Creative Cantrips - Shape Water

[Stealthscout]

“You may judge any spellcaster by their biggest spell, but you should judge a master by their cantrips.”

-Olaf Junier, Magic Instructor

5th edition embraces your group’s interpretation and rulings, allowing players to come up with new ideas for old things all the time. This needs to be balanced against dangerous, game-breaking precedents. This is part of a series ofpostings around Cantrips to help balance the player desire for cool ideas with the DM’s need to know what is possible before they are problems for their game.


Tips for the everyone at the table:

• Be clear and consistent in advance – Whenever possible, make rulings based on clear language and interpretations, not on the specific tricks. Also do it early so nobody has to discuss laws of physics in a critical battle.
• It is a game, but not just a game – The Rule of Cool balances the Rule of Reason. Or yet another way, players need to have fun but might want to ‘forget’ a good idea if it would disrupt an important plot point they know the DM is relying on.
• The DM can always change a ruling, but be fair about it – If an interpretation turns out to be too abusable, it can be changed. But the players may need to compensate accordingly so don’t do it in combat and/or disallow them to switch out cantrips they will no longer use.

This posting will go over an analysis of the cantrip, while the second goes into specific tricks/effects you can do and what rulings they may rely upon. I am hoping for even more ideas, and stories are welcome.

Cantrip Details
30’ Range
Affect water in a 5’ cube with one of the following effects:

• Freeze it for 1 hour
• Create ‘simple’ shapes and animate them for one hour
• Move it 5’
• Redirect the flow of water up to 5’ in ‘any direction’
• Change color or opacity for 1 hour (same color throughout)

Limitation: movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage
Limitation: only two non-instant effects can be in effect at a time

Multiple effects, but basically move water in an area and freeze it.

Full disclosure: This is my favorite cantrip by far. It is both thematic and can do so many things that I’m constantly finding new options for it.

Pros and Cons

• Pro –Water is common and can (should!) be carried around anyhow
• Pro – Water comes in multiple forms – vapor, liquid, or solid
• Pro – Somatic only makes it stealthy when needed
• Pro – Decent number of effects in the same spell
• Pro – High elves and Water genasi can get this as a racial freebie
• Pro – If you create a shape and it gets destroyed but not disintegrated, just recreate it next round.
• Both – Only two non-instantaneous effects at a time
• Con – You need water around, but the spell doesn’t supply that for you
• Con – We’re playing with physics. Rule decisions may have unintended ramifications later as a result and makes some DMs distrust the spell or rule out otherwise fair options. (it’s why this posting exists – to help with that discussion)
• Con – the power of the spell doesn’t improve with levels. Silver lining - house rules could leverage this by ruling some things are possible only at level X
• Con - Re-directing water every round takes an action – so no rerouting the waterfall for the entire party with one action

Rulings that Apply:
There’s a lot, so I broke this down into sub-categories
General:

• Gaps in casting - At-will effectively means ‘permanent if you keep spending actions’ but your DM may rule that there is a ‘gap’ between castings so that shape may buckle for a moment between castings
• Help actions – Assisting others through a spell makes sense, but expect to explain how you help in detail.
• Can you shape and freeze in the same action? – by RAW, no. Some DMs may allow this for simplicity or if you constantly use this spell
• Can I affect water bound or mixed with other things? (ex. mud, solutions, plant life) – Answers across the board, but you can argue a higher level character could do more. I will assume below that you can manipulate anything that is 50% water or more, but anything bound up in the water could be dropped if you don’t try to keep it there.

Crating Shapes and Animation:

