I want you to think about that, what would happen if every time a soldier was clearing a room he opened fire as soon as he opened the door? He just opened the door and randomly fired without checking for who is in the room? Oh wait, he'd kill innocent people. The character is doing the exact same thing,
In this instance I would compare the Fire Bolt to a 'breaching charge' on the door, or at least removing obstacles so the door can be breached. The breach is not intended to kill those inside but disorient them (but can cause a lot of damage.) You'd be 100% right if this was a Fireball though, that would involve casualties due to its fiery blast radius. Even so, these charges take time to set up (as others have mentioned with burning the webs), require communication ('verbal components'), and those on the other side can take a pretty good guess as to what's going to follow. It's not without consequence already.
Even then, the soldier in this instance is not opening fire upon opening the door. They're just trying to clear a way to the door. After that, were this my party, the martials/heavies would breach the door and enter, covering the squishy caster.
I agree with you and Sanvael both, however. Sometimes there should be hints saying 'this is a bad idea,' but if the advice isn't heeded or said caster is just saying "I cast Fire Bolt!" as soon as the word 'web' is said, then yes, the character should suffer the consequences of their actions. I don't however believe in putting an innocent person in that room as punishment for a player using their toolkit. People in the real world do silly things and still succeed, if we want to talk about "treating the world real."
All of this said and I haven't included my usual caveat: if this is a player problem, such as my above example of them interrupting you and other players to selfishly do their thing, that needs to be brought up out of game. D&D must be fun for all participants, and that includes the DM. You don't need to harm characters to get a giggle out of their futile attempts to defeat some webs.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
Just narrate: "as you cast your firebolt to burn the webs, you hear a scream as you strike a young girl in the face, horribly scarring her. She's the lords daughter you were hired to rescue, he will not be happy. Perhaps you should get a will or reroll?". Just set up a scenario where you know the players behavior, and this time have it backfire. Whether you want it to be comical, cruel or deadly. You could also put in a barrel of highly combustible goblin juice and go "oh, oh no, your firebolt explodes the kegs, the kegs of goblin draught, its 150 proof. A massive fireball forms, roll Dexterity saving throw please".
This is the opposite of what a DM should do, unless they have already given the players clues (foreshadowing) to show that this might happen. Why would you punish the players for using their abilities?
There's often a knee jerk reaction in threads like this one, to say "Throw something unexpected at them to stop them doing it." This is practically the worst thing a DM can do to their players. It tells them that if they try to solve problems using their abilities, random, awful and inexplicable things can happen. The world loses consistency.
It's one thing to "know player behaviour" and set up something that requires them to do something differently, but it needs to be reasonable for the PCs to expect it. A random child hidden in the webs? The players aren't really responsible for that. What was the child doing in a dense spiderweb patch and why hadn't they broken the webs? If the DM instead states "There's a broken trail through the centre of the webs," then you could allow a Survival check to identify that they've been recently broken by a creature passing through.
The DM creates the world.
The DM lays clues to indicate what the PCs might encounter along the way.
When something goes amiss, it's because the PCs didn't investigate, or didn't take sensible precautions.
It is poor play to cause random, inexplicable mishap to try to force characters to play a certain way.
Did you miss this part, doing this on opening the door always:
>As a DM how have you dealt with players that want to constantly cast a cantrip.
I want you to think about that, what would happen if every time a soldier was clearing a room he opened fire as soon as he opened the door? He just opened the door and randomly fired without checking for who is in the room? Oh wait, he'd kill innocent people. The character is doing the exact same thing, he's shooting blindly to take advantage game mechanics and not treating the world as real. Situations like that, is that over time he's going to screw up and hit someone. What you advocate for is the exact opposite of what a DM should do. You are advocating for making the world all about the player with no consequences of their action. You can coddle your players all you want, but lack of verisimilitude and player coddling leads to short campaign.
Well if they continue casting spells blindly into the darkness, and they are on a rescue mission, I'd have it set up that the last room they would hit the girl with the potential of death depending on how they roll. I would also give them some potential negative actions earlier on. It's poor play to shoot blindly to abuse a game mechanic and have no consequences. You can't call it a breaching charge, because the door open and they are shooting the spell blindly into the dark. Imagine doing that in a funhouse dungeon with a big fat dragon asleep that the party could have moved around, maybe even tried to steal some treasure, but PhatL3wtins decides to cast firebolt in again without looking, well now they have some fun.
