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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6605993" data-attributes="member: 12731">Off-topic; feel free to skip.Look, 5th edition is the first edition I've played that a) does not provide complete stats for making holes in walls and b) tells you to use common sense (the exact quote is "Can a fighter cut through asection of a stone wall with a sword? No, the sword islikely to break before the wall does.")But it's still a game where a fighter can do as much damage with a single swing as a frikkin' siege tower, and MUCH more damage per round. So to conclude this very off-topic tangent, let's take a 3rd edition stone wall. A 10x10 section has "hardness" 8 and 900 hp. Assuming a character with STR 18 and a +1 magical longsword, that's 1d10+5, meaning 2,5 points of damage on average. He makes a hole in that stone wall in 36 minutes.Then consider how this is a VERY conservative estimate, since I haven't factored in more than one attack per round, or any abilities (such as power attack). My point is not that you're playing it wrong. My point is that a character swinging an axe for ten minutes is one thing, as regards the energy that is developed. The energy needed to cause 10 points of cutting damage is something you or I can do - if you hack at me with an axe, I'm likely to go down if not die outright in one attack. But allowing a character to "swing" Firebolt or Ray of Frost for ten minutes straight, now THAT'S absurd. In order to create similar damage to me using nothing but fire or cold (or necrotic!)...THIS is what at-will cantrips are breaking.Cantrips at will are fine IN COMBAT since combat never lasts very long. Cantrips out of combat are utterly broken if you can "swing" them as long as a woodcutter can chop wood. Sure, it's easy to say "okay, so let's rule you can't cantrip for very long". If that works for you, fine. Some of you aren't even going down this road, and need to do absolutely nothing. But if you have players who like finding and using rules literally (without applying self-enforced common sense filters), you might find my suggestion useful. That is: how about giving each cantrip 10 "slots" resetting on a short or long rest. That's 40 slots if you have four cantrips, so the series of fights where you run out of both Fire Bolt and Ray of Frost and, say, Poison Spray (30 castings) would be pretty rare. In other words, your combat prowess would not be meaningfully affected, but your environmental one would. (Ideally, you would never actually enforce such a rule; force players to count their cantrips I mean. It's only there to be pointed to, after all) That's all I did. Now I'm done being off-topic. Thanks.</blockquote>

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