• Complexity – ‘Simple’ is relative. A sculptor PCs should be better than average, but proficiencies and skill checks would apply for anything complex.
• Hardness – Ice is hard, but water could either be hard due to magic or soft as a puddle of water. I will assume it is ‘soft’ so you go slip through it at slow speeds, but it can be HARD at high speeds.
• Can you animate and/or re-shape ice? – Makes sense, but not explicitly stated. It would make ‘hard’ shapes much more useful.
• Can shapes hover or ‘fly’? – A floating ball of water is very thematic, but flight always changes things. A compromise could be a 5’ max height or something.
• Movement speed – DMs will likely rule on the spot here. ‘Animation’ could mean it stays in the same square or use the speed of an Animated Object (per spell). Also check if there a difference between the speed of water and ice shapes.
• What actions could an animated shape do? – Most DMs would only allow pre-programmed, ‘dumb’ motions like walking in one direction or repetitive actions. They may allow action/bonus actions through the object on your round or even autonomy like the Animated Objects spell (but not likely)
• Can my animated object attack? – Explicitly it doesn’t allow damage but it could splash onto enemies as a help action or be a delivery mechanism (ex. acid flask). Expect it to take your attack action to accomplish.
• Can shapes go outside the spell range? – Awesome if they can, but this could be reserved as a limitation to prevent abuse. A DM may rule they stay in a given shape but can’t be animated outside this range or at least can’t move outside it willingly.
• Can moving ice push people around? – Logically yes, but the spell states movement ’doesn’t cause damage’. The DM may allow push or trips using your casting ability score.

Managing Ice and Vapor

• Can you thaw ice too? –Possible oversight in the write up, as thawing anything you can freeze is pretty minor.
• What else can melt that ice? – The write up states it melts only after an hour, so magic keeps it that way. Dragonfire probably melts it too, but can you place it in a bonfire or does it melt slowly with a candle?
• Can you change the water’s temperature? –Ice is cold by definition, so you can cool it. But if you can thaw water, what temp would it be thawed to and can you control that? 33 degrees or room temperature may be important
• Can I encase willing creatures in ice? – It explicitly doesn’t allow you to encase unwilling creatures (good call - no paralysis or suffocation), but could I make bindings when they are asleep?
• Can I affect water vapor? – Not explicit, but reasonable for those cases you have a lot flying around. You will want to follow up with ‘can I condense the water out of the air’. If you can’t, the only way to get liquid water out of the air would be to freeze it and melt it later. Either way, this is a way to find water when you don’t have any.
• Does freezing ice expand? – Either the freezing ice just ‘solidifies’ or it expands like normal ice does. The second one implies the DM expects some ‘normal physics’ to work in his mind and opens up a lot of options. If it doesn’t, you can more freely make ice shapes without worrying about all the details.

Tricks and Useful Details

• Water weighs 8.34lbs per gallon and there are 7.48 gallons per square foot. A 5’ cube of water is therefore 935 gallons and 7798lbs. Remember movement you create through the cantrip cannot cause damage.
• A human-sized shape is roughly 17-18 gallons of water and weighs the same amount.
• Carry water with you. It doesn’t need to be much for most things.
• Other cantrips affect water too - notably Presdigitation or Druidcraft. For instance, they can also thaw ice and/or warm it up in small quantities if this spell doesn’t.

[Stealthscout]

Effects
Fake blood (skill checks)
You can make a LOT of it quickly and in any splatter pattern you want, but it won’t be as viscous so keep it on the floor. Note without help this wouldn’t work against things with scent.


Impromptu ‘summon’ (complex shapes, hardness of shapes, animation speed, ability to attack, support needed, animating ice)
Depends on a lot of rulings, so bet on simple and slow. A small water elemental is easy and doesn’t have to move far to be a threat, but a ‘slush ooze’ could be frightening too. Depending on the rulings, you could include another object in the form (rope, a weapon) for actual damage. If you can’t attack with them, this is really just a one-round diversion or battlefield control.

If you get everything your way, this is best used as a either a medium/large sized animated object or a flying summon that contains something harmful and trips or splats against enemies. Twinked - make a flying 5’ anvil and have fun for a game.


Find illusions and trigger traps (animation speed, hardness of objects)
If you get a lot of water, just make a bumpy cylinder or ball and bounce it around. Any weight trap will be set off, but note that unless the shape is ‘hard’ it won’t trigger any tripwires. Illusions might be easier to see because they won’t affect the blob, though a DM may consider it a ‘disbelief attempt’ instead of an automatic dispel.


Break objects (expanding ice)
Two tricks that work well together:

• Expanding Ice – move water into a small hole and freeze. Ice expands and breaks just about anything (this is how potholes are created IRL). Easiest on locks or doors but once you have a hole to work with you can take out large blocks of granite. If your ice doesn’t expand, pound wood into the crack and soak it in water instead.
• Erosion – Toss some sand into the water and animate it into a swirling column (drill bit) and wait. All materials eventually erode with this method from dirt to iron bars. Takes a while, though.

Stationary barrier (hardness of shapes, speed of animations, shape and freeze together, how ice melts)
‘How’ is less interesting than ‘where’ for this one. Basically create a transparent shape in a spot and leave it there. Situations where this is handy:

• Baricade against enemies, either for an entire passage or make a choke point. Either make it rough for opaque or very smooth to be an ‘invisible’ barrier
• Firewall – especially if made into ice.
• Air/gas barrier – A 1mm wall is utterly transparent and stops any/all gases but not projectiles or enemies running through it. Defensively protects against spells like cloudkill, but could be an invisible ‘trap’ to let someone pop the bubble holding methane or the like.
• Seal a door shut or open. Doesn’t take much water to freeze it in place
• Seal crawlspaces used by enemies or vermin (especially kobolds)
• Make a lock much harder to bypass (ice over or an opaque hard shape)
• With a little water, you can make any square frozen difficult terrain. Choose black ice, razor ice, or ‘thick slushie’ as desired
• Make a ‘turtle shell’ of ice to block falling objects.
• Support the ceiling with a quick pillar
• Hold hazardous objects high in the air as an impromptu trap and release.

Mobile barrier (helping, hardness of shapes, speed of animations, animating ice, control over animation)
As with the stationary barrier, but some additional effects are available

• Scan an area - Make a moving film of semi-opaque water moving down a passage. Going over objects creates ripples, granting advantage to spotting things. For extra points, embed a lit torch or glowing rock to ‘scan’ the next 100 feet easily. Best in cramped spaces or 5’ passages.
• Moving barricade or terrain – Make that ice barricade move with the combat so you don’t have to leave it. Same thing with that difficult terrain you made.
• Storm the room – Don’t just freeze that door off the hinges and stop. Force it into the room like a battering ram for an instant barrier and one heck of an intimidation check at the same time.
• Smoke Screen – make it opaque or muddy and block line of sight. As useful as a fog cloud, but without the large area of effect.

Clean water (affecting bound water)
Since the spell only moves water, removing particulates is easy. Note this doesn’t remove dissolved materials unless your DM is really nice. On the other side, you are dehydrating whatever it is that you separate out – like travel rations, nullifying certain poisons, or killing patches minor aquatic creatures.

This can also be useful to check for dangerous things in the water. By moving it around, you can ‘check’ a pool of water for slimes or other hazards or to see that really is just water and not holy water or acid instead.


Cool, useless stuff (various rulings)
These come up over time:

• Instant iced tea
• Cool your home in summer with a pillar of ice in the parlor
• The most impressive (temporary) aquarium ever
• Tease a target by freezing their food or drinks
• The mathematically perfect ice rink
• Make a river flow in geometric patterns or some other artistic way. Multiple castings could result in a performance.
• ... Let's just leave it at 'Bathroom Hijinks' (ew, but it would be funny)

The Full Body Suit (encasing yourself in ice, complex shapes, hardness of shapes, animating shapes, affecting vapor, skill checks, gaps in casting, ability to thaw ice)
Cover yourself with water with or without a helmet to make a suit. By rules you can’t give yourself temp HP or a better AC, but this could have many other uses:

• Protection from hazardous materials – Probably helps with casual contact or vapors, but ‘hard’ or ice suits could protect against some objects or mosquitos. You probably want to clean the water before drinking, though.
• Air bubble - a helmet containing air gives you an extra breath of air for long swims.
• Temperature control – Water buffers against temperature changes. Use with another cantrip to ensure the temperature is exactly what you want all day. Protection from heat/cold, or personal sauna at will.
• Disguise – Many variations, but color it and leave holes for the eyes/ears/mouth. Mimic nearly any Marvel character you want. A variation is just to add bulk and/or body parts as part of a disguise (arms, hump back, ear points, etc.) A vapor, slush, or frost version could cover you head to toe, look impressive, and not hinder you at all (cold resistance may be necessary).
• Carry water around – If your DM rules that animated shapes are slow, he can’t complain about covering your armor with a few gallons to move it around quickly.
• Panic Button – freeze that suit in place for protection on all sides. Just remember to leave space for your hands and air and hopefully you have resistance to cold (read: cold sorcerer). For extra cheese, you can slide it around instead of walking but expect that to be ruled out quickly.
• Swimming/climbing – Move the suit as though it was an animated object that carries your body with it. Even if limited to 5’ per round, it lasts a full hour so you could go far without getting tired.
• Variant – mirror suit. Make the suit have multiple flat sections and color it silver to get a mirror effect. Then take on that basilisk.

