The Weird Potential of Purify Food and Drink

[No brains]

Time for a stupid fun thought experiment. Ponder this if you're a DM.

Ever stop to think about how weird Purify Food and drink can be? Under the right circumstances, anything is poison. Also different things are poisonous to different creatures. How does the spell define food, drink, poison, and disease? Furthermore, how can this be used in creative ways?

Let's start simple. What if I wanted to purify some liquor I was served? Worrying that a drink is poisoned is a decent fear and when it takes 10 minutes of saying grace to counteract, why not be safe? Any of the DMG or MM's poisons are removed from the drink, but what about the alcohol in the drink? Alcohol is an intoxicant, but it is rarely served in amounts that are immediately harmful on the level of 'real poisons'. That said, alcohol poisoning is a thing and even one addressed in D&D's 3rd edition book, The Arms and Equipment Guide. Is all alcohol purged from a drink? Is only harmful levels of alcohol purged from a drink? Would a glass of a strong drink be fine, but would a large jug of it vanish? What is the tipping point for a commonly picked poison to be considered harmful by the spell?

Taking that same idea to an extreme, what about water? Water intoxication is possible, so would Purify Food and Drink remove water if it was a sufficient volume to cause water poisoning? Could the spell destroy a 5-foot sphere of water if the caster was considering drinking it all at once, or is there no cure for that kind of stupid?

Now let's consider the gray area between creatures and food. If I want to eat a chicken, I would want it free of disease. If I attempt to purify a live chicken, am I casting a budget version of Lesser Restoration on it? Could a lizardfolk cleric cure their party with a 1st-level ritual? If I cast this spell on a live pufferfish, can I enjoy the ritziest sushi of all time? Could I even neutralize a wyvern's sting in a delirious haze of starvation?

Even dead creatures invite weirdness with the vague status of food. If I find a rotting carcass, can I purify it into rare steak? How long would it take for decay to resume now that the toxic chemicals and harmful microorganisms have been purged from the meat? What is the line between a toxic substance and one that is just inedible? Soil is heavily decayed organisms, so if I were really hungry, could I get a meal out of purifying some dirt? It's not even like all minerals are inedible. I could probably get some table salt by purifying some sand from a beach.

Also consider what happens to the poison. Is it annihilated? Broken down into non-toxic substances? Removed wholly from the food in a still-toxic state? All this could be important for determining if food was actually poisoned, distilling alcohol for mixing a more potent drink, or even punishing a player that would try a fringe case by disintegrating their disgusting, desperate meal.

Finally, what is considered poison? Are we looking down a Toxic Rick rabbit hole of subjectively unhealthy things? Would a dwarf's purification of liquor remove less alcohol than a kobold's casting? Is the spell tuned only to a bog-standard human's nutritional needs? Does that mean that purified chocolate would still be bad for a dog companion? What are we looking at here?

I've heard people talking about nerfing Goodberry in their games and if that seems bad, then 'potential infinite dirt buffet' is worth thinking about too. Considering this spell can be used to either reward a lateral-thinking player with the nectar of not-exhaustion, or punish them by denying them their conniving cheese. It is a decision that should be balanced like a complete breakfast.

But maybe I should stop playing with my food and eat already.

[Ganymede]

And what about teleportation!? If I attempt to teleport, is location determined relative to the planet we're on, the solar system we're in, or relative to the galactic center!? Will teleporting to that tavern I visited last week result in me dying in the cold void of space!?

[No brains]

And what about teleportation!? If I attempt to teleport, is location determined relative to the planet we're on, the solar system we're in, or relative to the galactic center!? Will teleporting to that tavern I visited last week result in me dying in the cold void of space!?

Stuff like that does get me nervous, especially with Glyph of Warding. One sane constraint is if I wanna put a trap on my ship: is the ship a map that has its own squares or is it an object that moves on a map?

For right now though, I'm suspicious of that broccoli over there...

[JoeJ]

To start with, it helps if you assume that modern ideas of chemistry and biology are completely irrelevant.

