D&D 5E Cantrips, a Curious Thing

[greg kaye]

...
Most spellcasting classes can use Cantrips. Small bits of magic that can be used over and over again; mechanically, there's no real problem with this- it gives spellcasters something to do each turn, and lets them conserve spell slots.
...

While a ranger's quiver can contain just 20 arrows.

 

[Krachek]

Interesting, so for all the Wizard knows, they have an "MP pool" they draw spells from. They have a set amount of magical power to work with, they know how to ration it or put extra power behind a spell, and that's that.

Something like that. The whole magic system of DnD was built for convenience.
Gygax at first like the vanican system because it look like arrow in a quiver.
Finding spells in dungeon was a great reward and a good reason to go for adventuring,
all those rules were made for a gameplay, not for a fantasy.
Now when I try to pretend a more wide fantasy system, I’m stuck with the old dungeon crawl requirement.

So I prefer detach it.
As players I know the rules, the spells, the number of slot I have,
then I interpret why my character use that spell, or not, or acquire that new power, and so on.

To some extend, the less my character know about the game rules and mechanics the better it is.

 

[Seramus]

It's literally determined by the Goddess of Magic. She and her predecessors have woven several different systems of magic, similar but increasingly restrictive. She literally tinkers with it and adjusts it the same way a real world game developer adjusts and balances their game, except the "patches" tend to happen with big events like Karsus, the Weave getting shattered, the Spellplague, etc.

So sacred cows are literally an IC thing! Spellcasters lost their quadratic capabilities, but their cantrips got beefier. Once upon a time they didn't even HAVE cantrips and had to fling darts and other such things. Eventually they were allowed to siphon power from prepared spells to fling cantrips (a "reserve" if you will), and then we got the cantrips of today.

When new editions come out, settings like the Forgotten Realms generally don't recon things to have always been that way, the world literally changes!

 

[James Gasik]

While a ranger's quiver can contain just 20 arrows.

While I agree that making Rangers track ammunition is a bit weird in a world with "free" magic (really, they should just have a cantrip that conjures arrows or something if you really feel the need for verisimilitude), a Ranger can do a lot more damage than a Firebolt, even if the Firebolt gets better over time, and bows have insane range, so it's not like it's strictly apples to apples.

The fact that cantrips deal magical, non-physical damage is the real kicker to me; why you can't load up on, say, fire arrows to deal with enemies strikes me as very odd.

But this is somewhat orthogonal to the discussion; I don't want to get bogged down in the "are cantrips good/bad?" debate; everyone has their position on it, and at this point, I highly doubt anyone will change their mind. I was more struck by how cantrips are so unlike other spells. You acquire them at set intervals, they upgrade at set intervals, they don't cost resources to use, and you don't even prepare them or record them in your spellbook (I believe this changed for Wizards in Tasha's).

They're their own thing, with their own mechanics. They aren't even bound by spellcasting restrictions; oh you casted a bonus action spell this turn? Cantrips are still usable when no leveled spell is!

 

[James Gasik]

Yes, the evolution of cantrips is very curious as well. In the beginning, they were "minor spells"; according to the 1e Unearthed Arcana, you can cast two cantrips in one round and you could prepare (I think, I always have trouble parsing the text, especially since it opens talking about 0-level magic-users, which I don't even think is a thing) four cantrips with one first level spell slot.

2e then made all Cantrips a function of a first level spell (Cantrip), and other than the proviso that they had no combat abilities, that spell allowed you to create minor magical effects at will for it's duration; at one hour per level, that eventually became most of a day!

3e pushed back a little, putting a limit on cantrip use, but making them slightly more powerful, and ironically it was Paizo that made cantrips at will in PF1e.

5e rolled with this, but also making them more equivalent to 4e's At-Will Powers, which is where we are now. So from the very beginning, cantrips were "demi-spells", far less potent than actual spells, but you could use a lot more of them. But now their power has increased to the point that, in some cases, they can feel as potent or even more so than a 1st level spell (though by the time this occurs, you weren't attacking with 1st level spell slots anyways, so balance is preserved?, but there is a bit of narrative dissonance to the concept).

 

[Krachek]

When new editions come out, settings like the Forgotten Realms generally don't recon things to have always been that way, the world literally changes!

For edition change we Can use the multiverse concept, or the Tik event, the earth sake, the sun rise with a strange rune inscribe in it. It’s a 5 will decrypt the sage. we are now in the 5th age!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I want to preface this by saying this is not a call to change how cantrips and spells work; I presume that the current system exists for reasons related to mechanical balance. So please, no comments like "lol wut, do you want to make casters stronker?", or "I hate at-will cantrips!" (we're assuming that's just how things are for the purposes of this discussion). That's not the point, really. What I'm curious about is the narrative; D&D's spellcasting systems all evolved from an interpretation of what's going on in Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels (or, as I'm more familiar with, Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber)- the Wizard takes time to "pre-cast" a spell in advance, to be released at a later time by leaving a few threads of magic unwoven (or something to that effect).

You can see this in play with Rituals, which can be used with no "cost" in spell slots, but take a lot of time to use. But Cantrips exist in this funny space, where they can do a lot for a very minimal cost, even if they eventually outperform low-level spells!

