Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 dragonfather Sep 22, 2014 21:56:47	A number of the people I play with and DM for have all expressed our concerns to each other about how concentration is very limiting. This is especially true for rangers, warlocks, and vengeance paladins. (Basically anyone who uses hunter's mark or hex). Often times the player is forced to choose to either buff themselves, or the party. In many cases you are choosing which buff for yourself you want as well. Stuff like hex that is supposed to be a long duration spell doesn't make sense to restrict your ability to concentrate on anything else at all. Similarly, if I am the tank, I'm going to buff my tankiness and my party is left out of the benefits of my class spellcasting. Our group came up with an idea for using concentration slots. It works as follows:   Each player has one offense, defense, and general concentration slot. The general slot can be used as offense or defense. Some spells use the general slot specifically. Most spells use either the offense or defense slot. Hex uses offense. Shield of faith uses defense. Most party buffs use the general slot. Some powerful spells use both the offense and defense slot (haste is an example) Some can use any slot (Invisibility uses 1 any slot, greater invisibility uses two any slots)   We are still building out which spells use which slots as we play. the idea is that you can always have at least two spells active, but still limit them, and not allow you to stack lots of buffs for quadratic spellcaster growth. This makes it so the ranger can maintain hunter's mark and concentrate on his arrow spells in combat, and the warlock can maintain hex while concentrating on his cloud of death. Cleric Tanks can boost their AC and bless the party, ect.   I wanted to get the thoughts of the community here on the house rule.   Thanks!
#2 DaveDash Sep 22, 2014 22:17:51	dragonfather wrote:
#3 FallingIcicle Sep 22, 2014 22:34:34	Have you actually played for a while with the concentration rules as written? If not, you might want to try it out first before house-ruling it.
#4 dragonfather Sep 22, 2014 22:48:19	We have already played a good 12-15 sessions each before we decided on this. The ranger was constantly complaining he could only maintain hunter's mark, the wizard wanted to cast flaming sphere but didn't want to stop flying, the cleric wanted to tank but also bless the party. Everyone complained about it.   We did consider a "Long Term" concentration slot with a short term combat one as well, and we considered just houseruling certain spells didn't require concentration, but we found it easier to categorize spells by their intended effect rather than if they should be long term or short term spells, or if they really need concentration, which could have unintended concequences.
#5 RCanine Sep 22, 2014 23:04:55	I think one of the major reasons to have concentration is so that spellcasters down overshadow the other spellcasters. I think the houserule is fine so long as your realize it probably will make rogue and monk trap classes at best. Fighter might still have some use, since he can pick up some spells too. Also, with things like this:   DaveDash wrote:
#6 DaveDash Sep 22, 2014 23:17:00	RCanine wrote:
#7 arnwolf666 Sep 23, 2014 0:03:39	I just ignore the concentration rules in my homebrew settings, thinking about returning to segments for intiative, and doing intiative every round.