Would you allow this? (half-elf Dilettante power)

[nute]

There is a player in my current campaign who is playing a warlord, but styling him as a bard - logical, since the role is basically to inspire and provide buffs to the party, only it's done here through combat maneuvers rather than song.

To keep with the flavor, he requested to use the Dilettante racial ability to gain the Wizard class's "Cantrips" feature rather than a 1st level at-will attack power.

I don't think it would be broken to allow "Cantrips" as an ability once per encounter, choosing one of the four and regaining the ability after a short rest.

Thoughts?

 

[generalhenry]

heck I'd say giving him cantrips at will would be fine.

 

[useridunavailable]

Sure, I would. Sounds like fun!

 

[Kzach]

No, I wouldn't allow it.

It's gimping his character for nothing but RP flavour. I'd rather give a player the cantrips as a freebie than have a player purposefully weaken a character just for fluff reasons.

I've always thought it selfish to do this kind of thing. Why should the rest of the group suffer for one player character's weaknesses?

The rules are meant for combat and utility, RP should never require rules and if you have to use rules to represent an RP element of your character, then you should reconsider how you go about RP'ing in the first place.

 

[generalhenry]

It's gimping his character for nothing but RP flavour

still probably beats a 3E bard

(man I miss my 2E bard, he was OP)

 

[Hella_Tellah]

No, I wouldn't allow it.

It's gimping his character for nothing but RP flavour. I'd rather give a player the cantrips as a freebie than have a player purposefully weaken a character just for fluff reasons.

I've always thought it selfish to do this kind of thing. Why should the rest of the group suffer for one player character's weaknesses?

The rules are meant for combat and utility, RP should never require rules and if you have to use rules to represent an RP element of your character, then you should reconsider how you go about RP'ing in the first place.

I don't think the cantrips are useless in combat at all. Sure, they don't do damage, but my wizard uses ghost sound to lure out enemies, prestidigitation to snuff out torches and draw enemies into a low-light area (we're all elves), mage hand to swap things out of his pack for just one minor action, and light to make a scary, huge shadow of himself for a Wizard-of-Oz circumstance bonus to Intimidate.

Cantrips are totally worth it. I'd let him take them.

 

[Samurai]

No, I wouldn't allow it.

It's gimping his character for nothing but RP flavour. I'd rather give a player the cantrips as a freebie than have a player purposefully weaken a character just for fluff reasons.

I've always thought it selfish to do this kind of thing. Why should the rest of the group suffer for one player character's weaknesses?

The rules are meant for combat and utility, RP should never require rules and if you have to use rules to represent an RP element of your character, then you should reconsider how you go about RP'ing in the first place.

He still has his usual at-will and encounter powers from his class, so trading a bonus at will-as-encounter power for 4 level 1 utility powers is not hurting him at all. In fact, it may be a little too powerful IMO. I'd probably let him choose 1 or maybe 2 of the Cantrips to use, not all 4.

 

[fuzzlewump]

He still has his usual at-will and encounter powers from his class, so trading a bonus at will-as-encounter power for 4 level 1 utility powers is not hurting him at all. In fact, it may be a little too powerful IMO. I'd probably let him choose 1 or maybe 2 of the Cantrips to use, not all 4.

Keep in mind the "4 level 1 utility powers" versus a scorching burst. Yes, you can have a perfect situation set up by the DM that allows a ghost sound or whatever to completely avoid a combat or win a challenge, but for the most part the cantrips do not come up often, and when they do it's almost certainly not going to do much to the encounter.

Keep in mind prestidigitation is ranged 2, so you must be 2 squares away from a torch to snuff it out, and you're using a standard action to do so. I would angry if I was the rest of the party if the Warlord used his standard action to run up and put out a torch or make spooky noises as the orcs are chopping at me. Yes, the cantrips alone, especially putting limits on them, is gimped to the nine layers.

 

[Samurai]

Keep in mind the "4 level 1 utility powers" versus a scorching burst. Yes, you can have a perfect situation set up by the DM that allows a ghost sound or whatever to completely avoid a combat or win a challenge, but for the most part the cantrips do not come up often, and when they do it's almost certainly not going to do much to the encounter.

Keep in mind prestidigitation is ranged 2, so you must be 2 squares away from a torch to snuff it out, and you're using a standard action to do so. I would angry if I was the rest of the party if the Warlord used his standard action to run up and put out a torch or make spooky noises as the orcs are chopping at me. Yes, the cantrips alone, especially putting limits on them, is gimped to the nine layers.

Not all encounters involve orcs in a dungeon. Most of our party encounters have been in the city, with a corrupt (turned out mind-controlled) Baron, lots of social encounters, and mysteries. We have maybe 1 battle every 2 days of real-time game play. What good is a scorching burst then, compared to Mage Hand and other powers useful outside of combat?

 

[Nifft]

There is a player in my current campaign who is playing a warlord, but styling him as a bard - logical, since the role is basically to inspire and provide buffs to the party, only it's done here through combat maneuvers rather than song.

Cool.

To keep with the flavor, he requested to use the Dilettante racial ability to gain the Wizard class's "Cantrips" feature rather than a 1st level at-will attack power.

As others have said, it's a nice suite of abilities, and I'd allow him to use them at-will since they have very little combat use (other than Light, they're basically useless in combat, and Light isn't exactly game-breaking).

You might also want to allow him to take Arcana and Thievery in place of Athletics and Endurance.

Cheers, -- N