D&D 5E Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade Nerfed in TCoE

[Zardnaar]

A stick is an improvised weapon.

If that.

This a proper war club is different bro a stick.

The Maori ones here are kinda nasty.

 

[TheSword]

So, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is being released a week from now, and I know there is quite a bit of hype for the book so far. I personally am excited for some of the content (Class Feature Variants, Customizing Your Origin, Armorer Artificer, Beast Barbarian, Rune Carver Fighter, Phantom Rogue), but I am not excited for the changes to the Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade cantrips. They have now been changed to have a range of self (5 feet), making it illegible for Twinned Spell, Distant Spell, War Caster, Spell Sniper, and other combinations. It also no longer works with reach weapons, and is even more limited than it was before.

What do you guys think? Do you dislike the change as much as I do, or do you have different opinions on it? Please discuss below.

What’s wrong with the cantrips being what they were intended to be - giving a little extra magic damage to an attack. If they wanted to give a sorcerer (or sorc multiclass) two extra attacks with a twinned quickened cantrip, I’m sure they would have found a more straightforward way of doing it.

Anything reduces the power of sorcadins is fine by me.

 

[jmartkdr2]

It seems to me that if they intended specifically to allow for grappling/shoving, (and by implication any future uses for variant attacks within the Attack option), they would have just had haste say:

"That action can only be used to take the Attack (one attack only),"

Instead they had it say:
"That action can be used only to take the Attack (one weapon attack only),"

If they had only wanted to rule out Extra Attack specifically, they could have said something like:

"If you have access to the Extra Attack feature, you can not apply it to this Attack action)."

Since the specificity of a weapon attack as a subset of general attacks was well established in the source text, it seems most reasonable to assume that grappling/shoving is disallowed by the intent (as it clearly is by the letter).

Honestly, I think this is going against the grain of the whole book - it's not intended to be read this technically.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

In the "treasure" section of the PHB it's stated that magic items have value "far beyond simple gold".

While it may be reasonable to interpret "far beyond" as being more than "at least" 1sp, there's no explicit monetary value given, so it's not strictly possible to evaluate if a particular magic item is worth more or less than 1sp.

That's incorrect. Even if it is a magic weapon that has a variety of monetary values, it still counts as the base weapon, and thus has the same base price as that weapon.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

What’s wrong with the cantrips being what they were intended to be - giving a little extra magic damage to an attack. If they wanted to give a sorcerer (or sorc multiclass) two extra attacks with a twinned quickened cantrip, I’m sure they would have found a more straightforward way of doing it.

Anything reduces the power of sorcadins is fine by me.

What's wrong is that now, for no good reason, you can't use this with reach weapons against targets within the reach of the weapon. This is directly contradictory to the SCAG, where it specifically mentions a type of Bladesingers who use whips.

I don't think it's OP to have a sorcerer expend some of their extremely limited resource to attack one more time in a turn. Even if WotC thinks this is OP, they could have just said at the end of the cantrip "This spell cannot be Twinned," and be done with it.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Honestly, I think this is going against the grain of the whole book - it's not intended to be read this technically.

You're right that that's how they bill it--right up until they answer specific questions. At that point the designer himself is full intricate technical examination of what the published words mean.

I think the point is really that they tried to keep things plain language when they could, and they intentionally avoided clarifying everything so as to allow for individual interpretation. But when it comes to the actual rules interactions (including things like keywords--which are not called out as such but absolutely exist in the edition, with "attack" being one if the prime examples; fireball and magic missile are not attacks, for instance, because if the way it is formally defined, which has important implications for how they interact with things) they have a set of definite rules elements that interact in specifically defined mechanical ways.

I think what trips people up is that the statements of simplicity and DM empowerment can imply more of a lack of such specificity than they actually created. What they actually set it up to do is:

-Limit the quantity of complicated rules interactions
-Limit the scope of areas of the game where such rules interactions come into play
-Limit the pressure for DMs to follow those rules strictly

 

[Charlaquin]

A stick is an improvised weapon.

If that.

Of course, part of the rule for improvised weapons is that if they are similar to a weapon, you can treat them as one. So, a stick could be treated as a(n improvised) club, which is worth 1sp.

 

[Flamestrike]

Of course, part of the rule for improvised weapons is that if they are similar to a weapon, you can treat them as one. So, a stick could be treated as a(n improvised) club, which is worth 1sp.

Yeah I agree.

Same with a Warlock use summons a longsword as his pact weapon. A longsword is a weapon, with a value of 1sp or greater so it's just fine to use with the cantrips.

The question isnt 'did I pay 1sp for this weapon'. It doesn't matter if you found it, summoned it, stole it, bought it, or made it yourself.

 

[TheSword]

What's wrong is that now, for no good reason, you can't use this with reach weapons against targets within the reach of the weapon. This is directly contradictory to the SCAG, where it specifically mentions a type of Bladesingers who use whips.

I don't think it's OP to have a sorcerer expend some of their extremely limited resource to attack one more time in a turn. Even if WotC thinks this is OP, they could have just said at the end of the cantrip "This spell cannot be Twinned," and be done with it.

Sure they could, but who cares

Bladesingers with whips? It’s a corner case non-problem. If the ability had never been there in the first place to use whips, then no one would be screaming out because whips weren’t valid.

Speak to your DM if you have a special case you want to build for. If it’s not OP then I’m sure they would be reasonable.

We can agree to disagree about Sorcadins getting two free attacks.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Okay, so, Armourer's Thunder Gauntlets?