D&D 5E Cantrip nerf (house rule brainstorm)

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't even understand his reasoning. "Because magic." Well, there's alchemy. And why not make an explosive magic powder that can be used to fling a lead ball out of a tube? I can come up with a better reason: In a world with combat magic, the first firearms would be so ineffective that the tech wouldn't be developed any further. In fact, if you have artillery based on spells like Shatter and Fireball, mass formations of conscripts, which are necessary for early firearms to even be particularly useful, would have been abandoned for similar reasons as Europe abandoned them after WW1.

Oh I very much disagree with Keith about firearms, but claiming the whole setting is unbelievable just because it has a somewhat odd take on tech? Lol wut

But yeah no way fireball obviates the value of a cannon.

kinda wrecks the whole "guns were easy to teach someone to use" line that so often comes up trying to justify them

Not in the least. Those are vastly more expensive, and becoming a magewright takes years of training. It’s a craft skill, like becoming a blacksmith. You can train someone to operate a cannon in a couple weeks.

Oh, and the cannon could be replicate by a kingdoms own people, no need to be beholden to Cannith for it.

To me, what’s missing is a cheaper, simpler, more mass production, version of those siege weapons. If arcane guns are in the very early days in the starting years of the campaign, that’s great. Because Eberron would likely have guns that run on magical “tech” in some way.

But none of the stuff in Exploring Eberron actually obviates the most important reason guns would develop. Some nations have more magic than others.

 

[DnD Warlord]

I will say if wizards are common (or magerights) you may end up with the Alex Luther theory being true...

(Lex believes that if people come to trust and rely on super powered individuals like an alien they will stop being push forward to make bigger better things... people will get lazy)

if I can hire or even train 16 wizards of 5th-11th level to go with my army they are ground support, artillery and more. Maybe when those are common enough no one ever TRIES to produce a working set of cannons.

my own worlds I normally make magi tech guns instead when I want guns... more in common with a blaster from Star Wars of a phaser from Star Trek then a real musket or flint lock

 

[tetrasodium]

Oh I very much disagree with Keith about firearms, but claiming the whole setting is unbelievable just because it has a somewhat odd take on tech? Lol wut

But yeah no way fireball obviates the value of a cannon.

Not in the least. Those are vastly more expensive, and becoming a magewright takes years of training. It’s a craft skill, like becoming a blacksmith. You can train someone to operate a cannon in a couple weeks.

How many weeks do you estimate that it takes to teach an individual to "crush [a small globe] against an engraved brass plate"? I think you are overestimating the level of "training" needed for a magewright. Unlike forgotten realms, eberron has a public education system in khorvaire & likely similar to varying degrees on the other major continents. At times magewright has included lamplighter seamstress launderer & other very low skill positions. As to bombadiers & people wanting to operate the smaller normal staff sized variants mentioned... It's just not a credible claim to suggest that significant training would be required to teach the operator to "crush the breath of siberys against an engraved brass plate" while suggesting that feebleminded individual who needed extensive training to basically crush an egg is going to be someone you can trust around gunpowder.

Spoiler: breath of siberyis

Teaching someone to aim a cannon siege staff or even simple staff like noted in the second highlighted paragraph there is something one could call equivalently difficult for a given level of proficiency. With that said, the results of a siege staff or wand are dramatically more effective than a mere cannonball & in some cases closer to some of what modern artillery can accomplish

Oh, and the cannon could be replicate by a kingdoms own people, no need to be beholden to Cannith for it.

To me, what’s missing is a cheaper, simpler, more mass production, version of those siege weapons. If arcane guns are in the very early days in the starting years of the campaign, that’s great. Because Eberron would likely have guns that run on magical “tech” in some way.

The role of the dragonmarked houses in eberron is so extensive that the idea of a kingdom taking such a massive leap backwards to sever ties with cannith would be like the US military going back to ww2 era "fighterplanes" & swords to not be beholden to lockheed & boeing. Cannith has a genetic monopoly, short of house cannith splitting in two as phiarlin kinda did it's literally impossible for someone else to do what they do at the speed & cost they do it. That arcane artillery can be mass produced because of cannith's capabilities & those capabilities could be turned to dangerous barely effective curiosities like the ones you suggest if not for them being dangerous & ineffective curiosities

Wotc's focus on the needs of equipment FR first last & only when making the weapons & armor systems in 5e so overlysimplified may have prevented someone from throwing a shadowrun style "weapons of eberron" book up on dmsguild or something, but that failure doesn't suddenly solve all of the gunpowder & firearm development problems.

But none of the stuff in Exploring Eberron actually obviates the most important reason guns would develop. Some nations have more magic than others.