If players do something all the time, especially if it breaks world immersion you should counter on occasion. Even if its a good tactic, you should put in a counter to it on occasion to break potential boredom, so that the players have to change their tactics. In 5E, everyone wants to be a melee of some kind due to the nerfing of the arcane compared to prior editions. So every now in then, put in a mob that when the party hits, they take damage or if they get within 5 feet they take damage. All of a sudden, the party is panicking and trying to figure out how to beat it or how to run. And then your arcane players can shine.
Well if they continue casting spells blindly into the darkness, and they are on a rescue mission
Sure, blindly setting stuff on fire on a rescue mission is probably a bad idea, but there's no evidence in the OP of casting spells blindly into darkness, or that they're on a rescue mission.
Once more I have to agree with Pantagruel666's assessment, you'd be correct if these scenarios were the ones the OP has described. But, quote,
"Casting spells blindly into the darkness"
"on a rescue mission"
"abuse a game mechanic"
"the door open and are shooting blindly into the dark."
"a funhouse dungeon with a big fat dragon asleep"
"casts fire bolt again without looking"
Isn't happening. That is called creating a strawman, and a strawman is only as difficult to defeat (or burn down with a Fire Bolt) as you build it. The player is not saying "I cast fire bolt blindly into the darkness," they are saying, quote the OP, "I cast fire bolt to burn the webs. I keep doing this to clear the room of webs. I will cast until there is no more webs I can see," and even then I imagine that's the DM giving us more the gist than a word-for-word quotation. In a conservative reading of this, the DM could treat the character as if they were a robot, exterminating all signs of webbing and webbing accessories no matter if there's a clearly living person entangled in them, not stopping at the screams because they've declared their action for instance. The DM should also update the caster as they're doing this, and the players should be paying attention to the burning webs to see if there's nothing of value (like a person, or flammable loot) entangled in them, so they can go "whoa, stop casting" or "I take a moment to assess the damage I've done to the webs before continuing to burn the rest."
The DM describes the environment. "You see a doorway covered in cobwebs."
The players describe what they want to do. "I burn them down with fire bolt, and do this for any cobwebs I see."
The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions. "The webs burn away."
The DM describes the environment. "Behind the doorway is a big fat dragon asleep, with cobwebs in the room."
At this point the player should see that between the cobwebs and the big fat dragon asleep, the latter is the more pressing issue. Granted, they might not realise in time, so they should perhaps require a check to ensure they can realise this quickly enough and cancel the spell, if they've been idly firing these things off in quick succession. This is of course assuming that the previous advice by myself and other users has gone ignored or unnoticed, where fire bolt apparently doesn't emit any sound, smell, smoke or light effects that would alert this dragon.
Finally to your point about immersion, boredom and counters I agree that using the same answer can get grating. You have the right idea in your final paragraph about changing things up; there should be things that fire bolt isn't going to solve, and the DM needs to make those encounters happen.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
Fire bolt has a verbal component which means it's going to sound like Ness in super smash bros:
PK FIRE! PK FIRE! PK FIRE!
An amusing and good point. The party will likely be communicating verbally anyway unless they're making a point of being stealthy (even then, DMs may rule differently how loud the verbal component is). Armour will rattle, loose earth will be kicked, webbing can be slashed or burnt by other means. Were I the DM I'd be reminding the player their spell has a verbal component and the required volume (for me it would be ordinary speaking volume) to cast it. You on the other hand could fairly rule it as shouting "PEEKAY FIYURR!" However, I would let the player know this before they do it; if I suddenly spring upon them that they're shouting a spell at the top of their tiny lungs, that's inconsistent ruling from the previous times where it was unmentioned and thus didn't create any cause for alarm.
Going back to what I said about player versus character problems, it's also important to note that the character knows the spell has a verbal component. If it's a player problem, such as not knowing the components, that needs to be addressed out-of-game.
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Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
There are a lot of character powers and spells that make certain stuff non-challenging. I see it as my job as DM to create consequences and other kinds of challenges that are not so easily negated, while at the same time still give the players a feeling that their characters powers/spells bring benefits and a sense of empowerment. It's not always easy, but one of the things that make it fun to DM. Imho.
