned "concentration doesn't make sense" (which removing it entirely fixes), "magic is too hard to counter" (which replacing concentration with something else fixes) and "spellcasting should involve more of a gamble" (which is sort of orthogonal to the concentration mechanics), and one houserule isn't going to address all three of those equally well, if at all.

Galithar
2018-10-21, 02:31 PM
Well I didn't originally post with any interest to have a full discussion about the rule, it was more of I gave spotty backstory that was irrelevant to my actual intent of looking for broken concentration combos.

Since you're so interested though when I have more time (my groups session starts soon and I'm not 100% prepared yet... Bad DM haha) I'll give you a full rundown of what I'm doing. It's not so much that I want magic easier to counter or harder to counter. It's that I want there to be risk in your reward. This is part of my personal 5e overhaul that is changing almost every aspect of the game but using 5e as my baseline to then completely ignore later as I change it so much it'll probably resemble another system more when I'm done with it. Haha