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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7555965" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>One of the meta-considerations is that the players know you have instituted this change, so they will base their decisions accordingly. It's not as important, whether a non-scaling cantrip is mathematically superior to firing a crossbow; player perception of the house rule will tell them that cantrips have been nerfed, and there's no point in using them, so they'll be more inclined to find alternatives. <em>Maybe</em> that alternative would be to use a spell slot (in which case they will run through spell slots more quickly), but maybe it would be to Dodge (which isn't a lot of fun), or maybe they'll increase their Dexterity so that they'll be better with the crossbow. </p><p></p><p>Most likely, the players will interpret that you've nerfed wizards, and simply choose to play some other class instead. Or they'll play a cleric, but they'll play a melee cleric that wasn't going to cast cantrips anyway, so now they benefit from extra spell slots with absolutely no drawback. (Note that it doesn't actually matter, whether the extra spell slots balance anything out. Player perception is what drives their decisions.)</p><p></p><p>Monster HP bloat is a big issue, when it comes to balancing the utility of cantrips against spell slots. Unless you're still fighting orcs when you're level 17, the 1d10 from Fire Bolt goes from a meaningful action to a meaningless one pretty quickly; but so does the 3d6 from Burning Hands. If you have a 4d10 Fire Bolt, then that's bordering on something useful. When the monster has 200hp, you're not going to sit there and decide to use Burning Hands instead of Fire Bolt because it does 10 damage instead of 6; if you can't spare a high-level spell slot to deal damage, then you're going to look for other things to do, which have level-appropriate effects. You'll cast Grease, or Protection from Evil, because those spells are equally effective regardless of what you're fighting.</p><p></p><p>This may be getting off-topic, and if so I apologize, but you're never going to get high-level casters using low-level damage spells against high-level monsters. It's simply not worth it, and reducing the damage from cantrips will not change that; it just changes cantrips into another meaningless action. The alternative you should be comparing against is the non-damage spells, and the only way to make a low-level damage spell equivalent to a low-level non-damage spell, against a high-level target, is to auto-scale the damage to compensate for HP bloat. If you don't make any changes to cantrips, and let lower-level damage spells scale automatically, then it would usually be worthwhile to cast a low-level damage spell instead of a cantrip. Off the top of my head:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When you reach level 5, your first-level and second-level damage spells automatically gain the benefit of being cast one level higher than the slot you use.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When you reach level 11, your first-level through fifth-level damage spells automatically gain the benefit of being cast one level higher.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When you reach level 17, your first-level through seventh-level damage spells automatically gain the benefit of being cast one level higher.</li> </ul><p>By level 17, your Burning Hands would be automatically upgraded from 3d6 to 6d6, which is marginally useful again. You might actually cast that instead of Fire Bolt, even if Fire Bolt was 4d10, if you could hit more than one target.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7555965, member: 6775031"] One of the meta-considerations is that the players know you have instituted this change, so they will base their decisions accordingly. It's not as important, whether a non-scaling cantrip is mathematically superior to firing a crossbow; player perception of the house rule will tell them that cantrips have been nerfed, and there's no point in using them, so they'll be more inclined to find alternatives. [I]Maybe[/I] that alternative would be to use a spell slot (in which case they will run through spell slots more quickly), but maybe it would be to Dodge (which isn't a lot of fun), or maybe they'll increase their Dexterity so that they'll be better with the crossbow. Most likely, the players will interpret that you've nerfed wizards, and simply choose to play some other class instead. Or they'll play a cleric, but they'll play a melee cleric that wasn't going to cast cantrips anyway, so now they benefit from extra spell slots with absolutely no drawback. (Note that it doesn't actually matter, whether the extra spell slots balance anything out. Player perception is what drives their decisions.) Monster HP bloat is a big issue, when it comes to balancing the utility of cantrips against spell slots. Unless you're still fighting orcs when you're level 17, the 1d10 from Fire Bolt goes from a meaningful action to a meaningless one pretty quickly; but so does the 3d6 from Burning Hands. If you have a 4d10 Fire Bolt, then that's bordering on something useful. When the monster has 200hp, you're not going to sit there and decide to use Burning Hands instead of Fire Bolt because it does 10 damage instead of 6; if you can't spare a high-level spell slot to deal damage, then you're going to look for other things to do, which have level-appropriate effects. You'll cast Grease, or Protection from Evil, because those spells are equally effective regardless of what you're fighting. This may be getting off-topic, and if so I apologize, but you're never going to get high-level casters using low-level damage spells against high-level monsters. It's simply not worth it, and reducing the damage from cantrips will not change that; it just changes cantrips into another meaningless action. The alternative you should be comparing against is the non-damage spells, and the only way to make a low-level damage spell equivalent to a low-level non-damage spell, against a high-level target, is to auto-scale the damage to compensate for HP bloat. If you don't make any changes to cantrips, and let lower-level damage spells scale automatically, then it would usually be worthwhile to cast a low-level damage spell instead of a cantrip. Off the top of my head: [LIST] [*]When you reach level 5, your first-level and second-level damage spells automatically gain the benefit of being cast one level higher than the slot you use. [*]When you reach level 11, your first-level through fifth-level damage spells automatically gain the benefit of being cast one level higher. [*]When you reach level 17, your first-level through seventh-level damage spells automatically gain the benefit of being cast one level higher. [/LIST]By level 17, your Burning Hands would be automatically upgraded from 3d6 to 6d6, which is marginally useful again. You might actually cast that instead of Fire Bolt, even if Fire Bolt was 4d10, if you could hit more than one target. [/QUOTE]
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