At will cantrips: To House rule or not to house rule?

[Randomguy]

I'm going to start DMing a group of new players, running The Sunless Citadel (in 3.5), an adventure module that starts at level 1. I'm debating whether or not to house rule it so that casters can cast lvl 0 spells at will, like in pathfinder. My reasoning is that it will help the casters feel more caster-y even when they run out of spells, and at will Detect Magic will help them not miss too much of the treasure, and at will Cure Minor Wounds will make everyone a bit less squishy (which is a problem at low levels).

What are your thoughts on this? Should I do it?

[Blackhawk748]

It works fine, as this is what my group does now, we just rule that Cure Minor can only heal to half total HP. Other than that its not a problem.

[ryu]

I'm going to start DMing a group of new players, running The Sunless Citadel (in 3.5), an adventure module that starts at level 1. I'm debating whether or not to house rule it so that casters can cast lvl 0 spells at will, like in pathfinder. My reasoning is that it will help the casters feel more caster-y even when they run out of spells, and at will Detect Magic will help them not miss too much of the treasure, and at will Cure Minor Wounds will make everyone a bit less squishy (which is a problem at low levels).

What are your thoughts on this? Should I do it?

All of those things are true especially for new players. Some things to keep in mind though are that your players will almost certainly start every fight at full health. They will also probably spam the hell out of detect magic as an extra way of searching rooms if they're anything like me. There's also the possibility of creative uses of absurdly large numbers of cantrips doing things you didn't expect. Are you prepared to accept all of these things?

[Crazysaneman]

Works fine for us too, we just remove CMW and IMW all together and replace them with stabilize and bleed from PFSRD.

[137beth]

It works for my group. We kept CMW as-is, which reduces the 15 minute workday during the first few levels. After the early levels, CMW has negligible effect (spending CLW wands to heal to max hit-points after every encounter without CMW consumes less than 1% of WBL--all that CMW avoids is wasting real life time tracking a meaningless resource).
You might want to consider switching Create Water to the pathfinder version, though.

[Curmudgeon]

Casters don't run out of spells beyond low levels of play. I broke a game once playing a Cleric with this rule, spending days to flood a dungeon with Create Water. I just kept casting, round after round, and the martial characters in the party would deal with the half-drowned monsters who came struggling to the surface as each new section flooded.

I'd check over all the cantrips and put limits on some of them. I'd also institute a cutoff: free cantrips go away at character level 5.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Aside from everyone slowly healing up to full outside of combat? You're fine. Pathfinder is exactly the same game and it runs infinite cantrips with no issue. You might have the odd worldbuilding quirk-- water scarcity isn't nearly as much of a thing thanks to create water, food isn't going to spoil easily due to purify food and drink, and infinite detect magic/poison might make certain assassination techniques difficult, but higher level spells have much bigger impacts if you start thinking about things too hard. As long as you have the GMing chops to stop players from flooding out dungeons (and it's not at all hard, given how freaking slow that is-- you'll probably be dead of wandering monsters long before you start to fill up rooms), you shouldn't see any issues. And having infinite cantrips just makes casters feel so much more... magic-y, since they can throw around minor flavor-type spells whenever they want.


I'd also institute a cutoff: free cantrips go away at character level 5.
What? How on earth does it make sense to lose magical ability as you level up? :smallconfused:

[Telok]

Aside from everyone slowly healing up to full outside of combat? You're fine.

I've also seen Acid Splash used as a door opener and trap tester. Detect Magic replace all forms of searching and investigation. Touch of Fatigue, Daze, Lullaby, and Disrup Undead spammed all fight. Deathwatch and Naturewatch become at-will 'detect life' spells. And No Light spam shuts down everyone without exactly the right magic or darkvision (combined with Rings of the Darkhidden it's a "no light spells = lose" spell when spammed).

Then of course you get the Easy Metamagic, Arcane Thesis, Fell Drain Sonic Snap.

It can slow things down and turns casting into the easy answer to lots and lots of stuff. Y'know, even more than it is already.

[Curmudgeon]

What? How on earth does it make sense to lose magical ability as you level up? :smallconfused:
You're going to be gaining higher-level spells with each level, so it's a tradeoff. At some point, you need to put away childish things and concentrate on adult studies.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You're going to be gaining higher-level spells with each level, so it's a tradeoff. At some point, you need to put away childish things and concentrate on adult studies.
That might explain why a high-level wizard never feels like spamming low-level spells, but it's crap for explaining why one day you're like "hahaha, the universe surrenders the secret of fireball to me... wait, why can't I cast any more detect magic spells?" If anything, they should become even easier as you level up. You shouldn't suddenly acquire a new limit on an existing ability.

