D&D 5E Limiting use of cantrips - what are the consequences?

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Also, I hope that those who want to limit cantrips just remove the warlock class from the game, to avoid people taking a useless class...

 

[Ranthalan]

Do people who play in games where cantrips are being cast every 6 seconds allow all characters to continually do other actions non-stop as well? Like taking down a castle with a mace or dashing every 'turn' for travel, etc.

I'm not following you. There are rules for travel. I assume you mean destroying a castle with a mace. If a player wanted to try, I'd let him. I'd establish a HP value for the castle (somewhere in the millions) and the player would have to roll for each attack. Eventually, (per our table rules) the player's mace would degrade because of botched rolls and the mace would become useless.

 

[Ranthalan]

Also, I hope that those who want to limit cantrips just remove the warlock class from the game, to avoid people taking a useless class...

I have limited cantrips and have a warlock in my game. I worked with the player to come up with a rule that met both our approval. It can be done.

 

[abirdcall]

I'm not following you. There are rules for travel. I assume you mean destroying a castle with a mace. If a player wanted to try, I'd let him. I'd establish a HP value for the castle (somewhere in the millions) and the player would have to roll for each attack. Eventually, (per our table rules) the player's mace would degrade because of botched rolls and the mace would become useless.

So you house rule one situation and use rules which cover use over time for another while disallowing the player from using an at will action over and over but you are perfectly fine with a wizard casting a spell every 6 seconds?

I don't have words. I think that speaks for itself.

 

[Ranthalan]

So you house rule one situation and use rules which cover use over time for another while disallowing the player from using an at will action over and over but you are perfectly fine with a wizard casting a spell every 6 seconds?

I don't have words. I think that speaks for itself.

Sorry, I'm still not following you. I'm not disallowing anything. The rules allow for a wizard to cast a spell/cantrip every 6 seconds. It's no different than a fighter using sword every turn. The rules balance spells (not cantrips) by restricting how many you can cast in a time frame. There are no restrictions per the rules on cantrips. This led to undesired affects at my table so I introduced a mechanism to limit them. All of this was done with the input of the players and their sign off before the rule change was put into effect.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Pursuant to another idea I posted here about increasing spell power by toying with the save-each-round mechanic for ongoing spell effects (such as paralysis), namely reducing the number of saves one gets, I'm now thinking about cantrips. More particularly, the flavor of unlimited cantrips is not something that fits well within the custom low-magic campaign world that I wish to offer my players. I like magic to be scarce, but meaningful.

Whether spells and/or cantrips are at-will or short-rest-recharge or daily, they're a dependable, renewable resource, that can be used systematically and thus unlikely to feel 'scarce.'

Has anyone toyed with - or implemented - the idea of limiting cantrip use? For example, they could work like other spells with a limited number of spell slots.

In past editions, yes. Under 1e you memorized cantrips by cashing in a 1st-level slot and memorizing 4 cantrips. In 2e, Cantrip became a 1st-level spell that let you do many of the things 1e cantrips did 1/round for hours/level. For my campaign, I expanded on that with a 2nd and 4th level spell that let you cast increasingly useful cantrips (the 4th level spell in essence gave you a few 1/rnd at-will combat-useful effects all day, much like 5e cantrips).

With 5e's neo-Vancian slots, it'd make a lot of sense to cash in a slot to gain use of cantrips. Maybe 1 cantrip per slot level?

The obvious downside for casters, is of course that they might have to revert back to clearly suboptimal combat options once they're out of cantrips and spells.

Cantrips are meant to be sub-optimal in 5e. (Except maybe for Warlocks, that is.)

Although this is less likely to be a problem in my games due to rare occurences when there are numerous battles in a single day, it's still a very valid concern.

If you rarely have the recommended 6-8 encounters/day, your casters spell slots are going to seem even less like a 'scarce' resource.

So, what do you think about this?

How would you implement such a system?

If I were going to try to run a genuinely low-magic game, I'd probably just make casting available only through Prestige Classes with fairly dire prerequisites, and with limitations far more severe than the relatively simple and dependable daily slot.

What type of counter-measure would you consider for casters, especially ones that have poor non-magic battle options, to mitigate the loss of unlimited cantrips?

Wouldn't worry about it. In a low-magic setting, where enemies are unlikely to have magic or be prepared to deal with it and magic items are even rarer than usual, casters already get a relative boost in power/importance because their spells are in greater demand, and make more significant impacts when used.

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

It sounds like you're ultimately trying to revert to an earlier edition. Cantrips consuming 1st-level slots was an AD&D thing, in 3.x/PF they have their own set of slots. And, in those prior eds, you didn't have saves every round against most spells. It wouldn't be hard to simply play an earlier ed, nor that difficult to port it's spellcasting systems into 5e wholesale.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Didn't read the whole thing, but here's what I'd do (and may do in my next 5e campaign)...

Cantrips require "actual" material components. A simple Focus and Material Component Pouch isn't going to cut it. Specific material for each cantrip. Material is used up in casting. The material component should be expensive enough and/or 'bulky' enough that it serves the equivalency of "ammo" (re: arrows, bolts, sling stones, etc). I never liked the "cantrip...all day long, baby!" schtic. If you're gonna do that with the rules, may as well just have a rule where if you have a bow and a 'quiver of arrows', you never run out of them and can always find/craft some in a few minutes (tops) if you find yourself without them. By having unlimited casting of cantrips, but limited ammo for everyone else, the scales got tipped far too much on the caster side of thing.

There are a lot of different ways I can see this being implemented...but I'll figure that out when/if I decide to do this.

Now, as an asside, I've had a house-rule in my 1e AD&D "Eisla" campaign (my own setting;very low power/level) that handled Cantrips like "semi-limited skills" for Magic-Users. Basically, each time you cast a Cantrip, you put a mark next to it's name and rolled an Int check on d20, minus the number of check marks. So if you had cast Bluelight 3 times, and you had a 15 Int, you would need to roll a 12 or lower to cast it a fourth time. If you succeeded, the next time you'd need to roll an 11 or lower (15 - 4 times you've already cast it that "day"; my days are 'between sleeps'...and yes, I have rules for how much someone can sleep in a day...the higher your Con, the less chance you have to fall asleep 'before you are tired'). Anyway, this may work for 5e as well, but would require more book keeping...something that I generally try and avoid in my 5e games.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Horwath]

Please no.

we'll all have elven wizards again. As using longbow is still 10 categories less degrading for a wizard than using crossbow

 

[Skyscraper]

I have limited cantrips and have a warlock in my game. I worked with the player to come up with a rule that met both our approval. It can be done.

Would you care to share it?

 

[Ranthalan]

Would you care to share it?

It's on one of my posts on the prior page. Forgive my ignorance on forum mechanics, I'm not sure if there's a way for me to link to that post.