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Cantrip Auto-Scaling - A 5e Critique
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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 7533636" data-attributes="member: 58197"><p>It would be more elegant and aesthetically pleasing. Whether it would be <em>better</em> would depend on how it was implemented. And there's the rub: How would you implement this, without messing up the balance of casters and martials? You can't power-up 1st-level damage spells without making low-level casters OP. And if you have the 1st-level spells scale by caster level, then you risk creating the same problem when a 1st-level spell outperforms its 2nd-level equivalent. If you have <em>all</em> spells scale by caster level, then you're back into "quadratic wizard" territory. And if you look at the other side of the problem and simply get rid of cantrip scaling, you cripple mid-level casters; folks in the 5-10 range, who don't have enough spell slots to cast leveled spells all day, and need better baseline damage than a single crossbow attack.</p><p></p><p>It might be possible to devise a complex formula that would address all of these issues. But at that point, is it elegant or aesthetically pleasing any more?</p><p></p><p>This is why you're getting mostly defenses of the status quo: You haven't proposed a viable alternative. And nobody else seems to have one, either, including the people who designed the game (I'd be surprised if they never noticed the issue). Come up with something and put it on the table, and we can debate it. As it is, though, most of us prefer to accept slight inelegance in exchange for a system that works.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 7533636, member: 58197"] It would be more elegant and aesthetically pleasing. Whether it would be [i]better[/i] would depend on how it was implemented. And there's the rub: How would you implement this, without messing up the balance of casters and martials? You can't power-up 1st-level damage spells without making low-level casters OP. And if you have the 1st-level spells scale by caster level, then you risk creating the same problem when a 1st-level spell outperforms its 2nd-level equivalent. If you have [i]all[/i] spells scale by caster level, then you're back into "quadratic wizard" territory. And if you look at the other side of the problem and simply get rid of cantrip scaling, you cripple mid-level casters; folks in the 5-10 range, who don't have enough spell slots to cast leveled spells all day, and need better baseline damage than a single crossbow attack. It might be possible to devise a complex formula that would address all of these issues. But at that point, is it elegant or aesthetically pleasing any more? This is why you're getting mostly defenses of the status quo: You haven't proposed a viable alternative. And nobody else seems to have one, either, including the people who designed the game (I'd be surprised if they never noticed the issue). Come up with something and put it on the table, and we can debate it. As it is, though, most of us prefer to accept slight inelegance in exchange for a system that works. [/QUOTE]
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Cantrip Auto-Scaling - A 5e Critique
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