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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Stew" data-source="post: 6196721" data-attributes="member: 23484">Your list of spells is for the most part very helpful. Thanks! My desired tweaks for spellcasting don’t involve spells, but the rules for casting generally.Attack Cantrips.1. It should be possible to cast a cantrip as an attack (or, rather, and attack action), and so benefit from the Fighter’s Extra Attack ability. (How to Play p. 17, Classes p. 24) At the moment, it’s a spell (and so a spell action). This may entail other effects to ensure balance, but for zero-level spells only (or perhaps for zero-level spells for which one makes an attack roll, thereby excluding e.g. Burning Hands), I would like to see them as an attack. 2. I’d also like “ray” spells (including attack cantrips) to require a Dex roll to hit rather than a spellcasting-ability roll. (I have lost this one, I know; but some need for investment in a second ability would be nice, and would make it a desaign choice, rather than one more ting to pull from one’s bag o’ tricks.)Both of these are real changes to the rules, but (for me at least) they represent improvements.Implements.1. An implement should have to be wielded in order to gain a spellcasting bonus (and so should always take a hand); this is the case for mages, druids and bards (where the verb used is “hold”), but not clerics (who need only “display”, and can wear it around their neck or on a shield; Classes, p. 11). Not only is this asymmetric needlessly, but it again means the player doesn’t have to make a choice:  a cleric can hold a weapon and a shield and still get the spellcaster bonus. (It also means the cleric can’t have his implement disarmed, the way another spellcaster can.).2. Clarification is needed on bard instruments. Most instruments need two hands to play. As written it’s enough merely to hold a fiddle to get the bonus. Ugh – accept the story you are telling, I say. If an instrument needs two hands, then you can’t also be holding a shield (assuming proficiency) from a feat or something else). The same would be true if a mage chooses to wield a staff; two hands for the bonus. 3. More clarification is needed on bard instruments. Do bards specializing on oratory or dance get the bonus? Do they have to hold their dance shoes or copies of Cicero to get a bonus? Obviously not. All bards have three proficiencies, and there needs to be a list of things that “count”. I think anything entertainment-related should be fair game, but whatever it is, I think you need two free hands to get the bonus.  Each of these three is, I think, really a straightforward clarification on somewhat messy ideas in Implements right now. All of them would improve spellcasting.</blockquote>

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