D&D 5E Cantrip nerf (house rule brainstorm)

[not-so-newguy]

What non-combat cantrips are you seeing spammed? Light? Mold Earth? Mage Hand? Prestidigitation/Thaumatury? It is a rare occurence that using these cantrips is anything more than a convenience.

This is much ado bout nothing.

Cleric cantrip Guidance, IME.

 

[Immoralkickass]

Why do grognards assume that when a magic user run out of 'mana', they are completely empty like a dry water tank? In most games where characters that have stamina bars, when their stamina his 0, they don't just fall over and lie still, don't they? They usually just can't sprint/jump/use abilities that consume stamina.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes.

Because it is not about "being winded" but about thematic sense of "magic" being linked to its limits and restrictions. I know this is an unpopular view these days - but having played wizards in older editions who sometimes had to get creative with what few spells they have left or even with non-magic solutions was as fun as casting magic some damage dealing spell.

It's not that your talking about an "unpopular view", your just ignoring the fact that casters back then were basically one step shy of Robin Williams in Aladdin while the martials were well... that monkey running for cover. 5e casters are lightyears from that to such a degree that it's hard to be taken seriously when trying to turn that caster dial up even a notch or two without rebuilding everything

 

[humble minion]

What non-combat cantrips are you seeing spammed? Light? Mold Earth? Mage Hand? Prestidigitation/Thaumatury? It is a rare occurence that using these cantrips is anything more than a convenience.

Situationally, if Mold Earth and Mending etc are infinitely spammable, they put whole occupations out of work. Moving a 5ft cube of earth 5 feet every 6 seconds (or whatever time a round represents these days) basically makes shovels obsolete, Prestidigitation does the same for pretty much any cleaning task, and Mending means that stuff absolutely never need wear out or remain broken, and the implications of THAT on the economics of people trying to make a living from (for instance) tailoring or shoemaking or damn near any form of craftsmanship are pretty obvious.

Of course, this need never bother you in a game if you choose not to think about it, unless a PC decides to set up a 'we repair anything in 6 seconds!' shop. But it does have big implications on the implied setting.

 

[neogod22]

The issue I have with this is, cantrips are already oretty limiting. While they can get up to 4 dice in damage, in most cases because it is magic, you don't get to add any modifiers to it. Also you only get 1 attack per round in most cases. So sure when you look at max damage in a level 20 caster, a cantrip can do usually between 32 - 40 damage per round, may sound acceptable, but the problem is, on a missed attack (or a save) you do 0 damage. Minimum damage is 4. So in reality you'll probably average around 16-20 damage in a hit, which fir level 20 characters is pretty weak. A fighter with a +3 weapon and a max on his primary stat is going to do a minimum of 36-38 damage depending on the weapon they use assuming that all 4 attacks hit, and the fighter rolled all 1s. For the most part, cantrips are not strong. They may seem strong when you look at the number of dice, but because of black of modifiers to damage, and multi-attacks, the are actually weak for the most part. I am aware that there are a few exceptions, but exceptions don't make the rule.

 

[Dross]

Casters can cast a number of cantrips equal to their Int score per short rest, or suffer a level of exhaustion

Weapon users can make a number of weapon attacks equal to their Con score per short rest, or suffer a level of exhaustion.

What? If you want to limit at will abilities, limit at will abilities.

If you use Int as the determining factor, anyone using some other ability to cast is even more impacted, i.e. cleric, druid.

In my experience guidance is the most used non combat cantrip, but even then some basic rules enforcement can cover that problem (if it comes up for us)?

 

[Blue]

Hello all,

A bugbear about 5e (for me at least) was the idea of unlimited spammable cantrips for casters. To us 'get off my lawn' grognards, this seems a touch excessive.

I had an idea for a nerf I wanted to brainstorm - Each cantrip can only be cast a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. Recover all uses upon short rest.

And discuss...

Exact opposite direction I want to go. More uses early on. About a whole adventuring day's worth, less an action or two,

As a grognard, the "hey, spend most of your adventuring day using a non-prime ability score to use a weapon without any class features to back it up" was just boring and also sucky as you were not very effective.

Make me feel like a magic user the entire day, and at least somewhat effective after my "potion bottles" of slots have been used up at low levels. If the goal of the game is to have fun, going back to weapons is literal losing the game.

Don't want cantrips, that's fine. but replace it with something else. Wands purchasable like normal weapons (as common, same prices) that let you inflict reasonable ranged damage using your casting score. Something to keep you relevant.

Also, the idea that "oh no, being able to float over my pipe and light it with a snap of my fingers" offends you as a grognard, considering that in all of the fiction wizards did that sort of thing all the time, is really selective memory. So allow unlimited non-combat cantrips.

 

[Don Durito]

My preference would be to have some more complex spells that last for a minute and don't require concentration but allow one to have a continous attack.

A basic spell might be one that lets you make a group of arrows hover around you and you can then spend an attack to let you fling them at someone as a ranged spell attack. Or you summon six little spheres each of a different energy type and you can fling a different one each round.

But you can take a lot of spells and add cantrips to them. For example casting Fireshield might let you use flamestrike at will. Casting Fog cloud might let you try and strangle someone in the cloud with thickened wreaths of fog. If you have Bane cast on someone you can make melee attacks using Wisdom or attacks and damage.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Cantrips do 1/3 to 1/2 the damage of martial attacks, and the wizards need something due to how much they got nerfed. Are you going to get rid of Concentration and bring back spells increasing damage with caster level?

If you're going to do this without breaking things, the resource is going to need to be plentiful enough that there's no practical consequences in-game, because realistically, wizards use their cantrips no more than about a dozen times in a day.

 

[Mistwell]

I think nerfing the attack cantrip uses will work fine. At lower levels the mages will turn to crossbows daggers and darts, like prior editions. And they will do fine with that. I'd just make sure you're more lenient with the "free hand plus component hand" rules.

At mid and higher levels, they have so many spell slots that the cantrips take a back seat in quantity of use anyway.

So sure, it should work out OK. Just, don't harsh them on the technicalities of dropping and drawing and stowing the ranged attack weapons at those low levels with component pouches and somatic gestures and all that jazz. Let them take a meaningful action towards combat every round if they run out of spell slots and cantrips to use.

As for the non-attack cantrips I would consider increasing those uses by treating some as a ritual. So if you have the mending cantrip, you can limit "normal" usage but allow more uses if they add a minute or 10 minutes to each casting to do it as a ritual.