Not as much as you are suggesting

Spoiler: they were all this nation before the last war started

That's one of the key differences of some nations (aundair/zil/droaam) & there are reasons for that just like breland's farmland, karrnath's undead, & the wealth & resulting mass of warforged held by pre-mourning Cyre all have or had reasons that predate the last war. Every nation had a similar level of magic prior to the last war, they just developed it differently during the war due to what resources were at their disposal through the war. Any nation in khorvaire developing guns because they somehow have "less" magic than a different nation would be like starfleet investing in gunpowder based cannons rather than phaser arrays because it worked great for kirk here.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

How many weeks do you estimate that it takes to teach an individual to "crush [a small globe] against an engraved brass plate"? I think you are overestimating the level of "training" needed for a magewright.

I think you’ve read one book about Eberron and are getting the wrong idea, if you think magewrights can be trained very quickly.

Unlike forgotten realms, eberron has a public education system in khorvaire & likely similar to varying degrees on the other major continents. At times magewright has included lamplighter seamstress launderer & other very low skill positions.

You think seamstresses are low skill workers? LOL

As to bombadiers & people wanting to operate the smaller normal staff sized variants mentioned... It's just not a credible claim to suggest that significant training would be required to teach the operator to "crush the breath of siberys against an engraved brass plate" while suggesting that feebleminded individual who needed extensive training to basically crush an egg is going to be someone you can trust around gunpowder.

You don’t get it. You can’t just take a random person and teach them to operate the device. They have to be a spellcaster. The requisite training is not just to operate the siege engine. It requires a fully trained magewright, ie one who can at least ritually cast spells, which takes usually years of training. Even the lamplighter in Sharn isn’t a low skill laborer, because they spent a few years in apprenticeship learning to ritually cast the spell that lights the lamps.

Spoiler: breath of siberyis

View attachment 135194

Teaching someone to aim a cannon siege staff or even simple staff like noted in the second highlighted paragraph there is something one could call equivalently difficult for a given level of proficiency.

No, it isn’t. It takes a couple weeks.

With that said, the results of a siege staff or wand are dramatically more effective than a mere cannonball & in some cases closer to some of what modern artillery can accomplish.

Which of those is gonna take a wall down?

The role of the dragonmarked houses in eberron is so extensive that the idea of a kingdom taking such a massive leap backwards to sever ties with cannith would be like .

Who said anything about them breaking ties with Cannith?

Not as much as you are suggesting

Spoiler: they were all this nation before the last war started

View attachment 135199
View attachment 135200

That's one of the key differences of some nations (aundair/zil/droaam) & there are reasons for that just like breland's farmland, karrnath's undead, & the wealth & resulting mass of warforged held by pre-mourning Cyre all have or had reasons that predate the last war. Every nation had a similar level of magic prior to the last war, they just developed it differently during the war due to what resources were at their disposal through the war. Any nation in khorvaire developing guns because they somehow have "less" magic than a different nation would be like starfleet investing in gunpowder based cannons rather than phaser arrays because it worked great for kirk here.

You completely misunderstand the state of the Five Nations. Exactly the point is that Aundair has a lot more magic than Karrnath, and Karrnath has the best and oldest military academies and martial traditions. You keep quoting Exploring Eberron, but you really don’t seem to understand the setting, especially if you think that having once been Galifar means that some nations don’t have more magic than others, when in fact it means exactly that they do.

 

[DnD Warlord]

You don’t get it. You can’t just take a random person and teach them to operate the device. They have to be a spellcaster. The requisite training is not just to operate the siege engine. It requires a fully trained magewright, ie one who can at least ritually cast spells, which takes usually years of training. Even the lamplighter in Sharn isn’t a low skill laborer, because they spent a few years in apprenticeship learning to ritually cast the spell that light

okay I have not followed Ebberon through the editions and I really only steal stuff for my homebrew... so forgive me but...

is it any harder to train a magewright then it is to train a battlefield engineer? I was under the impression (and I may be wrong) anyone CAN learn magic since at least 4e, if not 3e... the inborn spark went to sorcerer and now wizards and artificers (and magewrights) could be anyone with a 12+ intelligence.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Oh I very much disagree with Keith about firearms, but claiming the whole setting is unbelievable just because it has a somewhat odd take on tech? Lol wut

But yeah no way fireball obviates the value of a cannon.

For infantry combat, yes, not for defeating fortifications. For that, you've Passwall. But seriously, though, if you've got "everyday magic," you've certainly got exploding powder of some kind. Call it what you will. I'm sure they'll find some use for it.

