Concerning Concentration

[Severian]

Let me dive right into it. Of all the crpgs I have ever played, this one has the worst magic system of all of them - by a long shot!
And the reason for that is in 19 out of 20 cases the abominable concentration requirement.

I found, for example, that the best thing my Wizard could spend his concentration on was Hasting my Paladin (even with Haste being limited to one target, now, with no ability to upcast it for more), and then go to town with Fireball, Cone of Cold or whatever other damage spell I had to hand.
Thank god I chose Shock Mage on a whim, who can boost his damaging spells, because I have no idea what a Loremaster or a Green Whatever would have done, seeing that, other than damage spells, every godsdamned spell in the game requires your concentration.

My Cleric suffered the exact same fate as my Wizard, concentrating on one choice spell, and then to turn to ten rounds of mindless smashing enemies over the head with a blunt instrument.

Paladin, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ditto.

Literally the only choices I made with those characters were whether or not to smite/channel divinity for more damage.

What the actual ♥♥♥♥!

To make matters considerably worse, even magic effects from the items you attune to require your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ concentration. I haven't used the super cool sounding boots of levitation once in my entire playthrough! Same for the abilities of the super awesome Ring of the Grand Inquisitor or something!

Is this actual D-n-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-D, anymore? Who thought this would be fun?

As much as I loathe the endless pre-battle buffing of Pathfinder: Kingmaker - I would kill for that magic system here.
And as for BG3 - I pray to Bhaal they homebrew the crap out of the actual 5th Edition rules! Purists be damned!

[DiceWrangler]

Are you blaming this game or Wizards of the Coast for implementing the rule within D&D 5e?

[Severian]

Originally posted by DiceWrangler:

Are you blaming this game or Wizards of the Coast for implementing the rule within D&D 5e?

Oh, definitely WotC. As for the devs, I can really only question their judgment for choosing 5th Edition for their game, if this is a faithful recreation of the tabletop rules.

[ZiffyHead]

Yeah, I don't really like the concentration rules either, but as mentioned, our beef is with WOtC, since they made the rules.

I wouldn't mind as much, if you could concentrate on 2 or 3 spells at higher levels, maybe even with some concentration check, but oh well...

[Digihuman]

Originally posted by ZiffyHead:

Yeah, I don't really like the concentration rules either, but as mentioned, our beef is with WOtC, since they made the rules.

I wouldn't mind as much, if you could concentrate on 2 or 3 spells at higher levels, maybe even with some concentration check, but oh well...

Ahahahahahahahahahaha...
Oh believe me. You don't want that. I've DMed games where I gave my party magic items or special abilities to double-concentrate and that makes them broken beyond belief. The concentration system may feel restricting at times but without it, what little balance 5e has gets thrown right out the window. You can dress it up to look innocent like "Haste and Wall of Fire" but it ultimately ends up devolving into insane combos like "Force Cage Prismatic Wall!".

[Severian]

Originally posted by Digihuman:

Originally posted by ZiffyHead:

Yeah, I don't really like the concentration rules either, but as mentioned, our beef is with WOtC, since they made the rules.

I wouldn't mind as much, if you could concentrate on 2 or 3 spells at higher levels, maybe even with some concentration check, but oh well...

Ahahahahahahahahahaha...
Oh believe me. You don't want that. I've DMed games where I gave my party magic items or special abilities to double-concentrate and that makes them broken beyond belief. The concentration system may feel restricting at times but without it, what little balance 5e has gets thrown right out the window. You can dress it up to look innocent like "Haste and Wall of Fire" but it ultimately ends up devolving into insane combos like "Force Cage Prismatic Wall!".

What else changed in 5E, if it was alright to use all of those spells and more at the same time in the 2E and 3.5E era?
(I have less than no clue about 4th Edition)

[ZiffyHead]

Originally posted by Digihuman:

Originally posted by ZiffyHead:

Yeah, I don't really like the concentration rules either, but as mentioned, our beef is with WOtC, since they made the rules.

I wouldn't mind as much, if you could concentrate on 2 or 3 spells at higher levels, maybe even with some concentration check, but oh well...

Ahahahahahahahahahaha...
Oh believe me. You don't want that. I've DMed games where I gave my party magic items or special abilities to double-concentrate and that makes them broken beyond belief. The concentration system may feel restricting at times but without it, what little balance 5e has gets thrown right out the window. You can dress it up to look innocent like "Haste and Wall of Fire" but it ultimately ends up devolving into insane combos like "Force Cage Prismatic Wall!".

LOL

Yeah, I figured it would probably upset the game balance (wizards used to be too much).

That's the problem with games that are actually pretty well balanced, a simple seeming tweak can easily destroy that balance.

So, I guess I'll change my shaking fist emoji for WOtC, arising from my concentration consternation, into a minor grumbling about doing too good of a job at balancing... mutter, mutter...

LOL

LOL

[Digihuman]

Originally posted by Severian:

Originally posted by Digihuman:

Ahahahahahahahahahaha...
Oh believe me. You don't want that. I've DMed games where I gave my party magic items or special abilities to double-concentrate and that makes them broken beyond belief. The concentration system may feel restricting at times but without it, what little balance 5e has gets thrown right out the window. You can dress it up to look innocent like "Haste and Wall of Fire" but it ultimately ends up devolving into insane combos like "Force Cage Prismatic Wall!".

What else changed in 5E, if it was alright to use all of those spells and more at the same time in the 2E and 3.5E era?
(I have less than no clue about 4th Edition)

Long and short, power levels and power balances. 2e and 3e had a near-infinite progression system, while 5e is designed around capping at level 20 and CR 30. Even beings once considered immensely powerful like Laeral Silverhand are much weaker in 5e to compensate for this new system (and given lore explanations in-universe for the rule changes).

