So the gust cantrip can do 3 things but only the first 2 matter to this discussion.
One Medium or smaller creature that you choose must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 5 feet away from you.
You create a small blast of air capable of moving one object that is neither held nor carried and that weighs no more than 5 pounds. The object is pushed up to 10 feet away from you. It isn’t pushed with enough force to cause damage.
You can push a medium creatue 5 feet or a 5 pound object 10 feet. Why can the object only be five pounds? the average weight of a human is 137 pounds and it can push a human 5 feet. The max weight of a medium creature is 500 pounds also. I understand the 5 pound weight limit on mage hand but this doesn't make sense since its just a powerful blast of wind. Pushing 10 feet would require more force but even if we say that only something 1/4 of the weight than something we can push 5 feet, then going by average human weight you could push an object that weights 35 pounds, and if we go by 500 pounds then we could push an object of 120 pounds. So even if we say that we can push an object 1/8 of the weight 10 feet away than we could push 17 pounds (by average human weight) or 60 pounds (by max medium weight). The minimum weight of medium creatures is 60 pounds for reference.
I would like this cantrip for the flavor of my character but it just sucks and everyone says it's useless (rightfully so). Do you guys have any advice or house rules to make this spell at least decent or make sense?
People want cantrips to be more powerful, and some quite blatantly are. The elemental cantrips are meant to be minor things like Prestidigitation. People treat Move Earth like a magical backhoe when it's more meant to be a magical garden rake. Gust is supposed to be a sudden sharp gust of wind. It takes considerable force to move a 5 pound object 10 feet. That's more than I would allow, and the only reason it can move a 500 pound medium creature 5 feet is because critters with legs are inherently unstable. They stumble and move, not slide along the ground. If you want more, use a feat and get Telekinesis.
Do people really need to optimize everything? Some spells are more situational than others and it is fine that way.
This is only true for wizards, unless I missed another class gaining the same ability to change cantrips when long resting. So far as I know, for everyone else, knowing a cantrip is a relatively precious resource that can't be altered until you level at the earliest. As a result, all cantrips you can learn have to compete with each other - i.e. you have genuine resource scarcity. A cantrip that's too situational is a genuinely poor choice for anyone, since you never know what situations the campaign will put you in. Adventurers are in the business of surviving their adventures, and players generally want to have fun, which for cantrips means finding yourself in situations where casting your cantrip makes sense.
So the gust cantrip can do 3 things but only the first 2 matter to this discussion.
One Medium or smaller creature that you choose must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 5 feet away from you.
You create a small blast of air capable of moving one object that is neither held nor carried and that weighs no more than 5 pounds. The object is pushed up to 10 feet away from you. It isn’t pushed with enough force to cause damage.
You can push a medium creatue 5 feet or a 5 pound object 10 feet. Why can the object only be five pounds? the average weight of a human is 137 pounds and it can push a human 5 feet. The max weight of a medium creature is 500 pounds also. I understand the 5 pound weight limit on mage hand but this doesn't make sense since its just a powerful blast of wind. Pushing 10 feet would require more force but even if we say that only something 1/4 of the weight than something we can push 5 feet, then going by average human weight you could push an object that weights 35 pounds, and if we go by 500 pounds then we could push an object of 120 pounds. So even if we say that we can push an object 1/8 of the weight 10 feet away than we could push 17 pounds (by average human weight) or 60 pounds (by max medium weight). The minimum weight of medium creatures is 60 pounds for reference.
I would like this cantrip for the flavor of my character but it just sucks and everyone says it's useless (rightfully so). Do you guys have any advice or house rules to make this spell at least decent or make sense?
The four elemental cantrips vary quite widely in utility for no clear reason; Gust is the worst of the four. For Gust, the issue isn't so much the strength of it; although Shape Water can move 7800 pounds, and Mold Earth can move infinite weight (assuming only real world materials, 125 cubic feet of loose iridium gravel/sand is probably the limit - don't know what it weighs, but it should easily beat 7800 pounds). That's simply because those two spells can move a 125 foot cubic volume of matter, which Gust can't. The core issue here is how little you can do you with Gust to engage in clever shenanigans.
