D&D 5E Changing Cantrips

[aco175]

I never thought about this before and thought it was like older editions where you could swap a spell when you gained a level of new spells.

 

[Satyrn]

I never thought about this before and thought it was like older editions where you could swap a spell when you gained a level of new spells.

It is. The rules for learning, casting and swapping spells is described in the class's section about spells of 1st level and above.

The rules for learning and casting cantrips is described in a separate section of the class, and doesn't include any mention of swapping.

So unless your DM draws the swapping rule from the one section and lets it apply to the other, the rules don't permit swapping cantrips.

 

[guachi]

By rules, no.

But in the 5e games I've run, even the ones that fell apart early on, I told the players they could change stuff early on if they felt it wasn't v working.

In my current campaign, the sorcerer decided in session two he wanted sleep as a spell. The elf ranger decided he was from a different elf clan in a different country.

In a previous campaign the devout desert fighter (but not a Paladin) decided at level two he really wanted to be an actual paladin.

In each case, the PC was fundamentally the same character just more in tune with what the player wanted.