D&D General Limiting Utility Cantrips

[Gadget]

I'm not seeing the problem. I admit, unlimited cantrips was at first jarring, especially if you harbor some low-magic sensibilities. But D&D has left 'low magic' behind a long time ago. And really, is Mending overcoming that many problems? I kind of like the idea of giving the Wizard something minor and magical to do all the time vs hoarding their magic sleep spell for the right moment as in ye olden days. Then again we can quibble over 'minor' and scaling of damage cantrips as well I suppose.

I think the game is largely not played like a Gygaxian dungeon solving problem of DM vs Players, where every innocuous thing can be a riddle to solve or a deadly trap and PCs are counting their torches and every buckle and strap. Of course, some tables do like to play that way, and there's not anything wrong with that, but I think D&D is no longer tyring to support that as the default out of the box play style.

 

[Distracted DM]

Updated poll options

 

[Horwath]

Yeah, I find it to be a bad spell as it was written. Why wouldn’t you spam it as much as you can? The concentration and stealth aspects are very situational; there are many, many times that the PCs won’t be in stealth, or needing to worry about concentration.

I’m not a fan of spells and abilities that circumvent or trivialize core parts of the game cheaply. Everyone uses skills, you have bonuses to skills based on your abilities and expertise. Having a near constant +1d4 is just such a “no duh” thing that I question its existence.

maybe better solution would bi similar to 5E24, pick a skill, but instead of +d4 you get advantage, that keeps you inside your competence level, max roll is still 20 not 21-24, but you increase your average roll. It's fits as guidance is just getting Help action from a spell and not another character.

 

[Horwath]

i mean, i'm not trying to claim damage cantrips are amazing but i still feel at baseline that they're too good for what they are, especially when you factor in that they auto-scale three times and exist in combination with levelled casting, it's just a combination of things that all add up together to result in a little too much kick IMO, i would just have them scale once at like, 7th and i'd consider the issue solved.

they are still too weak even with scaling, 4d10 at 17th level is complete rubbish and probably a waste of action, might be better to take a Dodge action to safeguard any concentration spell you have.
22 damage at tier4 is a joke, it's like d4 at 1st level.
It's only in the game to make casters feel magical while not casting real spells every turn. little less humiliating than shooting a crossbow.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I wouldn't change it, and I probably left a comment on why I think it works fine on the thread about setting off traps. But if you do feel the need to change it...

Make them be castable at will, but you have to prepare them with one of your normal spell preparations to be able to cast them--they can't be selected as one of your known cantrips.

Even doing that I expect (based on my experience with allowing people to do that in addition to the normal rules) that players will almost never prepare cantrips. The undesirability of sacrificing a prepared leveled spell for another at-will cantrip is high.

Making them actually use a 1st level slot to cast is basically eliminating them from the game. Might as well make them some sort of ritual instead at that point.

 

[CreamCloud0]

they are still too weak even with scaling, 4d10 at 17th level is complete rubbish and probably a waste of action, might be better to take a Dodge action to safeguard any concentration spell you have.
22 damage at tier4 is a joke, it's like d4 at 1st level.
It's only in the game to make casters feel magical while not casting real spells every turn. little less humiliating than shooting a crossbow.

i don't really care if they're 'too weak', they're there as the fallback option most of the time, and as it is i feel casters rarely encounter the requisite attrition to get through enough of their slots to be relying on cantrips for their damage anyway, especially at higher levels where you're saying their relative damage is worse.

 

[Horwath]

i don't really care if they're 'too weak', they're there as the fallback option most of the time, and as it is i feel casters rarely encounter the requisite attrition to get through enough of their slots to be relying on cantrips for their damage anyway, especially at higher levels where you're saying their relative damage is worse.

it's a fallback as number of spell slots(and it's a good decision) was drastically cut down from 3.5e, back then you really could not run out of spell slots. 18th level sorcerer had 65+ spell slots from levels 1-9, now 18th level sorcerer has 20 slots to use.

if cantrips didn't scale at levels 5+ if you are not casting level spells, your only option is then Dodge.
Guess what, taking Dodge action as only choice is really not fun to play.

 

[el-remmen]

I am limiting all cantrips by asking for a spellcheck after each time one is cast. If you fail, it is no longer available until after a Long Rest. So you still get to cast it, but the effort may have temporarily burned out the knowledge of that spell.

The spellcheck is based on your spellcasting ability score. The DC is 11. You can apply your prof bonus.

 

[GrimCo]

Leave poor cantrips alone. In 3e they were 3/day at 1st lv, then 4 day rest of game. That was pathetic. Best thing PF1 did for casters was introduced unlimited cantrips, including damage ones. They were trash and didn't autoscale, but at least you still had some magic when you used your 1-5 slots per day. Sure, 5e wizard has more slots at early levels ( 2 -3-6-7-9 vs 1-2-3-5-6 in pf1, in 3.x cantrips used slots) but you burn trough the slots rather quick at lower levels. And to be honest, it sucks to play wizard that can't even produce magic spark and is reduced to crappy crossbowman for the first few levels.

Some of the 5e cantrips can be used in very fun and creative ways (mage hand has been used for some R rated stuff i wont go here, seen Message used couple of times for cheating on card games, but also as walkie talkie).

 

[CreamCloud0]

it's a fallback as number of spell slots(and it's a good decision) was drastically cut down from 3.5e, back then you really could not run out of spell slots. 18th level sorcerer had 65+ spell slots from levels 1-9, now 18th level sorcerer has 20 slots to use.

if cantrips didn't scale at levels 5+ if you are not casting level spells, your only option is then Dodge.
Guess what, taking Dodge action as only choice is really not fun to play.

casters might have less slots than 3.5e but it seems more often than not past the first few levels they're still not running out of slots before long resting again and getting them all back, most groups just don't seem to want run the requisite attrition to get to that point, i would rather offensive cantrips existed more along the direction to things like ray of frost or thorn whip that exist to control and manipulate the battlefield rather than as direct offensive measures.