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

embee said:

This.

Wizard: Well, I'm out of cantrips. That's okay. I'll just pull out my trusty crossbow. Good thing I have a 14 DEX... Okay, Mandalf pulls out his light crossbow and fires at the slavering wight. Yuss! 16! I roll a 3. So that's 5 damage.

DM: No. You do 2 damage.

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That's the most insane part of the whole mess wotc made with the math. So many parts of the system from creature design to the design of individual spells are so obviously trying to be written as if that will always be the case from level 1-20 in every campaign just cause it could happen in some campaigns while going out of their way at every opportunity to advise how it should not be all that difficult of a hurdle to avoid. They top that off by not making any way to remove the weighted clothing from the other player facing parts like nondamage spells for once the martial classes get something to bypass it .

humble minion said:

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.

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Heh... well, the implications of magic in every single setting of D&D are completely ignored anyway. With the number of centuries if not millenia almost every single setting has had 9th level magic available to it... not a single setting would still be in the pseudo-medieval state they all appear to be. Every single one would have become so advanced that all of D&D should be d20 Modern at this point.

Look at where "science" has take our real world in the last 100 years, and we've had to invent and move one small advance at a time. What we have now technologically-speaking compared to what humanity looked like back in 1921. This is the reality of what learning and progress gives us. And yet we D&D players are supposed to believe that in the Forgotten Realms... their history goes back more than 20,000 years while still having the power and capabilities of what 9th level spells could give them that entire time... and yet no one ever advanced their technology with that magic to move beyond still living it thatched huts and using horses to pull carriages around. Please.

There is no reality whatsoever in any of these D&D settings that use magic not having advanced past medieval agrarian society. But we all willfully ignore it because we want our fantasy to include castles and knights and such. Which is fine and we all do that. But to do so we have had to willingly turn a blind eye to what magic does and NOT try to reason out what should "really" happen. And that means pretending that no one actually has infinite Mold Earth cantrips and is taking away jobs from ditch diggers and grave diggers and the like.

Eubani said:

Never understood the joy some found in being an untrained crossbowman. Nerf the Grognard in you and embrace change.

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You whippersnappers and your crossbows. Make ‘em get out the darts!

Mistwell said:

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.

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At lower levels, crossbows are on par with cantrips, if not a touch better, as long as your DEX is at least 14. As you level up, though, problems start to appear:

1. You just nerfed Quicken Spell into the ground.
2. Realistically, your only option when casting a bonus action spell is Dodge.
3. Druids and Bards rely heavily on Concentration spells and have very, very few fire-and-forget spells. Taking away Vicious Mockery, Thorn Whip, Produce Flame, etc is a pretty serious nerf to these classes, because it's a long time before they'll be able to do much else with their action.
4. Cantrips are a key feature for EKs.
5. Boosting cantrip damage is a pretty important feature of Dragon Soul sorcerers and several cleric subclasses. Are they going to get a replacement for having this feature nerfed?

I'm sure there's more.

Esbee said:

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...

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The thing that would concern me with this, is cantrips already lag martial attacks by martial claseses (Agonizing blast excepted) and if you nerf them the martial classes will just be flat better than the casting classes.

Also things like light, mage hand, message, mending, prestidigation .... should semantically be able to be cast over and over.

tetrasodium said:

cantrip damage compared to melee damage is bad, like freakishly bad to an almost unbelievable degree.

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Except for Warlocks with Agonising Blast. And don't forget that cantrips are magic, so not subject to the same resistances. And some cantrips (e.g. Chill Touch) have secondary effects.

Esbee said:

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...

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My question is, why do you feel it needs to be nerfed? Like I said in may previous post, cantrips are not that strong to begin with unless of course you're playing a warlock. If you take any class that uses both cantrips and martial weapons, I.e. Battlesmith, or Eldritch Knight, they will probably only use their cantrips for ranged attacks or special situations (like doing fire damage to a troll), since they can do far more damage using their martial weapons. If you want to limit cantrips to YOUR character, that's fine, you can always play your character the way you want, but if you're a DM and feel like punishing your players for no reason, then well, you're still entitled to your opinion, but I think that sucks.

I mostly like some of these ideas if I was looking to change. I do think that this would ripple through the other classes and how 5e works. The way power levels work over the editions has been brought closer together so that taking power from casters will change the power of the martials as well and make some classes more or less appealing. There is also things like tracking cantrips like torches and arrows, and if/how you do that.

I like the "Harry Potter" ideas of having a focus that increases what you can normally do. We have wands already, but mostly to do away with components. I would like some more ideas on this. Some things on amount of increase or is having a wand the same as normal now, but may come into play if you are taken prisoner and you do not have it, making it like a fighter's sword.

Maybe some craft rules or background rules for a wand of whatever that targets a single spell, say wand of firebolt or chill touch. That is the one you use most and the want could make that one better somehow. I also do not want to make one more hurdle to be a caster and then you are the same as before, like a feat tax/tree.

Quartz said:

Except for Warlocks with Agonising Blast. And don't forget that cantrips are magic, so not subject to the same resistances. And some cantrips (e.g. Chill Touch) have secondary effects.

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Martial classes are probably going to have magic weapons around the time the party starts facing off against monsters that are immune or resistant to mundane damage.

Meanwhile, the pajama-wearers are expected to not need weapons. So unless the caster has a +1 bow, he's going to be next to useless.

embee said:

Martial classes are probably going to have magic weapons around the time the party starts facing off against monsters that are immune or resistant to mundane damage.

Meanwhile, the pajama-wearers are expected to not need weapons. So unless the caster has a +1 bow, he's going to be next to useless.

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Why are you assuming that if the fighter has a magic weapon that the casters haven’t picked up a wand or a few scrolls?