I am utterly perplexed by the people commenting in this thread who feel that "a room full of cobwebs" should be a challenge sufficient to warrant something more tactical, powerful or skilful than using a Cantrip to overcome.
I'm not sure what they are expecting to happen if the PCs don't use Firebolts to clear the webs. They will get really cobwebby. Oh noooooo!
I feel maybe the discussion has become overly fixated on the specific example given, rather than "repeated use of cantrips." If a Cantrip is sufficient to remove all threat from a location - let's say your party have ray of frost and there are patches of Brown Mold, then casting the cantrip a bunch of times to remove the threat is legit, and you need to think about more devious threats. Presumably in the web example there are going to be Giant Spiders or some such hiding in the webbing, or a hidden trap. Give the spider some high ledges to be sitting on, and cover the trap with a rug.
Regarding "Oh no they are making sound," if you're going to apply this logic to the casting of some cantrips (10 in one minute) then you must be running dungeons that drop random monsters on the PCs both for talking to one another, and during fights with anything else, and when traps are set off.
As a DM how have you dealt with players that want to constantly cast a cantrip. the example I have. Dm: as you open the stuck door the cobwebs that help hold the door in place break revealing a room filled with interlaced cobwebs so dense you can’t see the other side of the room.
-player: I cast fire bolt to burn the webs. I keep doing this to clear the room of webs. I will cast until there is no more webs I can see.
What is/was the purpose of the room? Context is important was it a room to waste time in a time sensitive adventute r were you expecting some sort of resourse (other than time) to be spent? Is ritual casting causing similar issues at the table? From the title I was honestly expecting a perma guidance situation.
I did let them burn away all the webs with little repercussions. It was a point of letting them know the place was full of spiders and could be dangerous. In the end the spiders retreated because of the webs being burned and the final fight with the queen was harder then it would have been (not drastically so though).
My thought was either contact swinging a sword or constantly casting a spell even if a cantrips would cause characters to tire over time. Maybe even earning a point of exhaustion prior to the final battle in the area.
My thought was either contact swinging a sword or constantly casting a spell even if a cantrips would cause characters to tire over time. Maybe even earning a point of exhaustion prior to the final battle in the area.
It's not an unreasonable idea in general, but simply clearing a single room of a mass of webs doesn't seem like it would be sufficient.
My thought was either contact swinging a sword or constantly casting a spell even if a cantrips would cause characters to tire over time. Maybe even earning a point of exhaustion prior to the final battle in the area.
It's not an unreasonable idea in general, but simply clearing a single room of a mass of webs doesn't seem like it would be sufficient.
A single room I agree. But to basically do this through an entire dungeon seems a bit much. I take it as a lesson learned for sure. We all talked about it afterwards and came to a reasonable conclusion. Spending hours casting a spell or swinging a sword would tire anyone out, even heroes. I was more curious what other people thought and did they have that issue.
My thought was either contact swinging a sword or constantly casting a spell even if a cantrips would cause characters to tire over time. Maybe even earning a point of exhaustion prior to the final battle in the area.
It's not an unreasonable idea in general, but simply clearing a single room of a mass of webs doesn't seem like it would be sufficient.
A single room I agree. But to basically do this through an entire dungeon seems a bit much. I take it as a lesson learned for sure. We all talked about it afterwards and came to a reasonable conclusion. Spending hours casting a spell or swinging a sword would tire anyone out, even heroes. I was more curious what other people thought and did they have that issue.
Spending hours constantly casting a cantrip or swinging a sword would be an issue. Just look at rules for jungle travel where you have to clear the jungle with a machete. This limits the pace and if you try to move faster you can become exhausted.
However, spending 10 minutes or half an hour casting a cantrip to burn down some webs should not be an issue. There are several published modules where there are rooms obscured by webs that contain various creatures. When I was running one of these, the party had the same idea as yours because it is obvious and because firebolt is one of the few cantrips worded so it can target objects in addition to creatures. I let them use one casting of firebolt/5' cube of webs. I didn't rule the webs were so flammable that one firebolt lit them all on fire. When the fire got too close to the creatures hiding in the webs, they attacked.
Not a big deal.
