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Cantrips, a Curious Thing
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<blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 9053614" data-attributes="member: 20564"><p>Responding to the first post, before my thinking gets swayed or focused in particular directions by other posters. I have an alternate take on just about everything said. I don't know if it's true.</p><p></p><p>I believe Cantrips exist for gamist and narrative reasons, I don't know how that lines up with how you use the word "mechanical" here.</p><p></p><p>Narratively is the more important of the two. In early D&D, low level magic users got compared to potion bottles. You cast your single spell of the day and then you were an extremely cut-rate fighter for the rest of the day, throwing darts or using your crossbow. It did not <em>feel</em> magical.</p><p></p><p>So cantrips were a gamist way to replace "at-will attack in a non-magical feeling weapons" with "at-will attack with a magical feeling spell". They purposefully do lag behind the at-wills that a martial can do, but are also supposed to stay relevant so don't lag too far behind.</p><p></p><p>(Oh, and I'm focusing on the combat cantrips as you are, but the non-combat cantrips I think are even more important in 'minor bits of magic that make a caster feel magical'. But they seem out of scope for this conversation, and they don't scale with level.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>There's one incorrect word here that changes the entire meaning. "D&D's spellcasting systems <strong>all</strong> evolved...". That word renders the rest false. If you replace it with "prepared spells prior to spell slots" you're on the money. But later additions to spellcasting, including both the cantrip and having spells known and spell slots separated are not Vancian. 5e does not have a single true Vancian caster in the idea of pre-casting, since you can use any slot to cast any of your spells. All of that has been replaced.</p><p></p><p>So we can, <em>and must</em>, discard that Vancian narrative as it is not supported in 5e.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm not sure I should get into this as it is a tangent to the main point, but from a class balance perspective these are on completely different metrics. If low level spells continued to beat high level martial at-wills, then there would never be class balance since casters also would have high level spells, and there's only so many Actions of casting per adventuring day. So leveled spells need to not scale. On the other hand, cantrips aren't being judged as spells of a particular level, they are being judged as "inferior martial at-wills", and as mentioned above they need to stay relevant and worth spending an action on, so as at-wills increase they need to keep pace, though a few steps behind. It's why they scale with character level and not with caster level, so that some multiclassing choices won't render them irrelevant.</p><p></p><p>Once you look at the appropriate metrics for this to work as a game it makes sense.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Here you're looking for an in-world explanation of a gamist design choice. I don't think we've ever been given an official one. My own personal take is a bit like upcasting (another non-Vancian concept), where with experience you can put more "oomph" into something. For leveled spells they have a measured effort / resource cost, so that needs to be boosted up and is a choice to use. But cantrips the amount of magical put in is so light - the reason you can cast them without using resources - that putting in more magical energy is still a trivial amount, so you are effectively always upcasting them when you can. But again, that's just personal headcanon to explain something we haven't been given an in-world explanation for. It just as easily could be the "10,000 hours to master", where cantrips are the only spells you do enough to master like that, or some other explanation. That one also fits well into Wizards getting signature spells with Spell Mastery that no longer use resources to cast.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Blue, post: 9053614, member: 20564"] Responding to the first post, before my thinking gets swayed or focused in particular directions by other posters. I have an alternate take on just about everything said. I don't know if it's true. I believe Cantrips exist for gamist and narrative reasons, I don't know how that lines up with how you use the word "mechanical" here. Narratively is the more important of the two. In early D&D, low level magic users got compared to potion bottles. You cast your single spell of the day and then you were an extremely cut-rate fighter for the rest of the day, throwing darts or using your crossbow. It did not [I]feel[/I] magical. So cantrips were a gamist way to replace "at-will attack in a non-magical feeling weapons" with "at-will attack with a magical feeling spell". They purposefully do lag behind the at-wills that a martial can do, but are also supposed to stay relevant so don't lag too far behind. (Oh, and I'm focusing on the combat cantrips as you are, but the non-combat cantrips I think are even more important in 'minor bits of magic that make a caster feel magical'. But they seem out of scope for this conversation, and they don't scale with level.) There's one incorrect word here that changes the entire meaning. "D&D's spellcasting systems [B]all[/B] evolved...". That word renders the rest false. If you replace it with "prepared spells prior to spell slots" you're on the money. But later additions to spellcasting, including both the cantrip and having spells known and spell slots separated are not Vancian. 5e does not have a single true Vancian caster in the idea of pre-casting, since you can use any slot to cast any of your spells. All of that has been replaced. So we can, [I]and must[/I], discard that Vancian narrative as it is not supported in 5e. I'm not sure I should get into this as it is a tangent to the main point, but from a class balance perspective these are on completely different metrics. If low level spells continued to beat high level martial at-wills, then there would never be class balance since casters also would have high level spells, and there's only so many Actions of casting per adventuring day. So leveled spells need to not scale. On the other hand, cantrips aren't being judged as spells of a particular level, they are being judged as "inferior martial at-wills", and as mentioned above they need to stay relevant and worth spending an action on, so as at-wills increase they need to keep pace, though a few steps behind. It's why they scale with character level and not with caster level, so that some multiclassing choices won't render them irrelevant. Once you look at the appropriate metrics for this to work as a game it makes sense. Here you're looking for an in-world explanation of a gamist design choice. I don't think we've ever been given an official one. My own personal take is a bit like upcasting (another non-Vancian concept), where with experience you can put more "oomph" into something. For leveled spells they have a measured effort / resource cost, so that needs to be boosted up and is a choice to use. But cantrips the amount of magical put in is so light - the reason you can cast them without using resources - that putting in more magical energy is still a trivial amount, so you are effectively always upcasting them when you can. But again, that's just personal headcanon to explain something we haven't been given an in-world explanation for. It just as easily could be the "10,000 hours to master", where cantrips are the only spells you do enough to master like that, or some other explanation. That one also fits well into Wizards getting signature spells with Spell Mastery that no longer use resources to cast. [/QUOTE]
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