What are some clever usages of prestigitation?

[CrackedChair]

So prestigitation is a cantrip with a slew of effects that can be used for utility, such as cleaning or soiling, or flavoring things.

I wanted to know, what would be clever uses of this cantrip? I'd love to make use of this cantrip for more than just simple things.

[nickl_2000]

Cleaning the dirty window of the warehouse your are trying to scout
Cleaning/Dirtying you clothing so that you fit in better in social situations/disguise
Heating up the Barbarian's ale to cause them to rage
Cooling down the Barbarian's ale to prevent them from raging
Create an odd odor, musical note, whatever that grabs the attention of a guard to get them down a dark ally
Putting a mark on a person so that you allies know who to kill
Make trinkets for kids to play with to calm them down

[Renduaz]

Arcane Chef - As much as WOTC attempted to prevent most of their spells from potentially allowing a magic user to break a campaign's economy or accumulate stacks of gold effortlessly ( There are actually a few ways to do this, but this one is notable for being just the most basic cantrip ), I think they've missed the financial implications of Prestidigitation's "flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material for up to 1 hour ( And it's not as if you couldn't just instantly recast it before 1 hour has even passed or immediately after )", with seemingly no boundary on the flavor you can create. With this you could take the cheapest wine or ale, change it's flavor to that of the most expensive wine or ale in the world, and sell cups of it in some mini-bar or stall to pretty much everyone who can't afford the latter, for a much reduced price, yet higher than what you paid for the cheap wine or ale. You could do what everyone in our own society would become a billionaire if he successfully managed to through science - replicate the perfect taste of sweets, sugar or other unhealthy foods in an healthy food. It doesn't even have to be illegitimate, you can straight up inform buyers that you're selling Prestidigitation-altered ordinary wine which will still taste perfectly like the finest vintages or healthy foods which taste perfectly like the most lavish desserts or sweets. Still going to be highly enjoyable within the hour when it will long pass down to their stomach. You might lose a bit of the prestige value on things like beer, wine and other drinks, but various peasants and workers or even the higher class will still be willing to pay extra ( Yet nowhere near the full price ) for what is essentially the same taste, , much as it happens in our world with either clothes or foods and so forth. And when it comes to replicating the taste of unhealthy foods in healthy ones, it won't matter. Not to mention turning every meal into the most delicious ever.


The Delegate of All - Prestidigitation effects last for 1 hour and you can have up to 3 effects at the same time. A combination of creating a nonmagical trinket that can fit in your hand along with making a small mark or symbol appear on an object surface is prone to being used to recreate any kind of badge, token, signed note, seal and so forth that you can think of showing to someone. Flash it briefly though, because it will only last for 6 seconds or so. For notes or perfect signatures and seals on papers and letters and the like though you can use the 1 hour feature instead of the nonmagical trinket. Best part about using Prestidigitation for that? It's Transmutation and actually creates what it says, so anything which reveals illusions wouldn't show anything. Detect Magic would though.

Food Poisoning - This one can actually kill creatures without even using poison, or creatures who have immunity to poison. Take any non-consumable liquid or chemical which looks like water or a brew or that giant's ale, change it's flavor to that, and someone is going to gulp down a whole battle of toxic material, use in combination with Shape Water to even give it the same color if need be, plant where you want or replace the creature's drink, and watch as it gulps down a whole ****ing jug of pure poison or Mercury ( If brew/sauce/something has similar texture ) or God knows what without ever noticing it. Until he's dead, that is.

The Mop-Up - Clean up blood from yourself or another creature after killing it if you don't want evidence of how it were killed and you dealt the final blow subtly.

[Coffee_Dragon]

A rare clever use of Prestidigitation is to realize it's a flavour cantrip and keep it as such.

[nickl_2000]

A rare clever use of Prestidigitation is to realize it's a flavour cantrip and keep it as such.

This would be super effective at hiding poisons

[strangebloke]

Arcane Chef sheer genius.

And people said that flavor text wasn't meaningful!

[Unoriginal]

The Food Poisoning thing doesn't work against creatures that are immune to poison. Not to mention most creature would notice if they were drinking giant ale/mercury/other non-subtle toxic things, even with a disguised taste and appearance, simply for the distinctive texture or the effects already starting in their mouth (for exemple, it it was acid-like, alcoholic enough to or with the texture of mercury).

On the other hand, it's true that it can be used to hide more subtle poisons

[strangebloke]

Yeah, the 'flavor' has me thinking. 'Spicy/hot' corresponds not to things you can taste, but to things to can feel. The 'hot' flavor comes from actual chemical burns that you receive on your tongue. now, normally, these burns are quite mild.

But then, there is hot foot and then there is hot food.

The carolina reaper is a fine example, but any ultra-hot pepper would serve. You 'flavor' a pile of sand with obscene ghost pepper flavor and throw it in the enemy's eyes!

I guess most DMs would probably not allow that.

[Renduaz]

The Food Poisoning thing doesn't work against creatures that are immune to poison. Not to mention most creature would notice if they were drinking giant ale/mercury/other non-subtle toxic things, even with a disguised taste and appearance, simply for the distinctive texture or the effects already starting in their mouth (for exemple, it it was acid-like, alcoholic enough to or with the texture of mercury).

On the other hand, it's true that it can be used to hide more subtle poisons

As I've explained, it works if it's a liquid or material which isn't really poison but isn't meant to be edible without some serious health issues, and I added mercury as a single example, noting it would need to be replaced with something like a sauce or with the same texture. Plenty of toxic chemicals with the same texture as water. Bleach ( Known for millenia ), you could mix in industrial amounts of salt dissolved in liquid, not enough to change the texture, but with Shape Water's opaqueness adjustment and color adjustment, enough to mask it's presence, then masking the flavor with Prestidigitation, to cause some serious trouble for a Human at least. You could annoy or even neutralize creatures by slipping them potions of Invisibility or Gaseous Form, or Philter of Love, no saving throw or ability to resist whatsoever, and the effects would be instant too.

[Naanomi]

Our necromancer uses it to clean all the meat off of the bones of his skeletons so they don't stink

[Rusvul]

The usefulness of Prestidigitation as a flavoring tool varies significantly based on how you interpret it. If your DM allows it to completely rewrite something's flavor (this jelly now tastes like mustard) it is substantially more useful than if it can only add flavors (this jelly now tastes like jelly mixed with mustard). The way it's written is a little vague, but I think the second interpretation makes more sense. (I would speculate it's also closer to RAI.)

That's not to say you couldn't still use it to great effect - it could take a poison already designed to be subtle and make it nigh-undetectable, or perhaps you could hide some harmful chemicals by adding the overpowering taste of limeade. Your ability to conceal things like a strong vinegary taste or high alcohol content would be limited, though. (Oddly enough, I don't know what bleach or mercury taste like, so I have no clue if you could make a believable bleach-limeade cocktail.)

[Arcangel4774]

Used in conjunction with minor illusion allows for your illusion to smell. I.e. nobodies going to buy it if a zombie /doesn't/ stink

[tieren]

I was in an aquatic adventure with another PC who was big into cartography and would regularly use the cantrip to highlight parts of the map they were discussing or "zoom in" to a particular area. Was very flavorful.

[Klorox]

I love threads like these. 😊

[Renduaz]

The usefulness of Prestidigitation as a flavoring tool varies significantly based on how you interpret it. If your DM allows it to completely rewrite something's flavor (this jelly now tastes like mustard) it is substantially more useful than if it can only add flavors (this jelly now tastes like jelly mixed with mustard). The way it's written is a little vague, but I think the second interpretation makes more sense. (I would speculate it's also closer to RAI.)

That's not to say you couldn't still use it to great effect - it could take a poison already designed to be subtle and make it nigh-undetectable, or perhaps you could hide some harmful chemicals by adding the overpowering taste of limeade. Your ability to conceal things like a strong vinegary taste or high alcohol content would be limited, though. (Oddly enough, I don't know what bleach or mercury taste like, so I have no clue if you could make a believable bleach-limeade cocktail.)

I disagree, I think the first interpretation makes the most sense. "You chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material" - You flavor the very material, all of it, literally every fiber of it's existence ( Within 1 cubic foot, which isn't even just surface, it's everything ). So I take an orange, I flavor it to taste like an apple. Where does the orange's "flavor" comes from? Magic? Nope, it comes from the material which the orange is made of, it's chemical composition. And I just flavored every single tiny unit of material in that orange as "apple". There is nothing left of the original. Where would the orange flavor come from? It can't be somehow "both", since that would actually 1. Add more material to the material, even if it's at the microscopic level, in order to induce two flavors, which is something the spell doesn't do, instead of just transmuting pre-existing material to magically exude a different flavor and 2. It would also need to create some extremely bizarre, possibly even physically impossible "perfect hybrid" between an apple and orange, somehow giving off both tastes at once to whoever is eating it, which also seems extremely dubious. Lastly, once again keeping in mind that the spell targets everything in the material, including at the smallest level, while you're thinking about "mixing" at a cooking level, it would violate the wording of the spell. If I choose to flavor the 1 cubic foot material ( By definition of "material", everything about it ) of jelly as mustard, then "Jelly+Mustard" would be a different taste than what I asked for.

It doesn't matter that it's Jelly, it doesn't matter what it was before. "Flavor 1 cubic foot of material" means the material at every level now acquires the flavor, and there's no trace of the jelly's former flavor granted by it's chemical composition left. It's chemical composition now magically tastes like mustard.

[Arcangel4774]

(Oddly enough, I don't know what bleach or mercury taste like, so I have no clue if you could make a believable bleach-limeade cocktail.)

Bleach tastes like chlorine (most pool water), but stronger. At lower concentrations Gatorade will cover up the flavor quite well, although this may be in part due to its high sodium content causing the chlorine and sodium to make salt.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I disagree, I think the first interpretation makes the most sense. "You chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material" - You flavor the very material, all of it, literally every fiber of it's existence ( Within 1 cubic foot, which isn't even just surface, it's everything ). So I take an orange, I flavor it to taste like an apple. Where does the orange's "flavor" comes from? Magic? Nope, it comes from the material which the orange is made of, it's chemical composition. And I just flavored every single tiny unit of material in that orange as "apple". There is nothing left of the original. Where would the orange flavor come from? It can't be somehow "both", since that would actually 1. Add more material to the material, even if it's at the microscopic level, in order to induce two flavors, which is something the spell doesn't do, instead of just transmuting pre-existing material to magically exude a different flavor and 2. It would also need to create some extremely bizarre, possibly even physically impossible "perfect hybrid" between an apple and orange, somehow giving off both tastes at once to whoever is eating it, which also seems extremely dubious. Lastly, once again keeping in mind that the spell targets everything in the material, including at the smallest level, while you're thinking about "mixing" at a cooking level, it would violate the wording of the spell. If I choose to flavor the 1 cubic foot material ( By definition of "material", everything about it ) of jelly as mustard, then "Jelly+Mustard" would be a different taste than what I asked for.

It doesn't matter that it's Jelly, it doesn't matter what it was before. "Flavor 1 cubic foot of material" means the material at every level now acquires the flavor, and there's no trace of the jelly's former flavor granted by it's chemical composition left. It's chemical composition now magically tastes like mustard.

That's a nice interpretation of how it would work scientifically. You can also reconstruct a person exactly as they were at the time of death via disintegration so I think it's safe to say that trying to explain the effects of magic scientifically isn't really a proper argument. All that said, I do agree with your interpretation that whatever you cast on it would have it's flavour replaced rather than added. My reasoning is that the ability to flavor it is bundled within the ability to heat or cool something. Something cannot be hot and cold so it stands to reason that if you give it flavor B, flavor A is gone for the duration.

Much more fun to use your own discretion as a DM and make sure that blatant and unrealistic (even in a magical world abuse) such as flavoring a jug of mercury as OJ expecting the whole mug to be downed is vetoed while creative uses like making a cheap bottle of wine taste expensive and refined are rewarded for being clever (until the player inevitably uses it to cheat the economy)

"Because Magic" is a valid excuse in DnD.

[Renduaz]

That's a nice interpretation of how it would work scientifically. You can also reconstruct a person exactly as they were at the time of death via disintegration so I think it's safe to say that trying to explain the effects of magic scientifically isn't really a proper argument. All that said, I do agree with your interpretation that whatever you cast on it would have it's flavour replaced rather than added. My reasoning is that the ability to flavor it is bundled within the ability to heat or cool something. Something cannot be hot and cold so it stands to reason that if you give it flavor B, flavor A is gone for the duration.

Much more fun to use your own discretion as a DM and make sure that blatant and unrealistic (even in a magical world abuse) such as flavoring a jug of mercury as OJ expecting the whole mug to be downed is vetoed while creative uses like making a cheap bottle of wine taste expensive and refined are rewarded for being clever (until the player inevitably uses it to cheat the economy)

"Because Magic" is a valid excuse in DnD.

I haven't described how magic works scientifically. I've described how material works scientifically. An orange is made of material, that material is responsible for it's flavor. Prestidigitation, the magical spell, explicitly flavors "1 cubic foot of material". All the material within that 1-cubic foot gets flavored, including the non-magical composition of the orange, therefore nothing can remain of the orange's original natural flavor. It's replaced with magical Prestidigitation flavor. The only exception is if your DM decides to rule that in his campaign physics, foods get their flavor from some extraplanar source or divine decree, which is changed through the Weave by the casting of Prestidigitation into a paradoxical blend of both apple and orange at once, in which case, sure.

[Waterdeep Merch]

If you do the classic prison escape adventure, you can use it to feign an illness easily. Make a bad biological smell, make your skin overly hot or cold (might need to use some cloths to achieve this if your DM's a stickler for fair targeting), and the guards are pretty likely to buy that you've come down with some terrible disease. Claim you got it from just being near to or touching something and watch the guards lose their minds.

[BigKaiju]

Rather than charming the local lord, you make it appear your rival has peed himself when speaking with the lord instead. Works on dungeon guards as well.

I've never had good luck with charisma rolls....

[Motorskills]

The illusion option allows you to alter letters on a page, such that the word "prestigitation" becomes "prestidigitation".

[BillyBobShorton]

A rare clever use of Prestidigitation is to realize it's a flavour cantrip
This is a game of imagination and creativity, yes? And a thread about using said creativity to have fun with a flexible cantrip. Ok. Just checking.

Many players like to use simple spells and abilities and test the limits. Pres. just so happens to be one of those powers with enough "flavour" to really push the imagination and be used less conventionally to potential great effect. Feeding a King a promised delicious meal but it's actually body parts of his mistress, revealed after he thoroughly enjoys it, or creating the smell of troglodyte emit from some jerk in a bar acting up, or soiling a guard's pants to sneak in somewhere... it's flavour by comparison to many damage and control spells, but as a freebee forever, it can help out and create some real entertaining and useful options for solving or making a situation.

Nothing wrong with going against the grain and experimenting.

[Arcangel4774]

A rare clever use of Prestidigitation is to realize it's a flavour cantrip and keep it as such.

Is this supposed to be funny. I.e. it literraly can add flavour?

[Findulidas]

I dont know if anyone has mentioned this yet but I used to warm myself (underclothes) when we were facing really harsh cold weather. You could potentially also use it to chill yourself in harsh hot conditions I guess. If you are playing lizardfolk and you DM likes to be annoying and give you coldblooded features while adventuring in the north (Ive seen this happen unfortunately) this can clearly help.

[Coffee_Dragon]

Is this supposed to be funny. I.e. it literraly can add flavour?

It was not meant to be funny, but nickl_2000 already caught on to the alternate interpretation.

[nickl_2000]

It was not meant to be funny, but nickl_2000 already caught on to the alternate interpretation.

You should have taken credit for the double entendre :)

[JAL_1138]

Create the odor of a rattlesnake right under a horse's nose, causing it to panic.

Did that once to an enemy riding near a cliff's edge. Failed an Animal Handling check and fell down the cliff.

DM allowance may vary.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I haven't described how magic works scientifically. I've described how material works scientifically. An orange is made of material, that material is responsible for it's flavor. Prestidigitation, the magical spell, explicitly flavors "1 cubic foot of material". All the material within that 1-cubic foot gets flavored, including the non-magical composition of the orange, therefore nothing can remain of the orange's original natural flavor. It's replaced with magical Prestidigitation flavor. The only exception is if your DM decides to rule that in his campaign physics, foods get their flavor from some extraplanar source or divine decree, which is changed through the Weave by the casting of Prestidigitation into a paradoxical blend of both apple and orange at once, in which case, sure.

What I was trying to say is that you simply can't explain this effect scientifically without creating one issue or another. It's magic, it just does what it says on the box. Whether you want to rule that it makes it taste like your chosen flavor in addition to it's previous flavor is one option, and whether it replaces the previous flavor for the duration of the spell is another. The specific reason (taking RAW) that your explanation of the latter doesn't work is because "flavor" does not also include other properties of the food such as toxicity or texture.

If this weren't the case then Purify Food and Drink would become useless instead of having its special niche uses.

I would also rule that it tastes only like the flavor you choose for the duration, just like you said you would, but your explanation doesn't work. Explaining it off in the way you did would add even more opportunity for abuse.

On topic, I found a nice idea while browsing Reddit to make parts of your clothing taste just AWFUL when you come into contact with an enemy trying to eat you. I'm not sure that it would stop them from trying, but it sure would make them upset.

[Sir cryosin]

I had a magic assassin rogue2 sorcerer4. I used prestidigitation to rot all the food supply in a military Fortress. When they would sent hunting party's out we would ambushed them and kill them. We played the wait game the fortress couldn't send out letters to call for reenforcement. So we wittled them down then the rest died of starvetion.

That was my most clever use of prestidigitation.

[Renduaz]

What I was trying to say is that you simply can't explain this effect scientifically without creating one issue or another. It's magic, it just does what it says on the box. Whether you want to rule that it makes it taste like your chosen flavor in addition to it's previous flavor is one option, and whether it replaces the previous flavor for the duration of the spell is another. The specific reason (taking RAW) that your explanation of the latter doesn't work is because "flavor" does not also include other properties of the food such as toxicity or texture.

If this weren't the case then Purify Food and Drink would become useless instead of having its special niche uses.

I would also rule that it tastes only like the flavor you choose for the duration, just like you said you would, but your explanation doesn't work. Explaining it off in the way you did would add even more opportunity for abuse.

On topic, I found a nice idea while browsing Reddit to make parts of your clothing taste just AWFUL when you come into contact with an enemy trying to eat you. I'm not sure that it would stop them from trying, but it sure would make them upset.

It does. It changes the flavor of 1 cubic foot of material. And if a material is what grants a food item it's flavor, then that material gets a new flavor because all of it gets flavored with the designated flavor. That's what it says in the box. If it created a paradoxical physically impossible blend of two flavors it WOULDN'T do what the magic says on the box. The material would have a different flavor than what I asked for, since the original material flavor hasn't been changed like the spells says it does.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say about toxicity or texture. Yes, the spell doesn't change the material's properties that grant a food it's toxicity or texture, only the flavor property.

[Grimmnist]

I had a player come to me before a one off session and he wanted to play a trickster character where he would mess with the other players. We worked it out so he could secretly cast illusions on them by correcting me on any of my descriptions as I was running the session and I would play along. He had a lot of fun telling me the barbarian's food tasted like feces.

[Zorku]

The Food Poisoning thing doesn't work against creatures that are immune to poison. Not to mention most creature would notice if they were drinking giant ale/mercury/other non-subtle toxic things, even with a disguised taste and appearance, simply for the distinctive texture or the effects already starting in their mouth (for exemple, it it was acid-like, alcoholic enough to or with the texture of mercury).

On the other hand, it's true that it can be used to hide more subtle poisons

What the hell does mercury feel like on your tongue?

...

Scientifically speaking it's non-reactive so it shouldn't have any flavor, and it's otherwise a smooth liquid. It's a little more than 10x as dense as water, so there's probably something about that you could pick up on if you were familiar with it, but anybody that's familiar with what mercury feels like on their tongue will already have absorbed a ton of that heavy metal in their lifetime anyway, so probably not anyone you still care to assassinate. If it's somebody's first drink of the night I could see them spitting it out and being skeptical, but if they're already sloshed it seems like a pretty easy material to swallow without much thought, especially if it also tastes sweet and alcoholic.

The bigger issue to me is that the toxicological profile for mercury shows that it's not readily absorbed by the body via means other than inhalation. You've got to get inorganic mercury into your blood before it oxidizes and accumulates in your kidneys and other organs, and it only gets there in high quantities through your lungs. If you drink the stuff less than 1/10000th of it is going to be absorbed so that it can enter your blood, and that's just not an effective poison. There will still technically be some nerve damage, but you're gonna have to get them to swallow more mercury than you can probably buy from the local apothecaries before they hit lethal doses.

*This runs counter to modern sensibilities, because the really fast acting mercury poisons we're used to are not inorganic mercury. That stuff is already oxidized. It still doesn't get absorbed through your skin terribly fast, unless you've got the scary situation of wearing latex gloves, where the mercury passes through the glove and is then pressed into a very thin patch with a lot of surface area, cause normally this stuff beads up so there's not much surface area. This is also the form you'll find mercury in within the infamous polar bear liver.

Any would be magical assassin is gonna want to find some way to sting their target an inject this stuff. If you somehow have the advanced chemistry knowledge to oxidize it beforehand then it will do a lot of organ damage quickly. If you do not oxidize it beforehand then their organs can clean up a good portion of the stuff, but won't ever get a chance to scrub the mercury that made it into the brain before it oxidized.


I disagree, I think the first interpretation makes the most sense. "You chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material" - You flavor the very material, all of it, literally every fiber of it's existence ( Within 1 cubic foot, which isn't even just surface, it's everything ). So I take an orange, I flavor it to taste like an apple. Where does the orange's "flavor" comes from? Magic? Nope, it comes from the material which the orange is made of, it's chemical composition. And I just flavored every single tiny unit of material in that orange as "apple". There is nothing left of the original. Where would the orange flavor come from? It can't be somehow "both", since that would actually 1. Add more material to the material, even if it's at the microscopic level, in order to induce two flavors, which is something the spell doesn't do, instead of just transmuting pre-existing material to magically exude a different flavor and 2. It would also need to create some extremely bizarre, possibly even physically impossible "perfect hybrid" between an apple and orange, somehow giving off both tastes at once to whoever is eating it, which also seems extremely dubious. Lastly, once again keeping in mind that the spell targets everything in the material, including at the smallest level, while you're thinking about "mixing" at a cooking level, it would violate the wording of the spell. If I choose to flavor the 1 cubic foot material ( By definition of "material", everything about it ) of jelly as mustard, then "Jelly+Mustard" would be a different taste than what I asked for.

It doesn't matter that it's Jelly, it doesn't matter what it was before. "Flavor 1 cubic foot of material" means the material at every level now acquires the flavor, and there's no trace of the jelly's former flavor granted by it's chemical composition left. It's chemical composition now magically tastes like mustard.

-

I haven't described how magic works scientifically. I've described how material works scientifically.
While I agree that "you flavor x" has a different meaning than "you add flavor to x," every time you bring up atoms and microscopic levels in these game systems you are barking up the wrong tree. A DM is under no obligation to have the materials in their game behave scientifically, but instead is under the obligation to have those materials behave under common (or uncommon) sense. There's a pretty good chance that we both know how useless common sense is for science, but it's really powerful for narrative and we're making stories so scientific descriptions can sod off.


A rare clever use of Prestidigitation is to realize it's a flavour cantrip and keep it as such.

How about some clever flavour then?

[scalyfreak]

How about some clever flavour then?

http://www.smarties.com/wp-content/themes/smarties/images/logo.png

[CursedRhubarb]

Using the warming or cooling ability on your clothes can help with travel in the snowy mountains, or scorching desert. Just have to recast each hour and smile while your friends shiver or sweat.

[UberN3wb]

A friend's trickster rogue exacted revenge on a noble and sabotaged critical negotiations at a council meeting by subtly soiling the noble's clothing, making him odorous, creating farting noises etc. Never before had I seen such immaturity be so productive (and amusing).

[Basement Cat]

In a world where toilet paper is sadly absent it's better than a bidet!

And when you're traveling in the forest or jungle you can use it rather than grabbing random leaves off some tree, vine or shrub to wipe yourself. Not only does this avoid incurring the wrath of Treants it provides a safeguard against a potentially nasty rash that would occur by accidentally using poison ivy or poison oak leafs. :smallbiggrin: