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!

[Severian]

Digihuman eredeti hozzászólása:

Severian eredeti hozzászólása:

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.

Well, those systems all have Sorcerers, though, which, given Solasta's narrow selection of spells, is pretty much what Wizards are in this game.

[PorkSocks]

D&D is a story-telling device. It has always had horrible balance issues. 4e came the closest to being a balanced combat system, and was loathed by a large swath of the fanbase for it.

[Digihuman]

PorkSocks eredeti hozzászólása:

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

Fair! I was trying to pluck some concentration spells off the top of my head. Thanks for the correction there. xD

Severian eredeti hozzászólása:

Well, those systems all have Sorcerers, though, which, given Solasta's narrow selection of spells, is pretty much what Wizards are in this game.

Yeah, in 5e the Sorcerer's "Spontaneous casting" was given to all spellcasters. The Sorcerer is...honestly just a bad class in 5e.

[Severian]

Spontaneous casting was the main reason I used to be excited for 5E games to be released. Solasta's Shock Wizard is basically normal 5E's Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer - just without the Metamagic, and I like it, because it suits the combat-heavy pace of crpgs.

I was never a fan of older editions' wizards, because spell preparation felt very meta-gamey, what with the lack of divination options to get an idea from the DM of what to expect wherever you were going.

Now, if we could just kick the whole concentration fiasco to the curb, I would be a real 5E fanboy :D

[dulany67]

You know you don't have to continue concentration? I mean you can get the benefit of a concentration spell for a few rounds and switch to a new spell. The fact that you hate it just shows why we need the mechanic in the game.

[Indure]

I've played a lot of pathfinder and 5e games. I can totally understand why people don't like the concentration system because 9/10 times there is a best spell that will always take your concentration slot and all the other spells might as well not even be equipped. But I also hated the prebuffing you have to do in Kingmaker where you spend 3-5 minutes casting buffs prior to a fight.

My biggest problem with 5e's concentration system is how poorly balanced concentration spells are. They don't seem to take into account that they compete with each other and should be balanced accordingly. Who would you cast Protection from Energy, or Death Ward on a single player when they can cast Haste or a devastating AoE field? Also lower level spells that provide nice utility start to heavily conflict with the higher more powerful spells, but sometimes you need dancing light or Guidance for a check.

It would most likely be OP, but it would be nice for the full casters to overcome concentration on lesser spells. Like at level 5, cantrips and level 1 spells no longer require concentration and at lvl 10, lvl 2-3 spells no longer require concentration.

[PorkSocks]

Our house rule was you get a number of concentration points for spells of a class equal to the highest spell level you can cast from that class plus one. So if you can cast 5th level spells, you have 6 concentration.

Spells cost concentration equal to their spell level plus one. So if you can cast 5th level spells (and thus have 6 concentration), you can maintain one 5th level spell (6 concentration), or two 2nd level spells (each is 3 concentration, or three 1st level spells (each is 2 concentration), or something like a 3rd level (4 concentration) and a 1st level (2 concentration).

[Severian]

@PorkSocks: That sounds like a lot more fun than the default rules.

[Blackmage]

As everyone has already explaiend, the purpose of concentration is game balance. It prevents you from ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stacking spells effects with one spellcaster. But also, most encounters are not going to run for that many rounds. 5 rounds is already a fairly long encounter. You shouldn't need to be stacking so many spell effects anyways.

I beat the game using a Loremaster Wizard with no issues. Shock Arcanist isn't bad if all you're looking for is to deal a little bit of extra damage. In most cases, like with Fireball, it's just another d6 of damage. It might as well be a droplet of water in the ocean. But I don't like how most of your spells from levels 1-5 are effectively already picked for you. I like the Greenmage and Loremaster better because they have a wider ranger of choices of spells to choose from.

The Cleric has many great non-concentration options, like Guiding Bolt and Inflict Wounds. If you ran a Battle Cleric, you can bypass Material/Somatic component requirements. Sun Clerics don't need a melee weapon because they force enemies to save on Sacred Flame with disadvantage, which is just as good as always attacking with advantage.

Severian eredeti hozzászólása:

Digihuman eredeti hozzászólása:

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?

There is also a great homebrew feat in the Tal'Dorei campaign setting book that enables a spellcaster to maintain concentration on two spells. They have to spend their action to maintain concentration on both against a DC that increases with each round.

Also, believe it or not, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and NWN do not accurately follow the D&D core system rules. Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale are all based on 2nd edition. NWN is based on 3rd edition. But they are all "adaptations," not true reproductions. So really, you've really only ever played D&D themed games, not "true" D&D, as far as rules go. Solasta is the only game ever made up to now to closely adhere to any core system rules.

5th edition was designed to be simple and accessible, for better or for worse. It's the most commercially successful edition of D&D to date, but at the cost of what some players might describe as "depth."
Concentration is a part of that concept. Would you really be able to expect a newb to think about stacking Greater Invisibility, Fly, Haste, and Slow all together in a single encounter? That would be much too complex, and thus, a deviation of what 5th edition is about.

[RJM]

Severian eredeti hozzászólása:

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.

It comes back to the age old problem in D&D of linear fighter, quadratic wizard. If you allow wizards (casters) to become exponentially powerful as they go up levels, melee characters and melee monsters become increasingly pointless.

5e set out deliberately to have characters scale in power much more closely to one another. Wizards still become incredibly potent at high level, but they don't leave everyone in the dust like they used to. Similarly you don't have to layer 5 buff spells on your adventurers to be able to hit the enemies and avoid being destroyed by them.

People like to complain that this has removed a lot of the fun of D&D, but I disagree. There was nothing fun about buffing endlessly before every fight in every D&D computer game since Baldur's Gate. Instead of this tedious process of layering virtually the same buffs, the players have to choose which one or two buffs will make the most difference in each situation and both sides have to decide whether it's tactically more important to target the caster to break their concentration or to do something else.

[Severian]

BlackMage eredeti hozzászólása:

As everyone has already explaiend, the purpose of concentration is game balance. It prevents you from ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stacking spells effects with one spellcaster. But also, most encounters are not going to run for that many rounds. 5 rounds is already a fairly long encounter. You shouldn't need to be stacking so many spell effects anyways.

It's not about what you need to do, but about what is fun. To me, that is. Why not be invisible and fly at the same time?
Even concentration itself could be a fun addition, as a possibility for others to stop your spells from working.
Maybe you could get a (hefty) penalty to your concentration save for each additional spell, or something to make it a trade-off.
But especially with Solasta's limited spell selection, concentrating on any one spell effectively means you don't get to use two thirds of your arsenal. And I find that way too punishing - not concerning power levels, but my enjoyment and the fantasy of playing a wizard.

BlackMage eredeti hozzászólása:

The Cleric has many great non-concentration options, like Guiding Bolt and Inflict Wounds. If you ran a Battle Cleric, you can bypass Material/Somatic component requirements. Sun Clerics don't need a melee weapon because they force enemies to save on Sacred Flame with disadvantage, which is just as good as always attacking with advantage.

The fun with spell casters, though, had always been that you didn't do exactly the same boring-ass stuff that any old physical class was doing - swinging weapons once or twice a turn, and maybe shoot a projectile.
I explicitly wrote that I don't like the fact that Clerics essentially choose one buff to focus on, and then turn into mindless club-wielding brutes. The fact that one subclass attacks with a cantrip changes nothing about the shallowness of the playstyle.

BlackMage eredeti hozzászólása:

Also, believe it or not, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and NWN do not accurately follow the D&D core system rules. Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale are all based on 2nd edition. NWN is based on 3rd edition. But they are all "adaptations," not true reproductions. So really, you've really only ever played D&D themed games, not "true" D&D, as far as rules go. Solasta is the only game ever made up to now to closely adhere to any core system rules.

As I have already freely admitted, yes, my experiences have been limited exclusively to crpgs. That doesn't change the fact that all of those games had way more enjoyable combat systems, and magic systems in particular, than Solasta.
Again, I make my point that the devs are to blame for choosing to implement faithfully a vastly inferior system of core rules.
Maybe I should have seen it coming, but blame me for falling for the illusion cast by critical role and the 20sided realms, etc. who made 5th edition combat seem like a lot of fun.

BlackMage eredeti hozzászólása:

Would you really be able to expect a newb to think about stacking Greater Invisibility, Fly, Haste, and Slow all together in a single encounter? That would be much too complex, and thus, a deviation of what 5th edition is about.

Of course I would. And why not? I was a total blockhead at 11 years of age. If I could grasp the concept of stacking buffs, or applying more than one magic effect to, well, greater effect then so can people today. You're doing people an injustice, if you think they're too dense to understand such simple concepts.

Also, DnD has always had lots of innate abilities that everyone is expected to understand to stack with whatever spells those characters might use. There are even flying player races, now, as far as I know.
Not to mention how important Dark Vision is in the game, which I am sure can also be cast as a spell.
There are so many instances where the designers at WotC followed the rule of cool, and blatantly disregarded their own iron rule of preventing synergies within the spell casting classes, that, it seems to me, they simply moved the power-gaming focus off spell selection to an extent, and onto race choice (looking at the variant human, the aarakocra, the variant tiefling, etc.) or even more ridiculously basic, the choice of world setting - well done indeed *slow clap

[Blackmage]

Severian eredeti hozzászólása:

BlackMage eredeti hozzászólása:

As everyone has already explaiend, the purpose of concentration is game balance. It prevents you from ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stacking spells effects with one spellcaster. But also, most encounters are not going to run for that many rounds. 5 rounds is already a fairly long encounter. You shouldn't need to be stacking so many spell effects anyways.

It's not about what you need to do, but about what is fun. To me, that is. Why not be invisible and fly at the same time?
Even concentration itself could be a fun addition, as a possibility for others to stop your spells from working.
Maybe you could get a (hefty) penalty to your concentration save for each additional spell, or something to make it a trade-off.
But especially with Solasta's limited spell selection, concentrating on any one spell effectively means you don't get to use two thirds of your arsenal. And I find that way too punishing - not concerning power levels, but my enjoyment and the fantasy of playing a wizard.

BlackMage eredeti hozzászólása:

The Cleric has many great non-concentration options, like Guiding Bolt and Inflict Wounds. If you ran a Battle Cleric, you can bypass Material/Somatic component requirements. Sun Clerics don't need a melee weapon because they force enemies to save on Sacred Flame with disadvantage, which is just as good as always attacking with advantage.

The fun with spell casters, though, had always been that you didn't do exactly the same boring-ass stuff that any old physical class was doing - swinging weapons once or twice a turn, and maybe shoot a projectile.
I explicitly wrote that I don't like the fact that Clerics essentially choose one buff to focus on, and then turn into mindless club-wielding brutes. The fact that one subclass attacks with a cantrip changes nothing about the shallowness of the playstyle.

BlackMage eredeti hozzászólása:

Also, believe it or not, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and NWN do not accurately follow the D&D core system rules. Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale are all based on 2nd edition. NWN is based on 3rd edition. But they are all "adaptations," not true reproductions. So really, you've really only ever played D&D themed games, not "true" D&D, as far as rules go. Solasta is the only game ever made up to now to closely adhere to any core system rules.

As I have already freely admitted, yes, my experiences have been limited exclusively to crpgs. That doesn't change the fact that all of those games had way more enjoyable combat systems, and magic systems in particular, than Solasta.
Again, I make my point that the devs are to blame for choosing to implement faithfully a vastly inferior system of core rules.
Maybe I should have seen it coming, but blame me for falling for the illusion cast by critical role and the 20sided realms, etc. who made 5th edition combat seem like a lot of fun.

BlackMage eredeti hozzászólása:

Would you really be able to expect a newb to think about stacking Greater Invisibility, Fly, Haste, and Slow all together in a single encounter? That would be much too complex, and thus, a deviation of what 5th edition is about.

