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

[doctorbadwolf]

It also takes a specially trained baker to bake a cake,

No, it doesnt

said training can often be summarized as reading the recipe on the box & basic familiarity with kitchen tools.

No rational person would classify that as special training, or even just training.

That level of familiarity with the arcane equivalent of kitchen tools is common in Eberron, Sigil, possibly pre-cleansing war Athas, parts of Thay, much of silverymoon based entirely on the high % of elves, & many others

No, it isn’t. It isn’t as rare as it is in a more low magic setting, but it isn’t common. The majority of people aren’t spellcasters o

making it perfectly reasonable that a period as long as "a couple weeks" could train someone up to metaphorically push the button.

Even if the previous was correct, this would not follow from it.

At your table you are welcome to declare that the level of "specially trained" needed is more like grandmaster cakewars champion,

Again, you misrepresent. At this point, I must conclude it is intentional.

but the setting & RAW for the artillery weapons themselves do not require that

Yes, they do.

Your arguments depend on conflating two wildly different levels of training with the weapon as being equivalent.

Nope.

You also seem to be confusing the section on players activating them
View attachment 135235

with the section about npcs doing so immediately before that
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Casting cantrips as an action or ritually including the racial cantrips makes one "a spellcaster". Adding "specially trained" from there only requires some amount of special training not X level artificer. Despite your claims otherwise nothing about the level of training or the required time investment is detailed. When talking about a setting where a lamplighter, seamstress, launderer, chef, & possibly even the farmer

You really seem to underestimate the difficulty and knowledge learning curve of farming. Anyway Keith himself has said that magewrights spend years mastering simple rituals and the like.

you talked up earlier are spellcasters

So, one culture has farmers knowing a few simple Druidic rituals to help crops grow. Very like minor effects that wouldn’t even be useful enough to an adventurer to ever be made into actual spells in a D&D book. That’s on par with the specialized techniques of farming specialized crops. Every older farmer I know has some knowledge that seems simple and obvious to them because they grew up with it (and no real knowledge in their formative years of how other folks grew up), that is actually very specialized and equivalent to specialized trade training.

The fact there are ten year olds on farms who can fully rebuild a tractor engine (a more complex task than rebuilding a Honda Civic engine), doesn’t mean that engine repair and diagnosis is simple, low-skilled work that can be taught in a few weeks.

there is not a very high barrier in place by needing a "spellcaster" to operate a siege staff with the same "couple of weeks" you put forward as good for operating a gunpowder cannon for the "specially trained" part to be met.

You’re stretching the meanings of words to the breaking point, here. Why are you so hell-bent on this? It’s Eberron, you’re meant to play it your way. Why do you desperately need to “prove” that guns couldn’t reasonably develop in Eberron?
Hell, I’ve discussed this with Keith several times, and even he admits that it’s not at all impossible, it just doesn’t fit the themes of the world to have guns when you can instead have magical gun-like things. I disagree, in that you could just have magically manufactured and propelled guns, but hey I can just do that in my Eberron, just like you can magewrights be unskilled laborers with only a few weeks training in your Eberron, in spite of that not being the official take or Keith’s take.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Hey what about cantrips (and magic item) charges as “ammo”? You can craft some during a rest, usually, and buy stacks in town, and maybe also places of magic might recharge some?

 

[fearsomepirate]

Just remind players that Guidance does not have a Reaction timing.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The only cantrip that I think is, maybe, problematic is eldritch blast. It makes many people playing a warlock feel shoe-horned into taking it. I can't recall if I mentioned this on ENworld or Reddit, but I'm thinking of making it scale like other cantrips, and therefore remove the extra attacks, and allow the warlock invocations that formerly affected only eldritch blast to instead affect all warlock cantrips.

Taking away Eldritch Blast from the Warlock is like taking smites away from the Paladin. The point of the Warlock is to fill largely the same functional role as a martial class, i.e. as a heavy damage dealer with both ranged and melee options, but with an overall more magical bent. If people feel shoehorned into EB (although you can be quite effective Pact of the Blade instead), the problem isn't EB is too powerful, the problem is that Warlock is not the class for them.

