For my magic users, their opportunity attacks are usually a good off hand punch in the face. I know war caster allows an action cast time spell to be used. I'm curious if there's some silver lining on the rules for using spells and magic for OA. What's been some rules enacted at your tables?
War caster is literally the only way, RAW; there's no special circumstance in the rules that allows otherwise. Homebrew is the only other possible answer, and frankly the potential of it is too powerful to allow for anything short of a Feat or prominent Class Feature to provide. Just allowing Cantrips to be used for Opportunity Attacks would be crazy powerful beyond Tier 1, and make the new True Strike even more of a must have.
For my magic users, their opportunity attacks are usually a good off hand punch in the face. I know war caster allows an action cast time spell to be used. I'm curious if there's some silver lining on the rules for using spells and magic for OA. What's been some rules enacted at your tables?
There is a significant problem with this from a game balance perspective, which is that opportunity attacks are very deliberately limited to be a single attack, even when the character can make multiple attacks with an Attack action.
Damaging cantrips generally get an upgrade at the same levels that Fighters get extra attacks, as a way of balancing out the damage potential. But (with the exception of Eldritch Blast) they're still making a single attack, just with more damage dice. This means that if you allow them to be used for opportunity attacks without some other tradeoff, their damage potential is now significantly higher than a normal opportunity attack.
If you wanted to house rule a way to balance this and allow it, you could make non-War Caster allowed to do it with just cantrips, but only the 1st-level version. War Caster enables the full damage.
I don't think this would break the game or anything, as opportunity attacks are not that common. And the ability to cast a spell in place of the attack is not the reason people take war caster. Still, I don't see any reason to give such a buff to casters either.
Martial charavters can never use a ranged weapon for opportunity attack, even if they have the Sharpshooter feat. OA is defined only as ever being a melee attack, weapon or unarmed.
Casters can take the WarCaster feat and use any spell on any creature , including casting a healing spell on an ally as they run past them. If they take the SpellSniper feat, they can cast a ranged attack spell at the enemy and not have disadvantage.
Martial characters cant use ranged weapons for an OA under any circumstances. They cannot heal on the fly like war caster allows. There are no similar feats for martials.
If casters could also do all they do without even requiring the Warcaster feat, then that only furthers the issue with martials always lagging behind casters in power level.
A feat to do something a martial can never do is a small price to pay for the added power.
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For my magic users, their opportunity attacks are usually a good off hand punch in the face. I know war caster allows an action cast time spell to be used. I'm curious if there's some silver lining on the rules for using spells and magic for OA. What's been some rules enacted at your tables?
War caster is literally the only way, RAW; there's no special circumstance in the rules that allows otherwise. Homebrew is the only other possible answer, and frankly the potential of it is too powerful to allow for anything short of a Feat or prominent Class Feature to provide.
Just allowing Cantrips to be used for Opportunity Attacks would be crazy powerful beyond Tier 1, and make the new True Strike even more of a must have.
There is a significant problem with this from a game balance perspective, which is that opportunity attacks are very deliberately limited to be a single attack, even when the character can make multiple attacks with an Attack action.
Damaging cantrips generally get an upgrade at the same levels that Fighters get extra attacks, as a way of balancing out the damage potential. But (with the exception of Eldritch Blast) they're still making a single attack, just with more damage dice. This means that if you allow them to be used for opportunity attacks without some other tradeoff, their damage potential is now significantly higher than a normal opportunity attack.
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If you wanted to house rule a way to balance this and allow it, you could make non-War Caster allowed to do it with just cantrips, but only the 1st-level version. War Caster enables the full damage.
I don't think this would break the game or anything, as opportunity attacks are not that common. And the ability to cast a spell in place of the attack is not the reason people take war caster. Still, I don't see any reason to give such a buff to casters either.
Nope.
Martial charavters can never use a ranged weapon for opportunity attack, even if they have the Sharpshooter feat. OA is defined only as ever being a melee attack, weapon or unarmed.
Casters can take the WarCaster feat and use any spell on any creature , including casting a healing spell on an ally as they run past them. If they take the SpellSniper feat, they can cast a ranged attack spell at the enemy and not have disadvantage.
Martial characters cant use ranged weapons for an OA under any circumstances. They cannot heal on the fly like war caster allows. There are no similar feats for martials.
If casters could also do all they do without even requiring the Warcaster feat, then that only furthers the issue with martials always lagging behind casters in power level.
A feat to do something a martial can never do is a small price to pay for the added power.