Most spellcasting classes can use Cantrips. Small bits of magic that can be used over and over again; mechanically, there's no real problem with this- it gives spellcasters something to do each turn, and lets them conserve spell slots.

However, something strange is definitely going on, because some of the Cantrips of higher level spellcasters get stronger over time, while the power of a spell slot doesn't change. Now, I'm just going to come out and say I don't think Cantrips are really infinite in universe; that's simply a game mechanic not wanting to actually place a limit on them. I'm just assuming that Cantrips can be used "an arbitrarily large amount of times" in universe.

But even that's a little strange. Consider: Fire Bolt is a ranged spell attack that deals 1d10 fire damage at level 1. At level 5 it becomes 2d10, at level 11 3d10, and level 17, 4d10.

Ice Knife is a 1st level ranged spell attack that deals 1d10 piercing damage, then explodes, causing the target and everyone within 5' to make a Dex save or take 2d6 cold. It never gets better than this, not even at levels 5, 11, and 17; instead, you'd have to use a higher level spell slot...but all that does is increase the secondary damage by 1d6. The initial d10 piercing never gets better.

What's going on, do you suppose, in-universe, that allows someone to wield a cantrip more efficiently and still maintain an arbitrary amount of uses per diem, but does not allow you to wield a spell more efficiently without using more and more of your allotment of magic energy? Even a Wizard who has attained Spell Mastery and could use Ice Knife at will like a cantrip, still only ever gains the minimum effect!

The only class that automatically scales spells is the Warlock, but even they are limited to X casts per day, as they must rest an hour to recover their slots.

So what is going on with Cantrips that causes them to function so differently from other spells? Why isn't there a dedicated Cantrip caster, who gets a large number of Cantrips and focuses on empowering them, not really caring about "spell slots" (the Warlock can be built in this fashion, but even they can mess around with leveled spells, not to mention Rituals)? You'd think there'd be some kind of Fighter or Rogue archetype called the "Cantrip Master" or something.

It is the way it is because things used to be as you desire: lower-level spell slots scaled up with caster level.

The result was 3e/3.5e/PF1e's runaway overpowered spellcasters. Ironically, back then, cantrips didn't scale at all and were limited in quantity (until PF1e anyway.) They quickly became worthless for anything but color or RP because first-level spells were plentiful, doubly so with bonus spell slots from high ability score. Given how horribly, blatantly unbalanced this was, it was one of the few 3e-isms that 5e staunchly refused to adopt, and the game is better for it. But in the absence of scaling by spell level, something has to scale, otherwise casters would (gasp! shock! horror!) actually suck at something for a change, so they added scaling to cantrips instead. It's one of the few relatively openly gamist elements in 5e as a result.

I don't think they ever meant or intended there to be an explanation for this. It's just what it is, like how hit points just nebulously are, or how having two different sources of benefit has no effect on how well you will do (Advantage doesn't stack at all.) It's just a thing.

If you want an explanation, however, the one that would make sense to me is that cantrips depend more on the power of the user than the power of the spell. Truly slotted spells have a fixed value because they are precisely defined. Cantrips, being non-slot spells, depend far more on the mojo of the person casting them. A high-level, highly experienced Wizard has a bigger "pool" of magical energy to draw on, and the size of the pool matters for cantrips, whereas it doesn't for slotted spells.

This would, in theory, mean that cantrips should get weaker once you've spent your higher-level spells, but maybe it's just a matter of being capable of casting those high-level spells that makes the difference. And the levels you get better cantrips are pretty reasonable in this context: at 11th level, you get 6th level spells, which are much less available than anything lower (Wizard, Sorcerer, and Druid can all recover lower level spells, but not 6+.) At 17th, you get access to 9th level spells, the top end of magic ability. 5th is the only one that doesn't have a clear thematic justification, but it is generally seen as being the first "big boy spells" level, with things like fireball, fly, haste, and revivify all showing up with spells that full casters get at level 5 (meaning, 3rd level spells.) In that sense, one might say that spells come in tiers, 0th-2nd "lesser," 3rd-5th "greater," 6th-8th "grand," and 9th "greatest, with cantrips reflecting this growth in power.

Of course, that doesn't do crap to explain cantrips for half- or partial-casters like Eldritch Knights or Artificers. But I doubt anyone can do much better.

 

[pemerton]

If only there was an edition of D&D that had solved this problem . . .

 

[greg kaye]

While I agree that making Rangers track ammunition is a bit weird in a world with "free" magic (really, they should just have a cantrip that conjures arrows or something if you really feel the need for verisimilitude), a Ranger can do a lot more damage than a Firebolt, even if the Firebolt gets better over time, and bows have insane range, so it's not like it's strictly apples to apples.
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Maybe I should have said fighter's quiver. "Free" magic is a new thing and one not widely supported across sources of lore. When I first played D&D, a 1st level magic-user would have one magic missile spell or one burning hands and that was it. Now a wizard can potentially fire off 9,600 rounds worth of firebolts between long rests without any need to pick up arrows. It's swung the other way.
I don't see why an archer should require a cantrip and I'm certainly not saying that an archer shouldn't be limited to the arrows that s/he is limited to. What I am saying is that "free" magic is strange. Casters are overpowered in d&d and giving them freebies has not helped.

 

[Aldarc]

If only there was an edition of D&D that had solved this problem . . .

Waiting for someone to claim that the edition in question is OD&D.