The description of Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade says that you must make a melee attack for the spell to take effect. What about ranged attacks? Could you potentially make this into a "booming arrow?" It wouldn't break the game, it will just make character building more flexible. Or is there some sort of reason why WoTC restricted those cantrips to melee attacks.
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Brains over brawn? Mind over matter? These canny warriors rightly answer, "Why not both?" - Tasha
Booming arrow would be pretty over powered. "You have to stay over there and let me hit you, or else you will take twice as much damage."
The main reason is probably to have some melee options. Most spells are ranged. These cantrips are also fairly strong, rolling almost twice as many dice as others.
Booming arrow would be pretty over powered. "You have to stay over there and let me hit you, or else you will take twice as much damage."
The main reason is probably to have some melee options. Most spells are ranged. These cantrips are also fairly strong, rolling almost twice as many dice as others.
What about Green-Flame Arrow? Or WoTC should just add completely new cantrips to be used with ONLY ranged attacks. That way there would be more options.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Brains over brawn? Mind over matter? These canny warriors rightly answer, "Why not both?" - Tasha
Booming arrow would be pretty over powered. "You have to stay over there and let me hit you, or else you will take twice as much damage."
The main reason is probably to have some melee options. Most spells are ranged. These cantrips are also fairly strong, rolling almost twice as many dice as others.
What about Green-Flame Arrow? Or WoTC should just add completely new cantrips to be used with ONLY ranged attacks. That way there would be more options.
Jack Nicholson nodding dot gif, but it's Oliver Queen
In all seriousness, I think that would be a reasonable spell
Note that, by comparison, hail of thorns is 1st level and does a scalable 1d10 to all surrounding creatures plus target vs a Dex save
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Booming Blade would be too good if you could tack it onto a Ranged Attack, but I think you could rework Green Flame Blade to work with a Ranged Spell attack... the idea being basically that it allows you to target a creature with a magic cantrip that uses your primary attack stat to land rather than your spell attack modifier.
I'll compare it to Acid Splash, which works quite a bit like GFB, in that it targets a single creature, but has an additional feature that targets two creatures. I think you'd have to reduce the damage... Acid Splash deals 1d6 Acid Damage as opposed to the 1d8 Fire Damage from GFB. But something like that where you target one enemy with a weapon attack, and additional damage hits another enemy standing near them that eventually starts to just add more damage to the initial hit. My only concern is how this might stack with things like Sneak Attack or Battlemaster Maneuvers... then again, BB and GFB already have weird stacking abilities that are just a touch unbalanced, but still probably not as just using a traditional Extra Attack.
Booming arrow would be pretty over powered. "You have to stay over there and let me hit you, or else you will take twice as much damage."
The main reason is probably to have some melee options. Most spells are ranged. These cantrips are also fairly strong, rolling almost twice as many dice as others.
What about Green-Flame Arrow? Or WoTC should just add completely new cantrips to be used with ONLY ranged attacks. That way there would be more options.
Magic Stone is an incompetent attempt at writing a cantrip along these lines. I would recommend starting with it when attempting to homebrew ranged cantrips, and I would also emphasize that in 5E ranged is already better than melee, so much like Magic Stone, you should write the spell to emphasize relatively inferior ranged weapons. For example, you could restrict the spell to thrown weapons as opposed to also working with ammunition weapons, and much like BB/GFB, you should probably restrict the range at which targets can be affected (BB and GFB don't work on initial targets 10 feet away, even with a reach weapon).
One implied drawback of GFB is that to get the benefit you need to be pretty close to two enemies. Adding that to a ranged attack is removing the associated risk, and greatly opens up your targeting abilities, so this would be a significantly better option in many cases. I like Quin's suggestions for adding limitations - particularly something dagger-specific would be able to accommodate a little more extra damage as well as boosting an unused weapon a bit.
I am still working on my best attempt at a ranged weapon cantrip. It's kind of like a reverse Booming Blade where you take the extra damage (downgraded to d6) if you don't move, flavored as ice coalescing in the targeted square. But I haven't decided whether its synergy with restrained/grappled/etc. makes it a spell that rewards teamwork (which is good, I like stuff that encourages tactics) or just makes it too good.
