# What's so good about the "blade" cantrips?



## Gavin O. (Apr 6, 2018)

According to a lot of guides, the "blade" cantrips, Booming Blade and Green-flame Blade, are highly desirable, but I cannot understand why. Yes they scale where a character's melee attacks don't, but so does every other damaging cantrip and those don't require you to also have competent weapon attacks. I can see why you might want them if you have quicken spell or War magic or some other way to abuse them, but not otherwise. 

Am I missing something?


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## Blue (Apr 6, 2018)

Gavin O. said:


> According to a lot of guides, the "blade" cantrips, Booming Blade and Green-flame Blade, are highly desirable, but I cannot understand why. Yes they scale where a character's melee attacks don't, but so does every other damaging cantrip and those don't require you to also have competent weapon attacks. I can see why you might want them if you have quicken spell or War magic or some other way to abuse them, but not otherwise.
> 
> Am I missing something?




They are desirable in a specific case - you are playing a melee-based character without access to Extra Attack.

They use your melee attack ability (usually STR or DEX) to apply, so you don't need to have a high spellcasting ability score.  This is a big difference from all the other damaging cantrips, and it's generally a big shift.  For those that want it, it's a big positive shift, for those who don't it's a big negative shift.

The damage is also quite nice, especially when you factor in that as a melee-based character there will be other damage increases (magic weapons, fighting styles, hex - whatever the build & party do).

EDIT:  They sometimes beat out Extra Attack even if you have access to it.  Also, it's available before Extra Attack so even a character that will eventually get it may want the cantrips early on.


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## Herosmith14 (Apr 6, 2018)

And at least in theory, I find Booming Blade a bit more useful than Green Flame Blade(both are still really good). Pick up war caster, OA BB, and the thunder damage goes through immefietely cause they're already moving of their own free will.


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## Grue AC (Apr 7, 2018)

And thanks to Hexblade CHA casters can melee without being MAD.


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## Ganders (Apr 8, 2018)

They break one of the core rules of the game: the separation between melee attacks and spells.  That's useful in various clever exploits.

Melee attacks scale in frequency (extra attack, bonus action attacks, AOO, Haste, etc) while spells scale in damage directly (cantrips by level, upcasting, etc).  To make up the difference, melee also get bonuses such as backstab, orcish fury, and strength bonuses much more often than spells get int bonuses.  For melee classes, getting a bit of cantrip-scaling damage added to their attacks is attractive.

Also, most class abilities are triggered by 'when you attack' or 'when you hit with a weapon attack' so they won't work with spells.  For caster multiclasses, getting access to some of those with a cantrip is a good enough reason, even more so if they have a way to still use their casting stat for the attack.


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## Blue (Apr 8, 2018)

Ganders said:


> Also, most class abilities are triggered by 'when you attack' or 'when you hit with a weapon attack' so they won't work with spells.  For caster multiclasses, getting access to some of those with a cantrip is a good enough reason, even more so if they have a way to still use their casting stat for the attack.




Actually, those trigger just fine with these spells.  IIRC Sage Advice had a good breakdown.  What doesn't trigger is "When you use the Attack Action", which is different from an attack.  You are using the "Cast a Spell" Action, it just happens to include an attack.  So anything that triggers of an attack, a hit, a melee-weapon attack, and the like will still trigger, but anything that wants the Attack action (like two weapon fighting) will not.  (PHB 192)


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## FrogReaver (Apr 9, 2018)

Gavin O. said:


> According to a lot of guides, the "blade" cantrips, Booming Blade and Green-flame Blade, are highly desirable, but I cannot understand why. Yes they scale where a character's melee attacks don't, but so does every other damaging cantrip and those don't require you to also have competent weapon attacks. I can see why you might want them if you have quicken spell or War magic or some other way to abuse them, but not otherwise.
> 
> Am I missing something?




They can give a big damage boost to rogues and clerics.  I don't think I've found a good use for them outside those 2 classes.


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## Volund (Apr 12, 2018)

BB is pretty good for an EK with War Magic from level 7-10. After the second Extra Attack at 11 it's not as good. After that I still might use GFB if there is another monster within 5' to tag with fire damage.

Falling into the OP's category of "or some other way to abuse them", my tempest cleric 16 can do spectacular crit damage with BB, Divine Strike, Destructive Wrath, and his Staff of Thunder and Lightning to throw in some extra max lightning damage. He's best friends with Battle Masters and Shield Masters and anyone else who can give him advantage on melee attacks.


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## smbakeresq (Apr 16, 2018)

I use them with certain cleric and bard builds to fill a character idea.  For example right now I am playing a Dragonborn Bard in a Greyhawk Campaign with 1 level of life cleric and then lore bard rest of way.  The idea is she was pushed into the clergy on Dragons Island in but then realized the way to spread the word about her people was to wander the lands and collect and retell the stories of others.  Of course being a dragonborn and worshipping dragons means you are built for combat, so a skald seems like the best idea.  Dragonborn are majestic of course of course so Bard makes sense also. 

So I took BB as a spell secret to keep going with that theme and the energy theme of dragons and dragonborn.  Its thematic also to smack someone with an attack that also blasts them with energy and is flashy.  It also works with Warcaster feat and then Dissonant Whispers (you can use BB for the OPP ATT and get the damage bonus right away as you scream foul oaths at them) and also use it for the OPP ATT generated by Command (flee.)

The other blade spells are ok but they put this PC (and others that get into melee but really are not built for it) into range of more than one enemy which is bad for you.  Lightning Lure is poor since other cantrips do more and pulling isn't that great or useable.  It isn't a blade spell but in the same section so I put it here.


