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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ashrym" data-source="post: 7830962" data-attributes="member: 6750235">Personally, I'm okay with spells losing their practical effectiveness over time.  The 1st level damage spells tend to have advantages over cantrips regardless of damage and the cantrips don't catch up in damage until 11th or 17th level, at which point other spells are giving those opportunities to shine.If the opinion is that cantrips shouldn't do competitive or greater damage than low level spells slots the solution would be to lower or drop the damage scaling.  This has zero effect at low levels where cantrips are more prominent and cantrips matter less later because of the spell slots available.  I would watch warlocks and they might be a special case in how cantrips are handled.Removing cantrip scaling completely doesn't impact low level play and prevents the cantrips from exceeding low level spell damage.  Restricting cantrip scaling to 2 dice at 5th level matches up with the typical extra attack feature and also doesn't exceed low level spell damage.  Restricting cantrip damage to 2 dice at 11th level does the same thing but slows down the damage progression.  Those solutions would resolve the issue where cantrips out damage low level spell slots.Adding damage scaling to low level spells increases the damage significantly in what's been proposed.  I'm thinking a 5th level wizard doesn't need the increase to cantrips and potential increase to 7 out of his 9 spell slots plus whatever he recovers after a short rest.  This increase will also interact with things like metamagic, domains, and subclass features.  An 18th level wizard suddenly has a much stronger at-will option for damage because of spell mastery, for example.  That's a rather large boost in damage on a class that, while versatile, doesn't do strong consistent damage.I like the lack of spell auto-scaling and if it were me I would either restrict the cantrips to 2 dice, or 1 die, or simply remove the damage cantrips completely and move eldritch blast over to become a class ability.The damage for the spells does scale, just more subtly and with less impact.  The saving throw / hit roll mechanic automatically increasing cause this for scaling in a different way than 1e (for example).  A 13 DC burning hands at 1st level is going to average less damage than a 19 DC burning hands at 17th level.I would still use burning hands at 17th level over a higher level slot or a cantrip depending on the situation.  The AoE effect is still there for number of targets over a cantrip and it still leaves me my higher level slots.  It's just a lot more situational as the levels increase.On a final note, damage spells aren't that great to begin with.  Monster hit points go up fast with CR and slots can go rather quickly digging into that.  I'm good with that drawback.  Cantrip damage is the 5e solution for spell casters to not blow through spells trying to maintain continuous damage.  I would rather take that cantrip damage away than give more potency in direct damage with those spell slots.</blockquote>

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