It’s not that I WANT to do more than intended, it’s why I asked the question here to get a consensus. The description says you can spread the fire to fill a five foot cube adjacent to it. Fire is naturally painful, and it doesn’t say, like Shape Water does, that the space cannot have a creature in it.
So if I’m in a burning building made of wood, and I’m fighting a goblin for some reason, and we’re standing next to fire, and I use the Control Fire cantrips to spread that fire into his space, you’re saying that would only do 1 point, like hitting him with a torch? Alchemist Fire s not Magical Fire and it does 1d4 of fire damage at the beginning of every turn unless it is put out.
But then the DMG says “burned by coals” would be 1d10 and “stumbling into a fire pit” is 2d10. Having the ground underneath you erupt into flames should be comparable to “stumbling in a fire pit”, but I’d agree that 2d10 seems like a bit much for a cantrips that isn’t meant for combat.
The main thing is that fire is naturally damaging, and the cantrips lets you control it and spread it to different spaces. Having a torch means you can easily spread the fire to any space around you as long as there’s something flammable in that space.
Obviously there are cantrips that can cause fire damage more efficiently, but I’ve got a character with no damage cantrips and I took Control Flame because it goes with his background. He’s an Entertainer and his thing is he’s a Fire Dancer, so he uses Control Flame as a means to make his performances more dazzling and spectacular. It was as I was thinking of the cool things he could do with that that it occurred to me that if he has what is essentially a staff or club with a flaming torch on the end, he could do some interesting things in combat with Control Flame, since it’s not Magical Flame. He’s a Sorcerer, so he could grab Firebolt or Create Bonfire later, but he’s only lvl 3 right now, and I’ve got other means of dealing with combat for the time being. This was just something interesting I’d thought of during creation and I wanted to get some thoughts.