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## mikal768 (Apr 17, 2018)

FrogReaver said:


> They can give a big damage boost to rogues and clerics.  I don't think I've found a good use for them outside those 2 classes.




They can also be useful for classes which might be able to get bonus damage based on elemental affinities. Draconic Sorcerer, Celestial Warlock, and so on.



Herosmith14 said:


> And at least in theory, I find Booming Blade a bit more useful than Green Flame Blade(both are still really good). Pick up war caster, OA BB, and the thunder damage goes through immefietely cause they're already moving of their own free will.




Except that the enemy can choose to stop at any time, including after being hit by the OA, and thus not take the damage. This could backfire if you're a class which doesn't necessarily want the enemy to stop and do a full attack in front of you. Just something to be aware of.


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## smbakeresq (Apr 17, 2018)

mikal768 said:


> They can also be useful for classes which might be able to get bonus damage based on elemental affinities. Draconic Sorcerer, Celestial Warlock, and so on.
> 
> 
> 
> Except that the enemy can choose to stop at any time, including after being hit by the OA, and thus not take the damage. This could backfire if you're a class which doesn't necessarily want the enemy to stop and do a full attack in front of you. Just something to be aware of.




Correct.  Most DMs won’t take an OA unless they are forced into it through something, they will play enemies far smarter and with total knowledge of the PC abilities then the creature would be.


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## mikal768 (Apr 17, 2018)

smbakeresq said:


> Correct.  Most DMs won’t take an OA unless they are forced into it through something, they will play enemies far smarter and with total knowledge of the PC abilities then the creature would be.




Unfortunately true, and a matter of different discussion. I try not to do so when running a game, unless the NPC would logically know what was about to occur (Has seen it before, has used it before, has had it used on them before etc.)


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## Mike Myler (Apr 17, 2018)

I've been opening up combats with my 6th level paladin 2/eldritch knight 4 by going GFB with a 2nd-level smite and spending his bonus for the blanked 1d4 radiant damage spell. He can action surge too. It's becoming an issue so I am retiring Murtaugh but blade spells + smite = horror.


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## mikal768 (Apr 17, 2018)

Mike Myler said:


> I've been opening up combats with my 6th level paladin 2/eldritch knight 4 by going GFB with a 2nd-level smite and spending his bonus for the blanked 1d4 radiant damage spell. He can action surge too. It's becoming an issue so I am retiring Murtaugh but blade spells + smite = horror.




Well sure if the majority of your adventuring days consist of fighting single or a couple large beasties. Against swarms... not so much.


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## Mike Myler (Apr 17, 2018)

Combat in the last session began with him walking out to pop a 75 damage crit (because there's a divination specialist wizard that rolled well for portent, so yay auto-crit). It was 8d8 magical slashing + 4d8 fire + 5 + 2d4 radiant (plus 1 ancillary fire damage). Even sans-crit that could have been 6d8+1d4 less, but even so, action surge to make another 4d8+2d8+5+1d4 attack. I'm fairly certain that like the big bad NPC he'd tricked his way close to (and the many dead NPCs of his past), any standard swarm is going to die even with damage resistance. None of this is with magic items or anything either, just an (accidental) abuse of a subclass and the multiclassing spell list.

Dude's getting retired because ^^^ is not fun for the GM. Replacing him with a drunken monk.


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## mikal768 (Apr 17, 2018)

By swarms I mean groups of enemies vs. a single target. Yeah... 75 damage crits are great against single targets.
Not so much when you're facing 10-20 opponents at once. Or if you have say, the standard number of encounters in an adventuring day.


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## Mike Myler (Apr 17, 2018)

Lol we were facing about 20 NPCs, about 2/3rds of which were zombies.  The ultra round is indeed something he can only do once, and after another three smites he's doing acceptable damage, but even one round where you can explode like that is hugely problematic.


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## mikal768 (Apr 17, 2018)

Mike Myler said:


> Lol we were facing about 20 NPCs, about 2/3rds of which were zombies.  The ultra round is indeed something he can only do once, and after another three smites he's doing acceptable damage, but even one round where you can explode like that is hugely problematic.




Not really. Most DMs can plan around that in game if needed, especially if you're at the level where you're able to do that and the NPC would know to plan accordingly (if said NPC had the ability to do so)...
Even though you can do it 1-4 times a day, you're still not doing as much damage as a dedicated blaster Wiz/Sorc can, so if you're hugely problematic, than those types of characters must simply be catastrophic.


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## smbakeresq (Apr 18, 2018)

Mike Myler said:


> Combat in the last session began with him walking out to pop a 75 damage crit (because there's a divination specialist wizard that rolled well for portent, so yay auto-crit). It was 8d8 magical slashing + 4d8 fire + 5 + 2d4 radiant (plus 1 ancillary fire damage). Even sans-crit that could have been 6d8+1d4 less, but even so, action surge to make another 4d8+2d8+5+1d4 attack. I'm fairly certain that like the big bad NPC he'd tricked his way close to (and the many dead NPCs of his past), any standard swarm is going to die even with damage resistance. None of this is with magic items or anything either, just an (accidental) abuse of a subclass and the multiclassing spell list.
> 
> Dude's getting retired because ^^^ is not fun for the GM. Replacing him with a drunken monk.




It wouldn’t be slashing, that’s just the weapon damage.  The smite is radiant damage right?  The booming blade is thunder, it would be 1d8 at that level so 2d8.  At level 6 it would be 2x weapon + 4d8 radiant (2nd level spell for smite) + ability + 2 d8 thunder for BB.


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## Lillika (Apr 19, 2018)

These Blade cantrips can also utilize Shadow Blade from XAGE.  I just made a post about the great synergy with a sorcerer who can twin BB and Quicken GFB, for 3 very strong attacks in a turn.


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