I would fix Gust by adding complexity to it, allowing you to be more clever. Here are things I think it should be able to do:
Go in any direction, not just away from you, like all three of the other elemental cantrips and like Gust's bigger cousin, Control Winds.
Let you take a 5x5x5 cube of air with you, like water and earth spells do. This takes special attention to make useful, because you don't want to copy either of the other two cantrips verbatim, but the idea here is that Gust should let you go underwater with an air bladder to breathe from, just like Shape Water lets you go about in air with a water bladder to breathe from.
Shape Water lets you just tell unoccupied water to be ice. It would be much weaker to let Gust tell its 5x5x5 air block, if unoccupied, to be low pressure, a la high altitude climates, allowing for minor effects like boiling water at a lower temperature and negligibly muffling sounds, and the same the other way, increasing pressure to help prevent water from boiling and make sound transmission negligibly better. This is a ribbon ability, so there's no real need for it, but I think it adds a lot of flavor.
Do people really need to optimize everything? Some spells are more situational than others and it is fine that way.
This is only true for wizards, unless I missed another class gaining the same ability to change cantrips when long resting.
Wizards can't change their cantrips when resting.
Tashas allows you to do this:
See
Cantrip Formulas
Thanks, I had not picked that one as a possibility, it's just an optional feature though.
Just as a side note, this is a clear example of power creep as it's actually fairly powerful as a feature and I don't have the impression that there is any counterpart to this boon.
Fully agree there....its for sure Power Creep for wizards no arguments here. At one point they discussed allowing prepared casters to do this (which might have made some sense) but instead they just gave it to wizard? Not sure on that decision but its the one we got.
People want cantrips to be more powerful, and some quite blatantly are. The elemental cantrips are meant to be minor things like Prestidigitation. People treat Move Earth like a magical backhoe when it's more meant to be a magical garden rake. Gust is supposed to be a sudden sharp gust of wind. It takes considerable force to move a 5 pound object 10 feet. That's more than I would allow, and the only reason it can move a 500 pound medium creature 5 feet is because critters with legs are inherently unstable. They stumble and move, not slide along the ground. If you want more, use a feat and get Telekinesis.
I just want to point out that Mold Earth is MUCH closer to magical backhoe than a garden rake. I am pretty sure it is impossible to move a 5 foot cube of earth in 6 seconds with a rake.
People want cantrips to be more powerful, and some quite blatantly are. The elemental cantrips are meant to be minor things like Prestidigitation. People treat Move Earth like a magical backhoe when it's more meant to be a magical garden rake. Gust is supposed to be a sudden sharp gust of wind. It takes considerable force to move a 5 pound object 10 feet. That's more than I would allow, and the only reason it can move a 500 pound medium creature 5 feet is because critters with legs are inherently unstable. They stumble and move, not slide along the ground. If you want more, use a feat and get Telekinesis.
I just want to point out that Mold Earth is MUCH closer to magical backhoe than a garden rake. I am pretty sure it is impossible to move a 5 foot cube of earth in 6 seconds with a rake.
I find there's a curious split in people's opinions on cantrips, largely based (it would seem) on whether the person has played older editions of the game or not.
Many veterans of older editions of the game dislike cantrips in general and hate it when players attempt to use them for much of anything more than parlor tricks or magical flavor. The usual refrain being something like "wanna do cool, powerful magic that affects the game world? Spend a spell slot like a proper spellcaster", with cantrips relegated to being low-damage stand-ins or random puffery to make a character feel more magical than they are. There's many complaints about cantrips being overused and too-powerful, and spellcasters getting away with murder because they can default to their cantrips instead of expending spell slots like God and Gygax intended.
