Limitations of Polymorph Any Object

[GargantuanOwl]

So I'm currently playing in a campaign where I want to take barrels of sea water and turn them into barrels of wine but my DM is unsure as to if polymorph any object would work on the water. His main argument is that at what point does a body of water become a single object. I think a defined body of water as long as its within the spells size capacity should be a viable target for the spell. I was wondering if there was any sort of official guideline on such limitations of polymorph any object because I can not find any.

[Psyren]

Water itself is not an object. However, a barrel of water is one, and could be polymorphed into a barrel of wine. Thus you could likely do one barrel at a time.

[GargantuanOwl]

That's how I feel but is there any sort of guideline on the spell other than what's in players handbook because that description is rather vague.

[ExLibrisMortis]

It's a very language-dependant argument, that. It works in English (and probably all Indo-European languages), but there may well be languages where 'a given amount of water' is definitely an 'object', regardless of the presence of the barrel.

That said, that may well be exactly why magic works the way it does. So all you need to do, is mindrape such a language into your mind, and you can polymorph bits of water!

[Gallowglass]

I'm not sure what we can point you to that would convince your DM, because his ruling on this is very odd.

In fact, a barrel of water to a barrel of wine is pretty convincingly less problematic that most other cases.

"water" is an object as long as is within the size limitation and is contained within an unbroken mass. You couldn't do two puddles, but you could do one puddle.

Would he object to you PaO a pile of sand? how about a bag of pebbles?

Lets say he objects to the bag of pebbles because "it is several rocks all combined in a single container" which seems to mirror his objection here. Would he let you use PaO on a desk? Because a desk is actually several distinct pieces of wood held together by nails and glue and covered with a stain or paint. That's like 5-20 different objects all joined together to form one object. And the difference between "wood chunks fastened with metal fasteners" and "a bag filled with rocks" is pretty academic to me. Would he let you use PaO on a sword? because a sword is one piece of metal fastened to a hunk of wood with another piece of metal or two pinned in.

I would point out these questions and ask him to come up with a ruling on what an object is, then if his ruling is too restrictive, ask him to let you swap out for a different spell without paying a retraining penalty.

[SimonMoon6]

His main argument is that at what point does a body of water become a single object.

As soon as a thing is a thing itself and not just part of a thing, then it is an object, imo.

As soon as you have a barrel of water, that is a thing. It is no longer part of a thing but is itself a thing.

A body of water is a thing. We have the word "a" in front of it to denote that it is "a" thing. A body of water is an object. A lake is usually too big to polymorph. But a cup of water is a thing. A barrel of water is a thing. A spoonful of water is a thing. A drop of water is a thing... as long as it has been separated from other drops.

[Inevitability]

You could freeze the water until it's a single object, then turn it into frozen wine. It'd probably affect the flavor, though.

[stack]

You could freeze the water until it's a single object, then turn it into frozen wine. It'd probably affect the flavor, though.

Alcohol would depress the freezing point, so it would change state pretty quickly.

[Psyren]

Alcohol would depress the freezing point, so it would change state pretty quickly.

That's an interesting point actually - if you change frozen X to frozen Y, it will stay frozen (since that was what you stipulated) even if the freezing point of Y is lower. So you can actually use PAO to change the temperature of objects. If I change a bottle of ice water to a frozen bottle of seaweater, it should get colder.

Similarly, if I PAO a bucket of water into a bucket of molten iron, will the bucket catch fire?

[Âmesang]

If you can track down a copy of AD&D 2ed's Player's Handbook, perhaps you could replicate transmute water to dust, and then polymorph dust to wine? :smalltongue: