Back in the days of AD&D 2e they dealt with cantrips in a completely different way from all of the other editions. I loved it but it took a long while to work out just how powerful a spell it was.

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The spell Cantrip was a 1st level spell that allowed you to do almost anything as long as it was small and didn’t cause any damage to anything and anything created only lasted something like an hour. On the face of it you might think it was useless for anything other than a full on roleplay session. You couldn’t be further from the truth however.

Before we realised just how useful this spell was our mages tooled up with blatant offensive or defensive spells and that was it. Occasionally they would get their books out when they had to research some magic items for the group but usually it was ‘how many fireballs and hastes are we going to need today?’

Then one day one of our clerics died and the player decided completely against character to bring in a mage. His daily allowance of 1st level spells were always completely taken up by cantrips. It took us around an hour to work out what he was up to.

In our first encounter upon entering a hamlet was a crowd of young kids. We had asked for directions from everyone passing by but as we were armed to the back teeth and strangers to boot noone would talk to us. Our new mage wandered over to the gang of street kids and got talking to them. He ended up casting cantrips to allow him to perform a brilliant card trick and then finished it off with some mini-fireworks from his wand. The kids loved it and after a few moments we were on our way armed with the information we needed.

Now you might think that is exactly what cantrip was for but it gets better.

We arrived at the tavern we were looking for in order to track down a certain rogue that could help us fence some stolen art work. He didn’t want to deal with us and decided to hit our remaining cleric out of the way and make a run for it. One cantrip later and just as the NPC goes to barge through the cleric the holy symbol around his neck shines like it had caught the sun at high noon. Blinded by this the NPC stumbled and was easily caught by the hands of the warriors.

From that moment on I loved that spell. From pretending to burn treasure maps to get other interested parties off of our tails to magically tying the shoelaces of the guards together to aid in our escape. Every single thing the spell done was minor but it had a huge impact on the game and on our party.

I really wish they had kept the spell like that rather than find ways to limit it. I understand why they did that but it’s nowhere near as much fun now.

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