Arcane initiate, cantrip and at-will

[Ginnel]

Well I'm gonna be a fighter who dabbles in everything religion, magic, alchemy if it comes out, I was mostly gonna do this by taking Knowledge arcana, then Ritual casting, then Jack of all trades.

However I noticed that arcane initiate would give me the skill I wanted & a wee bit of arcane flavour right off the bat, looking at the at-wills for a wizard nothing jumps out at me but as a character who dabbles in everything I was wondering if swapping that for a cantrip at-will would be fair, hence my guy would get knowledge arcane and prestidigitation.

So you think this is a fair trade off? just firing the idea out there as DM is a bit unsure about it and was wondering if this would make it in anyway vastly superior compared to an at will once an encounter.

 

[mattdm]

It sounds fine to me. Basically you're trading out an attack power for a minor utility power.

 

[That One Guy]

Rules-wise or sanity-wise? Rules-wise, cantrips are a class feature so it doesn't work (unless errata says something later). However, I think most sane people will agree that it's fine. If there's a rules-lawyer they might have beef, but... do it.

 

[mattdm]

Right, sanity-wise, not rules-wise.

And, also consider that in general class features are supposed to provide specific flavor to a class that you can't just "steal" with multiclassing, so it's not merely a power-level-balance thing.

But in the particular case of cantrips it seems okay to me.

I can also see a feat with Arcane Initiate as a prereq which lets you learn, say, any three cantrips. This'd be particularly good in a game where you have no actual wizard. If you do have someone playing a wizard, I'd say let them keep their thing.