Many folks who came into 5e without experience from older editions of the game, on the other hand, think of cantrips as their magical toolbelt they're supposed to try and use as often as they can in an attempt to preserve their spell slots. Spell slots are a precious, extremely limited resource and most spellcasting classes are absolutely 100% pointless without spells to cast - they do not get anything to fall back on beyond their magic with only limited half-exceptions for druids and clerics. Cantrips are the spells which allow a spellcasting class with zero non-spellcasting class features to remain relevant throughout a given adventuring day, and many DMs encourage using cantrips creatively rather than wasting spell slots on every little thing. Cantrips like Gust, which are sharply limited and unable to flex, simply feel bad next to cantrips like Mold Earth that can accomplish solid, helpful, useful tasks on the regular.
I'd recommend to D&D veterans to unbend a little and allow your players to have fun doing cool stuff with cantrips. Forcing players to treat any non-combat cantrip as an ineffectual waste of time that's "just for flavor" is denying your spellcasters a lot of cool little moments they might have if they were allowed to use their minor magics with the creativity and effectiveness of someone who's been utilizing magic in their daily life for many years. Since that is exactly what most any spellcaster is.
Especially if a Graviturgist wizard with Gravity Well.
Levitate enemy, use Gust, push them 10 ft. Repeat until they're over a hazard like a long fall, over lava or acid, etc. Your party members might even be able to create hazards, if you happen to be in a situation where such hazards aren't available.
Killing a powerful enemy with just a 2nd level spell and a cantrip is fantastic. Also nice to use on yourself to reach higher places - levitate upward, use Gust to move horizontally. A poor man's fly, if you will.
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Agreed, Gust should be used for interesting little bits and creatively, not buffed. Clear the toxic fumes from the room, scatter the enemy's campfire (or extinguish it if it's tiny) blow dust at foes to hope for some penalty or distraction (DM purview on that obviously)
Sure it's situational and of limited use, but as many have said, there are actual spells to do bigger things with wind and making a cantrip do those things makes the spell useless. Once that happens, you want the spell buffed and in a year we have a cantrip that can blow a table over on your enemy and a spell that can blow a dragon into orbit. I don't think there's anything wrong with the cantrip as is. DMs and players simply need to have more fun with it.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
The issue is why take Gust, which is "situational and of limited use" when you could take Minor Illusion, instead? Which is useful in an enormously higher number of situations and of immense, rather than limited, use. Why take Gust when you could take Mold Earth and use it to help quickly create more secure campsites and fortifications or undermine enemies? (Hint: cast Mold Earth under an enemy to excavate a five-foot cube of soil under them. No DM worth their spit is not gonna call that a Dex save to stumble prone - making Mold Earth better at Gust's job than Gust). Why take Gust when you could take Control Flames, which is just as utterly worthless in combat as Gust but which allows for improved stealth and sneakery out of combat and also the ability to stop something from being on fire nigh-instantly - which is one of those capabilities an adventuring party tends to think is totally worthless right up until the point when it's really, really Super Not Worthless.
Gust is not exceptionally effective in a narrow niche, the way Control Flames is. It is not possessed of nigh-infinite widespread utility value, the way Minor Illusion is. It does not allow one to save hours of tough physical effort the way Mold Earth does. Anything Gust can do, Mage Hand does better. Gust doesn't even have the freaking decency to be Somatic-only the way every other elemental control cantrip is - it's the only one of the four that requires a verbal component. Nor does it require only a verbal component so you can get up to shenanigans. It's V/S while every other elemental control cantrip is just S.
Gust is bad. It's just bad. At the very least it should not demand a verbal component to cast, especially since it does nothing useful. And unlike stuff like Druidcraft which is a lot of useless fun, Gust isn't even fun. Everything Gust does can be done better by more useful spells. Prestidigitation handles the third bullet of Gust better than Gust does, Mage hand handles the second bullet of Gust better than Gust does, and literally just reaching out and pushing somebody handles the first bullet of Gust without needing to expend magic. The spell isn't even good for people who want nothing but an airbender show-off version of Thaumaturgy - actual Thaumaturgy is better for that.
This thread is honestly making me want to try and fix Gust with a homebrew version that someone wanting to make an Air Witch wouldn't feel terrible for wasting a cantrip slot on. Hn. Ideas?
Agreed, Gust should be used for interesting little bits and creatively, not buffed. Clear the toxic fumes from the room, scatter the enemy's campfire (or extinguish it if it's tiny) blow dust at foes to hope for some penalty or distraction (DM purview on that obviously)
Sure it's situational and of limited use, but as many have said, there are actual spells to do bigger things with wind and making a cantrip do those things makes the spell useless. Once that happens, you want the spell buffed and in a year we have a cantrip that can blow a table over on your enemy and a spell that can blow a dragon into orbit. I don't think there's anything wrong with the cantrip as is. DMs and players simply need to have more fun with it.
The whole problem with Gust is that several of your examples are illegal because Gust was written to do almost nothing. For example, you can't "scatter" a campfire because you can only try to move 1 creature, autosucceed at moving 1 object (i.e. either the fire is an object or each burning thing inside it is an object, take your pick - but you can't move 2 burning sticks in a 3 stick fire, for example, and targeting ashes won't work out for you), or you can create a "harmless" sensory effect, which in a fire's case would make the fire dance. You definitely can't clear the toxic fumes from a room with it.
It's far and away worse at being used creatively than the other three spells it was built to coincide with, for no clear reason.
I find there's a curious split in people's opinions on cantrips, largely based (it would seem) on whether the person has played older editions of the game or not.
Many veterans of older editions of the game dislike cantrips in general and hate it when players attempt to use them for much of anything more than parlor tricks or magical flavor. The usual refrain being something like "wanna do cool, powerful magic that affects the game world? Spend a spell slot like a proper spellcaster", with cantrips relegated to being low-damage stand-ins or random puffery to make a character feel more magical than they are. There's many complaints about cantrips being overused and too-powerful, and spellcasters getting away with murder because they can default to their cantrips instead of expending spell slots like God and Gygax intended.
Many folks who came into 5e without experience from older editions of the game, on the other hand, think of cantrips as their magical toolbelt they're supposed to try and use as often as they can in an attempt to preserve their spell slots. Spell slots are a precious, extremely limited resource and most spellcasting classes are absolutely 100% pointless without spells to cast - they do not get anything to fall back on beyond their magic with only limited half-exceptions for druids and clerics. Cantrips are the spells which allow a spellcasting class with zero non-spellcasting class features to remain relevant throughout a given adventuring day, and many DMs encourage using cantrips creatively rather than wasting spell slots on every little thing. Cantrips like Gust, which are sharply limited and unable to flex, simply feel bad next to cantrips like Mold Earth that can accomplish solid, helpful, useful tasks on the regular.
I'd recommend to D&D veterans to unbend a little and allow your players to have fun doing cool stuff with cantrips. Forcing players to treat any non-combat cantrip as an ineffectual waste of time that's "just for flavor" is denying your spellcasters a lot of cool little moments they might have if they were allowed to use their minor magics with the creativity and effectiveness of someone who's been utilizing magic in their daily life for many years. Since that is exactly what most any spellcaster is.
I agree and this is what im talking about. I want it for the flavor and to use outside of combat but it has such limited use that I doesn't make sense to get it if I have limited spell slots. I don't think it needs to be buffed to be useful in combat just something to make it more flavorful and a decent cantrip to get if you want it.
Agreed, Gust should be used for interesting little bits and creatively, not buffed. Clear the toxic fumes from the room, scatter the enemy's campfire (or extinguish it if it's tiny) blow dust at foes to hope for some penalty or distraction (DM purview on that obviously)
Sure it's situational and of limited use, but as many have said, there are actual spells to do bigger things with wind and making a cantrip do those things makes the spell useless. Once that happens, you want the spell buffed and in a year we have a cantrip that can blow a table over on your enemy and a spell that can blow a dragon into orbit. I don't think there's anything wrong with the cantrip as is. DMs and players simply need to have more fun with it.