Of course I would. And why not? I was a total blockhead at 11 years of age. If I could grasp the concept of stacking buffs, or applying more than one magic effect to, well, greater effect then so can people today. You're doing people an injustice, if you think they're too dense to understand such simple concepts.

Also, DnD has always had lots of innate abilities that everyone is expected to understand to stack with whatever spells those characters might use. There are even flying player races, now, as far as I know.
Not to mention how important Dark Vision is in the game, which I am sure can also be cast as a spell.
There are so many instances where the designers at WotC followed the rule of cool, and blatantly disregarded their own iron rule of preventing synergies within the spell casting classes, that, it seems to me, they simply moved the power-gaming focus off spell selection to an extent, and onto race choice (looking at the variant human, the aarakocra, the variant tiefling, etc.) or even more ridiculously basic, the choice of world setting - well done indeed *slow clap

All of your complaints boil down to this: "it's inconvenient for 'me' that I can't be a level 9000 god wizard." All I can say at this point is, if you don't like, well too bad. The world isn't fair. Make your game and tell me how well that works out for you.

[dulany67]

You don't play a wizard in Solasta. You play a party of adventurers.

[Severian]

RJM eredeti hozzászólása:

It comes back to the age old problem in D&D of linear fighter, quadratic wizard. If you allow wizards (casters) to become exponentially powerful as they go up levels, melee characters and melee monsters become increasingly pointless.

5e set out deliberately to have characters scale in power much more closely to one another. Wizards still become incredibly potent at high level, but they don't leave everyone in the dust like they used to. Similarly you don't have to layer 5 buff spells on your adventurers to be able to hit the enemies and avoid being destroyed by them.

People like to complain that this has removed a lot of the fun of D&D, but I disagree. There was nothing fun about buffing endlessly before every fight in every D&D computer game since Baldur's Gate. Instead of this tedious process of layering virtually the same buffs, the players have to choose which one or two buffs will make the most difference in each situation and both sides have to decide whether it's tactically more important to target the caster to break their concentration or to do something else.

Again, this is the crpg enthusiast in me speaking, not the DnD buff, which I am not - the Paladin with which I whirlwinded through BG2's Throne of Bhaal expansion wielding the Holy Avenger +6 was plenty powerful and didn't need wizard levels to trivialize any encounter the game threw at me.
I often get the feeling that tabletop players have that particular gripe, but I guess it just never bothered me playing single-player games. I mean, I didn't have to watch Chad's cocky ass hogging all the time at the table with his timestop shenanigans :D

As for getting powerful as a player, in general - that is literally why I loved those old games so much. I highly doubt that more balance automatically equals more fun.

I agree with the issue of pre-battle buffing, how could I not. That is most distinctly not fun in PF:KM, and I am not looking forward to it in PF:WotR.
However, I always thought that BG2 had a pretty neat way around that, giving you the ability to cast multiple spells with just one high-level ability.
Also, you must realize that casting one buff or five makes little difference in terms of the amount of thought involved when you consider just how many spells those other games gave you to choose from, and how deadly the encounters were, and in how many different ways.
Not only that, but as a wizard you would simply not have survived a single round of combat without at least mirror image, greater invisibility and stone skin, given martial classes' thac0 progression and number of attacks, as well as your d4 hit die.
Finally the buffing bonanza had its own way of balancing itself, didn't it. Spell slots, for one thing, but also the fact that their short durations meant that your spells would often run out in the midst of combat, which never happens in 5E, as well as the fact that there were specifically designed breach spells to penetrate a mage's defenses.

[Severian]

BlackMage eredeti hozzászólása:

All of your complaints boil down to this: "it's inconvenient for 'me' that I can't be a level 9000 god wizard." All I can say at this point is, if you don't like, well too bad. The world isn't fair. Make your game and tell me how well that works out for you.

Fine then, I won't bother replying to you, anymore. Suit yourself.