Re: firebolt
Cantrips are designed to be a caster's bread and butter (especially at lower levels), and you would pull out higher level spells when they are going to be really impactful because you only get a few uses each day. By filling the world with scrolls and removing all consequences from long resting, Larian has essentially removed the cost from casting higher level spells because those few spell slots no longer have to last you through a full day's worth of encounters. If that cost is removed from leveled spells, of course they're going to be better than cantrips. The issue isn't that cantrips are too weak, it's that house rules have turned the really strong fancy stuff into your bread and butter. Remove scrolls and remove the possibility of getting a full night's rest after every 24 second battle and balance is going to improve substantially.
This. The stupid rest after every combat system that is being encouraged right now is the reason cantrips seem "weak."
I''d actually argue that if you could rest in fewer places you'd have more value to things like firebolt. The problem is the other abilities, like magic missile do so much damage and be casted so many times that fights do not "typically" last long enough to value this ability. Less rest means that there is more dependence on things like firebolt, and so you'd use it more. This is all logical, but the problem is players are efficient, and they will always do the more efficient thing, so this will lead players to recall to town a lot to sleep then come back and so reducing the sleeping zones would result in more recalling, and subsequently an annoying change to the game.
Moving half rested over to regenerating all spells would help this problem significantly (ie that resting after every combat is the more efficient thing to do) but the issue is that firebolt still is not a valid spell to be casted in most cases. You would not be able to alter the resource system (how many times you can cast) because you'd still have the issue of missiles > firebolt.
maybe moving the entire resting system to a time best thing would be a good move for this "spam" of resting, ie you can only full rest every 30 minutes. This would solve both problems, since half rests will not regenerate most spells, and subsequently firebolt will be a better change for the class.
I still feel like its just as simple as buffing it, but if there is indeed "rest spam" going on amongst everyone, i would encourage a timer on full days rest. I myself spam it also. Big battle > save (cuz of crashing > rest > save, literally every large encounter, so it probably needs to be changed.
