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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Phanixis" data-source="post: 6837122" data-attributes="member: 6822572">I actually think at-will cantrips as a whole are a bit of a red herring when it comes to the proliferation of magic.  People see this resource free source of magic and assume magic has gotten out of hand, but magic has always been insanely powerful in D&D ever since I started playing AD&D 2e back in the day.  It has been more powerful and prolific in any version of D&D I have played than in any other fictional setting I have encountered.  Even back in older editions by the time my wizard hit level 5 or 6 I basically had the equivalent of at will cantrips.  I had a wand of magic missiles for casual blasting and a 5-6 hour per cast unseen servant carrying my torch, opening doors, triggering traps and the like.  If anything, magic has been reduced in power significantly from older editions thanks to a reduction in the number of high level spell slots, a reduction in the number of separate spells you could have prepared, and the newly added concentration mechanics.  Gone are the days where the wizard can stack buff after buff and fly into battle backed by summoned minions and unleash huge swaths of devastation.  Now he is limited to one of his powerful ongoing effects at a time (for the most part, the logic for what gets the concentration flag can sometimes be weird), and it is a definite decrease in the ubiquity of magic by any measure.  And this isn't even getting into other the other problems of older editions, where the average PC is carrying a magical arsenal large enough to shame North Korea, or the general insanity that was the druid.  Even rogues could get into the action thanks to use magic device, yet nobody seems to complain about the rogue throwing magic missiles every round in combat is contributing to the ubiquity of magic.The only time magic feels more ubiquitous is at low levels.  But this was necessary.  To long has the game suffered from linear warriors, quadratic wizards and giving spellcasters a decent amount of combat effectiveness and utility early on in exchange for removing the extreme levels of power the obtained later on was a necessary change that improved the way D&D played.  Having a level one wizard who was limited to throwing oversized lawn darts after casting his one spell with a hit point total so low that he would die from a scrap with your average badger sucked, and having a wizard who could challenge God to a duel at level 20 tended to suck for everyone else.  Of course the problem is not just limited to wizards, any primary caster suffers from this same problem to one extent or another, if less extreme.  WoTC obviously came to realize how bad this was when they were developing 4e, but the AEDU system didn't go over very well, so now they have made a second attempt using a more traditional system.  Personally, I like the new neo-Vancian spellcasting system, it is an elegant, streamlined approach to spellcasting that blends the best aspect of spontaneous and prepared magic.  The only real flaw I have with it is the one the Hussar pointed out in that it has a tendency to largely replace the need for bards, clerics and druids to use weapons. This problem is based on the relative strength of the combat cantrips available when compared against the strength of conventional attacks.  It can be easily rectified by increases the martial competence of the offending classes along with a mild reduction in cantrip damage and scaling.  A relatively easy house rule fix for any otherwise excellent spell casting system.</blockquote>

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