The spell only works on actual food and drink, not other substances, and it doesn't make them more nutritious than they already were. It doesn't remove everything that is in any way unhealthy, only poison and disease. How does it know what is food or drink and what is poison or disease? Simple: the food or drink is the part that's supposed to be there. That is, the cosmos has a natural order in which food is neither poisoned nor diseased, and the spell restores that.

[Asmotherion]

Starting this conversation in-game with a cleric is some decent Wizard RP. Other than that, any DM will tell you to let them improvise that stuff, and will probably end up on the less "but there is this little backdoor in the rulings" version, unless your proposal might give a more interesting narative that can still sound plausible.

A too far fetched explaination makes magic too unstable, and unless your group enjoys this kind of trope it could backfire anytime;

[sithlordnergal]

Personally, I'd just say it gets rid of the alcohol without doing any of the other nutty stuff. Likewise, anything immune to poison is also immune to alcohol. Meaning never get into a drinking contest with a Yuan-Ti. They can, and will, drink more then you.

[Unoriginal]

5e shies away groom that kind of "find the loophole" reasoning for a reason.

The spell make what it is cast on harmless to eat or drink, that's it. You could rule out you can't get drunk on alcohol that has been purified like that, or you can just say that it removes poison up to a quantity that's not dangerous.

[JoeJ]

5e shies away groom that kind of "find the loophole" reasoning for a reason.

The spell make what it is cast on harmless to eat or drink, that's it. You could rule out you can't get drunk on alcohol that has been purified like that, or you can just say that it removes poison up to a quantity that's not dangerous.

Or that it doesn't remove alcohol at all, since alcohol does not do poison damage, nor does it impose the poisoned condition.

[Unoriginal]

Or that it doesn't remove alcohol at all, since alcohol does not do poison damage, nor does it impose the poisoned condition.

*shrug* There is no rules about being drunk, this edition, so if a DM wants to make it so that an excess of alcohol is treated as poison, it's their call.

In any case, nothing about the spell makes it remove the alcohol of a drink, as written. So any other effect is tHe DM deciding it.

[JackPhoenix]

Or that it doesn't remove alcohol at all, since alcohol does not do poison damage, nor does it impose the poisoned condition.

Being really smashed *does* sounds like having poisoned condition, though... or few levels of exhaustion.

[Bohandas]

Is it still a cleric spell in 5e? I'd say it depends on your god. The alcohol obviously wouldn't be removed if you follow a god of rogues and just as obviously would be if you follow a god of srs bsns

EDIT:
Oh, and I couldn't help but think of this video


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I#t=02m24s

[nickl_2000]

Being really smashed *does* sounds like having poisoned condition, though... or few levels of exhaustion.

In my college days I saw plenty of people who were smashed from drinking way to much. They looked pretty much exactly the way someone looks when suffering from food poisoning...

[othaero]

What if your character has celiac disease and casts it on a piece of bread? Would the bread disappear?

[No brains]

Starting this conversation in-game with a cleric is some decent Wizard RP. Other than that, any DM will tell you to let them improvise that stuff, and will probably end up on the less "but there is this little backdoor in the rulings" version, unless your proposal might give a more interesting narative that can still sound plausible.

A too far fetched explaination makes magic too unstable, and unless your group enjoys this kind of trope it could backfire anytime;

It's a good point to bring up that a Wizard or Arcana/ Knowledge Cleric would have reason to ponder this IC. It could make for some fun character interactions in a game where there's a zeitgeist of people trying to understand what magic does to their world.


Is it still a cleric spell in 5e? I'd say it depends on your god. The alcohol obviously wouldn't be removed if you follow a god of rogues and just as obviously would be if you follow a god of srs bsns

EDIT:
Oh, and I couldn't help but think of this video


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xs1WLIer1I#t=02m24s

Bear Grylls' favorite spell! So that's how he eats all those maggots!


Being really smashed *does* sounds like having poisoned condition, though... or few levels of exhaustion.


In my college days I saw plenty of people who were smashed from drinking way to much. They looked pretty much exactly the way someone looks when suffering from food poisoning...

