How many Cantrips does it take?

[Xuldarinar]

A notion I was kicking around, perhaps for a house rule.. a feat.. or even the basis for an archetype or class. It goes as follows;


Instead of casting higher level spells in various slots, an individual gets the ability to cast multiple level-0 spells in higher level slots. My question is a matter of balance; How many cantrips/orisons/knacks would be equivalent to a given spell level?


To rephrase; Lets say I wanted to cast multiple cantrips using a 1st level spell slot. How many level 0 spells being cast simultaneously would you say would be roughly equivalent to the power of a 1st level spell? What about 2nd? 3rd? 4th? ect.

[Zancloufer]

Well it depends. According to item creation a level 0 spell is worth half as much as a level 1 spell. So to make a wand/scroll/staff/user activated item, level 0 spells have half the cost (or use half as many charges) as an equivalent item with a level 1 spell. So 2:1 ratio makes sense.

Though in AD&D there where cantrips introduced in Unearthed Arcana and you could prepare 4 of those in a single level 1 slot. Mind you in D&D 3.x the gap between level 0 and 1 spells is smaller than it was back then.

[KillingAScarab]

Casters always have the option (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Preparing-Wizard-Spells) to use a higher level spell slot than what a spell would require.

You want to allow a character to cast two spells in the same round? The quicken spell (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/quicken-spell-metamagic---final) metamagic feat already does this. Do you want to allow for more than two spells per round? If so, then you need to come up with another limited resource to use, as the swift action has already been used that round, or turn to rules which allow for additional swift actions.

I'm currently in a play-by-post game which is using a set of homebrew rules called Final Fantasy d20 (http://www.finalfantasyd20.com/ffd20/index.html). It is based on Pathfinder and (of course) the Final Fantasy series of games, and one of the classes is time mage (http://www.finalfantasyd20.com/ffd20/time-mage-1.html). One of the features of that class is called motes of time, which might interest you. Emphasis is mine.


Each day, the time mage has a pool of motes equal three plus his class level. Once a round, as a free action, a time mage can expend a mote to do any one of the following things:

Gain a bonus to one attack roll, skill check, ability check, or saving throw. The roll must represent a single action that occurs entirely within a single round. (A time mage could use a mote to add a bonus to an Acrobatics check to leap over a chasm, but not to a Craft check made to determine how much progress was made after a day of work.) The bonus gained is equal to +1d4. This increases to +2d4 at 8th level, and +3d4 at 16th level. The time mage can decide to add this bonus immediately after seeing the result of the original die roll.

Take a swift action that does not count against the time mage’s normal limit of one swift action per round.

Act in the surprise round when the time mage would not normally be able to do so.

[Divide by Zero]

Kinda disappointed that "to screw in a lightbulb" wasn't the other half of this question.

On-topic, I think you'd pretty quickly hit a ceiling where casting every cantrip in the book at once wouldn't be enough to contribute comparable to other classes. Definitely by the time you get to 4th level spells, maybe even sooner than that.

[Bakkan]

Kinda disappointed that "to screw in a lightbulb" wasn't the other half of this question.

On-topic, I think you'd pretty quickly hit a ceiling where casting every cantrip in the book at once wouldn't be enough to contribute comparable to other classes. Definitely by the time you get to 4th level spells, maybe even sooner than that.

This is true if you can't cast multiple copies of the same cantrip.

If you can cast multiple copies of the same cantrip, then an easy way of comparing n cantrips to a level m spell is to look at damage. For instance, n cantrips can give you

n sonic damage with no save and no attack roll (sonic snap)
up to nd3 acid damage (average 2n) with n ranged attack rolls (acid splash) and no SR. Because you're making several attack rolls, this gives more reliable damage than a single big spell would give, but without as much chance of a lot of damage.
up to nd3 cold damage (average 2n) with n ranged attack rolls (ray of frost).
up to nd3 electricity damage (average 2n) with n ranged attack rolls (electric jolt).
up to nd6 damage (average 3.5n) to an undead creature with n ranged attack rolls (disrupt undead).
n crossbow bolts flying at your target (launch bolt)


Two issues come to mind.

First, cantrips don't scale with caster level, while other spells do. Thus, while 5 sonic snaps are definitely better than magic missile at caster level 1, they are completely outclassed by caster level 9. Thus, saying that 5 sonic snaps are equivalent to a level 1 spell seems wrong in both cases.

Second, without an additional ruling, something like n acid splashes can, if arranged to have a casting time of 1 full-round action, allow on-hit effects such as Sneak Attack to apply n times.

I think that this is a cool idea, but I would make some rulings regarding the use of this option.

A) The number of cantrips that you can cast out of (or prepare in) a single spell slot is twice your caster level or three times the level of the spell slot, whichever is lower. (The precise numbers would need to be tweaked)

B) All cantrips that have targets must have the same target (this eliminates launch bolt abuse, among other things)

C) Precision damage can only apply once.

[Divide by Zero]

If you can cast multiple copies of the same cantrip, then an easy way of comparing n cantrips to a level m spell is to look at damage.

I don't play Pathfinder, so maybe it's different there, but in 3.5 direct damage is generally regarded as one of the caster's weaker options, especially when there's no secondary effect. And damaging spells are really the only thing you can "stack" like that in combat. It wouldn't be the worst option, but I'd probably rather play almost anything else.

[Bakkan]

I don't play Pathfinder, so maybe it's different there, but in 3.5 direct damage is generally regarded as one of the caster's weaker options, especially when there's no secondary effect. And damaging spells are really the only thing you can "stack" like that in combat. It wouldn't be the worst option, but I'd probably rather play almost anything else.

In fact, that's why I focused on damage, as most other options don't care whether you cast it once or a hundred times. The exceptions would be spells like daze, with which you could nearly guarantee that your target would fail its save by throwing n copies of the spell at it.

EDIT: I should note that I have not played much Pathfinder, and so I am approaching this based on my experiences with 3.5.

[Firest Kathon]

The Words of Power system allows (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/variant-magic-rules/words-of-power#TOC-Arranging-Words-of-Power) combining multiple spell effects into a higher-level spell. Two cantrips equal a 2nd-level spell in that system.