D&D 5E removing cantrips: what to give instead?

[Tales and Chronicles]

Lets say I wanted to remove cantrip because reasons. What would be a fair trade in term of power for the classes that get them?

• Light armor prof?
• Simple weapon/ short selection of martial weapons?
• More skills?
• extra attacks (at level 6, 7 or 8 or 11?)?
• Extra slots (+1 for spell level 1 to 4 ?)
• Something else
• Mish mash of all of the above?

Its not a poll, its not a discussion about the reasons why someone like or not cantrips: its just a whiteroom design for now

 

[Tony Vargas]

Lets say I wanted to remove cantrip because reasons. What would be a fair trade in term of power for the classes that get them?

A button that says "I stopped casting cantrips, ask me how!" ...not 'button..' … oh, right, 'ribbon.'

Honestly, casters have it so easy in 5e, you could take away Cantrips and/or Rituals - or even Slots, leaving only cantrips & rituals - and they'd still be viable.

….


Edit: Ok, you might want to let the Warlock keep his Eldritch Blast.

 

[Salthorae]

Given that cantrips are primarily used for combat...

I guess the question is: is the goal to make casters less "all day combat" capable?

If not, then weapon proficiencies, armor proficiencies both make sense.

Extra slots for sure, regardless of why cantrips are removed.

I'd shy away from Extra attacks for the casters. That's just me.

 

[Stoutstien]

Maybe just limit cantrips to being able to cast a number of times equal to casting modifier per short rest?

Removing cantrips would have to be addressed class to class. Removing them from cleric is doable but warlocks are a whole different problem.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Maybe just limit cantrips to being able to cast a number of times equal to casting modifier per short rest?

Removing cantrips would have to be addressed class to class. Removing them from cleric is doable but warlocks are a whole different problem.

Well, I think Eldritch Blast could be an at-will feature of the warlock instead of a cantrip.

 

[Dausuul]

As far as damage output goes, Extra Attack at level 5 or 6 would be a fair trade IMO. A crossbow does as well as a cantrip at low levels; Extra Attack would keep it competitive through level 10, and by level 11 you don't spend a lot of time casting cantrips anyway. Then maybe toss in an extra skill or two to compensate for the lost utility options.

That said, I think warlocks and sorcerers would need a bit of extra love. Those two classes rely much more heavily on cantrips than other casters.

 

[cbwjm]

I think the extra spell slots option would be best since full casters would want to rely on their spells (some more than others) and taking away cantrips means they have to rely more on their spell slots or go back to the old throwing of darts or using light crossbows.

 

[DemoMonkey]

Proficiency with a d8 ranged weapon that uses their spellcasting stat as the attack and damage stat.

 

[prabe]

Without getting into the why, you'll probably want to address the interaction/s between cantrips and bonus-action spells.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Lets say I wanted to remove cantrip because reasons.

It occurs to me the reasons may matter.

Like, if the reasons include something along the lines of "at-will casting cheapens magic and makes it seem less magical" then giving them darts & crossbows &c to replace the light DPR grinding of cantrips would make sense. But, if it's the damage-grinding being undesireable, itself, that's the reason....

Also, the change needn't be to the classes. For instance, if you pull in the number of encounters/day from 6-8, that's the equivalent of giving more slots, because more rounds of each encounter can involve casting rather than plinking.