D&D 5E reducing dominance of ranged: cantrips

[Satyrn]

I think I'd tack on a material component to every cantrip. So a wizard in a cell couldn't cast their cantrips. The unlimited mending becomes limited, at least in a story way.

And then you could require that the material components of the "combat cantrips" be tracked like ammunition , so the casters are limited while not limiting cantrips to slots or mechanics based uses per rest.

 

[mellored]

Edrich blast isn't all that good. No fighting style, no magical weapons, no weapon damage bonuses, no feats, ect... The only real benifit is that it auto-scales. But a fighter 11/warlock 2 would do more damage with a bow. Much more with feats.

If your want to boost melee, then boost melee. Swords do 1d10 damage, mauls do 2d8 (I would still keep rapiers at 1d8). Then give everything 1 HP/level to compensate. All other attacks will be weaker by comparison.

Also fill the world with cover, trees, walls, fog, cliffs, and darkness (lamp is 15', darkvision is 60'). It should only be the occasional battle that happens in an open field on a clear day.


As for a wizard burning a lock, that's no different than a fighter smashing it. Ask for an endurance check to avoid exhaustion after 20 tries, and have guards notice the noise. Either way, stop making your locks out of wood.
For mending, I could see adding a component cost and increasing the casting time. Something comparable to what a craftsman would have to pay and do.

 

[Captain Panda]

Cantrips are fine as they are. They do not compete in damage with, for example, a sharpshooter build. I kinda expected this thread to be addressing that disparity more than the relatively underpowered cantrips in the game. The only one that is a solid damage competitor is eldritch blast. Granted, I do think they should come online for a warlock a level or two later, but it really doesn't break the game. If you think if does, I suspect you haven't encountered anyone who has actually done something that breaks the game.
Summons, for example.

 

[Ashkelon]

Edrich blast isn't all that good. No fighting style, no magical weapons, no weapon damage bonuses, no feats, ect... The only real benifit is that it auto-scales. But a fighter 11/warlock 2 would do more damage with a bow. Much more with feats.

Eldritch blast does however benefit from hex (well, so would a bow user, but getting both hex and 3+ attacks with a bow is much more difficult than hex + 3 attacks with eldritch blast). On top of that, the warlock could multiclass with sorcerer to effectively cast eldritch blast quickened every round. A level 2 warlock level 9 sorcerer has the ability to make 6 attacks per round for 1d10+1d6+5 damage with each hit pushing targets 10 feet. All of that is done without the need for feats.

I would say the base eldritch blast is more or less fine (though it does seem odd that warlocks get their 4th attack regardless of multiclassing and 3 levels before the fighter's capstone feature). The real problem with cantrips is quicken Spell metamagic. The sorcery point cost is low enough that a multiclass sorcerer warlock can effectively cast quickened eldritch blasts at-will. Even without using eldritch blast quickened fire bolts or quickened booming blades can still both put out more than respectable damage.

If spellcasters at-will capabilities are supposed to be lower than their martial counterparts because they possess dramatic and powerful encounter altering Spell effects, then there really is no reason to introduce game mechanics that give spellcasters at-will damage that matches that of the martial warriors. Especially in a game with no feats.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Comparing adventurers to teachers isn't really a good example... Teaching, on a pre-college level, is a very necessary and therefore common occupation, and doesn't have a relatively high entrance requirement in the grand scheme of things.

I'd say adventurers are more like professional athletes in the larger sports. There may be a whole lot of people in society who played ball in high school in the USA (represented in D&D by town guards, common muggers, temple priests and Uncle Bobo who only ever learned Minor Illusion and uses it to entertain the family at picnics), but once you get to the college level there are, what?
Maybe a hundred thousand college athletes out of a population of billions? And once you hit the professional leagues... There are less than 2000 people playing in the NFl and around 450 in the NBA.

Even if there are a significant population of people in a society who can cast the Mending cantrip (or Light, for that matter), it's still not going to wreck (or even majorly impact) an economy for two reasons...

1. Not everybody has access to it.
2. Unless those who do have access to it are under some kind of obligation to cast it for free and on demand, there are going to be very few cases where it wouldn't simply be more cost-effective for the majority of commonly-used items to either repair something the old-fashioned way or even buy a new one instead of finding and paying someone to cast a cantrip...

On the larger issue of verisimilitude, and wizards burning through locks, etc... Verisimilitude is the answer. In game terms, a metal lock is not only going to have a fairly high number of hit points but is also probably going to have resistance to most kinds of damage. Most materials are going to be resistant to at least one or more kinds of damage, even if they're vulnerable to others. And some damage types may not affect a particular substance at all - particularly psychic, necrotic and radiant...
In most cases, it's going to take a significant amount of time for a spellcaster to accomplish something solely using cantrips, and each casting is going to generate noise and highly visible effects.
While a wizard could easily Fireball a door off it's hinges, it's not unreasonable to assume that Fire Bolt isn't going to effect the entire surface area of the door and will at best eventually burn a medium-sized hole in it and maybe set it on fire.

On a slightly different note, a quick perusal of the damage-dealing cantrips in the PHB brings up the interesting fact that out of all of them only Fire Bolt actually specifies "creature or object" as it's target rather than creature, so take that as you will.

 

[mellored]

Eldritch blast does however benefit from hex (well, so would a bow user, but getting both hex and 3+ attacks with a bow is much more difficult than hex + 3 attacks with eldritch blast). On top of that, the warlock could multiclass with sorcerer to effectively cast eldritch blast quickened every round. A level 2 warlock level 9 sorcerer has the ability to make 6 attacks per round for 1d10+1d6+5 damage with each hit pushing targets 10 feet. All of that is done without the need for feats.