The only problem with EB is that it's a cantrip, which makes it exploitable via multiclassing, not a class feature.

 

[tetrasodium]

The only cantrip that I think is, maybe, problematic is eldritch blast. It makes many people playing a warlock feel shoe-horned into taking it. I can't recall if I mentioned this on ENworld or Reddit, but I'm thinking of making it scale like other cantrips, and therefore remove the extra attacks, and allow the warlock invocations that formerly affected only eldritch blast to instead affect all warlock cantrips.

agonizing eldritch blast as a cantrip scaling by pc level not class with equal or better scaling than fighter extra attack is absolutely a thousand percent a huge problem but removing it is a huge problem without rebuildiing the entire warlock class, Unsurprisingly IME it does not go over well with "warlock" players when during/before character creation you declare that EB is a warlock class feature that scales with warlock level & as a class feature does not consume one of their two starting cantrip slots like it did when a cantrip. Once you make it a class feature instead of cantrip you are a lot more free as a gm to do things to address problems with other cantrips like giving out illusionist wands & staffs with a less flexible version of ggtr's illusionist bracers without getting double agonizing EB

 

[fearsomepirate]

You can fix 99% of 5e munchkinism by doing the following:

1. Black out the EB description in Spells with a Sharpie.
2. Tape a copy of it in the Warlock section and write "class feature."
3. pencil in "Warlock" between "higher" and "levels."

Taaaaddaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

 

[Dausuul]

Taking away Eldritch Blast from the Warlock is like taking smites away from the Paladin. The point of the Warlock is to fill largely the same functional role as a martial class, i.e. as a heavy damage dealer with both ranged and melee options, but with an overall more magical bent. If people feel shoehorned into EB (although you can be quite effective Pact of the Blade instead), the problem isn't EB is too powerful, the problem is that Warlock is not the class for them.

The only problem with EB is that it's a cantrip, which makes it exploitable via multiclassing, not a class feature.

Well, I wouldn't say the only problem. I think @cbwjm has a point that the warlock's dependence on EB is a bug. It's overly limiting. I'd love it if warlocks had more options for their bread-and-butter attacks.

But the proposed solution of "remove the extra attacks from EB" is a heavy nerf to a class that is already on the lower end of the power scale*, and allowing EB invocations to work on other cantrips does not remotely compensate.

*Yes, yes, I know, warlock levels are a component in all kinds of broken builds. But none of those builds does more than dip warlock--they grab the low-level warlock features that lend themselves to multiclass exploits, and put the rest of their levels in some other class to benefit from those exploits. Single-classed warlocks are at the lower end.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, I wouldn't say the only problem. I think @cbwjm has a point that the warlock's dependence on EB is a bug. It's overly limiting.

It is quite literally a feature, not a bug. If you look at the original design of the warlock in 3.5 it is pretty much all about eldritch blast. It has abilities that customise the effect of eldritch blast, but it doesn't do much else. A warlock without eldritch blast is like a rogue without sneak attack.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

It is quite literally a feature, not a bug. If you look at the original design of the warlock in 3.5 it is pretty much all about eldritch blast. It has abilities that customise the effect of eldritch blast, but it doesn't do much else. A warlock without eldritch blast is like a rogue without sneak attack.

And therein lies the problem. - Eldritch Blast is such a central feature of Warlocks that it is limiting to their design possibilities.

For example Celestial pact warlocks get an ability to add Charisma to radiant and Fire cantrips/spells - It is almost completely useless.
It sounds good thematically, but the warlock is still better just using eldritch blast and ignoring their subclass feature.
Likewise blade pact warlocks are almost forced into the hexblade subclass simply because that is the only way to optimise beyond the point where they would be better off eldritch blasting rather than hitting stuff with their pact blade.

It is so powerful and dominant that it is automatically the best option for any warlock. But you can't design any ability that might be a better option for a warlock to do, because anything more powerful then EB + its assorted invocations would just be too powerful.

 

[Dausuul]

It is quite literally a feature, not a bug. If you look at the original design of the warlock in 3.5 it is pretty much all about eldritch blast. It has abilities that customise the effect of eldritch blast, but it doesn't do much else.

A bug doesn't become not a bug just because it's been around a long time.