Resistance: The Forgotten Cantrip

[Jerrykhor]

Resistance, the Saving Throw version of Guidance. It has come to my attention that this cantrip seems to be nearly non-existent in 5e. People don't use it, dont talk about it, don't rate it.

Is it good? But nobody seems to be take it. Is it bad? Worst Cantrips discussions are full of True Strikes and Blade Wards.

Only Clerics and Druids can learn it. For Clerics, its understandable. If you can foresee making a save, you're most probably in combat, so Bless is better. But still, there are times when it could be useful, like face tanking environmental hazards, traps etc that you can't find.

Does it need fixing?

[LudicSavant]

It's mostly that in most of the situations where you would cast Resistance, Guidance is about as good or better. And Guidance is useful in a lot of situations where you wouldn't cast Resistance, too. So when you're deciding what to use your small number of Cantrip known slots on, weeeell...

[terodil]

It's mostly that in most of the situations where you would cast Resistance, Guidance is about as good or better. And Guidance is useful in a lot of situations where you wouldn't cast Resistance, too.
Agreed that Guidance has a larger potential to be useful. That said, please help me understand your first sentence, that Guidance is as good as Resistance in situations where you'd use Resistance: I don't get it. If you're poisoned, if a trap is about to be sprung, etc., that's all about saving throws, not ability checks, and Guidance doesn't help with those like Resistance would (honestly confused, newbie here).

[Galithar]

He's probably making an assumption along the lines of, 'resistance is useful if someone is about to trigger a trap' but 'guidance makes my Rogue buddy less likely to trigger the trap as he disarms the trap avoiding the saving throw completely'

Guidance is a good spell, but as both player and DM it just annoys me. It just adds another step. It only lasts one minute so it always goes like this:
Rogue: I try to disarm the trap.
*Picks up d20*
Cleric: Wait! I cast guidance on him.
*Adds d4 to hand with d20*

Many people agree with me and just as many or more disagree, so sorry about my unrelated rant! Lol

[LudicSavant]

Agreed that Guidance has a larger potential to be useful. That said, please help me understand your first sentence, that Guidance is as good as Resistance in situations where you'd use Resistance: I don't get it. If you're poisoned, if a trap is about to be sprung, etc., that's all about saving throws, not ability checks, and Guidance doesn't help with those like Resistance would (honestly confused, newbie here).

Most of the situations, not all of them. If you're about to make a saving throw against poison while not under time pressure, then yeah Resistance is going to do more than Guidance.

However, the main thing that people use Resistance/Guidance for is to have something resourceless to Concentrate on, just in case something comes up. In which case, we're considering the usefulness of your ally maybe getting a +1d4 to a saving throw if they're targeted by a trap or spell or whatever before you lose Concentration, vs the usefulness of your ally getting +1d4 on their Initiative, or their opening Athletics check to grapple or shove, or overcoming some unexpected dungeon obstacle, or what-have-you.

It's not a useless cantrip, but Guidance is one of the best cantrips and there's a fair bit of overlap between their use cases.

[terodil]

Alright, thank you both for the clarification, Galithar and LudicSavant.

[DarkKnightJin]

He's probably making an assumption along the lines of, 'resistance is useful if someone is about to trigger a trap' but 'guidance makes my Rogue buddy less likely to trigger the trap as he disarms the trap avoiding the saving throw completely'

Guidance is a good spell, but as both player and DM it just annoys me. It just adds another step. It only lasts one minute so it always goes like this:
Rogue: I try to disarm the trap.
*Picks up d20*
Cleric: Wait! I cast guidance on him.
*Adds d4 to hand with d20*

Many people agree with me and just as many or more disagree, so sorry about my unrelated rant! Lol

My Cleric has Guidance, but I will OOCly press my hand to my chest if I want to cast it on myself. Or call a bit of attention to myself from another player (usually the Warlock) to give them a small peptalk. Or just go "Don't eff this up." And they grab the d4, knowing that I've used Guidance.

I started my Cleric career by casting it for just about any check I'd make.
Since then, I've 'limited' myself to thinking if he'd have a reasonable chance of thinking to cast it.
So, when a fight breaks out he wasn't expecting.. no Guidance.
But when he needs to be sneaky, or knows that they're going to be entering combat soon.. Guidance will be cast.

