It is kinda strange we havent gotten leveled spells similar to the blade cantrips, considering how popular they are.
I think that's what the Smite spells are meant to be. They pair a little more easily with classes that get extra attack, although it's a little hard to get them outside of playing as a Paladin.
Yea thats true enough, although ontop of being fairly class specific, they are also very predictable and uniform in their design. I cant help but think that the bladesinger, although I love the subclass, is actually bad for future gish support because it is very difficult to introduce more powerful gish options when you cannot take regular full casting away from the strongest gish out there, due to it being a subclass of a full caster.
When I read that the UA covered cantrips, I was hoping we'd get a revision on Druidcraft. That flower/pod/bud piece could really use some help.
Personally I think it's okay though some of the wordings could be tweaked; the main thing that cantrip needs is to be given to all druids by default, as it's a tough sell when you only have two cantrip choices.
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When I read that the UA covered cantrips, I was hoping we'd get a revision on Druidcraft. That flower/pod/bud piece could really use some help.
Personally I think it's okay though some of the wordings could be tweaked; the main thing that cantrip needs is to be given to all druids by default, as it's a tough sell when you only have two cantrip choices.
the tough sell is how little it actually does: weak sensory effect, light/snuff a candle, sprout a seed, and "if this rock is wet, then it is raining. wow, magic." prestidigitation includes heat/chill drinks, clean/smudge a thing, mark an object for an hour, create a trinket (like a whistle, pencil sharpener, hand mirror, etc). great roleplay facilitation! i feel like druidcraft could do a lot more to be worth the slot:
your hair turns green for 1 hour and your mood is enhanced by sunlight.
while you concentrate on druidcraft, indifferent animals don't immediately flee your presence.
gain insight into the significance of the moon's current phase: harvest, tide, migration, proximity to seasonal equinox, etc.
scratch your back/etc against a stationary object, leaving a subtle musk for a day that druids who know you would recognize.
know if a plant you are touching might be effective against minor parasites or vitamin deficiency that you are experiencing.
make a small mark or symbol appear on an unpainted/unvarnished object or surface for one hour. it may fluoresce very faintly in the dark.
designate a minor sacrifice of food, drink, or craft item as a gift to local fey. beasts and plants will ignore the item for an hour or more.
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the tough sell is how little it actually does: weak sensory effect, light/snuff a candle, sprout a seed, and "if this rock is wet, then it is raining. wow, magic." prestidigitation includes heat/chill drinks, clean/smudge a thing, mark an object for an hour, create a trinket (like a whistle, pencil sharpener, hand mirror, etc). great roleplay facilitation!
Prestidigitation is arguably a tough sell as well on characters with only two cantrip choices, as it's costing you a pick you could be using for a combat cantrip, or something more specific but stronger like light (for a character without darkvision), friends for a Bard etc. Aside from the palm-sized illusion it's not really doing anything you can't just do yourself, it's just a fun and flavourful thing to have as magic at your disposal.
Comparatively druidcraft actually has a slight edge IMO as accurately predicting the weather is actually a somewhat powerful divination feature, the problem is that that just isn't one that's likely to be all that useful in an actual campaign without your DM putting in some extra effort to make it useful, e.g- featuring harsh weather with real consequences from time to time, such that being prepared for it is actually useful.
Not that I'm opposed to improvements to either; I love both cantrips, but they're both cantrips you pick more for the roleplay than the mechanical features and that makes them trickier for two cantrip classes. I'd actually argue arcane casters should have prestidigitation as standard just as druids should have druidcraft (and perhaps clerics should have thaumaturgy), but it's less of a problem for those classes that get more picks (Cleric and Wizard both get 3, Sorcerer gets 4).
your hair turns green for 1 hour and your mood is enhanced by sunlight.
while you concentrate on druidcraft, indifferent animals don't immediately flee your presence.
gain insight into the significance of the moon's current phase: harvest, tide, migration, proximity to seasonal equinox, etc.
scratch your back/etc against a stationary object, leaving a subtle musk for a day that druids who know you would recognize.
know if a plant you are touching might be effective against minor parasites or vitamin deficiency that you are experiencing.
make a small mark or symbol appear on an unpainted/unvarnished object or surface for one hour. it may fluoresce very faintly in the dark.
designate a minor sacrifice of food, drink, or craft item as a gift to local fey. beasts and plants will ignore the item for an hour or more.
I like a lot of these, though I think the last one should be more vague, e.g- the gift/sacrifice "makes local fey less hostile towards the druid", so it's still up to the DM how much of an effect it has, rather than having a hard mechanic where you could kick an archfey's family to death but because you sacrificed a biscuit within the last hour they didn't notice. 😉
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When I read that the UA covered cantrips, I was hoping we'd get a revision on Druidcraft. That flower/pod/bud piece could really use some help.
Personally, I think a major effect of Druidcraft should just let you cause a single plant to grow to its maximum size (maximum size Small so druids aren't popping trees out of the ground like daisies) or heal plants of injuries and illnesses. It is how it is commonly played anyway, and the weirdly specific wording really undermines the creative uses of the spell. Just stipulate that the growth is too slow to actually ensnare anyone who's paying attention so it doesn't compete with Entangle or Plant Growth.
the tough sell is how little it actually does: weak sensory effect, light/snuff a candle, sprout a seed, and "if this rock is wet, then it is raining. wow, magic." prestidigitation includes heat/chill drinks, clean/smudge a thing, mark an object for an hour, create a trinket (like a whistle, pencil sharpener, hand mirror, etc). great roleplay facilitation!
Prestidigitation is arguably a tough sell as well on characters with only two cantrip choices, as it's costing you a pick you could be using for a combat cantrip, or something more specific but stronger like light (for a character without darkvision), friends for a Bard etc. Aside from the palm-sized illusion it's not really doing anything you can't just do yourself, it's just a fun and flavourful thing to have as magic at your disposal.
Comparatively druidcraft actually has a slight edge IMO as accurately predicting the weather is actually a somewhat powerful divination feature, the problem is that that just isn't one that's likely to be all that useful in an actual campaign without your DM putting in some extra effort to make it useful, e.g- featuring harsh weather with real consequences from time to time, such that being prepared for it is actually useful.
Not that I'm opposed to improvements to either; I love both cantrips, but they're both cantrips you pick more for the roleplay than the mechanical features and that makes them trickier for two cantrip classes. I'd actually argue arcane casters should have prestidigitation as standard just as druids should have druidcraft (and perhaps clerics should have thaumaturgy), but it's less of a problem for those classes that get more picks (Cleric and Wizard both get 3, Sorcerer gets 4).
i feel like choosing the druidcraft (or prestidigitation or thaumaturgy) cantrip or not says a lot about the character. i like that it's a choice. i especially like to take it on rangers (when it's an option). i don't want to be useful at cantrips, just expressing a connection to the land.
there was a time when i thought druidcraft should include control fire and create fire. it's just simple candle light, too easy, right? similarly, prestidigitation to include light spell. surely they'd be able to do both if they could do one, right? it just seemed so handy.
but two things: one, if it's so important and obvious then the dm will agree to give it out for free in session zero. i hope that's made especially clear in the revised. and two, well... there's a sometimes very subtle charm of the game that's entirely lost when one spell/character/party has an easy answer to 'everything' under the sun. especially in the early hardscrabble levels. having said that, i think there could be room for more cantrips (but not expanding the default number of cantrips a class receives).
designate a minor sacrifice of food, drink, or craft item as a gift to local fey. beasts and plants will ignore the item for an hour or more.
I like a lot of these, though I think the last one should be more vague, e.g- the gift/sacrifice "makes local fey less hostile towards the druid", so it's still up to the DM how much of an effect it has, rather than having a hard mechanic where you could kick an archfey's family to death but because you sacrificed a biscuit within the last hour they didn't notice. 😉
oh, vague was the idea. all i was saying is that nature wouldn't spoil the sacrifice before enigmatic fey could take a look when your back was turned. i definitely don't want to codify what the sacrifice must be, it's worth, it's effect, or what it looks like after it's been accepted (or rejected!).
it's like with the green hair. i really, really wanted to say "after an hour you feel like you've had a light snack," but that ventures way too close into the realm of usefulness. and that is not my point of these haha.
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When I read that the UA covered cantrips, I was hoping we'd get a revision on Druidcraft. That flower/pod/bud piece could really use some help.
...It is how it is commonly played anyway, and the weirdly specific wording really undermines the creative uses of the spell....
This is exactly my problem with it. I don't need the spell to be mechanically more powerful, just more accommodating to RP. (I would not object if it were more powerful mechanically, though.)
However, in practice all of them have mildly relevant effects:
All three can produce various minor sensory effects which a DM might consider a distraction. Actually stating that it can do this would add a definite use case.
Druidcraft can light or extinguish small fires. The latter is occasionally useful, though in practice there usually isn't one single light source that it's useful to extinguish.
Prestidigitation can do the same (but with 10' range), and can also clean items (surprisingly useful), place marks (occasionally useful), reheat food (cosmetic but so is proficiency with cooking tools), and create a small disposable object to, say, drop down a pit to see how deep it is (very marginal use case, but can come up).
Thaumaturgy can cause flames to brighten or dim (how many? To what degree? Not specified), and open or close unlocked doors and windows (this can come up).
I would be tempted by
Druidcraft
Whispering to the spirits of nature, you create one of the following effects within range:
You create a tiny, harmless sensory effect that predicts what the weather will be at your location for the next 24 hours. The effect might manifest as a golden orb for clear skies, a cloud for rain, falling snowflakes for snow, and so on. This effect persists for 1 round. If used in wilderness survival situation, assume you have advantage on survival checks to cope with weather-related hazards.
You instantly make a flower blossom, a seed pod open, or a leaf bud bloom. If used in a wilderness survival situation, assume you have advantage on survival checks for foraging. If used when searching for plant-based herbs or poisons, you have advantage on the check.
You create an instantaneous, harmless sensory effect, such as falling leaves, a puff of wind, the sound of a small animal, or the faint odor of skunk. The effect must fit in a 5-foot cube. The effect can be strong enough to be distracting; if a distraction would be useful, such as in combat, treat as the help action.
You instantly light or snuff out a candle, a torch, or a small campfire.
At higher levels: at level 5, you may produce 2 effects with a single casting, or the same effect on 2 targets. This increases to 3 at level 11, 4 at level 17.
Similar bonuses could be listed for prestidigitation and thaumaturgy.
However, in practice all of them have mildly relevant effects:
All three can produce various minor sensory effects which a DM might consider a distraction. Actually stating that it can do this would add a definite use case.
Druidcraft can light or extinguish small fires. The latter is occasionally useful, though in practice there usually isn't one single light source that it's useful to extinguish.
Prestidigitation can do the same (but with 10' range), and can also clean items (surprisingly useful), place marks (occasionally useful), reheat food (cosmetic but so is proficiency with cooking tools), and create a small disposable object to, say, drop down a pit to see how deep it is (very marginal use case, but can come up).
Thaumaturgy can cause flames to brighten or dim (how many? To what degree? Not specified), and open or close unlocked doors and windows (this can come up).
I would be tempted by
Druidcraft
Whispering to the spirits of nature, you create one of the following effects within range:
You create a tiny, harmless sensory effect that predicts what the weather will be at your location for the next 24 hours. The effect might manifest as a golden orb for clear skies, a cloud for rain, falling snowflakes for snow, and so on. This effect persists for 1 round. If used in wilderness survival situation, assume you have advantage on survival checks to cope with weather-related hazards.
You instantly make a flower blossom, a seed pod open, or a leaf bud bloom. If used in a wilderness survival situation, assume you have advantage on survival checks for foraging. If used when searching for plant-based herbs or poisons, you have advantage on the check.
