"You gain access to a cantrip" vs. "You gain a cantrip"

[Nik Gervae]

Some feats say "You gain access to a cantrip", others say, "You gain a cantrip". Is there a difference? Does gaining a cantrip mean that you get another cantrip "slot", or just add a cantrip to the list of cantrips you know?

Another feat I'm looking at is quite explicit, saying, "You gain the ability to cast a ... cantrip".

[Staffan Johansson]

Normally, "access" means you can select the thing using whatever means normally are available to you. For example, a person from Cheliax has access to the Devil's Advocate feat. That doesn't mean that all people from Cheliax has it, just that it's a thing they can select.

In the particular case of Halcyon Speaker, I am not sure that's the intent of the feat — particularly since later feats (like Halcyon Spellcasting Initiate) outright give you spells. But RAW, that is what it is.

[Nik Gervae]

So you take a 6th-level dedication feat and don't actually get any cantrips or 1st-level spells, you have to retrain to actually get the spells? Well that dedication just lost a lot of its appeal.

I'm still not clear on whether "you gain a cantrip" means you can cast it. If you're a spontaneous caster, I would say, yeah, you have that cantrip and can cast it, because "spells you have" = "spells you can cast". So by extension, I guess a prepared caster adds the cantrip to those they know and gains another cantrip to cast?

[Staffan Johansson]

Nik Gervae wrote:

So you take a 6th-level dedication feat and don't actually get any cantrips or 1st-level spells, you have to retrain to actually get the spells? Well that dedication just lost a lot of its appeal.

I think the assumption is that most Halcyon Speakers are wizards or druids, and can then go on to Learn the spells in question. But it does bleep over sorcerers a bit.

Given that the rest of the archetype seems to match pretty well with multiclass archetypes, I think it would make sense that this would also match multiclass spellcasting benefits.

[The Raven Black]

"You gain the ability to cast a cantrip" because you might not have been a caster before selecting this feat ;-)

I think "you gain access" is the same as "you gain" in this specific case because of the rules for learning halcyon spells : "You don’t gain new halcyon spells via the normal means you typically use to gain spells".

Otherwise, I do not see how a Wizard would ever gain a 1st-level halcyon spell.

It is strange though that the wording for the Halcyon speaker dedication feat is different from that of the Halcyon Spellcasting Initiate, Adept and Sage feats, not to mention the Flexible halcyon spellcasting feat.

I really feel like they originally designed the archetype like a classic multiclass archetype with the dedication feat and a separated Basic spellcasting feat and later decided to roll both into the current dedication feat and that they forgot to replace "gain access to a cantrip/spell" with "gain a cantrip/spell".

[Castilliano]

I do think gain access and gaining are different, which yes, makes some feats pretty poor IMO. Yet look at Adapted Cantrip, which amounts to the same thing as access yet I've seen people include in their builds.
I guess one thing in favor of access is it seems to defer to one's base spellcasting stat rather than to Charisma.

[Nik Gervae]

Oh yeah, Adapted Cantrip is pretty clear, to me, that you don't get another "slot", or even another cantrip in your spell book/known cantrips—it's a full swap-out.

The entry multiclass feats for Bard and Cleric, for example, do say things like "you gain a repertoire" or "you can prepare". A spontaneous caster "gaining a cantrip" would necessarily have it available to cast, though, so by extension/balance it seems a prepared caster would have to have an additional cantrip "slot" too. That or, as with the halcyon spell slots, you get a cantrip slot that can only be used for halcyon cantrips.

Oy, and now that opens up whether "halcyon spell" means generally "spell[s] from the arcane or primal spell list", as they are initially described, or more specifically "...that you have acquired through these dedications", which is at best implied by the text but not stated explicitly. I'm strongly inclined to think the latter, else you could just spontaneously cast any of your base class spells in your halcyon spell slots.

And yet, it seems to me you wind up with a lot of cantrips:

Magaambyan Attendant Dedication: "You gain the ability to cast a single arcane or primal cantrip of your choice." That's a clear addition of a cantrip to cast (although curiously it is not described as a halcyon cantrip).