The Omni-Lens (hardness of shapes, ability to hover)
Really hard ice functions much like glass, but you gain customized precision. Just the right lens at the right time can overcome problems with expensive magnifying glasses or telescope lenses in the field. Mirrors would require silvering as well (2 effects at once), but are even easier since you can create a few dozen per casting and move them into place.


Burrow Through Water
Only works for yourself and maybe one other, but vacate one 5’ square and the one in front of it. Move forward and repeat. It’s slow and doesn’t give you any air to breathe (no protection when drowning) but could be a stealthy option against moats.

Note small pools would displace enough water to notice and clear water doesn’t block line of sight. That said, it is a way to get past moats and many aquatic hazards (Quippers).


Measure a hole or other space
Fill in a space and then pull out what fit and measure it. This can often tell you if that hole in the wall is just a hole or part of a tunnel network by the inhabitants (ex. Kobolds).


Move Objects (hardness of shapes, animation speed, affecting bound materials)
Buoyant objects and/or debris in the water should move around with it unless otherwise desired. Arguably, it could move other objects with it as well. Use it for caltrops, furniture, delicate high explosives, or just to clean up an area.

Cleaning things up is more useful in adventuring than you might think. Make your camping area free of mold patches and minor vermin, remove dust from a distance, or get rid of fresh blood stains. Note the water just carries it somewhere else, so have a place to go with whatever it is.


Items and tools (hardness of shapes, shape and freeze)
This is a buffet of options. Your limitations are no movable parts, size (to a degree), they can’t be made of anything harder than black ice, and character skill/knowledge. A big plus is the ability to make multiple shapes in one casting and repair/reshape them on demand, and in an arctic environment you can assume ice would stay in that shape indefinitely.

• Artisan’s tools that aren’t exposed to temperature or severe abuse (chisels, picks, but not anvils or brewing gear)
• Ammunition – probably sling stones are easiest, but arrows are possible with some skill. Weapons are also possible, but very prone to breaking. If gunpowder is available, you can quickly make dozens of grenades.
• Spyglass or mirror – overlap with ‘optics’ above
• Ladder – Better than it looks. Attach two stacked 5’ ladders to the wall and climb. Then move the first section above the new one and climb. Repeat until done.
• Jewelry – Multiple facets would be hard and it would be magically cold, but fun
• Specialized equipment not on the list perfect for what you need – climbing gear, periscopes, swim fins, etc. You can use items you are not proficient in, just less effectively
• Molds for making other items. Especially since the ice can resist some heat.
• patch another object you already have. A boat comes to mind as an obvious example.

Make a mold (hardness of objects, thawing ice, ability checks)
Kind of the reverse of above, where you make a perfect mold and keep the ice around long enough for the material to harden. Best with common materials, but you could cast a lead copy of a key you studied, knockoff sculptures, or just use it to make standard items (arrowheads). The advantage is the item is normal and usable by others more than your spell duration.

Since this is magic ice, you could cast bronze or lead weapons on the road easily or just use this as 'mystical flavoring' when forging special items like an Icebrand.


The Aqua Mage Lock (hardness of objects)
Make a custom lock which requires someone to press a pin in the middle of the door behind a series of right angles that picks can’t get to. This would make it impossible to pick by without first knowing your way through the ‘maze’ inside the door and having either the cantrip or a custom telescoping pick set.

An alternative is to have a lock that requires a lot of force to move the bar out of the way. The mage must fill in the space correctly and then freeze to apply pressure. Make it spring loaded and the door automatically relocks in an hour or when you thaw the ice. This would need to be a strong door to withstand doing it wrong. In both cases, include a basic lock that doesn’t do anything with a few traps nearby and you have excellent security.

