D&D 5E reducing dominance of ranged: cantrips

[Tony Vargas]

That was nice! I was going to say that some forumites view themselves as the Phillip Marlowe to Mr. Mearls's Inspector Clouseau.

Or they might be Kato, if they constantly attack him...

...for his own good, of course.

 

[Alatar]

With the groups I have played in, Warlocks have been rare because the players like role playing, and don't like the idea of selling their characters soul....

I'm a poor roleplayer in a roleplaying light group, and I feel the same way. One of our players is on his second warlock in two campaigns. The first one was slain outright by his patron for refusing to betray the party. He has a better arrangement this time, by all accounts. No one is dipping into warlock.

A player doing the same thing over and over and over is annoying. It is also boring.

Certainly, I would get bored by doing the same thing over and over. That used to be the knock against playing a fighter.

The ultimate game balance mechanic though is that anything a PC can do an NPC can do too.

Sorta. The DM won't put the time into building that NPC that I put into building my character, and he can't run an NPC party as well as 5 players can run 5 PCs.

I never really liked playing blaster type casters, it feels pretty boring to me and also never really enjoyed playing fighters for the same reason, however some of my friends do and find it fun. Good for both of us.

And tastes will change over time. In the late days of 3.5, I built a focused specialist wizard that just threw orbs of force. He was unstoppable, and being unstoppable was a lot of fun until eventually it wasn't. My last 3.5 wizard focused on battlefield control.

If a caster is in a cell with a lock, ask yourself, do you WANT them to escape? If no, come up with an acceptable reason why their plan won't work. If you DO want them to escape who cares how they do it. If it is a question of timing, you CONTROL that. If you don't like YOUR dice rolls cheat, especially if it makes a better STORY.

Sure, but if that player with the sorcerer chose Subtle Spell, the most un-DPR-ish of metamagic options, for just that kind of rarely occurring scenario, are you really going to foil all that investment for your story? I hope not.

I tell my players I cheat at rolls, just not which ones. Heck I reward creative spell use. If they use the same thing over and over I'll find a way to counter it for smarter enemies with intelligence gathering ability.

Yes, it is your job to bring the adversity, while avoiding inadvertent TPKs. There is no story otherwise.

If players are relying on cantrips so much that means they lack the creativity to really mess your plans up with better spells = easier to come up with cooler challenges.

Or it could just mean that the player has chosen to fill a particular role in the party. You could have one caster who skews toward battlefield control and another who specializes in ranged attack spells, cantrips included, a third who focuses on AOE stuff, a fourth who mostly does buffs. Or one of your casters might split his attention between any two of those areas of focus. Over many levels, an odds and sods adventuring party can morph into a killing machine. In 4e, it started that way. The 4e adventuring party was a combat unit. The default construct was a leader, a controller, a defender and two strikers.

 

[Ashkelon]

Class flavor is mutable. I've seen warlocks with no patrons at all. I've seen warlocks who make contracts with nature spirits. I've seen warlocks whose magic came through their bloodline. I've even seen a warlock whose magic was the result of demon being I prisoner in his body.

So the whole selling your soul for magic idea about the warlock is rather flawed. Not all warlocks do that.

 

[Alatar]

Class flavor is mutable. I've seen warlocks with no patrons at all. I've seen warlocks who make contracts with nature spirits. I've seen warlocks whose magic came through their bloodline. I've even seen a warlock whose magic was the result of demon being I prisoner in his body.

So the whole selling your soul for magic idea about the warlock is rather flawed. Not all warlocks do that.

Fine. Be that way. No cantrips for you.

I kid. Sure the language in the class description does leave wiggle room. Excessive wiggling, however, might be seen as poor form in some circles. Just sayin'. Every character is built inside a box of rules. Tough choices get made. Compromises are required. That makes designing characters and seeing them flourish fun. I prefer to flourish in the middle of the box rather than pushing against the sides of the box. All that leaning against wall is inelegant.

My guess is that one of the motivations for building the patron thing into the uber cantrip warlock class was to dissuade casually adopted 2 level dips. At some level, you are compromising player agency or you are hand waving, in my opinion. But it is just an opinion, and I am often mistaken.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Saeviomagy]

Sorry but are you saying that the difference isn't enormous?

Yes, if this was about making a face unrecognizable, an axe would do.

100 whacks with an axe is going to leave you with a pile of unidentifiable gore. It's pretty trivial to find videos on butchery online that show a full cow processed in 12 minutes. If you're not interested in ending up with neat accurate cuts of meat, you've got a lot of time on your hands.
100 shots with a fire cantrip is going to leave you with a moderately cooked corpse. The lethality of firebolt isn't high enough for it to be burning holes through people.
100 doses of acid splash will probably still leave you with a recognizable corpse (http://www.thecollapsedwavefunction.com/2013/08/the-mythbusters-take-on-breaking-bad.html)

But I'm talking about setting buildings on fire with no fuel, burning holes through stuff, melting away flesh or even metal

Setting things on fire with firebolt comes down to your DM's specific interpretation of flammable. If his attitude is that with enough temperature anything is flammable, then yes: firebolt will be able to burn buildings down with no fuel, set fire to adamantium and ignite the moon. If it matches the definitions of, say, the MSDS (http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/flammablesolid.html), then it can't set fire to paper.

Those are both pretty ridiculous extremes.

My rule of thumb is that if I can't ignite something with a cigarette lighter before it gets too hot to hold, then it's not going to catch from firebolt, and that will exclude most problems you seem to have.

, trivially repairing fleets of wagons and everything on them...

At 1 minute per break as long as the break is less than 1 foot. Where are you finding fleets of wagons that are unusable that only require castings of this? If you've got (say) a broken wagon axle, then you're going to need to unload the wagon, lift or overturn the wagon, realign the axle, then cast the spell, then reload the wagon.

You can choose to say "you can't do anything with a cantrip I can't do with an axe" and indeed the issue would be resolved.

You don't even need to say that. You just need to read what the cantrips actually do and not be ridiculously generous with your interpretations and assumptions.

 

[dkmurphy]

Class flavor is mutable. I've seen warlocks with no patrons at all. I've seen warlocks who make contracts with nature spirits. I've seen warlocks whose magic came through their bloodline. I've even seen a warlock whose magic was the result of demon being I prisoner in his body.

So the whole selling your soul for magic idea about the warlock is rather flawed. Not all warlocks do that.

Sure there is wiggle room, but in the PHB, and the way the class is written, the implication is that you are basically selling your soul. Any DM/group can change or modify the flavor as they see fit. But in --general-- its basically selling your soul.

From an RP perspective works for some characters and others would not want to do that. I've seen very little level dipping into warlock in games I've played. I've seen some multiclassing but they were mostly warlock. Online, and with min/max mentality it seems like a popular dip for many character builds. But in actual game play I haven't seen allot of that, mostly none. Have seen more than a few warlocks.

The class is largely based around their EB cantrip. It is a great perk and some players love it. For me personally I find it boring, and more of a 1 trick pony even if it is effective. The OP seems to want to nerf all cantrips because of EB and FireBolt, which seems really silly and unnecessary. If a character is built around an awesome EB so be it, that is what they want, they think it is fun let them have fun. As a DM find ways to challenge the player. Blaster style wizards are easier to take out than more creative and unpredictable casters. If the DM knows what you are going to default to intelligent enemies that have in game means to know what the characters do, it makes it easier for the DM to counter. If the DM can't come up with ideas to counter or make the game challenging, they can ask for help and ideas online.

Playing a wizard right now. The cantrip I spam all the time is prestidigitation, then minor illusion. I only resort to damage dealing ones when I can't think of more interesting things to do or if I run out of spell slots. But, I'm not playing a blaster. Its harder for the DM to figure out what I'm going to do, than it would be if I was just lobbing firebolts around all day.

 

[dkmurphy]

No one has yet to convince me that there is any real problem with cantrips with the exception of level dipping into Warlock for Eldritch Blast and the Invocations. This is more a multiclassing issue than a cantrip one. Maybe make Eldritch Blast a class ability that is not gained via multiclassing, to be honest I don't even believe that far is required.

How many people actually play that out in the wild doing a 2 level dip into warlock? I have seen a number of warlocks and they IRL tend to go Warlock all the way or MC with one other class. In a AL game where there is little background or continuity between adventures, playing with different DM's etc it might be more prevalent, but even in the AL games I've played I have not actually seen it. I see it more in builds online and with people min/maxing a built, but that doesn't mean it translates to actual game play in real life. I tend to see more level dipping in younger players and more of a character concept in older players. Younger players also seem to like blaster casters more. Just an observation not a criticism. If they are having fun awesome. But in a campaign where a player cares a bit more about their character, plays with a regular group the whole selling your soul and having a patron seems to be more of a cost and a character story includes that and it is part of the campaign and not just ignored and treated as another set of abilities on any old character. So in general it looks like more of a problem on PAPER and less of a problem in real actual play.

 

[jasper]

"Guys, I totally have my soul! Really! Not serving some fiendish Devil in exchange for syrupy, happy, Eldritch Blast goodness!

Oh. That? Yeah, I was just doing a little human sacrifice- but for the LULZ, not because my Master, Asmodeus, exalted be his name, commanded me to do it. Totes of my own free will! Right guys! Guys?"

#NOTALLWARLOCKS

MY EMPLOYEE LIES. HE SOLD HIS SOUL FOR 2 MCRIB SANDWICHES AND A SMALL FRY. I THREW IN THE DIET COKE AS BONUS.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*