D&D 5E 06/06 Q&A : Safe Rest Locations, Regaining Spell Slots and Cantrip Balance

[I'm A Banana]

I gotta admit, personally, I like the idea of needing a nice, soft inn to recover magic powers (at least, non-cantrip magic powers) quite appealing.

As I read their explanation, though, this is actually a consideration for characters with healing spells -- if magic can heal you up above that resting threshold, there IS going to be a demand to use spells on the party member (after they've lost about 1/2 their HP) each day. If the healer is gaining spells back only with inn rest, then their spells should logically ALL be the healing type: anything else is going to be less useful. If the healer is gaining spells back with a night's rest, then the pressure isn't quite so great -- they only need to prepare healing spells when the party drops below 1/2, and even then, once the party's topped off, you can do other things.

....though this just makes me want to limit MAGICAL healing to 1/2 hp, too....and to make more in-depth healing require a ritual.....

Lance of Faith 1d8 (scaling)
Ray of Frost 1d8 (scaling) + reduced speed

Shortbow (simple weapon) 1d6 + dex bonus
Longbow (martial weapon) 1d8 + dex bonus

Is this really 2/3 to 3/4 as effective as a fighter? Even allowing for no bonus damage from magical ability, I think Ray of Frost is keeping up with bows pretty effectively.

Martial Damage Dice, anyone? Fighters don't just use raw weapon damage dice these days.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Martial Damage Dice, anyone? Fighters don't just use raw weapon damage dice these days.

Actually, these days, they do. Martial Damage Dice aren't around any more.

The scaling from Deadly Strike just keeps up with the scaling of spells. "Death dealer" options gives +1d6 damage. Even including that, I stand by my claim.

 

[GX.Sigma]

One of the five "death dealer" options gives +1d6 damage.

All of them do, unless I'm reading it wrong.

 

[Kobold Stew]

You're right, I misremembered. They each give +1d6 under certain circumstances.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Actually, these days, they do. Martial Damage Dice aren't around any more.

The scaling from Deadly Strike just keeps up with the scaling of spells. "Death dealer" options gives +1d6 damage. Even including that, I stand by my claim.

Sure, but the point remains valid: if you're going to compare spell damage to fighter damage, you probably shouldn't exclude sources of fighter damage. It might still be true that spells currently pwn fighter damage, anyway, but at least the comparison should be a fair one.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I think we're talking at cross purposes:

I'm claiming that a cantrip like Ray of Frost is as powerful and effective in combat as any comparable arrow. I see this in conflict with the stated goal of cantrips being 2/3 or 3/4 as effective. For some reason we are disagreeing.

Yes, there's +1d6 for some fighters; and there's -10 move for all wizards; there's the impact of feats, etc. There are many possible variations we can imagine for over/under optimized characters. The point is the same: they are directly comparable (and I'm still missing your point about MDD).

I would take this answer to suggest that in the next packet Ray of Frost and Lance of Faith might be d6 instead of d8, as a start. But that's just a guess.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Mostly I just want to be sure that if we're comparing damage, we're getting the numbers accurate. The idea is that the wizard is ~2/3 - 3/4 as damaging with their at-wills as a fighter.

If a fighter's using a bow and taking into account all of their modifiers, how does that compare to the wizard's ~4 damage/level? How does this compare to melee damage with the fighter? At what point is this true or not?

In just giving the 1d8+stat for a bow, you're ignoring sources of damage that fighters get on their attacks that wizards do not get on their spells, which is going to skew your results to make the fighter look weaker than it actually is.

 

[n00bdragon]

I love what they are thinking with cantrips and at-will spells. I'm really glad someone sat down and did some serious thinking about what are the limits of capability on a cantrip. What should these things, which ARE class features, be able to accomplish and not accomplish.

Now let's see them do it with 1st level spells. I won't hold my breath though because of all the sacred cows in that list.

 

[Kraydak]

I love what they are thinking with cantrips and at-will spells. I'm really glad someone sat down and did some serious thinking about what are the limits of capability on a cantrip. What should these things, which ARE class features, be able to accomplish and not accomplish.

Except that they just showed that they didn't think carefully about the limits on cantrips.

Let us be *really, really* generous to the casters.
Assume a base group of 3 casters *who pledge to never, ever, use a non-cantrip ability for offense*, and set cantrips to 2/3 Fighter. Should they pick up a cleric-tank (only cantrips for offense), or a fighter-tank?

Well, the Party-DPR for the 3 casters is 2XFighter. So going the fighter route takes it to 3XFighter. Going the cleric route takes it to 8/3 Fighter. The Fighter+3 Casters party does 12.5% more DPR than the Cleric+3 Casters, but the Cleric+3 Casters has 33% more spell-utility than the Fighter party. (8% more DPR if cantrips are at 3/4)

In a really, REALLY combat heavy campaign, you might go with the Fighter. But we assumed that the casters don't use any spells on offense. Which is absurd. So in practice, you'd never be justified in taking the Fighter. Cantrips above 2/3 is brokenly powerful, and cantrips at 2/3 is maybe, marginally, not completely broken if actual spells are offense-no and the campaign is combat-heavy. I.E. cantrips need to be well below 2/3.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Their goals for cantrips are right on. They're powerful enough to be useful, but still a lot weaker than fighter damage. I really don't understand why people are complaining about cantrips. How does having an at-will attack that's 2/3 as effective as a fighter's at-will attack make fighters obsolete? If cantrips were equal to fighter damage, and wizards had daily spells on top of that, then there would be reason to complain. But that simply is not the case.

As for the resting thing, I still hate this idea. Most of the time, players are either going to have some way of ignoring the penalty (such as by having some way of making a "safe" camp), or they'll just use healing magic to recover fully. The resting restriction only serves to make it even more difficult to try and play without a cleric (or other dedicated healing class), and it also makes playing a dedicated healing class less fun, because even more of your resources are going to have to go toward healing.

Further, I think the idea is completely unnecessary. There's already ways of making resting in dungeons dangerous, the easiest of those is the possibility that the party will be ambushed at night. Capping the hp that can be regained by resting in such situations is an annoying rule that really adds nothing to the game but takes a lot away. They need to abandon this terrible idea.