Purify Food and Drink on non-foods?

[mAc Chaos]

I am not sure how the Purify Food and Drink spell is supposed to work. It says it works on "food and drink," but does that mean ACTUAL food (like a steak) and drink (like a beer), or the material that MAKES those things? For example, you can purify a cup of water -- an obvious drink. But if it's just the fact that it's water, something that CAN be a drink, does that mean you can purify a tub of water (not a drink) or a swimming pool (not a drink) if you spend time?

My players are thinking of ways to use it, like as a way to clean a swimming pool without needing any filtration or plumbing, and I am not sure if it is something that works that way or should.

[Mastikator]

The intent of the caster for the item to be consumed as food is what makes it food. Food is not an essential property, it's a functional property. Therefore anything can be food.

[Keltest]

The intent of the caster for the item to be consumed as food is what makes it food. Food is not an essential property, it's a functional property. Therefore anything can be food.

I disagree. Metal shards of a sword will never be food, even if you put them in your mouth and begin eviscerating yourself by trying to swallow them. I would say that in order to qualify, it needs to be, at the very least, capable of sustaining you if you eat it, so something fairly inert like a small lump of gold wont count either.

Of the given examples, a tub and a swimming pool are both just quantities of water (though worth noting, a modern pool usually has chemicals in with the water that would make it unsafe to drink, which the spell would remove). You could use the spell on both, but it would be pretty impractical for the pool due to the volume limitations on the spell, and the spell doesnt remove non-toxic contaminants that would make the water just plain gross tasting, so I wouldnt drink dishwater or bathwater either.

[Mastikator]

I disagree. Metal shards of a sword will never be food, even if you put them in your mouth and begin eviscerating yourself by trying to swallow them. I would say that in order to qualify, it needs to be, at the very least, capable of sustaining you if you eat it, so something fairly inert like a small lump of gold wont count either.

Of the given examples, a tub and a swimming pool are both just quantities of water (though worth noting, a modern pool usually has chemicals in with the water that would make it unsafe to drink, which the spell would remove). You could use the spell on both, but it would be pretty impractical for the pool due to the volume limitations on the spell, and the spell doesnt remove non-toxic contaminants that would make the water just plain gross tasting, so I wouldnt drink dishwater or bathwater either.

Metal is food to a rust monster. A rust monster casting Purified Food and Drink should remove metals and impurities that are toxic to the rust monster.

[Keltest]

Metal is food to a rust monster. A rust monster casting Purified Food and Drink should remove metals and impurities that are toxic to the rust monster.

Rust monsters cant cast spells to begin with, so this argument is a non-starter, but more to the point it doesnt remove everything that would be harmful to the caster, it removes poisons and diseases. At no point is edibility guaranteed. The only reason it would get rid of metal or impurities is if they were innately toxic rather than just inedible.

[Mastikator]

Rust monsters cant cast spells to begin with, so this argument is a non-starter, but more to the point it doesnt remove everything that would be harmful to the caster, it removes poisons and diseases. At no point is edibility guaranteed. The only reason it would get rid of metal or impurities is if they were innately toxic rather than just inedible.

A wizard casts it then on behalf of their pet rust monster, to make a poisoned dagger edible. Won't make it edible to the wizard. It has to be edible for the creature you intend to have consume the food. Food is not an essential property, it has to be consumed for sustenance, what counts as sustenance varies from creature to creature. Ergo there's no thing that is definitely always food, nor is there any thing that is never food.

[Keltest]

A wizard casts it then on behalf of their pet rust monster, to make a poisoned dagger edible. Won't make it edible to the wizard. It has to be edible for the creature you intend to have consume the food. Food is not an essential property, it has to be consumed for sustenance, what counts as sustenance varies from creature to creature. Ergo there's no thing that is definitely always food, nor is there any thing that is never food.

5e doesnt work like that. It says "food" so it only applies to food in the commonly understood term. If humanoids cant derive sustenance from it, its neither food nor drink.