There are other ways around doors like this like just destroying the door, but it is a simple ‘secure door’ trick that can fool players easily.


Water Column and Ice Block trick
This one takes moving water, but encase the end of a rope a big block of ice. Then redirect the moving water to be angled away and up from you and let it naturally spill out the other side to create an ‘spout’ of water. Send the ice over going uphill and it will try to slide down the other side with rushing water pushing it faster – exactly like holding something just short of going over a waterfall. Use that force to pull or drag something.

Why not just freeze the object and move the ice with magic? Here, we can calculate the energy and force involved and to get hard numbers for the DM instead of ‘I’m sure I can drag 70,000 pounds with MAGIC’. Some DMs appreciate this sort of thing and let you do more as a result.


Pykrete (shaping ice, affecting bound objects, temperature control)
The physics is that you can bind a lot of small particles with ice to make something stronger than ice. In this case, we are talking about sawdust but you could also use cloth fiber or paper shreds. This stuff is hard as wood with the weakness that the ice tends to melt too fast for anything permanent. With magic, you can get past that weakness. Some ideas:

• Boats, furniture, or other structures – Pykrete was being developed as an option for cheap boats in WW2, so why can’t you? Creating the pieces separately and then putting them together allows you to make boats larger than 5’x10’.
• Melee Weapons – Melee weapons are more feasible this way, but probably maces and not rapiers
• Shields – If you have a DM who likes to destroy equipment, you are losing the shield a lot. With one cantrip you can create multiple shields that are somewhat fire resistant
• Extra-hard objects – This is a catch-all for barriers, masterwork objects, or other things above. If you make them from Pykrete they can’t be transparent but have twice the hardness to deal with

[Stealthscout]

Placeholder, just in case

[JumboWheat01]

Well, the scientist in me knows that the body is mostly made up of water. Freezing even a part of it would not be pleasant in any way, shape or form.

...And would probably amount to a few d6 of damage at most in D&D.

[JackPhoenix]

You can always freeze content of your waterskin/water in a bucket/whatever and drop the resulting piece of ice on your foe. The damage wouldn't be caused by the cantrip.

[Gastronomie]

I think it's "Shape Water", not "Control Water".

But the ideas presented are certainly awesome.

[HoodedHero007]

Freeze the blood in the heart, n damage will be caused directly by the cantrip, so you can kill somebody! YAY!
Or Drop an icicle on their heads, that can kill, and the damage is caused by gravity, not the cantrip

[Wilko]

I know you have mentioned not being able to choke people with this but how about some ice in the mouth, freeze someone's saliva to stop them casting.

Create a Bridge? on an area of water you should be able to create an ice platform in 5ft chunks which you can walk across. It depends on how you interpret the "Freeze for 1 hour" and "Only two effects at once" rules, if that's after an hour or when you stop concentrating it instantly melts then you will have to make it as a floating 10x5 chunk just dropping the last and creating a new section each round. If you read that as once the spell stops affecting it the laws of thermodynamics take over then you could build an ice bridge which would probably last a few hours. (Also I am picturing Magento making a bridge while walking across it from the first X-Men film as i type this :P)

[Sir cryosin]

This is probably not aloned but my DM let me do it anyway I used tsunami then after I would pick up some water and hearl it at a creature but freezing as I send it flying doing 1d6 of damage and it scaled like the other cantrips it wasn't the best damage I could do but it kept with my theme as a water genasi

[Douche]

If you mix water & sawdust, then freeze it, it becomes bulletproof. It's called Pykrete.

It's cuz the sawdust gets rid of the bubbles within the water and makes it perfectly solid. It's still only 1/35 as strong as steel, but can withstand up to 4500 psi. You could still withstand a blow from a sword (3000 psi, according to my research) if you make a shield or temporary breastplate with it using control water. Or you could shape it into a sword and have a temporary sword as well! Good enough for stabbing someone in the chest in their sleep

Technically, as long as they're not wearing full plate, you could still damage them (and even then, the way D&D explains it, you could damage someone with any weapon regardless of what kind of weapon you use. You're just exposing weaknesses in their armor depending on what you rolled) and you could even parry their attacks with the sword, since the Pykrete sword can withstand more pressure than what a normal guys swing can produce in PSI.

Freeze the blood in the heart, n damage will be caused directly by the cantrip, so you can kill somebody! YAY!
Or Drop an icicle on their heads, that can kill, and the damage is caused by gravity, not the cantrip

I think that controlling the water in someones body is considered too OP, as shown in Avatar the Last Airbender, where the bloodbenders were a variant of waterbenders and it was considered a forbidden art. It probably also took a great deal of skill and study to use it. Point being, it was there to explain why all the waterbenders didn't just make the firebenders blood all shoot out of their eyes and instantly bleed to death in the most emo fashion imaginable.

[JumboWheat01]

If you mix water & sawdust, then freeze it, it becomes bulletproof. It's called Pykrete.

It also makes a good, temporary boat.

[HoodedHero007]

OP does not = Impossible

[Douche]

OP does not = Impossible

Yeah, but there's already a cantrip called Frostbite which emulates trying to freeze someone.

There's also a blood mage homebrew that's one of the most popular items on the DM guild (wasn't it one of the featured UA?) and it probably does a better job of assigning a cost for manipulating someone's blood than simply taking a cantrip and allowing you to insta-kill someone, with no save, by freezing their heart or whatever.


But I agree, in real life, being able to freeze water at will should allow you to kill anyone easily, or freeze their eyeballs and render them blind. Or any other number of vital organs. If you think about it, Sub-Zero should automatically win every match of Mortal Kombat.

I think I'd allow the rule of cool to let you pull that trick on something like maybe assassinating an unsuspecting target in their sleep... but I probably wouldn't put you in a position where you'd have access to the king of the big bad in their sleep and trivialize the entire campaign.

[HoodedHero007]

Frostbite is literally giving someone frostbite, but how hard would it be to survive a frozen heart (and not frozen's "Love" Deus ex Machina)

[Freelance GM]

This cantrip caused a lot of debate in my campaign. Our verdicts:

By RAW, your target is "an area of water that you can see."

Blood plasma is 92% water, sure, but it's not water, it's blood. Likewise, mud is mud, and other fluids are other fluids. For the purposes of the game rules, ice is ice, not water, which is why the spell can't un-freeze things; it cannot target ice, or water vapor, only liquid water.

Thus, you can animate water, but not ice. Ice weapons, ice armor, and ice barricades still work, because someone is wearing or wielding them, but you can't move them anymore with the cantrip once they're frozen. That being said, a 5-foot cube of running water can work as a pretty effective barrier, too.

If only water you can see can be effected, then the Aqua Mage lock idea doesn't work, because as soon as the water goes into the lock, you can no longer see it, and it cannot be affected by the cantrip. Additionally, unless the target is already bleeding (which shouldn't be hard in D&D), you cannot see their blood, either. You can manipulate the blood you can see, but the effects would not extend to the blood you can't see, so no heart-freezing shenanigans allowed. Same goes for any other bodily fluid you can't see directly.

[Douche]

Frostbite is literally giving someone frostbite, but how hard would it be to survive a frozen heart (and not frozen's "Love" Deus ex Machina)

Considering the frostbite only lasts til the end of the targets next turn, probably pretty easy tbh

Also, Shape Water states "You freeze the water, provided that there are no creatures in it." so, ya know, since the water is permeating someone's body, they are inside it (and it is simultaneously inside of them). I don't even know why I'm arguing this with you.

[HoodedHero007]

Considering the frostbite only lasts til the end of the targets next turn, probably pretty easy tbh

Also, Shape Water states "You freeze the water, provided that there are no creatures in it." so, ya know, since the water is permeating someone's body, they are inside it (and it is simultaneously inside of them). I don't even know why I'm arguing this with you.

I'm pretty sure that people are not inside their blood, and also, in any fight, it would be easy to make someone bleed (preferably the fighter)

[Douche]

I'm pretty sure that people are not inside their blood, and also, in any fight, it would be easy to make someone bleed (preferably the fighter)

It's like standing in a puddle. Except the puddle is inside of you.

If I put a sponge in a bowl of water. The sponge absorbs all the water and is laying there in a bowl. The sponge is permeated with water, therefore it is inside the water.

