D&D 5E Limiting cantrips - advice needed

[phmas]

If what you want is that old-school feeling of harsh resource-management, especially for wizards, try eliminating damaging can trips and then powering up Arcane Recovery. Like, instead of recovering 1/2 your level in spells, you recover your whole level. Same deal for Circle of the Land druids. For sorcerers, give out more sorcery points (maybe level + Cha mod). For warlocks you already said you're letting them keep eldritch blast. I think most other casters have non-cantrip ways of dealing damage and so they don't need any compensation.

That is certainly something I am considering playing with. I'll try it after I test my previous idea!

 

[Mouseferatu]

Except for all those skilled martial artists who can ya know, chop through stone with their bare hands.

A thin slate of stone, maybe, or a brick. Not a genuine wall of of carved stone, multiple feet thick, like you'd find in an average D&D dungeon. There's no amount of skill or toughening of the skin/flesh/bone that'll allow for that. (Speaking real-world here, of course.)

Also, whether or not you can actually use this limb or that tool is still tangential to my overall point, which is the repetition of the act. Those were examples off the top of my head, but the point was that constant exertion has its practical/common sense limits, even if it doesn't have mechanical ones built into the game. The fact that two DMs may disagree on where those limits lie doesn't mean they don't exist. And again, there's no reason that same logic shouldn't apply to constant cantrips.

 

[Smoo]

If what you want is that old-school feeling of harsh resource-management, especially for wizards, try eliminating damaging can trips and then powering up Arcane Recovery. Like, instead of recovering 1/2 your level in spells, you recover your whole level. Same deal for Circle of the Land druids. For sorcerers, give out more sorcery points (maybe level + Cha mod). For warlocks you already said you're letting them keep eldritch blast. I think most other casters have non-cantrip ways of dealing damage and so they don't need any compensation.

I like the idea for the wizard, but I think a campaign trying to capture the elusiveness and mystery of old edition magic would not even allow the sorcerer or warlock classes. Those are definitely more consistent with a world where magic is as commonplace as swords. Likewise, many of the subclasses would no longer be viable. That type of setting is going to turn off a lot of players to be sure, but there are a bunch more who would absolutely crave it.

 

[Jester David]

Late to the convo, but if I were going to limit the use of cantrips I might pull a less arbitrary number of uses. Like using a particular cantrips a number of times equal to the spell casting ability score modifier. If, after playtesting, more uses are required then modifier + proficiency bonus would work.
That's 5-6 at low levels, which is akin to using a cantrip twice an encounter for 3 encounters.

If doing something in my game to limit cantrip use I'd have them castable at-will but increase the casting time to 10 seconds. So it takes two actions to cast: one to prep the spell and a second to unleash the magic. However, the prep work can be done between combats. So casters get one free cantrip per encounter and have to work for the second.

 

[CapnZapp]

Off-topic; feel free to skip.

A thin slate of stone, maybe, or a brick. Not a genuine wall of of carved stone, multiple feet thick, like you'd find in an average D&D dungeon. There's no amount of skill or toughening of the skin/flesh/bone that'll allow for that. (Speaking real-world here, of course.)

Also, whether or not you can actually use this limb or that tool is still tangential to my overall point, which is the repetition of the act. Those were examples off the top of my head, but the point was that constant exertion has its practical/common sense limits, even if it doesn't have mechanical ones built into the game. The fact that two DMs may disagree on where those limits lie doesn't mean they don't exist. And again, there's no reason that same logic shouldn't apply to constant cantrips.

Look, 5th edition is the first edition I've played that a) does not provide complete stats for making holes in walls and b) tells you to use common sense (the exact quote is "Can a fighter cut through a
section of a stone wall with a sword? No, the sword is
likely to break before the wall does.")

But it's still a game where a fighter can do as much damage with a single swing as a frikkin' siege tower, and MUCH more damage per round.

So to conclude this very off-topic tangent, let's take a 3rd edition stone wall. A 10x10 section has "hardness" 8 and 900 hp. Assuming a character with STR 18 and a +1 magical longsword, that's 1d10+5, meaning 2,5 points of damage on average. He makes a hole in that stone wall in 36 minutes.

Then consider how this is a VERY conservative estimate, since I haven't factored in more than one attack per round, or any abilities (such as power attack).

My point is not that you're playing it wrong.

My point is that a character swinging an axe for ten minutes is one thing, as regards the energy that is developed. The energy needed to cause 10 points of cutting damage is something you or I can do - if you hack at me with an axe, I'm likely to go down if not die outright in one attack.

But allowing a character to "swing" Firebolt or Ray of Frost for ten minutes straight, now THAT'S absurd. In order to create similar damage to me using nothing but fire or cold (or necrotic!)...

THIS is what at-will cantrips are breaking.

Cantrips at will are fine IN COMBAT since combat never lasts very long.

Cantrips out of combat are utterly broken if you can "swing" them as long as a woodcutter can chop wood.

