What would you give for a cantrip or two?

[Milodiah]

When it comes to sorcerers, I've always been a little skeptical that a hereditary thing like that would really be "all-or-nothing"...it seems like either your fairy godmother comes down, taps you on the head and says "Congrats, you're the Chosen One, now go compete with those wizards" or "Whoops, you lost the lottery, here's five points of Profession (farmer) and a hoe, have fun with Commoner class levels!"

I was considering allowing my players to have some magic in the family tree a long way back, bit since it's been so diluted they end up with just a cantrip or two, maybe a singular 1st-level spell they can cast once a day. My only question is how to balance this...obviously they're not taking a level in sorcerer, and I don't use the White Wolf style merits/flaws setup in my games, so what would be a reasonable thing to ask of them? A set number of skill points or something?

[strangebloke]

A cantrip x/times per day is really only useful for qualifying for PRCs and such. I mean, cleaning your gear with prestidigitation is cool and all but it isn't exactly going to break the game.

If you take one skill point at first level (x4 because first level) that's probably fair, since it will hamper them in getting into other PRCs along the way, and offset the main benefit of the cantrip.

Note that Magical Training (http://dndtools.eu/feats/players-guide-to-faerun--22/magical-training--1834/) is a thing. It gives you three cantrips, although the fluff isn't exactly what you're going for.

On a fluff-related note, I always made it that bards, hexblades, and other such classes were sorcerers with weak bloodlines who narrowed their focus to get the best results that they could.

[Gildedragon]

Dragonmarks are decent to fluff as sorcerous bloodline manifestations

[nedz]

There are some general feats in Complete Arcane which grant 1 x 1st level spell and 2 x Cantrips a day as SLAs.


Communicator
Insightful
Necropolis Born
Night Haunt
Soul of the North
Spell Hand


Now these are very specific and I've always thought that they could be generalised.

[jiriku]

A cantrip once per encounter might be balanced as a skill trick (cost: 2 skill points). A 1st level spell once per day would be worth a feat IF it was a spell that scaled well with level advancement, like feather fall, longstrider, true strike or identify. It wouldn't be a GREAT feat, but it would be acceptable.

If you intend this to function as a bloodline choice, a modified racial trait could be useful. For example, perhaps dwarves could trade their skill bonus with stonework for identify once per day, or elves could trade their free Search check for secret doors to cast detect secret doors 1/day.