[Greywander]

The problem with Resistance versus Guidance seems to be that ability checks are mostly active while saving throws are mostly reactive. You usually know you're going to make an ability check before you make one, because you're the one instigating it, and therefore it becomes trivial to simply slap on Guidance first. You usually don't know you're about to make a saving throw because someone (or something) else is instigating it, so unless you happened to slap on Resistance less than a minute prior you're out of luck.

As far as fixing, I'd extend the duration to 24 hours, as long as concentration is maintained. That way, you can slap it on when you wake up and not worry about it until it gets used or you need to concentrate on something else. The other option might be making it a reaction whenever you see someone making a saving throw, but then you would have the problem of never not using it.

[Man_Over_Game]

The problem with Resistance versus Guidance seems to be that ability checks are mostly active while saving throws are mostly reactive. You usually know you're going to make an ability check before you make one, because you're the one instigating it, and therefore it becomes trivial to simply slap on Guidance first. You usually don't know you're about to make a saving throw because someone (or something) else is instigating it, so unless you happened to slap on Resistance less than a minute prior you're out of luck.

As far as fixing, I'd extend the duration to 24 hours, as long as concentration is maintained. That way, you can slap it on when you wake up and not worry about it until it gets used or you need to concentrate on something else. The other option might be making it a reaction whenever you see someone making a saving throw, but then you would have the problem of never not using it.

I actually do something similar. Guidance, Resistance, and similar abilities use Concentration instead. However, I do change Guidance so you have to choose an attribute for the checks related to it (so you get 1d4 on your next Dexterity check).

[Foxhound438]

the issue with resistance is that it takes an action to probably not change the outcome of your next save. There's a lot of failure points here for something that takes your action: a bad d20 face makes the d4 irrelevant, a bad d4 result can make no change to the result, an enemy switching to attack rolls means it never applies, and effects that do half damage on a success can still totally wreck you.

To fix it, I'd maybe make it a re-roll of one save rather than a d4, probably limit it to one re-roll per character per day as free advantage is pretty strong, and maybe make it a bonus action or extend the duration. Alternatively, make it so that the save you use the d4 on gets the "evasion" effect, where if you succeed against a damage effect you take no damage and if you fail you take half.

[Man_Over_Game]

the issue with resistance is that it takes an action to probably not change the outcome of your next save. There's a lot of failure points here for something that takes your action: a bad d20 face makes the d4 irrelevant, a bad d4 result can make no change to the result, an enemy switching to attack rolls means it never applies, and effects that do half damage on a success can still totally wreck you.

To fix it, I'd maybe make it a re-roll of one save rather than a d4, probably limit it to one re-roll per character per day as free advantage is pretty strong, and maybe make it a bonus action or extend the duration. Alternatively, make it so that the save you use the d4 on gets the "evasion" effect, where if you succeed against a damage effect you take no damage and if you fail you take half.

This IS a cantrip we're talking about, and a lot of those abilities are a bit too strong for something that's the same power level as Gust.

Making it a reaction with touch range that can't be cast on yourself seems really good and flavorful. Yes, you'd be trying to do it every chance you get, but the number of chances you'd have would be very limited to make up for it's effectiveness.

[Sigreid]

It doesn't get picked because you get few cantrip picks, there's a lot of stuff competition for cantrips, and you can't switch your cantrips based on your daily expectations. It just loses out to cantrips with better or broader benefit and/or flavor.

[Pex]

If you're going to cast Resistance you might as well cast Bless for the same effect but doesn't go away when used, can affect three party members, and help attack rolls. Bless is too good to rather be wanting to cast Resistance. Guidance is appreciated because it affects skills which doesn't have a 1st level spell equivalent and is also useful out of combat.

[djreynolds]

Resistance, the Saving Throw version of Guidance. It has come to my attention that this cantrip seems to be nearly non-existent in 5e. People don't use it, dont talk about it, don't rate it.

Is it good? But nobody seems to be take it. Is it bad? Worst Cantrips discussions are full of True Strikes and Blade Wards.

Only Clerics and Druids can learn it. For Clerics, its understandable. If you can foresee making a save, you're most probably in combat, so Bless is better. But still, there are times when it could be useful, like face tanking environmental hazards, traps etc that you can't find.

Does it need fixing?

I often take magic initiate (cleric) for a fighter, and bless is once a day, so I will use resistance in combat all the time. It comes in handy

Often, once spirit guardians comes into play, bless is rarely used.

