Opinions on Druidcraft?

[hymer]

I'd love to hear the playground's opinion on two aspects of the Druidcraft cantrip.

1: Duration is instantaneous, yet it can do things that would seem to last longer than an instant. And those are probably not supposed to go on indefinitely. Suppose you were to use it to create the sound of a singing bird ('the sound of a small animal'), e.g. How long would you allow/expect the sound to continue on a single casting?

2: The Components are V and S. The spell starts by describing the verbal component as whispering. Clearly it wouldn't work in a Silenced area, but how would you rule this with stealth? Could you, say, make the sound of a cat to throw off suspicion while hiding? Whiff of a skunk to make a sniffer dog go away, without alerting the guards? How would you rule that?

[CoggieRagabash]

1: Duration is instantaneous, yet it can do things that would seem to last longer than an instant. And those are probably not supposed to go on indefinitely. Suppose you were to use it to create the sound of a singing bird ('the sound of a small animal'), e.g. How long would you allow the sound to continue on a single casting?

I'd probably say it's a sound that goes off at once and could reasonably be made in six seconds or less. I'd treat it as being little different than talking as a free action during your turn - the timeline of a round is pretty loosey goosey when you consider that this should all be taking place so rapidly. So just let the sound have been heard by everyone.

[sophontteks]

1. instantaneous duration doesn't mean the spell lasts for an instant.Why is it worded like this? I imagine the author rolled a natural one on his write english check. For example, find familiar has a duration of instantaneous. In the case of druidcraft, it states times in the descriptions. Most of its effects don't seem to persist for a long period of time.

2. As we were discussing the arcane trickster. What I would do is roll stealth in areas where a whisper could easily be heard over ambient noise, or against creatures with a bonus to hearing. In your examples, the sounds your making kinda trump whatever advantage you were hoping to achieve. Its more useful in that you could make a sound that entices the creature to move to a different area. I would definitely make you roll stealth against a dog for v spells.

Its kind of a bummer for you, but the minor image cantrip can make sounds and doesn't have a verbal requirement.

[CoggieRagabash]

I would definitely make you roll stealth against a dog for v spells.

Fortunately, a dog isn't terribly bright and doesn't understand magic so even if it hears a whisper from behind the tree over there, it may ultimately decide that whatever trick you pulled is more interesting. It wouldn't connect the two phenomena and so couldn't reason "I'm probably being tricked by some mage" unless it had a lot of training in that regard and was a clever enough animal to be able to accept that training. So it would come down to its training and whether or not it can stay "on task" and can correctly identify which phenomena are most relevant to being "on task".

Otherwise I agree, if the verbal component is specified to only be a whisper, it's a fairly stealthy spell inherently (rather than stepping on the toes of Subtle Spell metamagic and other class abilities) and should only be rolled for if there's not enough ambient noise to cover it up or they normally have Keen Hearing or the like.

[NNescio]

1. instantaneous duration doesn't mean the spell lasts for an instant.Why is it worded like this? I imagine the author rolled a natural one on his write english check. For example, find familiar has a duration of instantaneous. In the case of druidcraft, it states times in the descriptions. Most of its effects don't seem to persist for a long period of time.

It means the magic goes away after an instant. Some effects may remain, due to changes brought about by the magic. Most obvious case would be the damage from a fireball spell, but the familiar from Find Familiar is another one.

This wording ensures that the familiar can't be dispelled, nor does it wink out in an Antimagic Field.

[hymer]

Thanks for the thoughts so far. Anyone else want to weigh in? DM and player views are equally welcome.

[Kajorma]

I agree with the 6 second rule.
I'd treat making a noise this way like the druid is speaking, so it can't go past the end of the round.

Obviously, doing things like lighting a fire lasts longer.

As for stealth...
I would rule that any spell with a verbal component has a chance to be heard.
If that makes a spell useless in a particular situation, then it's really on the player to not use it then.
This is just one of the disadvantages to having that V on the spell.

[hymer]

@ Kajorma: Thank you!