You create an instantaneous, harmless sensory effect, such as falling leaves, a puff of wind, the sound of a small animal, or the faint odor of skunk. The effect must fit in a 5-foot cube. The effect can be strong enough to be distracting; if a distraction would be useful, such as in combat, treat as the help action.
You instantly light or snuff out a candle, a torch, or a small campfire.
At higher levels: at level 5, you may produce 2 effects with a single casting, or the same effect on 2 targets. This increases to 3 at level 11, 4 at level 17.
Similar bonuses could be listed for prestidigitation and thaumaturgy.
i feel like the revised DMG/PHB needs a "Utility Cantrips, Improv, and You" section to explain that help actions in combat with a utility cantrip flavor are usually okay. really, spelling out "if a distraction would be useful, such as in combat, treat as the help action" should be redundant.
also, homebrew is fun but i don't expect to see cantrips giving advantage to ability checks. in the case of druidcraft survival boosting, it would mostly be a spell given to druids and rangers who don't need it. they should already have proficiency in survival and high WIS. which means the ones who would ultimately benefit would be optimizers taking a spread of feats to cover their weak spots.
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anyway, as much as i'm okay with multi-effect roleplay-only cantrips, what i wanna know is why aren't there more produce flame type spells? like, more cantrips with an aspect of utility and combat both? why are produce flame and fire bolt separate spells? what's so uncantripy about wreathing your hand in fire to aid an intimidation check or to check the map by candle light? what's the reason druidcraft shouldn't facilitate a Shillelagh? or thaumaturgy a magic stone? you might convince me word of radiance & sacred flame or mage hand & prestidigitation is too much combinatorial bang for the buck; however, for the rest they don't seem to cross the "cantrips shouldn't replicate a leveled spell" taboo or violate DMG guidelines for creating a new spell.
i don't feel like i'm not asking for light plus eldritch blast plus move earth sort of power creep "so good that a caster would want to use it all the time". so, why not more simple produce flame type spells?
anyway, as much as i'm okay with multi-effect roleplay-only cantrips, what i wanna know is why aren't there more produce flame type spells? like, more cantrips with an aspect of utility and combat both? why are produce flame and fire bolt separate spells? what's so uncantripy about wreathing your hand in fire to aid an intimidation check or to check the map by candle light? what's the reason druidcraft shouldn't facilitate a Shillelagh? or thaumaturgy a magic stone? you might convince me word of radiance & sacred flame or mage hand & prestidigitation is too much combinatorial bang for the buck; however, for the rest they don't seem to cross the "cantrips shouldn't replicate a leveled spell" taboo or violate DMG guidelines for creating a new spell.
i don't feel like i'm not asking for light plus eldritch blast plus move earth sort of power creep "so good that a caster would want to use it all the time". so, why not more simple produce flame type spells?
I like that idea of giving attack cantrips an additional out-of-combat utility feature, but I don't necessarily think that existing utility cantrips should necessarily also gain attack functions. There's already a LOT you can do with Druidcraft, so having it also be used to trigger Shillelagh, I feel, would be overkill. However, I think it would make sense to add to Shillelagh the ability to cause seeds to blossom or flowers to bloom... not the full suite of everything druidcraft gives you, but something so you can feel a bit more magical even outside of combat.
I know that I'm often trying to use cantrips in creative ways. Like trying to electrocute someone through a metal chain using Shocking Grasp... or even just sparking it up to provide light.
It feels like acid-splash should just say "Hits a 2x2 grid" or something.
Logically, if a grid tile is 5ft squared and a medium sized creature occupies a single 5ft square, then a 5ft aoe is a single-target spell.
Having to explain to the DM/other players that you don't have to target a square, you can target 'the lines between squares' to let you cast a 5ft aoe over 20ft worth of grid tiles to hit four people at once makes me sound like I'm making shit up.
I've seen that some people use paper cutouts to denote the size/range of aoes and they just drop them on the gameboard to see who they hit, but that's never how my group did it. I've never seen or used rules for things touching part of a square. Either the effect hits your tile or it doesn't.
Poison Spray: I actually don't like it being made a ranged attack. I'd rather it remain a Constitution save but maybe follow acid splash and become a small cone attack with damage adjusted accordingly. Good constitution is relatively common on monsters, and poison damage is one of the more common resistances/immunities so there's scope for this to be an area of effect IMO.
I could see poison-spray becoming an aoe, but it should never go back to being a con-save.
Any spell that forces a con-save is effectively worthless. What's the point of hitting 5 dudes in an aoe cloud of poison if they're all just going to make their saves and take no damage anyway? You wasted your whole turn, should have cast firebolt instead.
Worthless. That's why the current non-playtest version of poison spray doesn't get used.
That's also why i'm so leery about the bastion options that provide poison materials as one of their primary benifits. Although they also provide herbs for healing potions too, and those are always useful.
I tried to make a Yian-ti pureblood poisoner character once, and even without running into any enemies who were totally immune to poison, it was still bad. I was a sorceress with poison spells, poison racial abilities, the Poisoner feat and a Poisoner's kit. I had poisoned daggers and darts up my sleeve.
I knew going in that a lot of things resisted poison, and if we ended up fighting the undead, i'd be screwed.
But that wasn't even the problem.
The problem was that only one creature ever failed to make their con-check to just take zero damage from my poison, and that was a bird.
Because basically every monster in the manual has con as their primary or secondary stat, and Basic Toxin is only a DC10 check to completely ignore. (also the poisoners kit doesn't actually explain how it works so me and my DM had to make some stuff up about me using it to produce toxins from the venom of my snake familiar)
I hope 1D&D fixes that, actually. Make poison-items do both poison-damage and the poisoned status effect, and then have the con-save only protect you from the latter. So a poisoned weapon still does +1d4 poison damage (unless you're immune to poison)
Poison Spray has a higher DC on the con-check (because of your modifier) but it barely matters. Everyone's con-scores are so high that they'll just ignore it.
Earlier someone suggested 1d12 if they fail the save and 1d6 if they succeed, and usually I like save-and-suck spells (where even if they make their saves, something bad happens to them so I didn't waste my whole turn) but in this case every enemy you fight is either going to make their saves, or be resistant/immune to damage.
So you've got a 1d6 damage on a cantrip, at best.
That's a problem, because Firebolt stands as the generic 'battle cantrip' that does 1d10 damage, no muss, no fuss, no special effects. If your spell isn't at least as good as that, there's no reason for you to bother learning it.
playtest Poison Spray does 1d12, which technically makes it one of the more powerful cantrips, but the tradeoff for that is it's bad damage typing, which makes it useless against a lot of things. So it ends up about equal, ish.
If it keeps the bad damage-typing and functionally does 1d6 instead, what's it gaining in exchange?
An Aoe? It'd be a big one. If I can't hit at least three dudes with it, it's still not worth casting. If it could hit multiple people and give them the Poisoned Condition without giving them a con-save, it'd be pretty useful. A good way to inflict Disadvantage on groups of enemies. If you let them con-save their way out of it though, there's no point.
Anything with a low enough Con-score to actually fail a con-save more than one in a hundred times can probably just be stomped to death under your boots.
It feels like acid-splash should just say "Hits a 2x2 grid" or something.
Logically, if a grid tile is 5ft squared and a medium sized creature occupies a single 5ft square, then a 5ft aoe is a single-target spell.
...
that spell is a 5ft-radius-sphere. i don't know if that's a 10x10x10 bubble or if that's the splash zone, but the effect is 10ft from left to right.
if anything, i don't see how a single target would "dexterously" avoid a 10ft-across AOE without leaving their square (and maybe the next one too). so maybe it is splash zone?
It feels like acid-splash should just say "Hits a 2x2 grid" or something.
Logically, if a grid tile is 5ft squared and a medium sized creature occupies a single 5ft square, then a 5ft aoe is a single-target spell.
Having to explain to the DM/other players that you don't have to target a square, you can target 'the lines between squares' to let you cast a 5ft aoe over 20ft worth of grid tiles to hit four people at once makes me sound like I'm making shit up.
I've seen that some people use paper cutouts to denote the size/range of aoes and they just drop them on the gameboard to see who they hit, but that's never how my group did it. I've never seen or used rules for things touching part of a square. Either the effect hits your tile or it doesn't.
Also, True Strike is Greenflame blade now.
I use a grid when I play, mostly to make things easier to read at a glance, but I'm personally against normalizing grid-based descriptions for spells and abilities in the game. I think the ability to be more dynamic and precise with this kind of thing is one of the big appeals of D&D compared to something like a strategy videogame
It is kinda strange we havent gotten leveled spells similar to the blade cantrips, considering how popular they are.
I think that's what the Smite spells are meant to be. They pair a little more easily with classes that get extra attack, although it's a little hard to get them outside of playing as a Paladin.
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Yea thats true enough, although ontop of being fairly class specific, they are also very predictable and uniform in their design. I cant help but think that the bladesinger, although I love the subclass, is actually bad for future gish support because it is very difficult to introduce more powerful gish options when you cannot take regular full casting away from the strongest gish out there, due to it being a subclass of a full caster.
When I read that the UA covered cantrips, I was hoping we'd get a revision on Druidcraft. That flower/pod/bud piece could really use some help.
Personally I think it's okay though some of the wordings could be tweaked; the main thing that cantrip needs is to be given to all druids by default, as it's a tough sell when you only have two cantrip choices.
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the tough sell is how little it actually does: weak sensory effect, light/snuff a candle, sprout a seed, and "if this rock is wet, then it is raining. wow, magic." prestidigitation includes heat/chill drinks, clean/smudge a thing, mark an object for an hour, create a trinket (like a whistle, pencil sharpener, hand mirror, etc). great roleplay facilitation! i feel like druidcraft could do a lot more to be worth the slot:
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Prestidigitation is arguably a tough sell as well on characters with only two cantrip choices, as it's costing you a pick you could be using for a combat cantrip, or something more specific but stronger like light (for a character without darkvision), friends for a Bard etc. Aside from the palm-sized illusion it's not really doing anything you can't just do yourself, it's just a fun and flavourful thing to have as magic at your disposal.
Comparatively druidcraft actually has a slight edge IMO as accurately predicting the weather is actually a somewhat powerful divination feature, the problem is that that just isn't one that's likely to be all that useful in an actual campaign without your DM putting in some extra effort to make it useful, e.g- featuring harsh weather with real consequences from time to time, such that being prepared for it is actually useful.
Not that I'm opposed to improvements to either; I love both cantrips, but they're both cantrips you pick more for the roleplay than the mechanical features and that makes them trickier for two cantrip classes. I'd actually argue arcane casters should have prestidigitation as standard just as druids should have druidcraft (and perhaps clerics should have thaumaturgy), but it's less of a problem for those classes that get more picks (Cleric and Wizard both get 3, Sorcerer gets 4).
I like a lot of these, though I think the last one should be more vague, e.g- the gift/sacrifice "makes local fey less hostile towards the druid", so it's still up to the DM how much of an effect it has, rather than having a hard mechanic where you could kick an archfey's family to death but because you sacrificed a biscuit within the last hour they didn't notice. 😉
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Personally, I think a major effect of Druidcraft should just let you cause a single plant to grow to its maximum size (maximum size Small so druids aren't popping trees out of the ground like daisies) or heal plants of injuries and illnesses. It is how it is commonly played anyway, and the weirdly specific wording really undermines the creative uses of the spell. Just stipulate that the growth is too slow to actually ensnare anyone who's paying attention so it doesn't compete with Entangle or Plant Growth.
i feel like choosing the druidcraft (or prestidigitation or thaumaturgy) cantrip or not says a lot about the character. i like that it's a choice. i especially like to take it on rangers (when it's an option). i don't want to be useful at cantrips, just expressing a connection to the land.
there was a time when i thought druidcraft should include control fire and create fire. it's just simple candle light, too easy, right? similarly, prestidigitation to include light spell. surely they'd be able to do both if they could do one, right? it just seemed so handy.
but two things: one, if it's so important and obvious then the dm will agree to give it out for free in session zero. i hope that's made especially clear in the revised. and two, well... there's a sometimes very subtle charm of the game that's entirely lost when one spell/character/party has an easy answer to 'everything' under the sun. especially in the early hardscrabble levels. having said that, i think there could be room for more cantrips (but not expanding the default number of cantrips a class receives).
oh, vague was the idea. all i was saying is that nature wouldn't spoil the sacrifice before enigmatic fey could take a look when your back was turned. i definitely don't want to codify what the sacrifice must be, it's worth, it's effect, or what it looks like after it's been accepted (or rejected!).
it's like with the green hair. i really, really wanted to say "after an hour you feel like you've had a light snack," but that ventures way too close into the realm of usefulness. and that is not my point of these haha.
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This is exactly my problem with it. I don't need the spell to be mechanically more powerful, just more accommodating to RP. (I would not object if it were more powerful mechanically, though.)
There are three cantrips that are designed to be primarily cosmetic small effects: druidcraft, prestidigitation, and thaumaturgy.
However, in practice all of them have mildly relevant effects:
I would be tempted by
Druidcraft
Whispering to the spirits of nature, you create one of the following effects within range:
faintodor of skunk. The effect must fit in a 5-foot cube. The effect can be strong enough to be distracting; if a distraction would be useful, such as in combat, treat as the help action.At higher levels: at level 5, you may produce 2 effects with a single casting, or the same effect on 2 targets. This increases to 3 at level 11, 4 at level 17.
Similar bonuses could be listed for prestidigitation and thaumaturgy.
Pantagruel666
I love the suggestion for Druidcraft!
i feel like the revised DMG/PHB needs a "Utility Cantrips, Improv, and You" section to explain that help actions in combat with a utility cantrip flavor are usually okay. really, spelling out "if a distraction would be useful, such as in combat, treat as the help action" should be redundant.
also, homebrew is fun but i don't expect to see cantrips giving advantage to ability checks. in the case of druidcraft survival boosting, it would mostly be a spell given to druids and rangers who don't need it. they should already have proficiency in survival and high WIS. which means the ones who would ultimately benefit would be optimizers taking a spread of feats to cover their weak spots.
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anyway, as much as i'm okay with multi-effect roleplay-only cantrips, what i wanna know is why aren't there more produce flame type spells? like, more cantrips with an aspect of utility and combat both? why are produce flame and fire bolt separate spells? what's so uncantripy about wreathing your hand in fire to aid an intimidation check or to check the map by candle light? what's the reason druidcraft shouldn't facilitate a Shillelagh? or thaumaturgy a magic stone? you might convince me word of radiance & sacred flame or mage hand & prestidigitation is too much combinatorial bang for the buck; however, for the rest they don't seem to cross the "cantrips shouldn't replicate a leveled spell" taboo or violate DMG guidelines for creating a new spell.
i don't feel like i'm not asking for light plus eldritch blast plus move earth sort of power creep "so good that a caster would want to use it all the time". so, why not more simple produce flame type spells?
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I like that idea of giving attack cantrips an additional out-of-combat utility feature, but I don't necessarily think that existing utility cantrips should necessarily also gain attack functions. There's already a LOT you can do with Druidcraft, so having it also be used to trigger Shillelagh, I feel, would be overkill. However, I think it would make sense to add to Shillelagh the ability to cause seeds to blossom or flowers to bloom... not the full suite of everything druidcraft gives you, but something so you can feel a bit more magical even outside of combat.
I know that I'm often trying to use cantrips in creative ways. Like trying to electrocute someone through a metal chain using Shocking Grasp... or even just sparking it up to provide light.
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It feels like acid-splash should just say "Hits a 2x2 grid" or something.
Logically, if a grid tile is 5ft squared and a medium sized creature occupies a single 5ft square, then a 5ft aoe is a single-target spell.