Sure, it's easy to say "okay, so let's rule you can't cantrip for very long". If that works for you, fine. Some of you aren't even going down this road, and need to do absolutely nothing. But if you have players who like finding and using rules literally (without applying self-enforced common sense filters), you might find my suggestion useful. That is: how about giving each cantrip 10 "slots" resetting on a short or long rest. That's 40 slots if you have four cantrips, so the series of fights where you run out of both Fire Bolt and Ray of Frost and, say, Poison Spray (30 castings) would be pretty rare. In other words, your combat prowess would not be meaningfully affected, but your environmental one would. (Ideally, you would never actually enforce such a rule; force players to count their cantrips I mean. It's only there to be pointed to, after all)

That's all I did. Now I'm done being off-topic. Thanks.

 

[Quickleaf]

5/short rest will ensure that, considering 1-2 short rests a day, the caster will have cantrips available for combat for the most part, but at the same time, will have to manage the resource and cantrips would not be prone to abuse

Sounds like a good solution for your group!

In groups where players can't abide by [MENTION=1288]Mouseferatu[/MENTION]'s common sense rule that "at-will" does not mean "indefinitely" (whether for physical activities or cantrips), or where you're trying to capture Old School feel, this seems like an entirely reasonable rule to enforce.

Happy planewalking

 

[Hriston]

It had a 1st-level spell called "Cantrip", which basically acted as a prolonged always-on prestidigitation that lasted several hours.

I missed that, not being too familiar with 2E myself. Replicating this spell may provide a solution of sorts. Using a first-level spell slot the caster may "turn-on" his or her cantrips for one hour per caster-level. Of course, to fully replicate the spell you would have to do away with damage-causing cantrips altogether.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Re: as much damage as a siege tower... HP for people is different HP for things. Isn't it?

People HP (and thus the damage you can do in HP terms) is a combination of physical toughness and skill, evasion, luck, stamina, etc.

Things HP is pure physical toughness. That wall can't dodge or turn your blade at the last second from a killing blow to a scratch.

So I'd say HP for things is going to be arbitrary and wouldn't baulk at giving Things massive HP. A fence panel could conceivably break if you fall against it. But a thick dungeon wall?

Even if Andy Dufresne was a STR 20 Barbarian doing 50HP damage every single round and didn't have to worry about the noise, it should still take him days to get out Shawshank that way.

Reason, exhaustion. Hitting a walking bag of water (ie, a person) has a lot less resistance than hitting a stone wall. You'd need the right tool for a start.

Flimsy fence panel: AC 0. HP 3.
Thick Dungeon Wall: AC 0*. HP 1,750. Immune to Finesse weapons. Immune to standard unarmed attacks. Unarmed attacks generate auto-hit AoE for 1HP damage to the attacker. Resistant to Piercing damage. Resistant to Fire, Cold** and Electricity damage. Immune to poison and necrotic damage. Every three melee attacks generates a level of Exhaustion in the attacker.

*you can hit it but roll to see if you Fumble and injure yourself, just in case. Because mockery.
** immediate and consecutive fire then cold or cold then fire damage negates Resistance to all but the first attack. More than ten minutes between such attacks starts the cycle over again.

Incidentally to stop warlock/Sorceror etc spamming of cantrips, you can rule that after a given number of consecutive cantrips the caster suffers exhaustion, too, just in general.

 

[Mephista]

I agree.

Handing out at will cantrips sounds reasonable *precisely* because of the combat focus.

It's outside combat it gets absurd, fast, that you can do cold or acid damage every round, for at least as often and as long as your friends can swing their swords and stab their daggers.

It's simply a staggering amount of energy. And since it isn't slashing, blunt or piercing, you can do things I'm sure the designers and playtesters never thought of, much less explored or tested.

People can't swing swords all day. You get tired really quickly. In a game, where combat is over generally in 4 rounds (30 seconds), and you can take a break, its not a big deal.

Its the same with cantrips. Any limit you put up will generally be meaningless, because its just not a situation that comes up in play that often. Seriously, do you have problems with people trying to destroy corpses by shooting firebolts at it constantly? Sure, its possible, but so is completely destroying a body with bullets. Its annoying, long, time consuming, messy, and just plain not smart.

If the designers and playtesters didn't think it up, then house rule it. If you're playing Planescape, invest in a bag of devouring for corpse disposal. There are much easier ways then trying to twist a cantrip beyond its intended purpose here.

Honestly, it sounds like your problem is something that comes up in a white room, and nothing in actual play. Still, just don't like damaging cantrips? Simplest solution is to just ban damage cantrips. KISS applies. If they need more spells a day, start dropping scrolls for them.

 

[Kalshane]

I'm going to say that's what they've done to clerics in 5e, and it's part of why they're disappointing to me.

The choice to deny the possibility of the laser cleric in 5e (no attack cleric spells; only a single spell requiring a save to avoid damage) shows that the deployment of cantrips is crucial to the experience of play for a class. If there were a single fire bolt available to classics, is it one everyone would take? Not necessarily. But it sure would be nice to have the option.

I made a "laser cleric" for 5E. Haven't had a chance to play him much, but I went with a variant human Light Cleric and took Spell Sniper as my bonus feat, choosing "Produce Flame" as my cantrip. Depending on the target, I can toss balls of flame or blast them with an explosion of radiant energy. Without feats, you can do the same with a Nature Cleric.