The day Guidance died – Death of a Cantrip

Recently The Alexandrian shared a post on Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition about issues with the cantrip Guidance.

This reminded me that I had killed off Guidance in my own D&D campaign, and yet I had not removed it from my game. Instead of turning the cantrip into a different spell (as the Alexandrian suggests), l took a different approach and changed it from a spell to an action.

For much the same reasons as presented in the blog post I removed the cantrip as it had become something that was mandatory to have and it was constantly in use. Instead of removing it completely, I turned it into an action that any character could perform:

Support action

• by sharing knowledge, by supporting or by encouraging one character can grant another a +d4 bonus on a skill test (and they do not stack).
• In order to grant the bonus the support action must be role-played.
• In stressful situations such as combat using the support action counts as an action.

We have the same amount Support actions as we had Guidance cantrips but now it is connected to social interaction between the characters and their conversations help grow both the setting as well as the characters.