 

[tetrasodium]

okay I have not followed Ebberon through the editions and I really only steal stuff for my homebrew... so forgive me but...

is it any harder to train a magewright then it is to train a battlefield engineer? I was under the impression (and I may be wrong) anyone CAN learn magic since at least 4e, if not 3e... the inborn spark went to sorcerer and now wizards and artificers (and magewrights) could be anyone with a 12+ intelligence.

it depends on what kind of magewright. Think of it like the arcane equivalent of "tradesman" & doesn't by itself mandate an extreme level of skill. While @doctorbadwolf is doing his best to make it sound as if every single magewright has a multiyear degree from the arcanix or something, but that is very much not the case in eberron & it includes a good number of jobs we would consider low skill or barely skilled like lamplighter & launderer as keith has written about before. Elsewhere he's written things like "In Aundair, a farm might have a floating disk that serves some of the same purposes as a tractor. In the Eldeen, you might have gleaners – the druidic equivalent of magewrights, with farmers knowing a simple druidic ritual or two to help with the crop.".

I'm not sure if there is significant difference between "battlefield engineer" & "combat engineer" but I think they are probably just different terms for the same general thing & will assume as much. A magewright who joins the military might be assigned to a unit with a similar role nto those & receive specialized training for the role that particular unit exists for (ie bridgemakers rarely have much to do with building irrigation systems & power grids). Using that bridgemakers/irrigation system/power grid split where different units might be specialized for those specific things they all likely have enough combined skills to put a temporary solution in place till some specialist could be assigned or hired to do it right. That's not to say every magewright would be assigned to a unit where their skills as a magewright are all that relevant to what they do, only so many lamplighters seamstresses masons launderers & anything else are needed in those roles. Some of the artificer archtypes are basically extremely skilled & ihighly trained combat magewrights too but those aren't the norm.

@doctorbadwolf yes aundair has much more magic than most of the other nations, but they have that because the queen of aundair invested in the local resource at her nation's disposal known as the arcanix/the arcane congress. Karrnath has a lot more undead than anyone else because having a local resource known as the mabar manifest zone made that sort of investment a good one for them. It's not a situation like FR where you have an advanced mageocracy next to a bunch of leaderless dirt farmers beside a technologically advanced hermit nation overlooking maurading bands of savage raiders who do nothing but go around plundering.

You also miss the point of why "the cannon could be replicate by a kingdoms own people, no need to be beholden to Cannith for it." would be equivalent of severing ties with Cannith. Nobody is physically capable of engaging in the sort of manufacturing cannith is at a similar cost & scale because doing that requires one to bear a mark of making just to use the dragonmark focus items that make it possible. Cannith has facilities all over & are thrilled to take their cut from selling things that enable people lacking a dragonmark. Those people are thrilled to give that cut too because it's either not possible or too expensive to do it in a way that cuts cannith out

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

okay I have not followed Ebberon through the editions and I really only steal stuff for my homebrew... so forgive me but...

is it any harder to train a magewright then it is to train a battlefield engineer? I was under the impression (and I may be wrong) anyone CAN learn magic since at least 4e, if not 3e... the inborn spark went to sorcerer and now wizards and artificers (and magewrights) could be anyone with a 12+ intelligence.

Kinda depends on what you mean by combat engineer. A bombardier isn't just a soldier with some magical training. They're a professional spellcaster operating in a battlefield role.
As the article Tetrasodium linked states, magewrights take years to master their rituals. That is why lamplighters are a respected profession: They're not just any yahoo with a ladder and a tinderbox; they're a graduate of a Cannith-accredited trade school.
Eberron hasn't directly answered the question of whether everyone can learn magic. However, it is very clear than PC-type magic is very rare. A magewright will probably spend a few years learning to cast one or two spells as a ritual for example. - They don't have spell slots as such.
Likewise cantrips are actually a fairly recent development, and many nations have been able to train up small units of Wandslingers. - But they can't cast spells without their focus wands.
While magewrights mean that many more people in Eberron have access to magic, actual PC classes are really rare.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

While @doctorbadwolf is doing his best to make it sound as if every single magewright has a multiyear degree from the arcanix or something, but that is very much not the case

Don’t lie about me, please.

I never said or implied any such thing. Hell, what I said directly precludes such a thing, as I mentioned apprenticeships and the like.

On the other hand, it very much is the case in Eberron that magewrights are not unskilled laborers. You can run it however you want, but in the actual canon Eberron, a magewright is someone who has attained professional rank in a magical trade skill. They are not entry level workers.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

with farmers knowing a simple druidic ritual or two to help with the crop.".

Some of the disconnect might be that...you’re simply wrong about the skill level of pre-modern occupations.

Farmers are not unskilled laborers, by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing written by Keith suggests that such rituals could be learned in a few weeks, or even a few months, by most people.