D&D 5E Balance issue

[trentonjoe]

Thanks for all the feedback. Whenever you get into action economy, balance gets tricky

Since there are arguments for it being to powerful and too weak, I am going to playtest it and hope it comes in the middle!

 

[trentonjoe]

I changed the trigger to "a second opponent within 5' makes an attack against you".

 

[NotAYakk]

The "this is weaker" was someone who (a) mistook the ability for thunderwave, and (b) doesn't seem to understand the idea of "next best alternative".

In any case, it is stronger than it should be, but it isn't the most powerful bit of optimization a player could do.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I would never want to pick a "use only as a reaction once between short rests" choice in a cantrip slot personally but perhaps if you have tons of them to burn you might...

I would suggest if you want to mess around with the cantrip design space you take the existing cantrips and do something like the following. Note that I just put in some random values for the recharge values. You could customize these values to fit how powerful or not each overcharge makes the cantrip.

Base Cantrip (as printed in the book) - At will and always available

Base Cantrip (minor overcharge) - Get some sort of increased power OR alternate usage such as a reaction and the cantrip "burns out" until the next rest. Recharges on a 3+ after a short rest or automatically after a long rest.

Base Cantrip (major overcharge) - Get some sort of major power increase OR alternate usage and the cantrip "burns out" until the next rest. Recharges on a 6 after a short rest or a 3+ after a long rest.

Edit - spelling issue