Yeah i totally get it i just think giving it more uses out of a fight would be nice that we don't have to make up as we go. Also this post wasn't to say it needs to be buffed just that it makes no sense to me mathmatically.
I can understand the weight thing, but it's also a cantrip, it probably won't be the best. While some cantrips are really good (i.e. Toll The Dead), ones like these will have more situational uses.
When I was talking about overpowered cantrips, I was thinking specifically about Eldritch Blast. It does the damage of a polearm at 120 feet. It gets better and better as time goes on. You can get more damage, a nearly unbelievable range, multiple attacks, drag things closer, push them away, slow them down...
Gust. I'm one of those "old school" players. I agree entirely that it needs something, but I don't know what.
When I was talking about overpowered cantrips, I was thinking specifically about Eldritch Blast. It does the damage of a polearm at 120 feet. It gets better and better as time goes on. You can get more damage, a nearly unbelievable range, multiple attacks, drag things closer, push them away, slow them down...
Gust. I'm one of those "old school" players. I agree entirely that it needs something, but I don't know what.
So Eldritch Blast is the only cantrip I think that has scaling correct only because an entire class is so dependant on it, being Warlocks. You don't get to cast more than 3 spells per day until level 12, and your mileage as a Warlock is going to vary greatly dependant on how often your DM allows you to short rest. That's a different thread though.
I like Gust, but yeah, it's pretty trash. I've given it to players as a flavor cantrip, and once convinced a DM that it would allow advantage on a grapple check to throw someone over a set of stairs because I was aiming the gust of wind at the enemy to provide that extra push.
In terms of what could we give it, Gust of Wind is of course the template to know how powerful not to make it, but also can provide some help:
LEVEL
Cantrip
CASTING TIME
1 Action
RANGE/AREA
30 ft
COMPONENTS
V, S
DURATION
1 Minute, Concentration
SCHOOL
Transmutation
ATTACK/SAVE
STR Save
DAMAGE/EFFECT
Control
You seize the air and compel it to create one of the following effects at a point you can see within range:
One Medium or smaller creature that you choose must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 5 feet away from you. On each additional turn, you can reactivate this effect by spending 1 Bonus Action.
You create a small blast of air capable of moving one object that is neither held nor carried and that weighs no more than 5 pounds. The object is pushed up to 10 feet away from you. It isn’t pushed with enough force to cause damage. On each additional turn, you can reactivate this effect by spending 1 Bonus Action.
You create a harmless sensory effect using air, such as causing leaves to rustle, wind to slam shutters shut, or your clothing to ripple in a breeze. On each additional turn, you can reactivate this effect by spending 1 Bonus Action.
You can use this to create a swirling air field around yourself, making it difficult for ranged attackers to strike true. After activating this affect, the first ranged attack that attempts to hit you makes the attack at disadvantage. After the first attempt, all other attempts are made as normal as the air field was disrupted by the object. Reactivation of this effect costs one Bonus action on each subsequent turn.
You could also use it to do something like creating the area around you difficult terrain for people to pass through, but I think giving it a concentration component and letting be activated on each turn as a bonus action, without the other bolded additional effect that I propose gives it enough value to consider. Having that spell up at lower levels to be able to move someone out of the way without getting that attack of opportunity on you is worth concentration, but also makes you choose if that's what you want over something else. Of course, diminishes at higher levels but all cantrips do, except Eldritch Blast and the other attack ones.
So the gust cantrip can do 3 things but only the first 2 matter to this discussion.
One Medium or smaller creature that you choose must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 5 feet away from you.
You create a small blast of air capable of moving one object that is neither held nor carried and that weighs no more than 5 pounds. The object is pushed up to 10 feet away from you. It isn’t pushed with enough force to cause damage.