For a fighter, you have 2 choices for magic initiate, warlock for hex and cleric for bless

And if you take cleric, you grab bless, maybe sacred flame for a ranged attack because you dumped dex, and guidance, but resistance is pretty good, 1d4 could make or break it for you and coupled with indomitable and maybe lucky, it can help out

[Citan]

This IS a cantrip we're talking about, and a lot of those abilities are a bit too strong for something that's the same power level as Gust.

Making it a reaction with touch range that can't be cast on yourself seems really good and flavorful. Yes, you'd be trying to do it every chance you get, but the number of chances you'd have would be very limited to make up for it's effectiveness.
I'm sorry but to me it's a plain regression.

In most of the situations described in above posts, which can be summed up as "not in combat but being in anticipation of potential risk", the Cleric can simply Ready himself to cast Resistance on the one guy doing the dangerous thing (like Rogue/Bard trying to disarm a trap) or himself if he suspects he may be targeted.
Sure, it means you won't be doing any other action like Perception checks or Help, but that seems a fair trade-off to me. ;)

Or like Guidance he may simply say to DM "I maintain and recast on xxx constantly" (with all risks and problems it can create in-world for the character -especially in socially hostile or infiltration situations-).

[Guy Lombard-O]

If you're going to cast Resistance you might as well cast Bless for the same effect but doesn't go away when used, can affect three party members, and help attack rolls. Bless is too good to rather be wanting to cast Resistance. Guidance is appreciated because it affects skills which doesn't have a 1st level spell equivalent and is also useful out of combat.

True, Bless is an awesome spell and far better than simple Resistance. But unless you regularly play at a high enough tier that 1st level slots aren't of much value to you, a cantrip which uses NO resources still has some benefit.

That said, I've never had a seen anyone actually use Resistance even once in any campaign I was in.

[Segev]

Indeed, the trouble with resistance is that its use-case is not well-aligned with its activation. +1d4 to ability(skill) checks is going to be more broadly applicable than +1d4 to saving throws, and when you need that +1d4 to saving throws, you almost never see it coming far enough in advance to cast resistance as an action before you need it. If you're picking up a spell for +1d4 to d20 rolls, you're just plain more likely to go for the one that will be more useful more often, and less often be useless because you hadn't thought to cast it before you needed it.

[Pex]

True, Bless is an awesome spell and far better than simple Resistance. But unless you regularly play at a high enough tier that 1st level slots aren't of much value to you, a cantrip which uses NO resources still has some benefit.

That said, I've never had a seen anyone actually use Resistance even once in any campaign I was in.

Because you mostly make saving throws in combat and that's where Bless comes in. It's not a throw away. It's a tactical choice of wanting to cast Bless and everyone gives applause from level 1. If you're worried about a saving throw from a trap you cast Guidance instead to give the rogue or whomever a bonus to disarm the trap so that there's no saving throw to be made in the first place. You know when you're making an ability check. You don't know when you'll need to make a saving throw. When you do it's too late. If Resistance could be cast as a Reaction people would take it hands down. If you suspect needing to make saving throws in combat you're expecting to do so more than once. Bless's duration trumps Resistance before counting its other benefits.

Resistance is not a bad Cantrip. It is useful, but it's outclassed/obsolete at level 1.

[Mr.Spastic]

It is mildly useful if you are exploring and know that you will be in combat. I had a War Magic Wizard with Magic Initiate Cleric for guidance, resistance, and bless. He would often cast resistance on himself while adventuring so that he would always have the concentration ac bonus and get a d4 on his first save to get his arcane defense closer to being able to trigger. He was a very tactical character so my DM could understand it from an RP perspective. I mean, he know if he is concentrating he get a +2 to ac so why wouldn't he want that on a cantrip.

Edit: This might be the only thing that it is good for.

[Zalabim]

It has a little bit in common with Spare the Dying in that there's a leveled spell that performs its role way better. It contrasts with Spare the Dying by doing something you can't actually normally do. Resistance lets you help someone make a saving throw. You can help someone attack, and bless helps with that too and stacks. You can help someone with an ability check, often, and guidance helps with that and stacks. You can't always help someone make a saving throw, but you can use resistance or bless. For certain types of saving throw, or saving throw-likes, you can help, like providing antitoxin against poison, or water when they're on fire, or the various ability check to break free examples from spells like entangle. So resistance definitely does help with something that people rarely want to do. That's why it's forgotten.