D&D 5E Potent Cantrip replacement

[Savage Wombat]

My group's evoker wizard just hit 6th level. And I remember that we all agreed that Potent Cantrip was, shall we say, poorly designed.

Has anyone come up with a decent suggestion for a replacement power?

 

[Cernor]

What's wrong with it? It gives you guaranteed damage, provided the target isn't immune to your cantrip. Just use cantrips that require saving throws rather than attack rolls and you're golden! If you're fighting enemy wizards, forcing a concentration check without having to use a spell slot seems pretty powerful to me.

I can see it causing problems if the player decided "I want to play a wizard, so I'll go evoker because I like blasting things" but didn't look at what they actually got by being an evoker. Then they could be stuck with only utility/attack roll cantrips and Potent Cantrip is useless until level 10... But that's their own fault for not planning ahead and they should have to deal with it.

 

[Staffan]

What's wrong with it? It gives you guaranteed damage, provided the target isn't immune to your cantrip. Just use cantrips that require saving throws rather than attack rolls and you're golden! If you're fighting enemy wizards, forcing a concentration check without having to use a spell slot seems pretty powerful to me.

For one thing, none of the evocation wizard cantrips have saves - fire bolt and ray of frost are ranged spell attacks, and shocking grasp is a melee spell attack. The only wizard cantrips that have saves are conjuration (acid splash and poison spray). Sure, there's no particular need for them to be evocations, but it's silly if the Evoker has an ability that's only useful with Conjuration spells.

That said, the Elemental Evil Player's Companion helps a bit in this regard, adding frostbite and thunderclap as evocation cantrips with saves.

 

[mlund]

Yup, I noticed the same thing. That's why my wizard that likes to use Evocations took Adjuration as his specialty instead of Evocation. Mage Armor, Shield, and Dispel Magic are always useful and the specialist abilities are actually relevant.

Marty Lund

 

[Johris]

The new Elemental Evil players companion booklet PDF has new Evocation cantrips that allow saves.

Frostbite & Thunderclap