Having to explain to the DM/other players that you don't have to target a square, you can target 'the lines between squares' to let you cast a 5ft aoe over 20ft worth of grid tiles to hit four people at once makes me sound like I'm making shit up.
I've seen that some people use paper cutouts to denote the size/range of aoes and they just drop them on the gameboard to see who they hit, but that's never how my group did it.
I've never seen or used rules for things touching part of a square. Either the effect hits your tile or it doesn't.
Also, True Strike is Greenflame blade now.
I could see poison-spray becoming an aoe, but it should never go back to being a con-save.
Any spell that forces a con-save is effectively worthless. What's the point of hitting 5 dudes in an aoe cloud of poison if they're all just going to make their saves and take no damage anyway?
You wasted your whole turn, should have cast firebolt instead.
Worthless.
That's why the current non-playtest version of poison spray doesn't get used.
That's also why i'm so leery about the bastion options that provide poison materials as one of their primary benifits.
Although they also provide herbs for healing potions too, and those are always useful.
I tried to make a Yian-ti pureblood poisoner character once, and even without running into any enemies who were totally immune to poison, it was still bad. I was a sorceress with poison spells, poison racial abilities, the Poisoner feat and a Poisoner's kit.
I had poisoned daggers and darts up my sleeve.
I knew going in that a lot of things resisted poison, and if we ended up fighting the undead, i'd be screwed.
But that wasn't even the problem.
The problem was that only one creature ever failed to make their con-check to just take zero damage from my poison, and that was a bird.
Because basically every monster in the manual has con as their primary or secondary stat, and Basic Toxin is only a DC10 check to completely ignore. (also the poisoners kit doesn't actually explain how it works so me and my DM had to make some stuff up about me using it to produce toxins from the venom of my snake familiar)
I hope 1D&D fixes that, actually. Make poison-items do both poison-damage and the poisoned status effect, and then have the con-save only protect you from the latter. So a poisoned weapon still does +1d4 poison damage (unless you're immune to poison)
Poison Spray has a higher DC on the con-check (because of your modifier) but it barely matters. Everyone's con-scores are so high that they'll just ignore it.
Earlier someone suggested 1d12 if they fail the save and 1d6 if they succeed, and usually I like save-and-suck spells (where even if they make their saves, something bad happens to them so I didn't waste my whole turn) but in this case every enemy you fight is either going to make their saves, or be resistant/immune to damage.
So you've got a 1d6 damage on a cantrip, at best.
That's a problem, because Firebolt stands as the generic 'battle cantrip' that does 1d10 damage, no muss, no fuss, no special effects.
If your spell isn't at least as good as that, there's no reason for you to bother learning it.
playtest Poison Spray does 1d12, which technically makes it one of the more powerful cantrips, but the tradeoff for that is it's bad damage typing, which makes it useless against a lot of things. So it ends up about equal, ish.
If it keeps the bad damage-typing and functionally does 1d6 instead, what's it gaining in exchange?
An Aoe? It'd be a big one. If I can't hit at least three dudes with it, it's still not worth casting.
If it could hit multiple people and give them the Poisoned Condition without giving them a con-save, it'd be pretty useful. A good way to inflict Disadvantage on groups of enemies. If you let them con-save their way out of it though, there's no point.
Anything with a low enough Con-score to actually fail a con-save more than one in a hundred times can probably just be stomped to death under your boots.
that spell is a 5ft-radius-sphere. i don't know if that's a 10x10x10 bubble or if that's the splash zone, but the effect is 10ft from left to right.
if anything, i don't see how a single target would "dexterously" avoid a 10ft-across AOE without leaving their square (and maybe the next one too). so maybe it is splash zone?
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AoEs on a grid target an intersection, not a tile, so a 5' radius is 4 squares.
I use a grid when I play, mostly to make things easier to read at a glance, but I'm personally against normalizing grid-based descriptions for spells and abilities in the game. I think the ability to be more dynamic and precise with this kind of thing is one of the big appeals of D&D compared to something like a strategy videogame
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