Light in Adventures

[nickl_2000]

Hi,

I'm starting a new campaign as a player with new characters. We are playing a modified version of Rise of the Runelords to have it work with 5e (seems like a lot of work, but the DM wants to do it, and who am I to say no since I'm not doing the work). For various roleplay and history reasons, I'll be playing a variant human moon druid with the healer feat. I know it's not the best feat in the long term, but I liked it for my Druid who effectively is a veterinarian. The party will be consisting of a Lizardfolk (Volos) Warlock, a Tabaxi (Volos) EK, a Half-Orc Sorceror, and myself the Variant Human Druid. Yes, I realize that this is an unusual cast of characters, but that's how we do things and we have fun doing it that way.

Here's my qualm that I'm running into. I need light to be able to see in my caster and many wildshape forms. The sorcerer doesn't want to take light as a cantrip and the warlock won't have it. So, I'm looking into unusual ways that others have solved this problem and your DM has allowed it. For example, get a lantern hook for your backpack and other things like that. One final piece of information, my pathfinder background (Two-World Magic) gives me an additional cantrip from any class. That could be used for light, but if I can avoid it, I would like a better damaging cantrip than produce flame.

Thanks!

[The Shadowdove]

Find someone to cast continual flame on something like a coin necklace or amulet. A locket can be opened / closed or a coin in and out of a pocket to obscure the light.

Duration: Until dispelled

A flame, equivalent in brightness to a torch, springs forth from an object that you touch. The effect looks like a regular flame, but it creates no heat and doesn’t use oxygen. A continual flame can be covered or hidden but not smothered or quenched.

[nickl_2000]

Find someone to cast continual flame on something like a coin necklace or amulet. A locket can be opened / closed or a coin in and out of a pocket to obscure the light.

Duration: Until dispelled

A flame, equivalent in brightness to a torch, springs forth from an object that you touch. The effect looks like a regular flame, but it creates no heat and doesn’t use oxygen. A continual flame can be covered or hidden but not smothered or quenched.

Great idea! Thank you, I will have to save up the 100GP or so to get it cast, but I'm a Druid it's not like I will be spending money on all that much anyways.

[poolio]

Druids get produce flame as a cantrip, why not just take that? It counts as a light source after all.

[Rogozhin]

Do magic items count??

Gem of Brightness, Lantern of revealing, goggles of night, DRIFTGLOBE!!! I love driftglobe.

[Afrodactyl]

You could just go very mundane and make some torches out of sticks, animal fat and rags and get a flint and something to strike it with.

[nickl_2000]

Druids get produce flame as a cantrip, why not just take that? It counts as a light source after all.

I think I will but the range is only 10/10 on that spell.

And I was trying to avoid a torch as I can't carry that while wildshaped or will with two hands full

[Slipperychicken]

Make one of the casters carry a torch if they're not willing to spend a cantrip slot. It's not like they're using that extra hand anyway.

Also don't knock the healer feat. That thing saves you spell slots, and that's not to be underestimated.

[Sigreid]

If you use produce flame on the sorcerer's robes you aught to have light for a good 10-15 minutes.

[RSP]

Find someone to cast continual flame on something like a coin necklace or amulet. A locket can be opened / closed or a coin in and out of a pocket to obscure the light.

Duration: Until dispelled

A flame, equivalent in brightness to a torch, springs forth from an object that you touch. The effect looks like a regular flame, but it creates no heat and doesn’t use oxygen. A continual flame can be covered or hidden but not smothered or quenched.

Um putting a flaming coin in your pocket may result in severe burns and destruction of gear.

Also, not sure how carrying a coin or whatever is any different from carrying a lantern or torch. If your teammates are sacrificing a hand for one, why not the other? If they're not, the item will just meld when you shapeshifter regardless.

Side note: Continual Flame couldn't be cast on the inside of a locket to open and close: the item is the recipient of the flame, though you could construct a larger apparatus to cover something like the coin, but then you're essentially just using a bullseye lantern.

[The Shadowdove]

You cast it upon an object and it creates no heat. As per the spell description.

Also, you wouldn't cast it upon the locket itself. You'd cast it upon the item that is placed within the object. For example, pictures are commonly placed within lockets. As are dried flowers. There's no reason why a more permanent or durable item might not fit within a common locket.

An item can be taken off then picked up or worn when you shift. Or just left on the ground before shifting as if it were a torch.

Worn items don't require a free hand.

[RSP]

You cast it upon an object and it creates no heat. As per the spell description.

Also, you wouldn't cast it upon the locket itself. You'd cast it upon the item that is placed within the object. For example, pictures are commonly placed within lockets. As are dried flowers. There's no reason why a more permanent or durable item might not fit within a common locket.

An item can be taken off then picked up or worn when you shift. Or just left on the ground before shifting as if it were a torch.

Worn items don't require a free hand.

It would be a DMs call if "no heat" equals "doesn't ignite flammable objects."

Casting it on a paper within a locket would be interesting, but would still only provide light in a limited cone in front of you. The light provided by a torch would be much better.

[Mellack]

How do you ignite things without heating them?

Depending on how the object is held will alter the casting of light and shadow, but you can easily have several advantages. It does not nead a hand. It doesn't need to be replaced regularly. It can be easily shut off. Water doesn't negate it.
Some options I have seen, put it on a weapon such as a dagger. That lets a hand that has a weapon also have a light source and it can be sheathed for darkness.
Put it on an amulet. Light is in a 180+ degree arc to the front, no hands needed, easily put under clothes for darkness.
Put it on a coin at the bottom of a scroll tube=flashlight.
Helmet with detachable horns or spikes. Put it on the horns/spikes. Full range light and can be removed for cover. Slower to change than the other options.

[RSP]

You could be right and removing heat from a fire removes its ability to ignite other things, but as this is a property not found in real life (so far as I'm aware), it becomes very difficult to argue either way, hence the "DM's call."

I've always thought of the spell as keeping its ability to ignite stuff, like say a campfire, or a villain's fancy drapes; it gives the spell utility and a reason why it's called "Continual Flame" and not "Continual Light."

[nickl_2000]

It's always the DMs call, but the continual flame creates no heat and uses no oxygen. I always assumed it was more odds an illusion than a real flame. I know the school isn't illusion, but it made sense that way to me

[Potato_Priest]

How do you ignite things without heating them?

Depending on how the object is held will alter the casting of light and shadow, but you can easily have several advantages. It does not nead a hand. It doesn't need to be replaced regularly. It can be easily shut off. Water doesn't negate it.
Some options I have seen, put it on a weapon such as a dagger. That lets a hand that has a weapon also have a light source and it can be sheathed for darkness.
Put it on an amulet. Light is in a 180+ degree arc to the front, no hands needed, easily put under clothes for darkness.
Put it on a coin at the bottom of a scroll tube=flashlight.
Helmet with detachable horns or spikes. Put it on the horns/spikes. Full range light and can be removed for cover. Slower to change than the other options.

What we use for full 360 degree light and ease of changing is we cast it directly on the person's head and then have them wear a hat.

[Slipperychicken]

What we use for full 360 degree light and ease of changing is we cast it directly on the person's head and then have them wear a hat.

Might as well just go all the way and reinvent the headlamp: cast continual flame on a trinket, put it in a case with one glass side, put in a sliding opaque cover for the glass side, and tie said case to someone's head/helmet.

You could even make it a flashlight-like tube with convenient holes for tying it to stuff. All you'd need are points in craft(jewelry), metalworking, or something like that.

[RSP]

What we use for full 360 degree light and ease of changing is we cast it directly on the person's head and then have them wear a hat.

As much I like flaming heads, the target has to be an object. Though you could, of course, cast it on a smaller cap and cover it with a bigger hat/helmet.

[solidork]

On my Arcane Trickster, I had a mage hand carry a torch until I got my Goggles of Night.

I would make the following proposal to your DM if you want to try for the mage hand solution:
-Handwave the minutiae of maintaining the mage hand outside of combat so long as everyone limits their speed to 30ft per round.
-If you are ever moving faster than that (horses, dashing) then the hand gets left behind, though someone could probably take the torch from the hand pretty easily.
-Once you get into combat, everything works as normal. It's pretty unlikely that whoever is controlling the torch is going to use their action to move it.

Also, torches/lanterns still produce light if you put them on the ground. If I was the GM, I would let you set down a lantern as an item interaction.

[JellyPooga]

Do magic items count??

Gem of Brightness, Lantern of revealing, goggles of night, DRIFTGLOBE!!! I love driftglobe.

I'm going to second the Driftglobe. Definitely loving the Driftglobe. Bonus points if you make it yourself in the shape of a glass fairy to follow you around shedding light.

[MrStabby]

If your DM is accommodating see if he/she will allow you to research a summon glow-worms cantrip or something. Not only would this solve your light problem it would be a very druidy way of doing so.

[nickl_2000]

If your DM is accommodating see if he/she will allow you to research a summon glow-worms cantrip or something. Not only would this solve your light problem it would be a very druidy way of doing so.

Nice, I will throw it by him when I see him next. It would remove the produce flame cantrip and give me the ability to get a decent ranged damage cantrip for when I am in my caster form.

[Kirkdent]

As much I like flaming heads, the target has to be an object. Though you could, of course, cast it on a smaller cap and cover it with a bigger hat/helmet.

Does your campaign have toupees?

[nickl_2000]

Does your campaign have toupees?

In a different campaign with the same DM, we rode into battle on a Paladin's mount that had the Fly Spell cast on it with a Max duration metamagic from a sorceror. We did ranged battle with kobalds flying on giant bats at the same time. We also sneaked through a kobald's castle with muffled hoofs of the same Paladin's mount successfully. I'm pretty sure that toupees are within reason.