If you only want to check how any two of those 185 interact, you'd need to check at least 17020 two-spell combinations. Of those spells, 185 are 1st-5th level spells or cantrips, meaning a single character could have any two of them (via multiclassing). There are currently 237 concentration spells on D&D Beyond. and how that interacts with every concentration spell, and how that interacts with every concentration spell, etc. It potentially affects every concentration spell. On a player character, it can have a much more devastating impact on the game. On a monster whose lifespan is measured in a rounds (and usually a single digit) and has a limited spell list, a possibly unbalanced ability is not a big deal worst-case, it throws off the difficulty of one fight. Alterations to spellcasting rules in general are difficult to balance, because there are just so many spells and so many possible interactions that must be considered. Like messing with the action economy, the results can be far-ranging and unpredictable.īut it's not just concentration. And more to the point, if you're asking 'Hey what do you think of this class feature?', most people won't be able to look at a change to concentration and tell whether it's viable or not.

It's good advice to not mess with that part of the rules but like all good advice, it's entirely possible to ignore it and still be fine - it's just more dangerous. If it feels like people on SE tend to have a kneejerk reaction to altering concentration rules, then this is probably the source of it. 'Don't mess with concentration' is a great rule of thumb, the safer path that totally avoids a pitfall rather than trying to tightrope-walk across it. You'll need to playtest the heck out of it with players who are dead-set on abusing it to the utmost, and you'll still not be totally sure it's okay. I wouldn't say that 'all changes to concentration are inherently overpowered', but I would say that all changes to concentration are inherently suspect. However, here I'm asking about about the boundary between game-breaking and non-game-breaking changes with respect to concentration. This question and answer address a specific very powerful change to concentration and has good advice for this question, overall. I am wondering what specifically breaks when concentration is changed and why the above examples don't also break that? Some answers to these questions give examples of overpowered concentration changes, but I don't find these very informative because they are so clearly overpowered. I am aware, per this question, that the rules warn about this ( this question is also related). What is the justification for this dogma and why are the above exceptions okay given the justification? Why does this dogma get repeated even when the changes to concentration are very limited? It is not clear to me why this dogma about never changing concentration, specifically, gets repeated.

It is glaringly obvious that some changes to concentration will break the game or make keeping track of it substantially harder, but this is true of every feature in the game. These all seem like substantial changes to concentration that are acceptable to the game designers. Matt Mercer's homebrew Cleric Moon Domain allows dual concentration as long as both spells are from the class domain list (admittedly, Matt Mercer is not WotC, but he is cited frequently as an authority here with respect to rules and game design).The Arcane Abeyance ability lets another creature concentrate on a spell cast by a Chronurgy Wizard.Further, it seems strange to me that this would be so dogmatic, given that, I've never found or been given a reason for this, however.

Every time I have proposed such a homebrew, regardless of how limited the change to concentration is, I've been told that one should never change how concentration works.

Treantmonk bard.It's not hard to find homebrew-review questions on this site that propose changes to how concentration works.

D d 5e homebrew classes matth mercer