Cascade Bearer's Spellcasting: "You gain a halcyon cantrip and a halcyon 1st-level spell." The sentence that spawned this thread. Clearly you don't gain a 1st-level spell slot, but spontaneous casters don't prepare cantrips from a pool of known spells, so you must actually get a 2nd castable cantrip.

Halcyon Speaker Dedication: "You gain access to two common Halcyon cantrips and two common 1st-level halcyon spells." And now the access thing, facing the same problem as the prior feat. So is this the option to swap out cantrips as you level, or do you get two more cantrips to cast at will? That nets you a total of nine cantrips you can cast, just from your base class + these dedication feats. There are other ways to gain lots of cantrips though, so I guess this is fine.

[The Raven Black]

OK. There are indeed several holes in the wording of those feats.

Way I see it :

MAD : one more cantrip to cast, independently of your other spellcasting abilities, if you had some already. I also think they should have called it halcyon cantrip.

BTW, I think halcyon spells are specifically those gained from these feats. Otherwise the limit on the level of halcyon spells you can cast becomes meaningless.

CBS : I think you just add these to your list of spells you can cast (your Repertoire for a Sorcerer). You gain no additional slot. It sucks if you are prepared and is not consistent with the wording of the Cantrip Expansion feat. So I would say it must give the ability to prepare an additional cantrip too. But it is quite debatable.

HCD : I read this as doing the same thing as CBS above. Which makes the whole thing even more of a mess. Here is hoping we get some clarification before the Magaambyan AP starts and the setting book comes out.

[The Raven Black]

Or maybe there is a tradeoff for spontaneous casters : maybe they have to learn a specific level of a halcyon spell but in exchange they can cast additional cantrips. Whereas prepared get all levels of a halcyon spell available but no additional cantrip slot unless specifically noted (ie the MAD).

I am not even sure the Flexible Halcyon spellcasting feat grants an additional cantrip slot. Is cantrip a spell level ?

EDIT : based on other threads here, you do not get additional MC cantrips through Breadth MCD feats, but by using a MCD feat to get Cantrip Expansion. So Flexible Halcyon spellcasting does not give additional cantrip slots.

Alas, there is no Cantrip Expansion for Halcyon archetypes, unless we say that is what CBS and HCD do : give additional cantrip slots to prepared casters.

But I would really need to go step by step with a GM on these to get them to this understanding of the RAW :-(

[Ched Greyfell]

Gaining access, to me, clearly means you have the ability to choose it (from, say, a different spell tradition, or if it was rare and you couldn't use it before).

If you gain a cantrip, I see that as a spontaneous caster adding it to her list of spells known, or even a prepared caster adding it to his prepared spells per day.

[Nik Gervae]

I'm pretty much in agreement with you Raven.

The Raven Black wrote:

But I would really need to go step by step with a GM on these to get them to this understanding of the RAW :-(

Yeah, that's unfortunate.LIke you said earlier, the whole thing is a mess.

[Squiggit]

Ched Greyfell wrote:

Gaining access, to me, clearly means you have the ability to choose it (from, say, a different spell tradition, or if it was rare and you couldn't use it before).

The problem is under this interpretation it's unclear what that part of the feat even does, because the rules for Halcyon spells make it clear you can only acquire them via feats. So gaining access to the cantrip doesn't do anything for you... and since they're Common spells you don't even need an access clause for them anyways.

In other words, strict RAW the feat gives you the ability to choose two cantrips, except there's no way to actually learn those cantrips and if there was you would have already had the ability to pick them anyways.

The only way to parse that line is by having it add the spells to your list/book/repertoire, IMO. Otherwise it doesn't do anything at all.

The Raven Black wrote:

Or maybe there is a tradeoff for spontaneous casters : maybe they have to learn a specific level of a halcyon spell but in exchange they can cast additional cantrips.

Gaining an extra cantrip at the cost of never being able to heighten your halcyon spells would be a pretty abysmal tradeoff.

I think that's a valid reading of the RAW but I'm not sure how much it passes the reasonability test, because that kind of brings the hammer down on spontaneous halcyon spellcasters pretty hard.