However, I don't let characters continually cast any cantrips ... the biggest offender is likely casting guidance every minute so that when a minute comes around that they have to roll initiative (or any other skill check) they get a bonus. I don't see any character walking around a fantasy world casting a cantrip every minute - it just isn't something I could see happening so I just say no :)
Just narrate: "as you cast your firebolt to burn the webs, you hear a scream as you strike a young girl in the face, horribly scarring her. She's the lords daughter you were hired to rescue, he will not be happy. Perhaps you should get a will or reroll?". Just set up a scenario where you know the players behavior, and this time have it backfire. Whether you want it to be comical, cruel or deadly. You could also put in a barrel of highly combustible goblin juice and go "oh, oh no, your firebolt explodes the kegs, the kegs of goblin draught, its 150 proof. A massive fireball forms, roll Dexterity saving throw please".
This is the opposite of what a DM should do, unless they have already given the players clues (foreshadowing) to show that this might happen. Why would you punish the players for using their abilities?
There's often a knee jerk reaction in threads like this one, to say "Throw something unexpected at them to stop them doing it." This is practically the worst thing a DM can do to their players. It tells them that if they try to solve problems using their abilities, random, awful and inexplicable things can happen. The world loses consistency.
It's one thing to "know player behaviour" and set up something that requires them to do something differently, but it needs to be reasonable for the PCs to expect it. A random child hidden in the webs? The players aren't really responsible for that. What was the child doing in a dense spiderweb patch and why hadn't they broken the webs? If the DM instead states "There's a broken trail through the centre of the webs," then you could allow a Survival check to identify that they've been recently broken by a creature passing through.
The DM creates the world.
The DM lays clues to indicate what the PCs might encounter along the way.
When something goes amiss, it's because the PCs didn't investigate, or didn't take sensible precautions.
It is poor play to cause random, inexplicable mishap to try to force characters to play a certain way.
Did you miss this part, doing this on opening the door always:
I want you to think about that, what would happen if every time a soldier was clearing a room he opened fire as soon as he opened the door? He just opened the door and randomly fired without checking for who is in the room? Oh wait, he'd kill innocent people. The character is doing the exact same thing, he's shooting blindly to take advantage game mechanics and not treating the world as real. Situations like that, is that over time he's going to screw up and hit someone. What you advocate for is the exact opposite of what a DM should do. You are advocating for making the world all about the player with no consequences of their action. You can coddle your players all you want, but lack of verisimilitude and player coddling leads to short campaign.
No one missed any part because it wasn't there till you made it up in this post.
You're misrepresenting the OP and the way fire bolt functions. The OP described the opening of a door, the seeing of cobwebs, and the player declaring the caster would cast fire bolt at the cobwebs until they're all burnt up. Notice the declared targets during this spamming of fire bolt.
You can't open a door and "cast fire bolt" unless you say what you're casting it at. "You hurl a mote of fire at a creature or object within range." It's not some sort of blind firing spell that will allow a DM to "set up" the player into committing war crimes or other atrocity. Shooting blind to cause the "horror" your trying to present isn't mechanically possible with this spell. Fireball sure, but I'm pretty sure a Wizard capable of spamming fireball isn't going to worry about cobwebs.
OP DM is impatient with this methodology. As far as gameplay, I don't see anything really wrong with the player's approach. Does it burn time and risk discovery? Sure. An organic environment might wonder what those flickers of light or slight burning smell is down the line. If a PC wants to play cobweb exterminator through an entire dungeon, let them drag and give things in the dungeon time to prep. You can't really "stealthily torch" an environment ... if that's what's even going on here.
Your response is presupposing indiscriminate use where the OP's description of the use sounded more targetted and thorough.
I mean you're seeing this reported player as someone indiscriminately blasting, like someone playing Doom. Whereas I think the player thinks of themselves as sanitizing a likely hostile environment, like the way the research team that triggered the Doom event probably should have behaved.
The number of you guys that want to punish the player for using a damage cantrip to solve a non-combat problem is depressing.
Just because a player finds a solution that you didn't foresee doesn't mean that it's a good idea to punish them for it or make it not work, or come up with some way for it to backfire.
I don't think it is in the spirit of the game for a DM to negate a players build.
I don't see what the problem is here for the OP. If there was something the DM wished to obscure in the room for a surprise, there are other methods rather than obscuring it with cobwebs. I don't have enough imagination to think of what else is bothering anyone.