In 3.5e you can theoretically become level 100 and fight appropriate epic level enemies. In 5e no epic level system was (officially) devised beyond the DMG's suggestion of giving feats or boons every X experience points. Hell, Tiamat- a GOD - has a CR 30 stat block in 5e, making this immensely powerful being...on par with a tarrasque.

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by Severian:

The abominable concentration requirement.

It's not that bad.

There are times I wished that I could cast my Ranger's lights, but Hunter's Mark always takes priority.

As for the others, the Cleric has a couple of nice ones but these abilities would be ridiculously overpowered if you could concentrate on everything at the same time.

They are too powerful.

It would be as bad as using the overpowered abilities in Valhalla. Worse than a console game is as bad as it gets.

Unless they added interrupts, like Pillars of Eternity. That way you could shut these casters down.

[Severian]

Thanks for the explanation. I expected it had to do with 5E being a bounded system.
That accounts for the balance part of the changes, at least, but I am absolutely floored by how poorly thought out the spell selection is, given the centrality of concentration to all caster classes.

[Digihuman]

Originally posted by Severian:

Thanks for the explanation. I expected it had to do with 5E being a bounded system.
That accounts for the balance part of the changes, at least, but I am absolutely floored by how poorly thought out the spell selection is, given the centrality of concentration to all caster classes.

Oh yeah, that's the real issue. Because they're limited to the SRD the selection of spells is rather poor. If they could license some spells from the PHB or other books, you'd have a much better variety.

[Severian]

On second thought, I still fail to see how casting Slow AND Haste AND Wall of Fire AND Fly AND Greater Invisibility would be unbalanced if enemies can do it as well.
Not to mention that it would be infinitely more fun than what you do now, which is decide on one concentration spell for the fight (10 turns is after all more than enough for any battle) and spend the rest of your turns rolling a bunch of damage dice like a street brawler.

[Digihuman]

Originally posted by Severian:

On second thought, I still fail to see how casting Slow AND Haste AND Wall of Fire AND Fly AND Greater Invisibility would be unbalanced if enemies can do it as well.
Not to mention that it would be infinitely more fun than what you do now, which is decide on one concentration spell for the fight (10 turns is after all more than enough for any battle) and spend the rest of your turns rolling a bunch of damage dice like a street brawler.

Yeah. In my homebrewed system I applied disadvantage to those who double-concentrated with a "lose it on one you lose both" rule. And it was still broken as hell. xD

[Severian]

Originally posted by Digihuman:

Yeah. In my homebrewed system I applied disadvantage to those who double-concentrated with a "lose it on one you lose both" rule. And it was still broken as hell. xD

But how? Sorry for being so slow on the uptake, btw - I simply have no experience with the tabletop game, and draw instead from Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, NWN, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, etc. where none of this is a problem.
And it cannot be the stat blocks (which have an upper bound in 5E) that make it so. After all, those other systems allowed us to keep pace with the defenses of higher CR creatures and vice versa.
What is the difference between casting Fear, Silence and then Slow (or even having them on a spell trigger like in BG2) in whatever Baldur's Gate had as its system, and doing the same in Solasta's 5th Edition?
Wouldn't it simply be a matter of encounter design to have both balance AND fun?

[Digihuman]

Originally posted by Severian:

Originally posted by Digihuman:

Yeah. In my homebrewed system I applied disadvantage to those who double-concentrated with a "lose it on one you lose both" rule. And it was still broken as hell. xD

But how? Sorry for being so slow on the uptake, btw - I simply have no experience with the tabletop game, and draw instead from Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, NWN, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, etc. where none of this is a problem.
And it cannot be the stat blocks (which have an upper bound in 5E) that make it so. After all, those other systems allowed us to keep pace with the defenses of higher CR creatures and vice versa.
What is the difference between casting Fear, Silence and then Slow (or even having them on a spell trigger like in BG2) in whatever Baldur's Gate had as its system, and doing the same in Solasta's 5th Edition?
Wouldn't it simply be a matter of encounter design to have both balance AND fun?

I honestly can't give a detailed explanation on the main issues, at least not while keeping it coherent, Someone else would be better at explaining it, I think. The best way to put it is that your points of reference - the older editions - were founded on very different principles.

It just comes back to power levels.

For one example, in 3.5e D&D (i.e NWN, and pathfinder being a fork of 3.5), you individually assign spells to spell slots, meaning you dedicate spellcasting to specific spells a specific number of times. In 5e, you just memorise X spells and can freely use them as many times as you have spell slots to use them.
That's not the main reason why it's broken, merely an example of a major change in direction to help explain why the systems are so different from each other.

[PorkSocks]

Originally posted by Digihuman:

Originally posted by ZiffyHead:

Yeah, I don't really like the concentration rules either, but as mentioned, our beef is with WOtC, since they made the rules.

I wouldn't mind as much, if you could concentrate on 2 or 3 spells at higher levels, maybe even with some concentration check, but oh well...

Ahahahahahahahahahaha...
Oh believe me. You don't want that. I've DMed games where I gave my party magic items or special abilities to double-concentrate and that makes them broken beyond belief. The concentration system may feel restricting at times but without it, what little balance 5e has gets thrown right out the window. You can dress it up to look innocent like "Haste and Wall of Fire" but it ultimately ends up devolving into insane combos like "Force Cage Prismatic Wall!".

Force Cage doesn't require concentration. You're probably thinking of Wall of Force.