D&D 5E Bigby's Back Hand as a cantrip?
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Bigby’s FingerYou can also have Bigby's Rude Hand.
Basically it has the same effect as Vicious Mockery, but it is by makes rude gestures at you instead of verbally insulting you.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Bigby's Facepalm.
TheSword
Legend
What’s the point of it staying in play?I believe it would be the only cantrip to do so and make attacks?
It then becomes a distraction and target of enemy attention that I would suggest is quite powerful.
Mixing ability scores for a spell seems to be... messy. In fact it’s best for it not to be linked to ability scores or rather it be whatever your spell casting stat is, in case it’s picked up by Bard or Warlock.
Also a ranged unarmed attack that has potentially a +3 or +4 to damage giving it a range of 4-7 or 5-8 at first level is going to be more powerful than pretty much any other cantrip.
Lord Twigs AC of 20 is crazy good. Far too good for a cantrip.
It then becomes a distraction and target of enemy attention that I would suggest is quite powerful.
Mixing ability scores for a spell seems to be... messy. In fact it’s best for it not to be linked to ability scores or rather it be whatever your spell casting stat is, in case it’s picked up by Bard or Warlock.
Also a ranged unarmed attack that has potentially a +3 or +4 to damage giving it a range of 4-7 or 5-8 at first level is going to be more powerful than pretty much any other cantrip.
Lord Twigs AC of 20 is crazy good. Far too good for a cantrip.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
I think that’s precisely what would make such a cantrip interesting. Like a cantrip version of spiritual weapon.
A fair critique. My thinking was, I wanted the hand to make an unarmed strike, but I wanted the attack mod and damage to scale based on the caster’s stats. Spellcasting ability would probably be a better choice to have it scale off of though, and it probably doesn’t need Strength and Dex scores like Bigby’s Hand has. Just give it a flat 10 AC and say the spell ends if it’s hit.
Keep in mind though, an unarmed strike deals 1 damage, plus mod. So it’s probably 4 damage, scaling up to 5 at 4th level and 6th at 8th level. That puts it on par with 1d8 cantrips at first, and eventually scaling up to 1d12. Seems ok to me.
TheSword
Legend
My god, the number of holdovers from 3e/pathfinder that I still have lodged in my brain 5 years later staggers me! I’ve still be treating it as 1d3. Thanks for pointing it out!
A consistent 4 or 5 damage is still good but it’s a good average. Also doing Bludgeoning damage is going to reduce its power compared to using force.
Honestly it is almost flavor text. It could have an AC of 1 and attacking it would still be a complete waste of time. It is the same action to cast a new one and have it attack as to have it move and attack. The caster could just cast it every round and it would have the same effect. I only included it to have it act similar to the more powerful Bigby's Hand spell, which also has an AC of 20 but has hit points equal to the caster's. Also it is a tiny almost invisible hand made of force, so it just seems like it would be hard to hit.
Cases where the duration and the fact that you can attack the hand would actually matter. If the caster was silenced he could still attack until the hand was destroyed. Or if you ready an action to attack the hand when the caster had it attack you. The first one would be pretty uncommon, but a benefit if it actually came up. The second one would force the opponent to waste their action attacking a cantrip creation that can be recreated the very next round. Maybe if you had a minion attacking the hand to protect the big bad? But it still seems like a lot of effort to stop a spell that might do a few d4 damage and give advantage on one attack.