You can push a medium creatue 5 feet or a 5 pound object 10 feet. Why can the object only be five pounds? the average weight of a human is 137 pounds and it can push a human 5 feet. The max weight of a medium creature is 500 pounds also. I understand the 5 pound weight limit on mage hand but this doesn't make sense since its just a powerful blast of wind. Pushing 10 feet would require more force but even if we say that only something 1/4 of the weight than something we can push 5 feet, then going by average human weight you could push an object that weights 35 pounds, and if we go by 500 pounds then we could push an object of 120 pounds. So even if we say that we can push an object 1/8 of the weight 10 feet away than we could push 17 pounds (by average human weight) or 60 pounds (by max medium weight). The minimum weight of medium creatures is 60 pounds for reference.
I would like this cantrip for the flavor of my character but it just sucks and everyone says it's useless (rightfully so). Do you guys have any advice or house rules to make this spell at least decent or make sense?
People want cantrips to be more powerful, and some quite blatantly are. The elemental cantrips are meant to be minor things like Prestidigitation. People treat Move Earth like a magical backhoe when it's more meant to be a magical garden rake. Gust is supposed to be a sudden sharp gust of wind. It takes considerable force to move a 5 pound object 10 feet. That's more than I would allow, and the only reason it can move a 500 pound medium creature 5 feet is because critters with legs are inherently unstable. They stumble and move, not slide along the ground. If you want more, use a feat and get Telekinesis.
<Insert clever signature here>
This is only true for wizards, unless I missed another class gaining the same ability to change cantrips when long resting. So far as I know, for everyone else, knowing a cantrip is a relatively precious resource that can't be altered until you level at the earliest. As a result, all cantrips you can learn have to compete with each other - i.e. you have genuine resource scarcity. A cantrip that's too situational is a genuinely poor choice for anyone, since you never know what situations the campaign will put you in. Adventurers are in the business of surviving their adventures, and players generally want to have fun, which for cantrips means finding yourself in situations where casting your cantrip makes sense.
Tashas allows you to do this:
See
Cantrip Formulas
The four elemental cantrips vary quite widely in utility for no clear reason; Gust is the worst of the four. For Gust, the issue isn't so much the strength of it; although Shape Water can move 7800 pounds, and Mold Earth can move infinite weight (assuming only real world materials, 125 cubic feet of loose iridium gravel/sand is probably the limit - don't know what it weighs, but it should easily beat 7800 pounds). That's simply because those two spells can move a 125 foot cubic volume of matter, which Gust can't. The core issue here is how little you can do you with Gust to engage in clever shenanigans.
I would fix Gust by adding complexity to it, allowing you to be more clever. Here are things I think it should be able to do:
Fully agree there....its for sure Power Creep for wizards no arguments here. At one point they discussed allowing prepared casters to do this (which might have made some sense) but instead they just gave it to wizard? Not sure on that decision but its the one we got.
I just want to point out that Mold Earth is MUCH closer to magical backhoe than a garden rake. I am pretty sure it is impossible to move a 5 foot cube of earth in 6 seconds with a rake.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Yeah, it's weird. No rhyme or reason I can determine:
Wizards can replace 1 cantrip every long rest.
Artificers can replace 1 cantrip every time they level.
Clerics and Druids get cantrip versatility, letting them change 1 cantrip each ASI.
Paladins and Rangers get martial versatility, letting them change 2 cantrips each ASI. Note that one is prepared and the other is known.
Bards can either replace 1 cantrip each ASI or swap the Expertise state of two skills they know.
Sorcerers can either replace 1 cantrip each ASI or replace a Metamagic.
Warlocks can either replace 1 cantrip each ASI or replace a Mystic Arcanum or replace a Pact Boon.
Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights have absolutely no way to replace cantrips.
I think that's the lot.
I'm glad we agree.
<Insert clever signature here>
I find there's a curious split in people's opinions on cantrips, largely based (it would seem) on whether the person has played older editions of the game or not.
Many veterans of older editions of the game dislike cantrips in general and hate it when players attempt to use them for much of anything more than parlor tricks or magical flavor. The usual refrain being something like "wanna do cool, powerful magic that affects the game world? Spend a spell slot like a proper spellcaster", with cantrips relegated to being low-damage stand-ins or random puffery to make a character feel more magical than they are. There's many complaints about cantrips being overused and too-powerful, and spellcasters getting away with murder because they can default to their cantrips instead of expending spell slots like God and Gygax intended.
