D&D 5E Limiting use of cantrips - what are the consequences?

[Ranthalan]

And the cleric refused to use weapon when it made sence to use a weapon or the warlock refused to use spells when it made sense to use a spell? If you want your players to use something else than cantrips - them give them situation where using something else than cantrip makes sense.

My point was, with certain cantrips, it never made sense for the cleric to use a weapon. He didn't even realize it for a while. He just did what he thought was best. Eventually he realized he had never use his weapon, and that felt strange to him. While he certainly could do so, it would also feel strange to not take the best action.

And of course I mixed it up, to present them with different challenges. Silence, lines of sight, etc. But in the long run it's just not good for the environments to be so reliant on the idea of trying to make them do different things.

If you like cantrips the way they are, then great. We made a change. We like the results.

 

[OB1]

I love the fatigue idea for endlessly casting cantrips, or a fighter endlessly swinging a sword against a door, and think that could definately be covered by a constitution check. "Oh, you want to cast firebolt for the 10th time in a row, DC10 Con Check, 15th, DC15, etc." And then you gain a level of exhaustion if you fail the check.

Another way to limit magic and make it feel special is to limit access to higher level spells. Make any spell (divine, arcane, whatever) above 2nd level required to be discovered through a quest. So when the wizard want's fireball, she has to research to discover the names of some old dead wizards who were known to be able to do such a feat, and then go on a quest to the wizards old tower (which is now overrun with monsters) to find the spellbook (which will have a few more spells as well). Or a Cleric who want's Mass Cure Wounds has to undergo a specific quest before his god will grant him access. And perhaps the Wild Sorcerer just rolls on a table for the spell they learn (but can replace it with a quest).

 

[Unwise]

if tracers can provide illumination how would a magical bolt of fire do less?

Just FYI I've fired a lot of tracers and they don't supply any meaningful illumination. All they do is let you see where your bullet went. You can't even see what, if anything it hit. You certainly can't see anything between you and it in any meaningful way.

I once fired a small belt of tracers accidentally, that was rather cool looking, but I would say it was more likely to burn out my retina and give me a seizure before letting me see something clearly. (Incidently, after doing that, I had to spend oh so long cleaning and retesting the weapon, then I had to manually insert tracer rounds into thousands of rounds of belt fed ammo. Oh boy, my RSI is acting up just thinking about it. Don't let a QM find you wasting tracers).

Anyway, sorry for the derail.

 

[grendel111111]

Another approach to this would be rather than limiting the amount of cantrips that can be used increase the number of cantrips that they have.

Basically the problem with people spamming firebolt can be viewed as "why use weapons when the firebolt is clearly better?". Ignoring that at low levels a crossbow is still often better, the lack of choice is the result of a lack of options.
So When a wizard is choosing spells he will look at the cantrips and find the one that will give the best result the most of the time (Thus they take firebolt and 2 other non combat cantrips). By 10th level they have access to another 2 cantrips. If you gave them 5 cantrips to start (and they don't gain more later) then they will more likely to take 3 offensive cantrips, Then they need to decide "in combat" Do I fire bolt, or would I be better to use ray of frost to slow the approaching ogre down and buy the fighters more time to kill the orcs? Should I fire bolt the goblin to use acid spash on him and his friend to get rid of both of them? Should I use poison spray on that weedy looking creature because I think it's unlikely to have have a good resistance to poison, but it seemed to shake off the fire bolt last turn very easily. Then you get less spamming of a single spell over and over again.

I ran a sorcerer like that and he almost never used anything but blaster cantrips so that all his spell slots were freed up to utility, But he had a lot of choices when it came to choose what spell he used (or if he fired his crossbow) (He also got to play around with his meta magic to make the cantrips do extra things too).

(This can't fix the cleric unfortunately, as it only has one combat offensive cantrip.)
Edit: I am a little surprised they didn't give each cleric domain an extra cantrip (tempest - shocking grasp, life - spare the dying, Light - light, nature - thorn whip, trickery- mage hand?, War - true strike?,

 

[Ranthalan]

Another approach to this would be rather than limiting the amount of cantrips that can be used increase the number of cantrips that they have.

I like this approach. I may try it in my next campaign.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think we're of like mind regarding this. 95% of my D&D history is 1E. The biggest shock starting up 5E was just how much magic there was. I know they say it's low magic, but I assume they're comparing it to editions I haven't played. The fact that the rogue in my campaign can cast a spell at all (without multi-classing), much less every turn, is just so weird to me. Every player save one at my table uses magic. It feels like everyone in the world can cast spells.

