Saturday, September 19, 2015

Concentration Killed CoDzilla

Last game session, I noticed something about the Druid's combat spells...nearly every single one of them is tagged with Concentration. This is a new mechanic in 5e. You can only have one Concentration effect active at a time, and if you get hit while one is active, you have to make a Constitution saving throw with a DC equal to the damage you took.

The result of this is that the CoDzilla problem from 3rd edition is gone. In case you didn't know, in 3rd, you could make a god-like cleric by stacking the right buff spells and feats. Likewise, the "Batman" wizard (a wizard who can become any class by activating the right spells) is a thing of the past. 4e solved this by standardizing abilities, but at the cost of alienating a lot of fans and making too many classes feel too similar. In 5e, spells feel a lot more like their classic incarnations, but the addition of Concentration keeps things from getting out of hand. Also, only allowing one effect at a time makes the game simpler to run.

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