D&D 5E Homebrew cantrip help

[WizardOfFrobozz]

I've got a player who's running a Lvl 1 5E wizard with a pretty non-traditional build & backstory. He's looking for a cantrip that will buff his strength stat and/or bonuses. We've gone back and forth iterating on what it might look like to knock a 3.5E-style Bull's Strength spell down to a cantrip power level, but I'm not sure that anything really useful can be shoehorned into an appropriately balanced cantrip. Here's the spell/effects under discussion:

Casting time: 1 action
Range: self only
Duration: 1 min, Concentration
Effect: For the duration of the spell, the caster gains +2 to her Strength ability modifier as long as she is unarmored. (Donning any armor immediately ends the spell.)

Even with the range reduction to SELF and the unarmored restriction, I think this still packs too much punch for a cantrip. I'm also not sure how to squeeze it down further without making it uninteresting. For example, knocking the bonus down to +1 and changing the duration to 1 round might qualify, but who would give up an action this round for a +1 to-hit/damage next round only? Ditto for limiting the bonus to unarmed attacks only - maybe a cool cantrip, but not what he's looking to do.

I'd love to encourage the RP concept of the buff guy who's kind of a wizard under protest, but I'm not sure how to find a good compromise on this one. Any thoughts?

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't know, Int is such an overpowered stat in 5e.

Easy mistake to make with the letters all being on the same keyboard & all but I'm not sure what you were going for because of that pretty major typo. Were you talking about dex or cha when autocorrect kicked in there?

 

[clearstream]

It’s a personal custom can trip, and it’s easy for the DM to say “for this character only”.

i think people are treating this like dm guild material, it’s just to a help make a single character concept work

Actually that is a good point. An approach I like for introducing tailored mechanics is to embed them first in an item with limited charges. Then if the mechanic doesn't work it removes itself, and if it works I can broaden it.

 

[clearstream]

Easy mistake to make with the letters all being on the same keyboard & all but I'm not sure what you were going for because of that pretty major typo. Were you talking about dex or cha when autocorrect kicked in there?

Wasn't it irony? Maybe I misunderstood...