As an aside, do spiders cause cobwebs? I don't believe they do. But, I am not an authority on the subject.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
As with real life, actions usually have consequences. There will be many circumstances where the PC's actions are perfectly valid. This will positively reinforce their behavior. Then there will be times where there will be serious consequences such as destroying something valuable, harming someone, perhaps even blowing something up, and injuring the party. If you have one webbed room in each encounter, that's going to get dull fast.
I would make it random with a skew based on the context. Example: The dungeon is near a forest that also has visible webs in it. This is a good indicator that webs = spiders and burning is a good idea. But the dungeon used to be owned by a half-crazed Artificer that may or may not have created gunpowder. The party might smell hints of it as they enter the dungeon. In this case, the player might want to exercise more caution and his party is right to suggest it as well.
Doing the same thing over and over again with the same result is the definition of boring to me.
It's just that eldritch blast might clear the webs more quickly once you get to 5th level, since you can take out two webs at a time - if their hit points are low enough.
In this instance I would compare the Fire Bolt to a 'breaching charge' on the door, or at least removing obstacles so the door can be breached. The breach is not intended to kill those inside but disorient them (but can cause a lot of damage.) You'd be 100% right if this was a Fireball though, that would involve casualties due to its fiery blast radius. Even so, these charges take time to set up (as others have mentioned with burning the webs), require communication ('verbal components'), and those on the other side can take a pretty good guess as to what's going to follow. It's not without consequence already.
Even then, the soldier in this instance is not opening fire upon opening the door. They're just trying to clear a way to the door. After that, were this my party, the martials/heavies would breach the door and enter, covering the squishy caster.
I agree with you and Sanvael both, however. Sometimes there should be hints saying 'this is a bad idea,' but if the advice isn't heeded or said caster is just saying "I cast Fire Bolt!" as soon as the word 'web' is said, then yes, the character should suffer the consequences of their actions. I don't however believe in putting an innocent person in that room as punishment for a player using their toolkit. People in the real world do silly things and still succeed, if we want to talk about "treating the world real."
All of this said and I haven't included my usual caveat: if this is a player problem, such as my above example of them interrupting you and other players to selfishly do their thing, that needs to be brought up out of game. D&D must be fun for all participants, and that includes the DM. You don't need to harm characters to get a giggle out of their futile attempts to defeat some webs.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
Well if they continue casting spells blindly into the darkness, and they are on a rescue mission, I'd have it set up that the last room they would hit the girl with the potential of death depending on how they roll. I would also give them some potential negative actions earlier on. It's poor play to shoot blindly to abuse a game mechanic and have no consequences. You can't call it a breaching charge, because the door open and they are shooting the spell blindly into the dark. Imagine doing that in a funhouse dungeon with a big fat dragon asleep that the party could have moved around, maybe even tried to steal some treasure, but PhatL3wtins decides to cast firebolt in again without looking, well now they have some fun.
If players do something all the time, especially if it breaks world immersion you should counter on occasion. Even if its a good tactic, you should put in a counter to it on occasion to break potential boredom, so that the players have to change their tactics. In 5E, everyone wants to be a melee of some kind due to the nerfing of the arcane compared to prior editions. So every now in then, put in a mob that when the party hits, they take damage or if they get within 5 feet they take damage. All of a sudden, the party is panicking and trying to figure out how to beat it or how to run. And then your arcane players can shine.
Sure, blindly setting stuff on fire on a rescue mission is probably a bad idea, but there's no evidence in the OP of casting spells blindly into darkness, or that they're on a rescue mission.
Once more I have to agree with Pantagruel666's assessment, you'd be correct if these scenarios were the ones the OP has described. But, quote,
Isn't happening. That is called creating a strawman, and a strawman is only as difficult to defeat (or burn down with a Fire Bolt) as you build it. The player is not saying "I cast fire bolt blindly into the darkness," they are saying, quote the OP, "I cast fire bolt to burn the webs. I keep doing this to clear the room of webs. I will cast until there is no more webs I can see," and even then I imagine that's the DM giving us more the gist than a word-for-word quotation. In a conservative reading of this, the DM could treat the character as if they were a robot, exterminating all signs of webbing and webbing accessories no matter if there's a clearly living person entangled in them, not stopping at the screams because they've declared their action for instance. The DM should also update the caster as they're doing this, and the players should be paying attention to the burning webs to see if there's nothing of value (like a person, or flammable loot) entangled in them, so they can go "whoa, stop casting" or "I take a moment to assess the damage I've done to the webs before continuing to burn the rest."