Many folks who came into 5e without experience from older editions of the game, on the other hand, think of cantrips as their magical toolbelt they're supposed to try and use as often as they can in an attempt to preserve their spell slots. Spell slots are a precious, extremely limited resource and most spellcasting classes are absolutely 100% pointless without spells to cast - they do not get anything to fall back on beyond their magic with only limited half-exceptions for druids and clerics. Cantrips are the spells which allow a spellcasting class with zero non-spellcasting class features to remain relevant throughout a given adventuring day, and many DMs encourage using cantrips creatively rather than wasting spell slots on every little thing. Cantrips like Gust, which are sharply limited and unable to flex, simply feel bad next to cantrips like Mold Earth that can accomplish solid, helpful, useful tasks on the regular.
I'd recommend to D&D veterans to unbend a little and allow your players to have fun doing cool stuff with cantrips. Forcing players to treat any non-combat cantrip as an ineffectual waste of time that's "just for flavor" is denying your spellcasters a lot of cool little moments they might have if they were allowed to use their minor magics with the creativity and effectiveness of someone who's been utilizing magic in their daily life for many years. Since that is exactly what most any spellcaster is.
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I like Gust.
Especially if a Graviturgist wizard with Gravity Well.
Levitate enemy, use Gust, push them 10 ft. Repeat until they're over a hazard like a long fall, over lava or acid, etc. Your party members might even be able to create hazards, if you happen to be in a situation where such hazards aren't available.
Killing a powerful enemy with just a 2nd level spell and a cantrip is fantastic. Also nice to use on yourself to reach higher places - levitate upward, use Gust to move horizontally. A poor man's fly, if you will.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Agreed, Gust should be used for interesting little bits and creatively, not buffed. Clear the toxic fumes from the room, scatter the enemy's campfire (or extinguish it if it's tiny) blow dust at foes to hope for some penalty or distraction (DM purview on that obviously)
Sure it's situational and of limited use, but as many have said, there are actual spells to do bigger things with wind and making a cantrip do those things makes the spell useless. Once that happens, you want the spell buffed and in a year we have a cantrip that can blow a table over on your enemy and a spell that can blow a dragon into orbit. I don't think there's anything wrong with the cantrip as is. DMs and players simply need to have more fun with it.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
The issue is why take Gust, which is "situational and of limited use" when you could take Minor Illusion, instead? Which is useful in an enormously higher number of situations and of immense, rather than limited, use. Why take Gust when you could take Mold Earth and use it to help quickly create more secure campsites and fortifications or undermine enemies? (Hint: cast Mold Earth under an enemy to excavate a five-foot cube of soil under them. No DM worth their spit is not gonna call that a Dex save to stumble prone - making Mold Earth better at Gust's job than Gust). Why take Gust when you could take Control Flames, which is just as utterly worthless in combat as Gust but which allows for improved stealth and sneakery out of combat and also the ability to stop something from being on fire nigh-instantly - which is one of those capabilities an adventuring party tends to think is totally worthless right up until the point when it's really, really Super Not Worthless.
Gust is not exceptionally effective in a narrow niche, the way Control Flames is. It is not possessed of nigh-infinite widespread utility value, the way Minor Illusion is. It does not allow one to save hours of tough physical effort the way Mold Earth does. Anything Gust can do, Mage Hand does better. Gust doesn't even have the freaking decency to be Somatic-only the way every other elemental control cantrip is - it's the only one of the four that requires a verbal component. Nor does it require only a verbal component so you can get up to shenanigans. It's V/S while every other elemental control cantrip is just S.
