Water Walking + Shape Water

[elyktsorb]

Could you use this to fly technically? Since all you would have to do is cast Water Walking, spread the water out with Shape Water, and then stand on it, then use Shape Water to move yourself? Need to climb a wall? Ritual Cast Water Walking, Shape Water a platform, then elevator up. Interestingly enough both effects last an hour.

Or am I just missing something here?

[Crgaston]

Looks like you could get a move speed of 5 max? But otherwise, I don’t see why not.

[elyktsorb]

Well a round is like 6 seconds. An action fits within those 6 seconds, and the moving water effect is instantaneous, which you can do continuously with the cantrip, so I don't see any reason you couldn't just move it at will, outside of combat.

[hymer]

Even provided the DM allows you to move the water out of the water (if you see what I mean), the effect is instantaneous. So you move it five feet up, and then normality ensues, and it splashes back down. Approximately six seconds later you can move it up again.
If you work with someone else with the cantrip, maybe you can build a frozen stair with it (one lifts the water, the other freezes it), though that would depend on the DM's interpretation as well.

[elyktsorb]

Even provided the DM allows you to move the water out of the water (if you see what I mean), the effect is instantaneous. So you move it five feet up, and then normality ensues, and it splashes back down. Approximately six seconds later you can move it up again.
If you work with someone else with the cantrip, maybe you can build a frozen stair with it (one lifts the water, the other freezes it), though that would depend on the DM's interpretation as well.

If you can only move the water 5 ft before it just becomes completely inert, then Shape Water is a far worse spell then I imagined. I have no reason to believe you couldn't move water, out of water though. "You choose an area of water that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube" I read this and thought that you could move 5ft of water from any source, though reading it again, I suppose it's not impossible to think that the water you move would have to be only a 5-foot cube at most, so you couldn't just take it out of lakes, or rivers at will, which combined with what you already said, makes me think Shape Water is an even worse spell then what I took it for initially

Even with the inability to take water out of large sources, carrying enough water to be spread wide enough for a single person to stand on, doesn't seem implausible.

[Segev]

Interesting trick. It sounds like it should work.

And yeah, I'm pretty sure shape water is meant to let you sculpt water-shapes that hold form while you maintain the spell. It's kind-of in the spell name.

[elyktsorb]

Well if you can shape and move water at will, without it becoming useless immediately. It definitely has potential for shenanigans.

Especially with a 5ft cube, you could cut it up into five 5 by 5 by 1 foot platforms. Having cast Water Walking on up to ten people, you could feasibly levitate 5 people at your leisure, without concentration, and as long as nothing physically knocks them off the platform it should be fine. But this seems too good to be true.

[Segev]

Well if you can shape and move water at will, without it becoming useless immediately. It definitely has potential for shenanigans.

Especially with a 5ft cube, you could cut it up into five 5 by 5 by 1 foot platforms. Having cast Water Walking on up to ten people, you could feasibly levitate 5 people at your leisure, without concentration, and as long as nothing physically knocks them off the platform it should be fine. But this seems too good to be true.

It's a ritual casting and maintaining a cantrip. And if you're whipping the floor about underneath people, the DM is perfectly within his rights to make them make constant Dexterity checks to keep their footing. Given the lax DC definition, he can make it as hard as he wants.

[elyktsorb]

It's a ritual casting and maintaining a cantrip. And if you're whipping the floor about underneath people, the DM is perfectly within his rights to make them make constant Dexterity checks to keep their footing. Given the lax DC definition, he can make it as hard as he wants.

Well I mean, after you've cast the ritual I don't see how that factors into anything since Water Walking lasts an hour, and maintaining a cantrip is supposed to be easy by definition.

But, the platforms don't actually have to be platforms, walk on water states people can move across water as though it were land, so they could be in a better position, and the water could be shaped to keep people from falling off, merely by making them half spheres.

Not to mention I doubt you'd want to use this in the same capacity you would use Fly for. But for simple things. Like scaling a wall or cliff. Going over a pit or river. Considering it's a ritual cast and a cantrip, it's not like it's wasting anything.

[Segev]

Well I mean, after you've cast the ritual I don't see how that factors into anything since Water Walking lasts an hour, and maintaining a cantrip is supposed to be easy by definition.

But, the platforms don't actually have to be platforms, walk on water states people can move across water as though it were land, so they could be in a better position, and the water could be shaped to keep people from falling off, merely by making them half spheres.

Not to mention I doubt you'd want to use this in the same capacity you would use Fly for. But for simple things. Like scaling a wall or cliff. Going over a pit or river. Considering it's a ritual cast and a cantrip, it's not like it's wasting anything.

Time is a resource. I'm not saying it's not useful. I'm just saying it sounds like a clever, rather than broken, solution.

[tieren]

I'm missing what the water walking is for. Why not just make the ice raft and stand on it while the cantrip moves it around, what do you need water walking for?

[elyktsorb]

I'm missing what the water walking is for. Why not just make the ice raft and stand on it while the cantrip moves it around, what do you need water walking for?

I assume the DC of trying to balance on an ice platform would be higher than that of a water platform, and ice is cold. I suppose there's no need for water walking. But I don't know if the ice is susceptible to breaking under the weight of a person.

With Water Walking, the spell is ensuring people stay atop the water with little regards to actual weight distribution. If you had a 5 by 5 by 5 block of ice, and then tried to divide it into multiple platforms for multiple people, would a 5 by 5 by 1 foot platform hold a person without breaking, probably.

It should also be stated that once you freeze water, with Shape Water, you can't turn it back to water from ice, as the spell makes you wait for an hour for it to turn back to water.

[Tanarii]

Especially with a 5ft cube, you could cut it up into five 5 by 5 by 1 foot platforms. Having cast Water Walking on up to ten people, you could feasibly levitate 5 people at your leisure, without concentration, and as long as nothing physically knocks them off the platform it should be fine.
Doesn't the water have to fit in a 5ft cube? If you split it up, they'd just be stacked on top of one another.

[elyktsorb]

Doesn't the water have to fit in a 5ft cube? If you split it up, they'd just be stacked on top of one another.

"You choose an area of water that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube. You manipulate it in one of the following ways" I took this to mean that you could only manipulate up to a 5-foot cube of water. Not that the water has to stay in a five foot cube. There's nothing stating the water must remain in a 5-foot cube, just that the amount you can manipulate can only be enough to fit in a 5-foot cube.

Even the spell wording assumes the water might not be in a 5-foot cube, if you took a stretch of water that was 10 ft long, 5 ft wide, and 1 ft deep, that would still fit in a 5 ft cube, since a 5 ft cube would be 125 ft of water spread out.

[tieren]

I assume the DC of trying to balance on an ice platform would be higher than that of a water platform, and ice is cold. I suppose there's no need for water walking. But I don't know if the ice is susceptible to breaking under the weight of a person.

With Water Walking, the spell is ensuring people stay atop the water with little regards to actual weight distribution. If you had a 5 by 5 by 5 block of ice, and then tried to divide it into multiple platforms for multiple people, would a 5 by 5 by 1 foot platform hold a person without breaking, probably.

It should also be stated that once you freeze water, with Shape Water, you can't turn it back to water from ice, as the spell makes you wait for an hour for it to turn back to water.

I would think 6 inches thick would be sufficient, and you don't need to leave it in slabs, you can use the extra water to make chairs and handle bars on the things for them to hold on to, a toe rail around the edge to catch their feet if they start to slip, etc....

Heck you could just make a boat.

[elyktsorb]

I would think 6 inches thick would be sufficient, and you don't need to leave it in slabs, you can use the extra water to make chairs and handle bars on the things for them to hold on to, a toe rail around the edge to catch their feet if they start to slip, etc....

Heck you could just make a boat.

After some research into ice thickness. "at least four inches, proceed with caution. Ice more than five inches thick will likely hold a snowmobile, and ice more than eight inches thick will likely support a car or small pickup truck"

Though again, this is in a lake setting where it would be spread evenly across a larger area.

At this point it might be better to know exactly what shapes/sizes/thicknesses of ice you could create with a 5ft cube of water. For a person to be able to stand on it, and it not break, I'd say the ice would have to be 5 inches thick.

[tieren]

After some research into ice thickness. "at least four inches, proceed with caution. Ice more than five inches thick will likely hold a snowmobile, and ice more than eight inches thick will likely support a car or small pickup truck"

Though again, this is in a lake setting where it would be spread evenly across a larger area.

At this point it might be better to know exactly what shapes/sizes/thicknesses of ice you could create with a 5ft cube of water. For a person to be able to stand on it, and it not break, I'd say the ice would have to be 5 inches thick.

In terms of raw material, if you use 5 inches you can make twelve 5 foot by 5 foot slabs, 5 inches thick from your 5x5x5 cube. If you went for a barge 10 feet wide and 20 feet long, that would use 8 of them, divide the other 4 into strips 20 inches high and rim the whole thing with a low wall. Technically you could probably make the side walls thinner and taller, but I doubt you need to.