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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8702717" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Yeah, casters in general never want to be in melee, so a spell which only does its job in melee is generally a bad choice. It's not that it's bad to have an AoE effect, it's that it's an option which depends on things going wrong before it can really do its job.Plus (more to the thread at large than you specifically), there are other AoE cantrips. Word of radiance is a Cleric cantrip that hits everything in range (5') with a scaling d6 radiant damage, with radiant being the second-best type in the game after force. (Force has fewer resistant or immune creatures, but neither has very many; conversely, almost nothing is weak to force, while slightly more are weak to radiant, though again neither is common.) Admittedly, it has a Con save attached, which is the most common "good" saving throw for creatures in 5e. It's still an AoE cantrip, one that functions more or less the same as thunderclap (and thunder damage, unlike force or radiant, is not quite such an uncommon resistance.)Between thunderclap, word of radiance, and sword burst, I don't really think it's accurate to say that AoE cantrips are verboten. I just think the ones that exist are considered to be sufficient.Personally, I'd say make it scale off proficiency instead of increasing the number of dice. Its strength is in its consistency, not its heightened potential. So have it do 1d6+Proficiency lightning damage. At maximum proficiency (6), that's slightly less good than 3d6 (3.5+6 = 9.5, average of 3d6 is 10.5), but extremely consistent, always doing 7-12 damage, whereas a comparable 4d4 alternative could do more damage (13-16) but could easily do less (4-6) In return for that consistency, you get 10 feet of extra movement, and the reduced likelihood of OAs. That seems like a reasonably balanced option to me, particularly because lightning is a fairly common resistance and (comparatively) very common as an immunity (almost as common as cold and more than half as common as fire, not counting reprints nor unique NPCs) while being exceedingly rare as a vulnerability (as in, according to my sources, there is only one creature vulnerable to lightning in 5e, and it's specific to Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.)So yeah. 1d6+Prof damage, some kind of saving throw to avoid damage (I recommend Dex personally, but Con would also make sense), does not scale like other cantrips. Instead, you get +10 feet of extra movement. Enemies who take damage from the spell are unable to make OAs against you. Until the end of your turn, all other OAs made against you have disadvantage.That sounds like a niche but useful cantrip. It depends on having enemies close to you, or being caught off-sides, to have any teeth. Should you have such a situation, however, it can actually be pretty good. The early damage may be a teensy bit high (since it's 1d6+2 as opposed to 1d8 flat for most other cantrips), but the extremely slow scaling means that difference will quickly even out at high level....and frankly, having a cantrip to protect yourself in the EXTREMELY squishy early levels of 5e doesn't sound like a bad plan to me. Having it last for a single turn, give only +10 movement and not "double after modifiers," and require a regular action to cast instead of a bonus action, makes it clearly inferior to expeditious retreat. And, even better, the two dovetail quite nicely, since the proposed stormwalk cantrip adds a flat movement bonus while expeditious retreat doubles after such modifiers are applied.I say go for it, Chaosmancer. Let stormwalk be a niche but useful defense-focused cantrip with a unique static-value (heh, punny) damage basis. In a world where things like light (for characters without darkvision), prestidigitation, fire bolt, minor illusion, etc. are jostling for those 2-4 known cantrips at 1st level (depending on what kind of spellcaster you are), I can't see stormwalk being rated very highly simply because its damage type isn't good, it doesn't scale well, and it requires a bad situation (being in melee with multiple enemies) to even be all that useful. Shocking grasp already does this to a single enemy, and does it better, with both better damage and preventing that one target from making any OAs whatsoever until the start of its next turn.</blockquote>

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