Gust is bad. It's just bad. At the very least it should not demand a verbal component to cast, especially since it does nothing useful. And unlike stuff like Druidcraft which is a lot of useless fun, Gust isn't even fun. Everything Gust does can be done better by more useful spells. Prestidigitation handles the third bullet of Gust better than Gust does, Mage hand handles the second bullet of Gust better than Gust does, and literally just reaching out and pushing somebody handles the first bullet of Gust without needing to expend magic. The spell isn't even good for people who want nothing but an airbender show-off version of Thaumaturgy - actual Thaumaturgy is better for that.
This thread is honestly making me want to try and fix Gust with a homebrew version that someone wanting to make an Air Witch wouldn't feel terrible for wasting a cantrip slot on. Hn. Ideas?
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The whole problem with Gust is that several of your examples are illegal because Gust was written to do almost nothing. For example, you can't "scatter" a campfire because you can only try to move 1 creature, autosucceed at moving 1 object (i.e. either the fire is an object or each burning thing inside it is an object, take your pick - but you can't move 2 burning sticks in a 3 stick fire, for example, and targeting ashes won't work out for you), or you can create a "harmless" sensory effect, which in a fire's case would make the fire dance. You definitely can't clear the toxic fumes from a room with it.
It's far and away worse at being used creatively than the other three spells it was built to coincide with, for no clear reason.
I agree and this is what im talking about. I want it for the flavor and to use outside of combat but it has such limited use that I doesn't make sense to get it if I have limited spell slots. I don't think it needs to be buffed to be useful in combat just something to make it more flavorful and a decent cantrip to get if you want it.
Yeah i totally get it i just think giving it more uses out of a fight would be nice that we don't have to make up as we go. Also this post wasn't to say it needs to be buffed just that it makes no sense to me mathmatically.
I can understand the weight thing, but it's also a cantrip, it probably won't be the best. While some cantrips are really good (i.e. Toll The Dead), ones like these will have more situational uses.
SAUCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I was talking about overpowered cantrips, I was thinking specifically about Eldritch Blast. It does the damage of a polearm at 120 feet. It gets better and better as time goes on. You can get more damage, a nearly unbelievable range, multiple attacks, drag things closer, push them away, slow them down...
Gust. I'm one of those "old school" players. I agree entirely that it needs something, but I don't know what.
<Insert clever signature here>
So Eldritch Blast is the only cantrip I think that has scaling correct only because an entire class is so dependant on it, being Warlocks. You don't get to cast more than 3 spells per day until level 12, and your mileage as a Warlock is going to vary greatly dependant on how often your DM allows you to short rest. That's a different thread though.
I like Gust, but yeah, it's pretty trash. I've given it to players as a flavor cantrip, and once convinced a DM that it would allow advantage on a grapple check to throw someone over a set of stairs because I was aiming the gust of wind at the enemy to provide that extra push.
In terms of what could we give it, Gust of Wind is of course the template to know how powerful not to make it, but also can provide some help:
You seize the air and compel it to create one of the following effects at a point you can see within range:
One Medium or smaller creature that you choose must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 5 feet away from you. On each additional turn, you can reactivate this effect by spending 1 Bonus Action.
You create a small blast of air capable of moving one object that is neither held nor carried and that weighs no more than 5 pounds. The object is pushed up to 10 feet away from you. It isn’t pushed with enough force to cause damage. On each additional turn, you can reactivate this effect by spending 1 Bonus Action.
You create a harmless sensory effect using air, such as causing leaves to rustle, wind to slam shutters shut, or your clothing to ripple in a breeze. On each additional turn, you can reactivate this effect by spending 1 Bonus Action.
You could also use it to do something like creating the area around you difficult terrain for people to pass through, but I think giving it a concentration component and letting be activated on each turn as a bonus action, without the other bolded additional effect that I propose gives it enough value to consider. Having that spell up at lower levels to be able to move someone out of the way without getting that attack of opportunity on you is worth concentration, but also makes you choose if that's what you want over something else. Of course, diminishes at higher levels but all cantrips do, except Eldritch Blast and the other attack ones.
"You don't get to cast more than 3 spells per day until level 12,"
Uhh their spells recover on a short rest.... Are you sure you mean 3 per day?