Repeated cantrips?

[Valwyn]

Usually, when you get repeated skills or tools, such as a half-orc with the soldier background being proficient in Intimidate twice, you are allowed to change the skill to something else, but what about cantrips? A Light cleric aasimar gets the Light cantrip from two sources (race and bonus spell), but I can't find a rule for or against retraining repeated cantrips. Is there an official answer out there? I doubt it would be an issue to swap one of the cantrips, specially for one that is comparable or thematically appropiate (having Light and Dancing Lights, or a fire or lightning cantrip if you are feeling generous), but that's just me.

Any thoughts?

[Nagog]

I doubt there's official stuff for it, as most racial cantrips are straight utility and for the most part won't scale past Tier 1, unlike skill prof which scale indefinitely. I'd just give the option for another bonus cantrip like you suggested

[Garfunion]

Usually, when you get repeated skills or tools, such as a half-orc with the soldier background being proficient in Intimidate twice, you are allowed to change the skill to something else, but what about cantrips? A Light cleric aasimar gets the Light cantrip from two sources (race and bonus spell), but I can't find a rule for or against retraining repeated cantrips. Is there an official answer out there? I doubt it would be an issue to swap one of the cantrips, specially for one that is comparable or thematically appropiate (having Light and Dancing Lights, or a fire or lightning cantrip if you are feeling generous), but that's just me.

Any thoughts?
I would allow the player to replace one of the light cantrips for dancing lights. You simply became better at controlling light.

[bid]

Usually, when you get repeated skills or tools, such as a half-orc with the soldier background being proficient in Intimidate twice, you are allowed to change the skill to something else,
You are allowed because the backgrounds listed are only samples. As detailed on page 125, you can pick any 2 skills and tools/languages along with whatever background feature you want. You could even work out a new feature with your GM, if nothing fits.

But yeah, getting an extra cleric cantrip would work.

[Bjarkmundur]

In my version of the aasimar I simply state "one non-damaging cantrip" and that has worked out fine.

I'm pretty sure that the intention for both of these features is flavor and utility, so as long as you honor that design goal you'll be fine.

[solidork]

It would be kinda cool if they got a supercharged version of light that shed bright light out to 40ft and dim light out another 40ft. That is a dangerous precedent to set though.

[Yuki Akuma]

I second replacing duplicate Light cantrips with Dancing Lights. It's fairly flavourful.

[Chronos]

For precedent, if an illusionist wizard already knows Minor Illusion, they get a different wizard cantrip of their choice instead. And I think there's another example somewhere, but I can't remember what it was.

For the aasimar light cleric, I'd just say "any other cleric cantrip". Including a combat cantrip. After all, you're taking a cleric level anyway: If you want Sacred Flame, then you'll have Sacred Flame.

[Segev]

For precedent, if an illusionist wizard already knows Minor Illusion, they get a different wizard cantrip of their choice instead. And I think there's another example somewhere, but I can't remember what it was.

For the aasimar light cleric, I'd just say "any other cleric cantrip". Including a combat cantrip. After all, you're taking a cleric level anyway: If you want Sacred Flame, then you'll have Sacred Flame.

It's often a house rule, rather than what is written, but generally, if a thing gives you a Cantrip and you already know that particular one, I will let you pick a different one from the list that you originally got it. This prevents stupid situations where you refrain from getting a highly-thematic Cantrip at level 5 because you'll get it at level 6.