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Author Topic: What is your opinion of Cantrips?  (Read 6659 times)

Wicked Woodpecker of West
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Re: What is your opinion of Cantrips?
« Reply #60 on: January 16, 2021, 11:02:09 AM »
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Some people genuinely do want magic to be dark and risky - but yeah, it would look very different from traditional D&D. For example, I've been playing in a weekly Call of Cthulhu campaign for most of a year, and just yesterday was the first time that a PC cast a spell. Overwhelmingly, spells seemed like things that we didn't want - like creating a zombie by torturing someone to death.

Indeed horror games are also fine example.
But even closer to D&D - original D&D was roguish/mercenary game, not heroic one necessarily - so Warhammer seems to emulate this fine.

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Agreed, but not everyone plays for heroic escapist fantasy. Notably, last session I also got my PC killed after over 30 sessions of play. He died as we tried to assault a cave with a bunch of cultists. I tried to throw some dynamite, and rolled a 00. The dynamite landed in the middle of our group, and I jumped on it and died to save the group. Everyone agreed that it was a great death, but... I mean, I blew myself up.

Well my Catholic Priest PC in CoC after mere 5 sessions (but it was short story - kamikaze'd himself into shoggoth with bag of granades) - my choice after he rolled critical failure on Sanity when seeing shoggoth - my GM said - ok it's bad, very bad - I let you choose how bad.

S'mon

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Re: What is your opinion of Cantrips?
« Reply #61 on: January 17, 2021, 05:45:43 PM »
I'd prefer that 5e Clerics didn't get attack cantrips, but otherwise no issue.

Jaeger

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Re: What is your opinion of Cantrips?
« Reply #62 on: January 18, 2021, 04:23:23 PM »
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TBH I'd make basic maneuvres avaliable for anyone with fighter getting bonus. But then my barbarian at 7 level is very good grappler without any feats, and turned into afflicted weretiger nowadays he can snatch invisible levitating spellcasters from the air by massive jumps. So it can be done.

This!

D&D would only need 4-6 viable options in combat other than "I attack with my most optimal attack" to spice things up nicely.



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I don't believe you.  I mean, I believe that you want to believe that using magic is dangerous, but in reality, you want it to only be a mild inconvenience.  If your character fails to cast magic missile and instead summons Orcus leading an army of undead-demons, that would be 'dark and risky' but it would also end the campaign.  A lot of the fun of D&D comes from thinking that bad things could happen, but it usually isn't actually fun when it does happen. ...

That is an extreme example. There is a middle ground here.

Spell failure consequences do not have to = Campaign ending incident. Or: Ha,ha you lose.

You can lose you spell slot/points. Cause yourself some harm, cause your friends harm, cause your enemies harm on top of both. Or summon something that causes problems, but is an escalation, not an extermination.

There are many ways to have consequences for failed spells/magic that are real but also do not end the world.
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zircher

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Re: What is your opinion of Cantrips?
« Reply #63 on: January 18, 2021, 06:27:15 PM »
Collateral damage as the result of spell failure works in many cases.  As stressed at the shooting range, look past your target as well as at it.
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Eirikrautha

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Re: What is your opinion of Cantrips?
« Reply #64 on: January 18, 2021, 07:09:22 PM »
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I don't believe you.  I mean, I believe that you want to believe that using magic is dangerous, but in reality, you want it to only be a mild inconvenience.  If your character fails to cast magic missile and instead summons Orcus leading an army of undead-demons, that would be 'dark and risky' but it would also end the campaign.  A lot of the fun of D&D comes from thinking that bad things could happen, but it usually isn't actually fun when it does happen. ...

That is an extreme example. There is a middle ground here.

Spell failure consequences do not have to = Campaign ending incident. Or: Ha,ha you lose.

You can lose you spell slot/points. Cause yourself some harm, cause your friends harm, cause your enemies harm on top of both. Or summon something that causes problems, but is an escalation, not an extermination.

There are many ways to have consequences for failed spells/magic that are real but also do not end the world.
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Not only that, but there are kinds of consequences that don't result in spell failure.  You can cast your magic missile just fine, but now, because of your roll on the effects table, you fail your next saving throw.  Or you catch the attention of a demonic force, that puts an obstacle in your way.  Not only does it not have to be world-ending, it doesn't even have to relate to the effects of that spell...

DocJones

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Re: What is your opinion of Cantrips?
« Reply #65 on: January 19, 2021, 05:40:18 PM »
When they debuted back in  the Unearthed Arcana, I liked them a lot.
Our group was disappointed that there was a Belch cantrip, but no Fart cantrip.
So one of our players noticing this omission spent time and money developing such a cantrip and open sourced it to the world.
There was never a dull moment after that.

Two Crows

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Re: What is your opinion of Cantrips?
« Reply #66 on: January 19, 2021, 06:45:49 PM »
When they debuted back in  the Unearthed Arcana, I liked them a lot.
Our group was disappointed that there was a Belch cantrip, but no Fart cantrip.
So one of our players noticing this omission spent time and money developing such a cantrip and open sourced it to the world.
There was never a dull moment after that.

That sounds about right.
If I stop replying, it either means I've lost interest in the topic or think further replies are pointless.  I don't need the last word, it's all yours.

Jaeger

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Re: What is your opinion of Cantrips?
« Reply #67 on: January 22, 2021, 01:38:17 PM »
For myself personally, I don't have a problem with high level characters being able to survive a direct blast of fire from a dragon's mouth. ...

And this is the type of thing that I find absolutely immersion breaking.

The hit point bloat in D&D throws me every time.

It's not that hard for D&D/d20 to adjucate these type of situations.

You just make shields worth something more than a + to AC.

PC's gat to make a save vs. arrow/breath weapons if you have a med shield 1/2 damage - if you have a large shield you can duck behind, minimum damage.

Or something similar.

Things for d20/D&D get a whole lot more manageable if you fix HP at a low level. Yes you have to scale other parts of the system back, but then you also don't run into the scaling issues that HP bloat brings.

For nostalgia reason you can't really do that with D&D.

But sticking blindly to the HP bloat paradigm is one of the reasons why so many d20 based games got a reputation for not properly emulating the genre/IP they were being made for.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2021, 09:55:58 PM by Jaeger »
"The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge."