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Cantrip Auto-Scaling - A 5e Critique
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<blockquote data-quote="Giltonio_Santos" data-source="post: 7534511" data-attributes="member: 36874"><p>Damage cantrips work to keep a caster's "auto attack" mode relevant at higher levels. 5e is a much better game with scaling cantrips and could turn much worse without them.</p><p></p><p>Remove the damage scaling and they'll have to use their spell slots (or worse yet: light crossbow shots) to keep from doing nothing in a round where spending a finite resource would not be advised, such as when the combat is not finished yet, but under control. You could compensate it by increasing the number of level 1-2 slots for casters in your game, at a risk that players would opt to just hit enemies with light crossbow shots and spam level 1-2 utility spells.</p><p></p><p>You can increase the damage of level 1-2 spells instead, but then you're making higher level spells worse by comparison. If that makes you feel uneasy, you'll end up increasing their damage as well, and then you'll have to increase damage done by non-caster characters if you want to keep balance working across different classes. Once you've implemented all of that, you'll have to increase monster HP if you don't want to make your combats shorter.</p><p></p><p>I don't think that's worth the effort.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Giltonio_Santos, post: 7534511, member: 36874"] Damage cantrips work to keep a caster's "auto attack" mode relevant at higher levels. 5e is a much better game with scaling cantrips and could turn much worse without them. Remove the damage scaling and they'll have to use their spell slots (or worse yet: light crossbow shots) to keep from doing nothing in a round where spending a finite resource would not be advised, such as when the combat is not finished yet, but under control. You could compensate it by increasing the number of level 1-2 slots for casters in your game, at a risk that players would opt to just hit enemies with light crossbow shots and spam level 1-2 utility spells. You can increase the damage of level 1-2 spells instead, but then you're making higher level spells worse by comparison. If that makes you feel uneasy, you'll end up increasing their damage as well, and then you'll have to increase damage done by non-caster characters if you want to keep balance working across different classes. Once you've implemented all of that, you'll have to increase monster HP if you don't want to make your combats shorter. I don't think that's worth the effort. [/QUOTE]
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Cantrip Auto-Scaling - A 5e Critique
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