The description of Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade says that you must make a melee attack for the spell to take effect. What about ranged attacks? Could you potentially make this into a "booming arrow?" It wouldn't break the game, it will just make character building more flexible. Or is there some sort of reason why WoTC restricted those cantrips to melee attacks.
Brains over brawn? Mind over matter? These canny warriors rightly answer, "Why not both?" - Tasha
My Homebrews: Monsters, Magic Items, Spells, Races
Rhulg- Hobgoblin Gunsmith
Booming arrow would be pretty over powered. "You have to stay over there and let me hit you, or else you will take twice as much damage."
The main reason is probably to have some melee options. Most spells are ranged. These cantrips are also fairly strong, rolling almost twice as many dice as others.
What about Green-Flame Arrow? Or WoTC should just add completely new cantrips to be used with ONLY ranged attacks. That way there would be more options.
Brains over brawn? Mind over matter? These canny warriors rightly answer, "Why not both?" - Tasha
My Homebrews: Monsters, Magic Items, Spells, Races
Rhulg- Hobgoblin Gunsmith
Jack Nicholson nodding dot gif, but it's Oliver Queen
In all seriousness, I think that would be a reasonable spell
Note that, by comparison, hail of thorns is 1st level and does a scalable 1d10 to all surrounding creatures plus target vs a Dex save
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Booming Blade would be too good if you could tack it onto a Ranged Attack, but I think you could rework Green Flame Blade to work with a Ranged Spell attack... the idea being basically that it allows you to target a creature with a magic cantrip that uses your primary attack stat to land rather than your spell attack modifier.
I'll compare it to Acid Splash, which works quite a bit like GFB, in that it targets a single creature, but has an additional feature that targets two creatures. I think you'd have to reduce the damage... Acid Splash deals 1d6 Acid Damage as opposed to the 1d8 Fire Damage from GFB. But something like that where you target one enemy with a weapon attack, and additional damage hits another enemy standing near them that eventually starts to just add more damage to the initial hit. My only concern is how this might stack with things like Sneak Attack or Battlemaster Maneuvers... then again, BB and GFB already have weird stacking abilities that are just a touch unbalanced, but still probably not as just using a traditional Extra Attack.
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Magic Stone is an incompetent attempt at writing a cantrip along these lines. I would recommend starting with it when attempting to homebrew ranged cantrips, and I would also emphasize that in 5E ranged is already better than melee, so much like Magic Stone, you should write the spell to emphasize relatively inferior ranged weapons. For example, you could restrict the spell to thrown weapons as opposed to also working with ammunition weapons, and much like BB/GFB, you should probably restrict the range at which targets can be affected (BB and GFB don't work on initial targets 10 feet away, even with a reach weapon).
I had a similar discussion resulting in some fun brainstorming for potential concepts.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/homebrew-house-rules/132679-bb-gfb-ranged-variants
Ended up making about 4 different spells, but have not had an opportunity to test them in my current stealth-centric campaign.
Might be of interest to anyone looking for Bladetrips:
https://www.reddit.com/user/Raven_Wanderer/comments/tqk74q/ravens_carefully_balanced_blade_cantrips_5e/
One implied drawback of GFB is that to get the benefit you need to be pretty close to two enemies. Adding that to a ranged attack is removing the associated risk, and greatly opens up your targeting abilities, so this would be a significantly better option in many cases. I like Quin's suggestions for adding limitations - particularly something dagger-specific would be able to accommodate a little more extra damage as well as boosting an unused weapon a bit.
I am still working on my best attempt at a ranged weapon cantrip. It's kind of like a reverse Booming Blade where you take the extra damage (downgraded to d6) if you don't move, flavored as ice coalescing in the targeted square. But I haven't decided whether its synergy with restrained/grappled/etc. makes it a spell that rewards teamwork (which is good, I like stuff that encourages tactics) or just makes it too good.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm