Spell Casting
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asheraryamSpell Casting
Uploaded by
asheraryamSpellcasting
#combat
The DM Lair: The D&D house rules no one talks
about
Change Cantrip Damage Scaling
Look, again, I know this already exists in D and D, but the damage power-
ups don't occur that often, and if you're a player, it can take ages, it
seems, before your Firebolt gains damage. Thus, I think that going the
route of having cantrips do less damage initially but scale up more often
could be fun. Consider this: instead of Firebolt doing 1d10 damage at
level one and then 2d10 at level five, wouldn't it be more fun if it did 1d6
damage at first level, 2d6 at third level, 3d6 at fifth level, 4d6 at seventh
level, and so on? I mean, I think so.
Now, the trick here, of course, is to implement the change such that you're
not actually changing the damage the cantrip deals that much. This is a
house rule for psychological benefit, to make things more fun. We're not
actually trying to boost damage or decrease it, for that matter. Now, our
quick and dirty method for scaling cantrips is to do this: first, cantrip
damage dice are reduced by two steps (so a d10 becomes a d6, a d8
becomes a d4, and so on, to a minimum of d4). Then, the damage
increases by that amount every other level. So, your damage increases
come at levels three, five, seven, and so on. At those levels, you gain an
additional die.