The spell is "purify food and drink" not "neutralize poison and disease."

[Mastikator]

5e doesnt work like that. It says "food" so it only applies to food in the commonly understood term. If humanoids cant derive sustenance from it, its neither food nor drink.

The spell is "purify food and drink" not "neutralize poison and disease."

That's your ruling as a DM. RAW does not stipulate what it means by food. Food is not an essential thing. It depends on the eater. To a dung beetle dung is food. To a human dung is not food.

My ruling as a DM is that it depends on the caster, not just default human. Humans are not the default caster race in D&D, other races and monsters with other diets can cast spells.

[GloatingSwine]

5e doesnt work like that. It says "food" so it only applies to food in the commonly understood term. If humanoids cant derive sustenance from it, its neither food nor drink.

The spell is "purify food and drink" not "neutralize poison and disease."

So what happens if an Illithid casts "Purify Food and Drink" on your brain?

[Keltest]

That's your ruling as a DM. RAW does not stipulate what it means by food. Food is not an essential thing. It depends on the eater. To a dung beetle dung is food. To a human dung is not food.

My ruling as a DM is that it depends on the caster, not just default human. Humans are not the default caster race in D&D, other races and monsters with other diets can cast spells.

Ok. Name one PC race that is called out as having a substantially different died from a regular human, such than a human wouldnt be able to eat it even if it were made clean.


So what happens if an Illithid casts "Purify Food and Drink" on your brain?

Nothing, since Illithids cant cast that spell to begin with.

ETA: obviously, the real answer here is "whatever the DM wants to happen" but thats going to be the case no matter what when you use a spell in circumstances that the designers did not intend to come up. If you houserule that an Illithid casts the spell, feel free to houserule that they have a version made for them that cleans brains up or whatever.

[Mastikator]

Ok. Name one PC race that is called out as having a substantially different died from a regular human, such than a human wouldnt be able to eat it even if it were made clean.

Who says it has to be a PC race? An awakened beast or plant may very well have a different diet than a human. Awakened animals can learn to cast magic same as any human NPC could. Therefore we must take seriously the case that a dung beetle casting purify food and drink will apply the spell to dung. A human would not apply it to dung.

[Keltest]

Who says it has to be a PC race? An awakened beast or plant may very well have a different diet than a human. Awakened animals can learn to cast magic same as any human NPC could. Therefore we must take seriously the case that a dung beetle casting purify food and drink will apply the spell to dung. A human would not apply it to dung.

I'm going to be frank, I find the idea of an awakened dung beetle with class levels sufficiently silly that I dont really feel the need to engage with the argument. Feel free to make it happen in your campaign if thats the tone youre going for, but again at that point youve dipped so far into DM customs tuff that you might as well just shrug and say the spell works how you want it to work and to heck with the text.

[GloatingSwine]

Nothing, since Illithids cant cast that spell to begin with.


Unless they've taken class levels.

Although the more reasonable scenario is:

The rogue has vials of poison for use in his roguelike shenanigans, the Cleric casts Purify Food and Drink within 5' of the Rogue, what happens to his poisons? At least some of them are vials of liquid which could be drunk, and possibly are structurally indistinct from potions which are intended to be drunk.

[Mastikator]

I'm going to be frank, I find the idea of an awakened dung beetle with class levels sufficiently silly that I dont really feel the need to engage with the argument. Feel free to make it happen in your campaign if thats the tone youre going for, but again at that point youve dipped so far into DM customs tuff that you might as well just shrug and say the spell works how you want it to work and to heck with the text.

A magewright can be any race. A dung beetle can be awakened. A dung beetle that casts Purify Food and Drink is RAW and could in theory exist and be RAW and legit and *everything. Just because it's unlikely and stupid doesn't mean it's impossible, so when it casts Purify Food and Drink on a piece of dung it wants to eat, does it purify the dung of nonmagical diseases and poisons that can harm a dung beetle, or does it remove nonmagical diseases and poisons that can harm a human, or does nothing happen?

To me this is simple, the intent of the caster matters. You intend for it to be eaten as food by someone who can eat it as food, then it works and removes nonmagical diseases and poisons that are harmful to that someone. For humans nothing changes.

*there are many settings where awakened beasts and plants take on roles within societies otherwise used by humanoids, so it's not even that weird for DND.

[Sigreid]

I think if a person can normally eat it and not die or get sick, purify food and drink will put it in that state. I think it's only meant to remove bacteria, poison, disease and rot that would be harmful from food. And frankly I wouldn't be impressed by a player that tried to make it do something like remove rust from a sword or whatever.

[lall]

I would say actual food and drink. Otherwise, you could claim you’re a cannibal and use it to remove disease and poison from Johnny. Now if you kill Johnny and cook him as a steak, then it works.

[Sigreid]

I would say actual food and drink. Otherwise, you could claim you’re a cannibal and use it to remove disease and poison from Johnny. Now if you kill Johnny and cook him as a steak, then it works.

You had the answer at the end there. Human flesh isn't food until it's separated from the living parts. So, you could chop off Johnny's gangrene leg and remove the disease from it; but that's not a lot of help to Johnny...

[GloatingSwine]

You had the answer at the end there. Human flesh isn't food until it's separated from the living parts. So, you could chop off Johnny's gangrene leg and remove the disease from it; but that's not a lot of help to Johnny...

But if you couldn't treat the gangrene you'd be amputating the leg anyway, so at least now Johnny has dinner.

[No brains]

Food in fantasy is a broader term than mortal minds may comprehend, eve at the time they are writing the rules.

The text of Lizardfolk's Hungry Jaws is loaded with the implication that any living creature is at least mistakable for food. This means a Lizardfolk Cleric/Druid can Purify Food and Drink on people and livestock, curing up to 8 people per 10 minutes of disease and crushing plagues like a one-folk Cleric for Disease Control. This CoDzilla SAVES civilizations.

What you really need to focus on is what counts a poison and disease. Items on the poisons table are a great start, so all of them are probably gone. Poisonous doses of other things are harder to sort out. Likely, the spell reduces those elements down beneath a harmful dose in the area of the spell. Eating two of Bender's salt slugs that were in two different castings of the spell would probably cause trouble.

Diseases can be weirder because endoparasites count as diseases a lot of the time. Slaadpoles, Kyus worms, Rot Grubs, all of those harmful beings inside a body count as diseases as far as Lesser Restoration is concerned. But where it gets weird is when creatures become harmful endoparasites against their will. Does a swallowed creature violently trying to stab its way out of a Tarrasque count as an endoparasite? If a mimic can survive the trip into the Tarrasque's mouth, its adhesive and low damage threshold might mean its never coming out without aid. Is this a niche power cheese to wombo combo a 2nd-level spell and a swallow ability into a no-save disintegrate? Or is it a low-key awesome literary nod to the origin of the Tarrasque who became the friend of a saint? How much barfing will be involved either way?

Also for your consideration: there are places on Earth where people literally eat dirt. Maybe it might take a specific soil, but there's a chance that PCs can seriously cast Purify Food and Drink on the ground and get food out of that. I am not joking. When survival is on the line against tedium, research will win. This is why you don't ban Goodberry. It's not worth it, man.

[zlefin]

Personally, I'd be pretty strict about limiting use of it. Spells do an awful lot of great things as is; and purifying spoiled/rotten food and drink is a useful enough thing to do already at times. I'd restrict it to stuff that real world people routinely regard as food or beverage.

Purifying a swimming pool's worth of water could be done with enough time; but the amount of water in there is really quite huge. After all; some municipal water systems in modern times (and maybe some aqueducts in roman times) would carry more than a swimming pool's worth of water.

It occurs to me I should check the exact wording of the spell.
Hmmm, it's rather vague, and covers a fair bit of radius, but still has some significant omissions. Being free of poison and disease doesn't change that rotted food is still rotted and may have limited nutritional value and terrible taste. It also may not affect a number of contaminants that don't qualify as poison or disease.

[Chronos]

Rust monsters, dung beetles, and illithids might not (typically) cast spells, but some dragons can, and some of them can subsist on eating various minerals that would be completely non-nutritive to humans. If a spellcasting dragon is sitting down to a nice meal of gems, but is worried that there might be veins of arsenic in them, could it use Purify Food and Drink to remove the arsenic?

[sithlordnergal]

Ok. Name one PC race that is called out as having a substantially different died from a regular human, such than a human wouldnt be able to eat it even if it were made clean.


...Could a Lizardfolk cast it on a Goblin? If so, does it remove disease, poisons, and make the Goblin safe to consume? Given that one of the literal Personality Traits of a Lizardfolk is "I collect fingers cause they make great snacks", they do eat Humanoids. XD

[Anymage]

Casting Purify on a living being or their still attached body parts is a no-go, because otherwise you open the door to conjuring water into those body parts. I can't think of anywhere that RAW explicitly says as much, the most I can think of is implications from the line of effect rules, but the game still goes in nasty directions if you leave that door open. Even if there are beings who would consider those creatures "food" and would happily eat them alive.

Dragons or elementals who eat nonorganic material? If I had to justify it, I'd say that the version your average adventurer knows is PF&D (generic humanoids), since PC races generally share similar biology and diets. Dragons or awakened rust monsters would likely have their own version of the spell, just like how clerics of whatever god looks after large cities have a higher level version with more area that they can use for municipal use. If the players really want to scrounge up a variant they can, but if they want to use a first level spell slot to remove arbitrary impurities from any collection of materials they'll have to research those specific variants. And likely find out that nonadventuring clerics of the local smith god likely already have Remove Impurities spells for various materials.

[KorvinStarmast]

I am not sure how the Purify Food and Drink spell is supposed to work. It is supposed to purify food and drink. Just as it says on the tin. Sometimes, a banana is just a banana.

[OldTrees1]

So what happens if an Illithid casts "Purify Food and Drink" on your brain?

Well, it is unlikely to affect the spice or flavor of the brain (so it is unlikely to change the memories). It probably would just remove any brain based pathogens (for example the pirons causing Mad Cow's disease). However it is unlikely to cure any disease in your torso.


Also since Illithids often eat the brain right out of the skull, you could argue you were already food from the Illithid's perspective. Be convincing enough and the Illithid might cast it multiple times on you during the week leading up to the feast.

[mAc Chaos]

It is supposed to purify food and drink. Just as it says on the tin. Sometimes, a banana is just a banana.

What does "purify" mean? If you take a cup of sewage full of random debris, does it remove all the little leaves, sticks, pebbles, and transform it all into a clear glass of drinking water as if you got it out of a faucet?

And is it the "cup" that makes it a "drink," or the fact that it's "water"? If it's the latter, then what if you just had more of it? Like in a tub or a pool.

I guess strictly speaking, the cup of sewage isn't even a drink. Or is it.

[Reach Weapon]

What does "purify" mean?

Back when the spell was just for clerics, druids and paladins I would have argued more strenuously that "pure" included the religious meaning, such that (absent tainting magic) the result would be in all aspects (including morally) clean and safe.


All nonmagical food and drink within a 5-foot-radius sphere centered on a point of your choice within range is purified and rendered free of poison and disease. (https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/purify-food-and-drink)

I should add that the "food and drink" part of the spell is interesting in two ways, the first being that your cup of sewage might transmute into less than a full clean and safe cup of water, and the second being that it's not listed as a material component, so we should probably be pretty forgiving on what counts useful inputs.