This is the thing that got me really curious because of the 'if it makes sense as a condition, it is a condition' rule, i.e. sleep imposing the unconscious condition even though the book does not outright say that. There's some stuff in the DMG that gets into diluted poisons that really got my head turning.


What if your character has celiac disease and casts it on a piece of bread? Would the bread disappear?

If a lizardfolk casts purify food and drink on the person with celiac disease, they're cured!

Maybe it would just remove the gluten. Maybe that's why people talk about being 'gluten free' for ten minutes at a time! We are in a world of magic! *crinkles tin foil hat* Though one thing I've learned from Binging with Babbish is that using vodka in baking can prevent gluten from forming. Depending on when in the process of preparation you cast the spell, you may literally have to pick your poison.

[Monster Manuel]

If a lizardfolk casts purify food and drink on the person with celiac disease, they're cured!



They wouldn't be, though, because the Celiac's disease of the person the lizardfolk might eat is not toxic in any way to the lizardfolk. Casting Purify on a jar of salsa would not remove the cilantro, despite my personal opinion of cilantro.

I think that's why the spell can't be subjective. It has no effect on anything that is not yet food or drink, regardless of whether that thing could be turned into food or drink at a later point in time. And it removes certain objective impurities from the food or drink, regardless of their direct impact on the caster. Purify Food and Drink cast on a moldy piece of bread removes the mold and the weevils, but not the gluten, because mold and weevils are impurities added to the bread, and the gluten is just the bread. The caster, if they suffer from Celeiac's, could purify the bread and eat it and still get sick. At least, that's how I'd rule it.

Where I find the spell to be super-useful? On sailing ships. This, combined with Prestidigitation to improve flavor, means that a minimally-talented magical quartermaster could keep a crew perfectly happy on the nastiest mush of gruel and seaweed, since they can purify it when it rots, and make it taste like filet mignon or lobster bisque. Not long term (scurvy and etc), but long enough to get them to port.

[JoeJ]

*shrug* There is no rules about being drunk, this edition, so if a DM wants to make it so that an excess of alcohol is treated as poison, it's their call.

In any case, nothing about the spell makes it remove the alcohol of a drink, as written. So any other effect is tHe DM deciding it.

I think I'd allow it to remove the alcohol from rotting fruit, but not from an alcoholic beverage. If it's supposed to be part of the food or drink, it doesn't get removed.

[Lombra]

My useless take on a useless argument (no offense):

Purify food and water and similar spells do not directly affect what they refer to. Instead, they make sure that whoever consumes that substance won't suffer poisonous effects from it. You're removing nothing from the substance, it just can't harm whoever assimilates it.

Because magic, yes.

[jas61292]

While generally a spell you think of as using to protect yourself, it is also a big hindrance to those who actually want to use non combat poison. Its hard to assassinate the duke when he is always having his drinks purified.

So, with that in mind, I have a question, especially for those who say it only works on things that are obviously food and drink. Clearly, if I give someone a mug of beer spiked with poison, the spell will eliminate the poison. But what if I just give him a mug of straight up poison. Maybe flavored with prestidigitation. Would purify food and drink neutralize the poison, or would it fail, as there is nothing there to purify?

[JoeJ]

While generally a spell you think of as using to protect yourself, it is also a big hindrance to those who actually want to use non combat poison. Its hard to assassinate the duke when he is always having his drinks purified.

So, with that in mind, I have a question, especially for those who say it only works on things that are obviously food and drink. Clearly, if I give someone a mug of beer spiked with poison, the spell will eliminate the poison. But what if I just give him a mug of straight up poison. Maybe flavored with prestidigitation. Would purify food and drink neutralize the poison, or would it fail, as there is nothing there to purify?

Yep. If it's just poison, then there's nothing for the spell to purify.

[No brains]

They wouldn't be, though, because the Celiac's disease of the person the lizardfolk might eat is not toxic in any way to the lizardfolk. Casting Purify on a jar of salsa would not remove the cilantro, despite my personal opinion of cilantro.

I think that's why the spell can't be subjective. It has no effect on anything that is not yet food or drink, regardless of whether that thing could be turned into food or drink at a later point in time. And it removes certain objective impurities from the food or drink, regardless of their direct impact on the caster. Purify Food and Drink cast on a moldy piece of bread removes the mold and the weevils, but not the gluten, because mold and weevils are impurities added to the bread, and the gluten is just the bread. The caster, if they suffer from Celeiac's, could purify the bread and eat it and still get sick. At least, that's how I'd rule it.

Where I find the spell to be super-useful? On sailing ships. This, combined with Prestidigitation to improve flavor, means that a minimally-talented magical quartermaster could keep a crew perfectly happy on the nastiest mush of gruel and seaweed, since they can purify it when it rots, and make it taste like filet mignon or lobster bisque. Not long term (scurvy and etc), but long enough to get them to port.

While the 'renders food harmless to eat' interpretation is sensible and useful (let's take a break from that logic noise), that's not the RAW of the spell. The spell says the food is rendered free of poison and disease. By this wording, it doesn't matter if the disease would affect the eater or the food, any disease is removed from the food. Taken by RAW, a lizardfolk could heal the disease of any humanoid that could cram itself into a 5' sphere.

Again, your interpretation is useful because it helps fulfill the intent of the spell. The spell should be used to make food safe to eat and not encourage lizard people's factory farming.


My useless take on a useless argument (no offense):

Purify food and water and similar spells do not directly affect what they refer to. Instead, they make sure that whoever consumes that substance won't suffer poisonous effects from it. You're removing nothing from the substance, it just can't harm whoever assimilates it.

Because magic, yes.

It is interesting that your take is antithetical to the 'removes what's not supposed to be there' interpretation. Would this interpretation make a gallon of wyvern venom into viable food? Venom is just protein, which can be digested. Technically some venom on Earth is drinkable since regular digestion dissolves the harmful parts of the substance. Though I suppose that if I cast your version of the spell on a refreshing glass of mercury, I would just end up passing it without it becoming part of my body, since it can't in any useful way.


While generally a spell you think of as using to protect yourself, it is also a big hindrance to those who actually want to use non combat poison. Its hard to assassinate the duke when he is always having his drinks purified.

So, with that in mind, I have a question, especially for those who say it only works on things that are obviously food and drink. Clearly, if I give someone a mug of beer spiked with poison, the spell will eliminate the poison. But what if I just give him a mug of straight up poison. Maybe flavored with prestidigitation. Would purify food and drink neutralize the poison, or would it fail, as there is nothing there to purify?

I like this angle.

Though there is the hurdle of establishing 'intent of food'. If someone intends to drink a mug of something, does that make it 'drink'? Gunpowder isn't very useful to drink, but Blackbeard did it anyway. If someone regularly engages in poison drinking contests, it would still be 'drink' that would be 'rendered free of poison'. Diet soda isn't really useful to a person's body in any way, making it dubiously count as 'drink', but people happily drink it anyway. Who picks the poison? This is a battleground of RAW vs RAI.

Another point, if one were to purify a poison, would that actually make the poison more potent since it would remove inactive impurities? Is it possible to purify that useless water out of my poison? Could I concentrate poison by purifying with the version of the spell that removes stuff that isn't supposed to be in something?

[Lunali]

It's a good point to bring up that a Wizard or Arcana/ Knowledge Cleric would have reason to ponder this IC. It could make for some fun character interactions in a game where there's a zeitgeist of people trying to understand what magic does to their world.

An interesting side effect of this could be that as people start to wonder about stuff like this, the effect of the spell could start to change. A lot of magic seems to work the way people expect, if expectations change it's possible the magic itself could change as well. The PCs could accidentally start the apocalypse by asking too many people about these things.

[JoeJ]

Another point, if one were to purify a poison, would that actually make the poison more potent since it would remove inactive impurities? Is it possible to purify that useless water out of my poison? Could I concentrate poison by purifying with the version of the spell that removes stuff that isn't supposed to be in something?

The spell doesn't purify poison, only food and drink. If cast on just poison it would have no effect.

[No brains]

An interesting side effect of this could be that as people start to wonder about stuff like this, the effect of the spell could start to change. A lot of magic seems to work the way people expect, if expectations change it's possible the magic itself could change as well. The PCs could accidentally start the apocalypse by asking too many people about these things.

I like this very much. :smallsmile:


The spell doesn't purify poison, only food and drink. If cast on just poison it would have no effect.

Some poisons are potable. Supposedly some snakes' venom can be broken down if ingested. Do not try this at home. Not to mention that venomous creatures can likely withstand eating their own venom. Though this loops back into pondering harmful dosages and some things counting as poison if they are merely in the wrong biological place.

Then again, casting purify food and drink on rattlesnake venom might just make a gross inert protein shake.

[JoeJ]

Some poisons are potable. Supposedly some snakes' venom can be broken down if ingested. Do not try this at home. Not to mention that venomous creatures can likely withstand eating their own venom. Though this loops back into pondering harmful dosages and some things counting as poison if they are merely in the wrong biological place.

Then again, casting purify food and drink on rattlesnake venom might just make a gross inert protein shake.

But a poison that doesn't hurt you if you swallow it is still not food. The phrase "food and drink" refers to the kinds of things you have at mealtime, not just anything nontoxic that you put into your mouth. The category boundary may be a little fuzzy, but not fuzzy enough to include snake venom. (As I said upthread, it's a lot easier to understand how spells work if you assume that modern science is not in any way relevant.)

[MeeposFire]

An interesting side effect of this could be that as people start to wonder about stuff like this, the effect of the spell could start to change. A lot of magic seems to work the way people expect, if expectations change it's possible the magic itself could change as well. The PCs could accidentally start the apocalypse by asking too many people about these things.

How very Planescape.

[Bohandas]

But a poison that doesn't hurt you if you swallow it is still not food. The phrase "food and drink" refers to the kinds of things you have at mealtime, not just anything nontoxic that you put into your mouth. The category boundary may be a little fuzzy, but not fuzzy enough to include snake venom. (As I said upthread, it's a lot easier to understand how spells work if you assume that modern science is not in any way relevant.)

But what if the person is a hipster or a rich weirdo or something? Or both? Who knows what they might have at meal time? They might mostly eat the kind of weird, questionably food things that people describe as "delicacies". Things like rotten cheese with maggots growing in it and drinks brewed from civet dung. Those are both real things and i could definitely see the kind of person that eats them also eating snake venom intentionally.

[JoeJ]

But what if the person is a hipster or a rich weirdo or something? Or both? Who knows what they might have at meal time? They might mostly eat the kind of weird, questionably food things that people describe as "delicacies". Things like rotten cheese with maggots growing in it and drinks brewed from civet dung. Those are both real things and i could definitely see the kind of person that eats them also eating snake venom intentionally.

Maggots, cat-poop coffee, Tide pods, and other weird things that hipsters (or stupid teenagers) eat absolutely do not qualify as food.

[Asmotherion]

Maggots, cat-poop coffee, Tide pods, and other weird things that hipsters (or stupid teenagers) eat absolutely do not qualify as food.
That's seriously a thing? I thought my friend who mentioned it was either trolling me or understood wrong and it was used as fertiliser or something XD

Anyway, my most easy DMing on the spell is to "render the food or beverage in a safe to consume state, that will not bring direct (non magical) harm to the consumer"

Any bacteria would die, any worms and insects would be repeled out, and it's Ph would return to normal. Magical poisons, curses and the like would not be dispeled.

Any effects the original food was intended to do, would happen as appropriate, unless the intention behind the spell was otherwise stated, in which case I'd add a Spellcasting Check for the further effect (that's a house rule I like to use when someone wants to slightly alter the effects of a spell).

[nickl_2000]

That's seriously a thing? I thought my friend who mentioned it was either trolling me or understood wrong and it was used as fertiliser or something XD


Sadly yes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

[No brains]

Maggots, cat-poop coffee, Tide pods, and other weird things that hipsters (or stupid teenagers) eat absolutely do not qualify as food.

Says you and the "European Union food hygiene-health regulations". It's not just hipsters or teenagers at work here, people are fighting for the cultural legacy of eye-biting maggot-filled cheese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_marzu
Since the maggots can survive in a person's body, they likely count as disease in the same way other parasites do. I GUESS the maggot-free cheese would be left behind though since there's nothing written about the health hazards of the cheese itself...


That's seriously a thing? I thought my friend who mentioned it was either trolling me or understood wrong and it was used as fertiliser or something XD

Anyway, my most easy DMing on the spell is to "render the food or beverage in a safe to consume state, that will not bring direct (non magical) harm to the consumer"

Any bacteria would die, any worms and insects would be repeled out, and it's Ph would return to normal. Magical poisons, curses and the like would not be dispeled.

Any effects the original food was intended to do, would happen as appropriate, unless the intention behind the spell was otherwise stated, in which case I'd add a Spellcasting Check for the further effect (that's a house rule I like to use when someone wants to slightly alter the effects of a spell).

What would happen to yoghurt that is purified? The bacteria in that is sometimes considered beneficial.

[JoeJ]

What would happen to yoghurt that is purified? The bacteria in that is sometimes considered beneficial.

What is this "bacteria" you speak of?

[TG Cid]

Or purify food and drink is you blasting the f out of the food and water with radiation.

Its purified but not as good for you as it could be. If you want to split hairs then that's your problem, just take the freaking Potassium iodide.

[LordEntrails]

It's a divine spell right? Therefore the power comes form a deity. A deity that must grant the power/spell, at least on a subconscious level. So, you can easily reason that their is an intelligent being that decides, based upon their view/opinion what is food, water and what is or isn't needing to be "purified".

[JoeJ]

It's a divine spell right? Therefore the power comes form a deity. A deity that must grant the power/spell, at least on a subconscious level. So, you can easily reason that their is an intelligent being that decides, based upon their view/opinion what is food, water and what is or isn't needing to be "purified".

There's no division between divine and arcane magic in this version. However, I generally treat all magic as working through symbols and meaning rather than anything resembling scientific principles.

[Asmotherion]

Says you and the "European Union food hygiene-health regulations". It's not just hipsters or teenagers at work here, people are fighting for the cultural legacy of eye-biting maggot-filled cheese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_marzu
Since the maggots can survive in a person's body, they likely count as disease in the same way other parasites do. I GUESS the maggot-free cheese would be left behind though since there's nothing written about the health hazards of the cheese itself...



What would happen to yoghurt that is purified? The bacteria in that is sometimes considered beneficial.
Well, you're left with bacteria-free yogurt I supose. It wouldn't affect you dramatically the first time you consume it, but if whole generations of a certain species only ate purified food, it might affect their metabolism and create a subspecies with +2 Wis (as a lot would turn to religion to be able to cast the spell in the frist place, and those with the ability to cast the spell will be valued more in that theoretical society), the spell itself as a Racial Spell (a foundation stone of the society, taught at an early age), and -2 Con (as they would have a rather frail imune system, since nobody would actually have been exposed to a lot of bacteria during their lifetime, and neither their ancestors).

It's small stuff like that, that actually created most subraces, the way I see it (in my personal setting).

[Fire Tarrasque]

I'd personally assume that a Poison is what the caster considers is a poison or toxin, or in the case of a Cleric, what their deity considers it. If something is beneficial, then it's not poison.
And as for the radiation idea, then the food might be irradiated.
What does it do to radiation anyway?

[No brains]

And as for the radiation idea, then the food might be irradiated.
What does it do to radiation anyway?

Radiation is the effect of the Sickening Radiance spell. Also radiation can warm food, potentially sterilizing it, as in a microwave. Though occasionally microwaves may create pertyons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton_(astronomy)). Nuke food at your own peril.