But let's go by your examples of a funhouse dungeon with a big fat dragon asleep, using the principles outlined in the Basic Rules:
At this point the player should see that between the cobwebs and the big fat dragon asleep, the latter is the more pressing issue. Granted, they might not realise in time, so they should perhaps require a check to ensure they can realise this quickly enough and cancel the spell, if they've been idly firing these things off in quick succession. This is of course assuming that the previous advice by myself and other users has gone ignored or unnoticed, where fire bolt apparently doesn't emit any sound, smell, smoke or light effects that would alert this dragon.
Finally to your point about immersion, boredom and counters I agree that using the same answer can get grating. You have the right idea in your final paragraph about changing things up; there should be things that fire bolt isn't going to solve, and the DM needs to make those encounters happen.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
Fire bolt has a verbal component which means it's going to sound like Ness in super smash bros:
PK FIRE! PK FIRE! PK FIRE!
An amusing and good point. The party will likely be communicating verbally anyway unless they're making a point of being stealthy (even then, DMs may rule differently how loud the verbal component is). Armour will rattle, loose earth will be kicked, webbing can be slashed or burnt by other means. Were I the DM I'd be reminding the player their spell has a verbal component and the required volume (for me it would be ordinary speaking volume) to cast it. You on the other hand could fairly rule it as shouting "PEEKAY FIYURR!" However, I would let the player know this before they do it; if I suddenly spring upon them that they're shouting a spell at the top of their tiny lungs, that's inconsistent ruling from the previous times where it was unmentioned and thus didn't create any cause for alarm.
Going back to what I said about player versus character problems, it's also important to note that the character knows the spell has a verbal component. If it's a player problem, such as not knowing the components, that needs to be addressed out-of-game.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
There are a lot of character powers and spells that make certain stuff non-challenging. I see it as my job as DM to create consequences and other kinds of challenges that are not so easily negated, while at the same time still give the players a feeling that their characters powers/spells bring benefits and a sense of empowerment. It's not always easy, but one of the things that make it fun to DM. Imho.
I am utterly perplexed by the people commenting in this thread who feel that "a room full of cobwebs" should be a challenge sufficient to warrant something more tactical, powerful or skilful than using a Cantrip to overcome.
I'm not sure what they are expecting to happen if the PCs don't use Firebolts to clear the webs. They will get really cobwebby. Oh noooooo!
I feel maybe the discussion has become overly fixated on the specific example given, rather than "repeated use of cantrips." If a Cantrip is sufficient to remove all threat from a location - let's say your party have ray of frost and there are patches of Brown Mold, then casting the cantrip a bunch of times to remove the threat is legit, and you need to think about more devious threats. Presumably in the web example there are going to be Giant Spiders or some such hiding in the webbing, or a hidden trap. Give the spider some high ledges to be sitting on, and cover the trap with a rug.
Regarding "Oh no they are making sound," if you're going to apply this logic to the casting of some cantrips (10 in one minute) then you must be running dungeons that drop random monsters on the PCs both for talking to one another, and during fights with anything else, and when traps are set off.
What is/was the purpose of the room? Context is important was it a room to waste time in a time sensitive adventute r were you expecting some sort of resourse (other than time) to be spent? Is ritual casting causing similar issues at the table? From the title I was honestly expecting a perma guidance situation.
Everyone has given great information on this.
I did let them burn away all the webs with little repercussions. It was a point of letting them know the place was full of spiders and could be dangerous. In the end the spiders retreated because of the webs being burned and the final fight with the queen was harder then it would have been (not drastically so though).
My thought was either contact swinging a sword or constantly casting a spell even if a cantrips would cause characters to tire over time. Maybe even earning a point of exhaustion prior to the final battle in the area.
It's not an unreasonable idea in general, but simply clearing a single room of a mass of webs doesn't seem like it would be sufficient.
A single room I agree. But to basically do this through an entire dungeon seems a bit much. I take it as a lesson learned for sure. We all talked about it afterwards and came to a reasonable conclusion. Spending hours casting a spell or swinging a sword would tire anyone out, even heroes. I was more curious what other people thought and did they have that issue.
Spending hours constantly casting a cantrip or swinging a sword would be an issue. Just look at rules for jungle travel where you have to clear the jungle with a machete. This limits the pace and if you try to move faster you can become exhausted.
However, spending 10 minutes or half an hour casting a cantrip to burn down some webs should not be an issue. There are several published modules where there are rooms obscured by webs that contain various creatures. When I was running one of these, the party had the same idea as yours because it is obvious and because firebolt is one of the few cantrips worded so it can target objects in addition to creatures. I let them use one casting of firebolt/5' cube of webs. I didn't rule the webs were so flammable that one firebolt lit them all on fire. When the fire got too close to the creatures hiding in the webs, they attacked.
Not a big deal.
However, I don't let characters continually cast any cantrips ... the biggest offender is likely casting guidance every minute so that when a minute comes around that they have to roll initiative (or any other skill check) they get a bonus. I don't see any character walking around a fantasy world casting a cantrip every minute - it just isn't something I could see happening so I just say no :)
No one missed any part because it wasn't there till you made it up in this post.
You're misrepresenting the OP and the way fire bolt functions. The OP described the opening of a door, the seeing of cobwebs, and the player declaring the caster would cast fire bolt at the cobwebs until they're all burnt up. Notice the declared targets during this spamming of fire bolt.
You can't open a door and "cast fire bolt" unless you say what you're casting it at. "You hurl a mote of fire at a creature or object within range." It's not some sort of blind firing spell that will allow a DM to "set up" the player into committing war crimes or other atrocity. Shooting blind to cause the "horror" your trying to present isn't mechanically possible with this spell. Fireball sure, but I'm pretty sure a Wizard capable of spamming fireball isn't going to worry about cobwebs.
OP DM is impatient with this methodology. As far as gameplay, I don't see anything really wrong with the player's approach. Does it burn time and risk discovery? Sure. An organic environment might wonder what those flickers of light or slight burning smell is down the line. If a PC wants to play cobweb exterminator through an entire dungeon, let them drag and give things in the dungeon time to prep. You can't really "stealthily torch" an environment ... if that's what's even going on here.
Your response is presupposing indiscriminate use where the OP's description of the use sounded more targetted and thorough.
I mean you're seeing this reported player as someone indiscriminately blasting, like someone playing Doom. Whereas I think the player thinks of themselves as sanitizing a likely hostile environment, like the way the research team that triggered the Doom event probably should have behaved.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Let them, that is what the spell does.
The number of you guys that want to punish the player for using a damage cantrip to solve a non-combat problem is depressing.
Just because a player finds a solution that you didn't foresee doesn't mean that it's a good idea to punish them for it or make it not work, or come up with some way for it to backfire.
I don't think it is in the spirit of the game for a DM to negate a players build.
I don't see what the problem is here for the OP. If there was something the DM wished to obscure in the room for a surprise, there are other methods rather than obscuring it with cobwebs. I don't have enough imagination to think of what else is bothering anyone.
As an aside, do spiders cause cobwebs? I don't believe they do. But, I am not an authority on the subject.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
As with real life, actions usually have consequences. There will be many circumstances where the PC's actions are perfectly valid. This will positively reinforce their behavior. Then there will be times where there will be serious consequences such as destroying something valuable, harming someone, perhaps even blowing something up, and injuring the party. If you have one webbed room in each encounter, that's going to get dull fast.
I would make it random with a skew based on the context. Example: The dungeon is near a forest that also has visible webs in it. This is a good indicator that webs = spiders and burning is a good idea. But the dungeon used to be owned by a half-crazed Artificer that may or may not have created gunpowder. The party might smell hints of it as they enter the dungeon. In this case, the player might want to exercise more caution and his party is right to suggest it as well.
Doing the same thing over and over again with the same result is the definition of boring to me.
What about Eldritch Blast, if'n you only gotta hammer, you tend to whack away. Try a homebrew hammer, same cantrip, just quiet.
Eldritch Blast has a verbal component, so it is just as noisy as fire bolt.
It's just that eldritch blast might clear the webs more quickly once you get to 5th level, since you can take out two webs at a time - if their hit points are low enough.
Eldritch Blast would require a house rule as webs are an object and it only targets creatures