Purify Food and Water: quantities

[Sonza]

Hi everyone,

I'm struggling to work out exactly how much food in pounds the spell 'Purify Food and Water' can affect. It says "1 cubic ft". It says that's 8 gallons/60lb of water, but doesn't give the weight for food. This is unhelpful, given that the quantities of food needed to survive are given in pounds.

I realise that the 'Tippyverse' thread addresses some things about this spell, but couldn't find the answer to my question on there. (Hope I was right in starting a new thread - total newbie here).

Can anyone help?

[ericgrau]

The thing is it varies based on the food and on how neatly you pack it. But I know grain is about 2/3 as dense as water including air gaps so go with that: 40 lbs. per cubic foot., or less if the food is not tightly packed. If it's one solid block of fresh food with no air gaps (like a slab of meat) then it's about the same density as water: 60 lbs. per cubic foot.

[Sonza]

Thanks, ericgrau.

Hmmm. See, I was going with a D&D magic balance. The 'create food and water' spell does equal quantities of food and water. A medium person needs 1 gallon of water and 1lb of food according DMG. So I figured if the spell did 8 gallons of water it'd do 8lbs of food. Your way suggests it can purify a lot more food than water, which would be... interesting.

[ericgrau]

Ah I see. Well you need about 1 lb. of dry food a day but fresh it's 3-6 lbs. If you eat dry food you need to drink extra water to make up for it: somewhere between 2 and 5 pints (up to half a gallon). Indoors with little or no walking and fresh food people need about half a gallon of water per day, but they need more when outside.

[Sonza]

Ta for the real world science. I will have a think. It all depends where I want to put the balance between realism and simplicity, really. I was thinking about adapting the starvation and thirst rules, since they will come up a lot more in this campaign.

Which brings me to another question:

The rules for starvation and thirst in both DMG and Sandstorm only say what happens if you have no food or water. What if you are on a reduced ration? This probably involves maths of some sort, I suppose. Any ideas? Is there a rules supplement somewhere with a table for this sort of thing? I also wondered about factoring in strenuous exercise (i.e. fight encounters) etc. Any help appreciated.

[hewhosaysfish]

Ta for the real world science. I will have a think. It all depends where I want to put the balance between realism and simplicity, really. I was thinking about adapting the starvation and thirst rules, since they will come up a lot more in this campaign.

Which brings me to another question:

The rules for starvation and thirst in both DMG and Sandstorm only say what happens if you have no food or water. What if you are on a reduced ration? This probably involves maths of some sort, I suppose. Any ideas? Is there a rules supplement somewhere with a table for this sort of thing? I also wondered about factoring in strenuous exercise (i.e. fight encounters) etc. Any help appreciated.

My suggestion is just count fractions e.g. if they're on half rations for 4 days, then that counts as 2 days without food.

Be prepared for players asking what happens of they try to build up "credit" by eating too much and getting fat. Counting stored fat towards encumberance would be realistic. Giving diminishing returns seems tempting (e.g. each extra days worth of food you eat gives you incrementally less "credit") but probably wouldn't prove enough of a deterent (given how cheap food is in comparison to the amount of money PCs can usually throw around).