Hex makes EB about on par with archery style, but it takes concentration, has shorter range, limited use, and fighter still gets their battlemaster's dice and action surges.

For sorcerer11/warlock2
(6d10 + 30) * 60% accuracy = 31.

vs archery fighter 13 (sharpshooter + crossbow experties)
(4d6+ 60)* 45% = 33.3


At level 20
(8d10+40) * 60% = 45.6

vs archer
(5d6+75) * 45% = 41.625


So yes, a really high-level sorcerer/warlock can slightly out damage a bow user. But you sacrifice a lot of defense for that little increase. Like -3 AC and -40 HP.
Also action surge, battle master dice, and ignoring cover are not included, but sorcerer can skip a few quickens for a fireball when that would be more helpful.

If spellcasters at-will capabilities are supposed to be lower than their martial counterparts because they possess dramatic and powerful encounter altering Spell effects, then there really is no reason to introduce game mechanics that give spellcasters at-will damage that matches that of the martial warriors. Especially in a game with no feats.

To quicken spam EB, you need to sacrifice those spells for SP. You'll run out of slots quickly if you try and do both. Then you'll be back to doing half the damage the fighter does.


Overall i'd say it's pretty balanced. Unless you're specifically playing at level 17-19. Then again, sorcerer's suck pretty bad from 1-3.

 

[neogod22]

Herein I would like to explore consequences of limiting cantrip use.

The main reason is that if we (as a larger effort) tweak the game to reduce the advantages of ranged weapons over melee weapons, this might make minmaxers simply switch over to Eldritch Blast et al.

A smaller (but to me equally important) reason is to me, granting some characters infinite access to magical powers presents large verisimiltude problems. Wizards trivially escaping cells by burning away locks. Entire economies wrecked since nothing needs repair. And so on. No matter how I try to solve these worldbuilding issues, the end analysis is always "the problem is that cantrips aren't finite".

Do you see any major negative impacts on playing the game, if cantrips were, say, limited to 4 slots per short rest?

Well the game doesn't need to be tweaked as in you limiting casters and ranged attackers. There are multiple ways to limit ranged attackers, it's called cover. Walls, doors, turns all limit ranged attackers. If you are using intelligent monsters, they may have a counter, goblins use bows and have nimble escape. Some monsters may be spell casters also. Or have really fast monsters move into melee range with the ranged attackers.

As far as your second point, spell caster of all sorts should be rare. Unless the characters are in a big city, or a town that has something like a mage college (which would probably be in a big city anyway), the locals might be lucky to have a real cleric living there, or a druid that comes by every few months. In your world, mages can be as rare as you want them to be, and the cantrip mend is a very slow process. It may be good for repairing small things like clothing and armor, but anything major, you put a ridiculous time frame on it, or say it's beyond the spell's ability.

Using firebolt to melt locks, there are a few things you can do to stop a caster from casting. Binding and gagging them would be the easiest way. Most spells require a verbal and somatic components so binding and gagging usually works. Also if the characters get captured in a major city or a place where spell casters are prevalent, they would probably have some special cells that can prevent casters from escaping. I don't think limiting players and their strategies a good idea because then they will think you are picking on them and the game becomes not fun. Remember, the players are the heroes, it's not your job as a DM to kill them, but to make it the best story possible.

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[Saeviomagy]

Herein I would like to explore consequences of limiting cantrip use.

The main reason is that if we (as a larger effort) tweak the game to reduce the advantages of ranged weapons over melee weapons, this might make minmaxers simply switch over to Eldritch Blast et al.

Well, that's only a problem if you specifically tweak ranged weapons to lower damage or increase reliance on stats. If you just change things like movement and the penalties for firing into/while in melee, then you don't have to treat most cantrips differently.

A smaller (but to me equally important) reason is to me, granting some characters infinite access to magical powers presents large verisimiltude problems. Wizards trivially escaping cells by burning away locks.

1) This is only a problem at levels 1-2. At third level, wizards get a teleport and trivially escape cells that way.
2) It's not even a problem then, because you're not going to let someone with a +4 strength mod punch their way out of the cell, are you? Same average damage as the firebolt. You're already noping one scenario, so just nope the other. If it would be dumb to hack your way through a dungeon door with a greataxe (and it would be), it's equally dumb to say that fire dealing equivalent hitpoint damage should burn the thing down.

Entire economies wrecked since nothing needs repair.

Except... why is the guy with magic power spending his life repairing everything? Are casters so common that the best job he can find is casting one spell over and over again? If that's the case, then does every blacksmith have a caster on hand to cast guidance over and over again? etc etc. This is the same problem as "nobody ever dies because there are clerics with cure wounds everywhere, and they cast it for free". The problem is that you've made spell casters an inexhaustible resource with no personal goals instead of something special.

And so on. No matter how I try to solve these worldbuilding issues, the end analysis is always "the problem is that cantrips aren't finite".

No, your problem is that everyone and their dog is blessed with magic and has nothing better to do than mend an item every 10 minutes.

Do you see any major negative impacts on playing the game, if cantrips were, say, limited to 4 slots per short rest?

Bored AF casters would top my list. I mean typically a caster is already better off using a ranged weapon (up until about level 10) instead of a damage cantrip. You'd just be mandating it.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

One thing I don't like about the cantrip scaling is that over level 11 cantrips start to deal more damage then some first level spells like chromatic orb.
not sure if this is a problem with the cantrips or those 1st level spells being to weak

 

[Valetudo]

Well, the problem is(If you consider it a problem, I dont) the warlock. Its obvious they didnt playtest the warlocks mc potential enough in the beginning. If your really having a problem with your group abusing this, then just change agonizing blast to level 3 or 4. If your a munchkin group, who cares? Thats what min/maxxers do.