[Curmudgeon]

That might explain why a high-level wizard never feels like spamming low-level spells, but it's crap for explaining why one day you're like "hahaha, the universe surrenders the secret of fireball to me... wait, why can't I cast any more detect magic spells?"
Who said you couldn't cast Detect Magic any more? You just can't cast it more than 4x per day; after that, you're saving your mojo for Fireball.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Who said you couldn't cast Detect Magic any more? You just can't cast it more than 4x per day; after that, you're saving your mojo for Fireball.
You know what I mean. "Saving up power for more powerful spells" doesn't scan, since you never lose casting potential at any other point. But at whatever arbitrary cut-off point you designate, you get quantitatively worse at casting spells-- you go from "so minor I can do it all day" to "enough of an effort that I can only do it a few times a day." It's like forgetting multiplication when you learn calculus. It also doesn't make much sense from a game balance perspective to remove an ability just when it's starting to get overshadowed by more powerful stuff.

[Yahzi]

spending days to flood a dungeon with Create Water.
Create water makes 2 gallons every 6 seconds. There are 7.68 gallons in a cubic foot. So let's compromise and say your cleric can fill 1 cubic foot per round, or 10 per minute, or 600 per hour (assuming they can stand to repeat the same spell 600 times without blinking). A 10 x 10 x 10 room (the smallest room in a dungeon) has 1,000 cubic feet. A 50 x 20 x 10 room has 10,000 cf, which will take a 5th lvl cleric 16 hours or so to fill (i.e all day). If you can flood a dungeon before you go insane from the constant repetition it must be a pretty small dungeon.

In any case presumably the dungeon has drainage, or the rain - which produces far more than 1/3 of a gallon per second over any appreciable area - would have already flooded it. Even a Decanter of Endless Water only makes 30 gallons a round (the same as a 15th level cleric with Create Water). People don't understand just how much water real life tasks (like industry and agriculture and flooding) require: there's a reason it's measured in acre-feet instead of gallons.

All Create Water will do is keep you and your friends from dying of dehydration. Which is pretty nice, actually, especially if you insist on marching through trackless deserts carrying armor and loot instead of water.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I've also seen Acid Splash used as a door opener and trap tester. Detect Magic replace all forms of searching and investigation. Touch of Fatigue, Daze, Lullaby, and Disrup Undead spammed all fight. Deathwatch and Naturewatch become at-will 'detect life' spells. And No Light spam shuts down everyone without exactly the right magic or darkvision (combined with Rings of the Darkhidden it's a "no light spells = lose" spell when spammed).

Then of course you get the Easy Metamagic, Arcane Thesis, Fell Drain Sonic Snap.

It can slow things down and turns casting into the easy answer to lots and lots of stuff. Y'know, even more than it is already.

If your casters spend their in-fight actions spamming cantrips they're probably less effective than they would otherwise be. There's no functional difference between a wizard shooting a crossbow and casting Ray of Frost or Acid Splash except that the crossbow actually has the chance to kill something with a hit at low levels. On the upside your players actually get to feel wizardy.

If your casters want to waste a feat to apply Arcane Thesis to a cantrip, let them. Using Fell Drain Sonic Snap at low levels is a good way to die from the resulting Wights. Using it at higher levels is, again, a rather inefficient use of your in-combat actions.

Detect Magic is easily blocked with a simple first level spell (Magic Aura), so searching skills still have their place. Especially since most low-level traps are mechanical anyway and Detect spells are pretty easily blocked. Anyone living in a world with common magic who wants something hidden is going to take precautions against those spells.
Not to mention that plenty of classes get Detect X abilities at will without breaking anything, so i don't really see a problem.

[ace rooster]

Launch item and dancing lights deserve mention I think, because they allow a caster to kite much better. One character preparing oil flasks and the wizard launching them is a very cheap way of getting medium range touch attacks, good from level 1. Dancing lights is a hugely useful spell in the dark, because it allows you to illuminate targets without revealing your own location. The standard defence to it is just to withdraw and wait for the duration to expire, which doesn't work if they can just keep casting it. Mage hand is harder to use well, but keeping a bullseye lantern 20 feet away from you is probably sensible if you don't want to just get hit by random missile fire.

[ericgrau]

If you do it like Pathfinder it will work as well as it does in Pathfinder. At will detect magic is a bit powerful for detecting foes who use magic or wear magic items or for noticing magical encounters. But it's still ok. If you change things from the way PF does it such as allowing at will cure minor wounds it may have unintended consequences. It's slightly powerful for a low level party adventures. It is world changing outside of adventures. You can overcome this by limiting the healing per day to 10-20 hp per caster level or some such so that it's still just as useful to the party but won't drastically change the way the world works outside of the party.

[Curmudgeon]

Create water makes 2 gallons every 6 seconds.
No, it makes 2 gallons per caster level every 6 seconds. I think my Cleric was about level 10, with the Craft domain (+1 CL). But your calculations don't work mostly because your assumed dungeon dimensions are way off. The reason I decided to flood the tunnels instead of going inside was because we were going after smart Kobolds (AKA Tucker's Kobolds). A tall ceiling in that dungeon was 4' high. The corridors were standard width for Kobolds: 2.5'. Per Dungeon Master's Guide II, Narrow and Low conditions together reduce speed to ¼ normal, with -4 to attack and -4 to AC. Kobolds with Slight Build (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060420a) move at full speed and have no penalties in those conditions.

You also assumed my Cleric only spent 16 hours per day casting Create Water. He spent 24 hours a day, minus maybe a few minutes. Since he was almost entirely using unlimited orisons he didn't need to prepare new spells. One casting of Lesser Restoration after the second day removed fatigue.

[Brova]

Honestly, even the at-will cure minor wounds thing is basically fine. That removes the need to rest to restore HP, but you clearly have at least one spellcaster (the dude dropping those cure minor wounds) who is going to run out of spell slots at some point. Getting unlimited healing at 1st level is not a particularly challenging task to begin with, seeing as the Crusader's martial spirit stance already does it.

[Mehangel]

No, it makes 2 gallons per caster level every 6 seconds. I think my Cleric was about level 10, with the Craft domain (+1 CL). But your calculations don't work mostly because your assumed dungeon dimensions are way off. The reason I decided to flood the tunnels instead of going inside was because we were going after smart Kobolds (AKA Tucker's Kobolds). A tall ceiling in that dungeon was 4' high. The corridors were standard width for Kobolds: 2.5'. Per Dungeon Master's Guide II, Narrow and Low conditions together reduce speed to ¼ normal, with -4 to attack and -4 to AC. Kobolds with Slight Build (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060420a) move at full speed and have no penalties in those conditions.

You also assumed my Cleric only spent 16 hours per day casting Create Water. He spent 24 hours a day, minus maybe a few minutes. Since he was almost entirely using unlimited orisons he didn't need to prepare new spells. One casting of Lesser Restoration after the second day removed fatigue.

I still think it would've been hilarious if there was a run-off tunnel that washed the water out into the river, making it so that your continuous casting of create water would have no effect..

[RedMage125]

I play 3.5e with very few houserules.

They are:
1- Hide and Move Silently are one skill, Stealth (Dex). Nothing is more obnoxious than a stealthy character having 2 chances to fail at doing what he wants to do, and enemies having 2 chances to succeed at detecting him. Any class with Hide OR Move Silently as a class skill gets Stealth as a class skill.
2- On that note, Spot and Listen are one skill, Perception (Wis). Namely because I don't want anyone to have 2 chances to detect stealthing characters. Search remains a separate, INT-based skill, as it represents actively looking, while Perception is your chance to notice something.
3- Healing from Negative Hit Points is done 4e-style. If a PC is at -7 hp and the party healer rolls poorly on his cure dice and heals him for 5 hp, the injured PC is at 5 hp, not -2. It is not fun for the injured PC to STILL have to sit around out of the fight, not doing anything, and it's not fun for the healing PC to feel like his action made no difference in combat. I may have said they don't die until they reach -(CON score), but I don't remember.
-Next two only affect spellcasters
4- Read Magic is a stupid spell. It is gone from my game. Its effects are rolled into Detect Magic. Any character who is detecting magic and concentrating on magical writing benefits from the effects of Read Magic as laid out in the PHB.
5- The ability to detect magic should be easier for arcane casters. Warlocks can do it at-will, and I did not want to dilute that special ability. HOWEVER, I altered the way it works for Sorcs and Wizards. Sorcerers (for whom magic is innate in their blood) get Detect Magic as a known 0-level spell that doesn't count as one of their cantrips known, but must still spend a 0-level slot to cast it. Wizards (who get all cantrips in their spellbooks) are a class defined by the fact that they spent years in study learning the ways of magic. Wizards do not need to prepare Detect Magic when preparing their cantrips for the day, but may spontaneously cast it by expending a 0-level spell slot in the same manner as clerics spontaneously casting cure spells. This allows them to prepare cantrips that might actually be USEFUL (such as Light, Mage Hand, Prestidigitation), but still be able to detect magic when needed.

#5 is the relevant bit for you in regards to detecting magic. Every player I've run this past since instituting those rules liked them. And it made things bit easier.

[BWR]

Pathfinder has at-will cantrips and I had to house rule that away because of abuse (mostly by one player who spammed Detect Magic and Prestidigitation at every possible moment and who didn't take a hint).

[Curmudgeon]

I still think it would've been hilarious if there was a run-off tunnel that washed the water out into the river, making it so that your continuous casting of create water would have no effect..
Something like that may have been at work. I think I kept the casting up for 4 days, after which point the water just spread out around the dungeon entrance instead of draining down inside. No more (half-drowned) attackers emerged after day 3. So either we got all the Kobolds, or at some point adding more water from the top had no impact on the dungeon. An inverse plumber's trap (i.e., upside down "U" shape) could have created a blockage.

[ericgrau]

You do have to wonder how the kobolds dealt with annoyances like wet floors after it rains. There might be a drain somewhere that we don't think about, just like we don't think about where they poop. Side note: I've been wanting to make dungeons with miniature furnishings, and my list includes chamber pots for the sake of completeness.

[Curmudgeon]

You do have to wonder how the kobolds dealt with annoyances like wet floors after it rains.
The entrance to the underground was shielded by overhanging rock, so only blowing rain would normally get in.

[pwykersotz]

Now that I've moved mostly to 5e, I do this in all my remaining 3.5 games. Detect Magic is changed to a 1st level spell, so is Create Water, and Cure Minor Wounds is gone. I enjoy the feel of it as a player. As a DM I honestly don't care much, it's not exactly troublesome to track or account for either way.

[ericgrau]

The entrance to the underground was shielded by overhanging rock, so only blowing rain would normally get in.
And runoff from the rain? Were they on a hill too?

[Chronos]

Or rain washing in along the ground, or rain seeping through the ground. Seriously, any cave that can be flooded that way already would be. And even if not all caves have drainage, it's trivially easy for the DM to rule that any given cave does, if you're trying to do this, so it still isn't game-breaking.

Back on topic, the last 3.5 group I played in used unlimited cantrips, aside from CMW (we could still cast that, it was just limited to X/day, where X was our class's usual number of cantrip slots). The only balance issue that came up was that we spammed Detect Magic for everything, and that's not actually as bad as it sounds, with how limited the information you get from Detect Magic is. On the plus side, it was a lot of fun, and meant that magical characters always had something interesting (not necessarily powerful, but interesting) to do. My preferred use for it was my bard spamming Summon Instrument for various random objects: Need to break a fall? Drop a bunch of bagpipes down the cliff first. Need a big heavy object to weigh something down? Tuba. Need a 10' pole? Didgeridoo, etc.

[Curmudgeon]

And runoff from the rain? Were they on a hill too?
The dungeon opening was a rocky enclosure on the top of a knoll. I couldn't say about the drainage inside, because we never went further than peering into the narrow tunnel entrance.

[ericgrau]

^ Alright just checking. Flood away. I still kinda wonder what they do with their excrement and how they get food. But I suppose the answer for both is storage and occasional trips out of the base. If you were patient you could simply wait at the entrance and do nothing until they leave normally. That and a variety of reasons are why they should really have a back door, though that's not always possible.

[Curmudgeon]

If you were patient you could simply wait at the entrance and do nothing until they leave normally.
Both advantages and disadvantages. Before the flooding we could look down the entrance ramp for ~50' to where it shallowed out, so we could see any Kobolds coming out. After the flooding we couldn't see through the muddy water, but the Kobolds came out half-drowned so were easier to finish off.

[Hrugner]

Detect magic still requires concentration, limiting movement speed, and setting a trap to go off when in the area of a detect magic would be a common enough trick in a world where at will detect magic was a thing.

Dump minor healing.

Create water is super weird when made unlimited, but it allows for tactics that are more interesting rather than more powerful.

Mending and prestidigitation both make certain professions obsolete, but that's more of a world building issue. Solve it however you solve the fabricate spell problems.

Mage hand and open/close can replace a rogue in some situations, but none that couldn't be replaced by an axe.

In my opinion, infinite level 0 spells make the world a higher magic world, but doesn't really replace player power or unbalance things.