Yep. Every class in the 5e PH uses spells in some sense. Even fighters and rogues can actually cast spells.

And, no, that's not 'down' from some prior edition high. 2e-through-4e, fighters and rogues didn't cast spells, at all, thankyouverymuch, neither did the 3e barbarian nor its more obscure Knight or Scout, heck, 4e even de-spelled the Ranger and introduced the Warlord, a fourth 'martial' (non-spell-casting) class, plus the Essentials Knight and Slayer (but not Scout, which got a few primal utilities).

Rather, 5e is 'low magic' in the sense of magic-items not being an assumed part of character balance. That's actually kinda a first for D&D, as the game has always assumed that non-casting characters, like fighters, would get some access to magic via items. In 1e that was done by weighting the random treasure tables in favor of items they'd use. In 3e & 4e the assumption of magic items (and wealth in general) by level became explicit guidelines, though you could also opt-out of using magic items for balance via an optional 'inherent bonus' rule.

I wouldn't tell my players, only x of you get to be casters. Anyway, it's not so much the number of casters. A big part of it is that every class has a casting subclass.

When spells become available also matters. A 5e fighter can start casting spells at 3rd, and that's about as late-blooming as it gets. A 1e ranger didn't start casting until 8th, so even some technical casters were non-casters for a while.

 

[slaughterj]

Pursuant to another idea I posted here about increasing spell power by toying with the save-each-round mechanic for ongoing spell effects (such as paralysis), namely reducing the number of saves one gets, I'm now thinking about cantrips. More particularly, the flavor of unlimited cantrips is not something that fits well within the custom low-magic campaign world that I wish to offer my players. I like magic to be scarce, but meaningful.

Has anyone toyed with - or implemented - the idea of limiting cantrip use? For example, they could work like other spells with a limited number of spell slots.

The obvious downside for casters, is of course that they might have to revert back to clearly suboptimal combat options once they're out of cantrips and spells. Although this is less likely to be a problem in my games due to rare occurences when there are numerous battles in a single day, it's still a very valid concern.

So, what do you think about this?

How would you implement such a system?

What type of counter-measure would you consider for casters, especially ones that have poor non-magic battle options, to mitigate the loss of unlimited cantrips?

How many cantrips slots would you allow per day, or how would you handle this limitation generally?

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks,

Sky

I haven't read but the first page of this thread, but here are some thoughts:

1. You probably want to minimize bookkeeping on the number that can be cast.
2. Here are some ways you can limit cantrips with limited bookkeeping:
a. Allow PCs to cast each one once per short rest (easy to track), but let them have a 1 minute duration on them (i.e., you activate Firebolt and can throw one each round, including the first round). You could add concentrate on them as well, or maybe just skip it, since so many other spells already have it. (This is similar to Shillelagh.)
b. Allow PCs to cast each one a number of times equal to their casting ability modifier per short rest (requires some tracking, but not too bad).
c. Allow PCs a "power pool" of a number of cantrip castings per short rest (just one pool, but cast any number of them in any combination, still relatively easy to track for bookkeeping), and base the power pool on various options, anything from straight casting stat (got an 18 INT, you can cast 18 cantrips per short rest, any mix), to stat modifier (min 1) x level (this would get really high and pointless to track at high level, and could be too low at low level), to stat modifier (min 1) x "X" arbitrary modifier x level (or half level, etc., the arbitrary modifier to make low level easier, half level or less to make high level from being too high), to stat modifier x "X" arbitrary modifier (probably too low for low level though), etc.

 

[Pssthpok]

Beyond establishing a very low-magic setting, I can't imagine a single good reason to do this. If you limit cantrips in a way that's got any impact whatsoever, you're just offloading the action economy for spellcasters onto their equipment. Unless a wizard shooting a crossbow rather than a cantrip solves your problem with cantrips, it's probably better to leave things as they are.

 

[Skyscraper]

I'm somewhat surprised that many people seem to want to convince me not to do this

I understand that rules balance and all. Just toying around with ideas, to get the flavor I hope to achieve.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I'm not entirely certain you do, cantrips are important because they're equivalent to a fighter swinging a sword, or a ranger firing an arrow- limiting cantrips makes them non-equivalent, arbitrarily weaker than using weapons.