Removing/modifying the Cantrips Subsystem

[Sadrik]

There are no 0 level spells, they are moved to 1st level.
Cantrip is a tag on certain spells, allowing it to be cast at reduced effect without losing it from memory.

Spells from Basic:
Bless: As a cantrip can add +1
Burning Hands: 1d6 as a cantrip
Fire Bolt: 1d10 as a cantrip, or 2d10, and 1d10 per slot level higher
Guidance: As a cantrip can add +1
Guiding Bolt: is a level 2 spell
Inflict Wounds: 1d10 as cantrip
Mage Armor: Cantrip
Magic Missile: 1 dart as a cantrip
Resistance: adds flat +2 or as a cantrip can add +1
Sacred Flame: 1d8 as a cantrip, or 2d8, and 1d8 per slot level higher
Shocking Grasp: 1d12 as a cantrip, or 2d12, and 1d12 per slot level higher
Thunderwave: 1d8 as cantrip

Other first level spells can be extrapolated as well.

 

[mips42]

Out of curiosity, what is the underlying purpose for not having at-will magic? Also, would it have the same intended purpose if, instead of Cantrips being at-will, limit to x per short or long rest like the rest of the spells? (EG: 4 per short or long rest at first level, increase by 1 every other level)

 

[epicbob]

One disadvantage of the existing system is that it creates an issue of redundancy (if not outright superiority) between cantrips and ranged weapon proficiencies.

At least, with this system, ranged weapons once again become a fallback in case you run out of spells.

 

[Sadrik]

Out of curiosity, what is the underlying purpose for not having at-will magic? Also, would it have the same intended purpose if, instead of Cantrips being at-will, limit to x per short or long rest like the rest of the spells? (EG: 4 per short or long rest at first level, increase by 1 every other level)

This does not affect the infinite magic of cantrips.

Cantrip is a tag on certain spells, allowing it to be cast at reduced effect without losing it from memory

The idea is that all of the 1st level attack spells can be cast as a cantrip for 1d damage. And they can also be scaled up by using higher level slots. Cantrips are still there. They just all become first level spells and behave like a regular spell for learning and scaling up.

Spelled out examples:
Fire Bolt
In this, it is a 1st level spell that deals 2d10 damage and for each level higher it is cast at it deals 1d10 more damage. You can also cast it as a cantrip which makes it stay in memory still and it deals 1d10 damage.

Detect Magic
1st level spell can be cast as a cantrip any number of times.

This does a few things that I think are neat. First it removes the cantrip subsystem. The auto-scaling spells and the seperate learning method. It brings them into the standard scaling of using higher spell levels to scale. Second it makes some of the other 1st level spells that are attack spells into cantrips. Magic missile can now be cast as a cantrip etc. Both of these features are desirable.

For limiting cantrips to a certain amount per long rest or short rest. I approve of that move. Something like casting stat per short rest works. Do if you had a 20 INT as a wizard you could do 5 cantrips between each short rest. Or perhaps the overall stat per day, so the same wizard might use up to 20 cantrips per day.

 

[Sadrik]

One disadvantage of the existing system is that it creates an issue of redundancy (if not outright superiority) between cantrips and ranged weapon proficiencies.

At least, with this system, ranged weapons once again become a fallback in case you run out of spells.

In edition 1e through 3e this was the case. Fall back to darts, or light crossbow, dagger or staff. Until you got your first wand... Then you pretty much blasted until you ran out of charges.

 

[mips42]

Ah, so the desire is to be able to scale the cantrips up. This seems like a decent idea but I would be interested in the scalability as opposed to other spells of a similar nature.
Using your example of Firebolt, by the time you can cast Fireball (5th level) a Firebolt would do a potential 5d10 and a fireball 8d6. In the first case, the average damage is 25-30 and in the second case the average is 24-32 which is really close. Do the others scale as well?
Would this scaled-up Firebolt be able to to be cast at will or only the 2 times the spell slots should allow? I would vote for the second (only so much magical juice to go around). I could see a mage or sorcerer using Fireball for crowd control and an empowered Firebolt for tough solos.
With that in mind, is there a reason to not just have a house rule that cantrips can be scaled up in the same way that regullar spells can without moving them to the 1st level spell list?
It's a interesting idea. Good luck with it.

 

[Sadrik]

Ah, so the desire is to be able to scale the cantrips up. This seems like a decent idea but I would be interested in the scalability as opposed to other spells of a similar nature.
Using your example of Firebolt, by the time you can cast Fireball (5th level) a Firebolt would do a potential 5d10 and a fireball 8d6. In the first case, the average damage is 25-30 and in the second case the average is 24-32 which is really close. Do the others scale as well?
Would this scaled-up Firebolt be able to to be cast at will or only the 2 times the spell slots should allow? I would vote for the second (only so much magical juice to go around). I could see a mage or sorcerer using Fireball for crowd control and an empowered Firebolt for tough solos.
With that in mind, is there a reason to not just have a house rule that cantrips can be scaled up in the same way that regullar spells can without moving them to the 1st level spell list?
It's a interesting idea. Good luck with it.

Yes this would scale up like a regular first level spell would. It would allow the caster to have two ways to cast fire bolt: as a 1d10 damage cantrip and retain the spell in memory and expend no slots or as a 2d10 1st level spell, 3d10 2nd level, 4d10 3rd level spell etc. but would lose the spell from memory.

I don't think there is the worry that it may eclipse an actual 3rd level spell 4d10 vs. 8d6.

 

[Yunru]

Sounds silly. Cantrips and Weapon attacks (in the hands of a weapon user) do roughly equal damage. What you're suggest not only makes Spellcasting classes feel less magical once they run out of spell slots, it makes them massively weaker.

Edit: No my bad, Cantrips are already weaker than a weapon user using a weapon. Which just furthers my point.

 

[Sadrik]

Sounds silly. Cantrips and Weapon attacks (in the hands of a weapon user) do roughly equal damage. What you're suggest not only makes Spellcasting classes feel less magical once they run out of spell slots, it makes them massively weaker.

Edit: No my bad, Cantrips are already weaker than a weapon user using a weapon. Which just furthers my point.

You may not like it. That is ok. It does make cantrips weaker. To infinite cast them they will only ever do 1dX of damage. That said, you can scale them. Other 1st level spells gain the cantrip tag. That is a pretty good thing. Slots can be expended to scale them up, I think this is ok though. I don't want the caster to default to cantrip shooting at mid level. That is lame. Instead they have a lot more slots at that level so can shoot them instead of cantrips. Also they will have magic items. So they can either use a wand or other magic item, use a higher level spell slot that wrecks it or they can literally pew pew with a 1dX cantrip. I think you grossly underestimate the actual effect with this.

 

[Yunru]

Since Cantrips scale anyway, I don't think I do.

Hell, you say it's to make ranged weapons a fallback for magic users (which is and always will be silly), but even with your changes they're still not.

A dragon sorcerer has run out of spell slots, oh no! Does she: A- fire a hand crossbow for a piddly 1d6+dex mod damage, or B- Cast Fire Bolt for 1d10+cha mod damage? Not counting in the fact the cantrip will have a higher accuracy if dex and cha aren't equal.