Prestidigitation trickery

[SlashRunner]

Prestidigitation says that it cannot harm others. Does this mean that no effect produced by it can harm anyone else under any condition? For instance, if I found an item that was immune to fire damage and used Prestidigitation to heat it up to 3500 degrees Fahrenheit, would the heat deal no damage to anyone? How exactly does that work?

[holywhippet]

You can't heat an item up that much using prestidigitation. In says in the spell description is can only warm or chill an item.

Given that it is meant to be a minor trick, I wouldn't think you could stack repeated castings to keep increasing the temperature beyond a certain level.

Consider it as being like warming an item using a candle. Doesn't matter how many candles you stick under an object one after another - it's never going to get extremely hot.

[Ravens_cry]

Bad example. I bet it would only heat it to the temperature of the flame, but that is still hundreds of degrees. But yes, I personally would not let it stack. However, it says it can make objects. Stick your hand in somethings mouth and make a crude object in its trachea.

[SlashRunner]

I think I saw somewhere that "warm" means to increase by 35 degrees Fahrenheit. If you cast it repeatedly for an hour, you would be able to keep an item at roughly 3500 degrees Fahrenheit for an amount of hours equivalent to the amount of spell slots you have of every level, with the stipulation that you lose 35 degrees every hour due to the casting time of prestidigitation.

[holywhippet]

Hundreds of degrees is still well short of 3500 degrees. Also, you'd have a cooling curve effect start to kick in pretty quickly ie. the hotter the item gets, the faster it cools.

Sticking an item down someone's throat is not an example of pretidigitation hurting someone - or at least not directly. Using it to try and damage someone's throat would be an illegal use, but in this case it's the character who is doing the injuring rather than the spell.

[MCerberus]

[citation required]

Things that are warmed also cool down, and this gets faster the larger temperature difference.

Plus you seem like you're imitating Heat Metal, which is a no-no.

[Bhaakon]

I'd say that it can't directly harm someone else (for instance, you couldn't use it to kill someone by chilling their brain), but indirectly, like, say, using it to trigger some kind of Rube Goldberg-like killing device, is perfectly fine.

As for the heating, I'd say that it could heat something until warm, not increase its temperature by a set amount with each casting until it's as hot as the surface of the sun.

[SlashRunner]

Hmm...how hot exactly is the elemental plane of fire? is it hot enough to offset the cooling effect by any significant amount? Also, since D&D pretty much just uses Fire, Cold, Acid, Electricity, Sonic, Force for all damage, the Sun would only deal fire damage. Which means technically, I could teleport to the centre of the sun if I had fire immunity, and perform all sorts of shenanigans.

Which leads to another question... does immunity to fire mean that the subject cannot be heated up?

[Bhaakon]

D&D also has piercing, slashing, and crushing damage, the last of which becomes an issue in the center of the sun.

[holywhippet]

Which leads to another question... does immunity to fire mean that the subject cannot be heated up?

No, it means it doesn't care how hot it gets - but doesn't like cold temperatures. Fire elementals are immune to fire and they are inherently hot in themselves.