[HoodedHero007]

Is the item covered in water/the fluid?
Is blood on the outside of the body, covering it? If not, then you are not in blood

[Gastronomie]

If I were the DM I'd say a Level 17-ish or higher caster might be capable of manipulating a target's blood. And with restrictions, such as him actually being a quite ruthless character.

Otherwise it's just a bragging player to be honest.

Remember that creativity is fun at first, but it is prone to eventually get one-patterned and dull, and the other players might even get sick of it. The various ideas presented by the thread creator are good because while each are useful, they're all somewhat situational.

This idea of manipulating blood is NOT situational. It will soon grow to be boring and thus it's a bad idea for the game. If a particular "at first unique" method proves too effective in various situations, chances are it wasn't a good idea to allow it in the first place. No matter how logical an argument is, it's a worthless argument if doesn't make the game more fun.

[krugaan]

OP does not = Impossible

Astronomically improbable then. Almost as improbable as finding a DM who will let you do any the things you suggest.

Fine:

We've qualified that water is in the air.

Creatures are surrounded by air.

Therefore, they are in water and unable to be affected by the cantrip in the manner you suggest.

[JumboWheat01]

Astronomically improbable then. Almost as improbable as finding a DM who will let you do any the things you suggest.

Fine:

We've qualified that water is in the air.

Creatures are surrounded by air.

Therefore, they are in water and unable to be affected by the cantrip in the manner you suggest.

See, now I approve of this logical counter-argument.

Pity that the spell is limited to a 5 foot cubic area. Imagine the fun of making snow with the spell.

[Douche]

Astronomically improbable then. Almost as improbable as finding a DM who will let you do any the things you suggest.

Fine:

We've qualified that water is in the air.

Creatures are surrounded by air.

Therefore, they are in water and unable to be affected by the cantrip in the manner you suggest.

And most water probably has some bacteria in it, so you can really only use this cantrip on perfectly sterile water in a controlled environment.

[HoodedHero007]

And most water probably has some bacteria in it, so you can really only use this cantrip on perfectly sterile water in a controlled environment.

You run into the fact that the bacteria are regarded as nonexistent in d&d

[Douche]

You run into the fact that the bacteria are regarded as nonexistent in d&d

I was joking, but I notice that you did not retort to Krugaan's argument and instead went for my low hanging fruit

[HoodedHero007]

Astronomically improbable then. Almost as improbable as finding a DM who will let you do any the things you suggest.

Fine:

We've qualified that water is in the air.

Creatures are surrounded by air.

Therefore, they are in water and unable to be affected by the cantrip in the manner you suggest.

Are they 100% immersed in water?
BOOYAH!

[krugaan]

low hanging fruit

I know there's a dirty retort here somewhere...

If I can just find it...

[HoodedHero007]

I know there's a dirty retort here somewhere...

If I can just find it...

?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????

[Stealthscout]

Whoah! I forgot to subscribe to my thread and didn't know I got so many replies. Thank you all.

Gastronamie - I have no idea what you mean about the name of this thread. It clearly shows 'Shape Water' effective 10 seconds ago.

Douche - I totally forgot about Pykrete! Writing that one up now. For anyone who doesn't know about that stuff, you should watch Mythbusters reruns sometime.


I'm seeing a lot of people wanting to directly freeze other people with the cantrip. It's kind of depressing - you know this won't work in even the most unreasonable game, right? I'm looking for good ideas and not just gamebreaking ones.

To anyone else, feel free to add on with other ideas.

[krugaan]

I'm seeing a lot of people wanting to directly freeze other people with the cantrip. It's kind of depressing - you know this won't work in even the most unreasonable game, right? I'm looking for good ideas and not just gamebreaking ones.

It's not a lot of people... just one.

Also, the OP is pretty extensive as it is, honestly.

ICE
- ice ladder (repeated castings), ice handholds
- temporary shelf on wall (ambush location!)
- ice rafts, igloos, underwater shelter (provide your own air)
- temporary molds
- anchor things in ice (climbing ropes, tethers, although I hope its not too warm...)
- random snowball fights
- easy restraint (I suppose on unconscious targets)

WATER
- purify water (debateable)
- putting out fires economically
- bathroom hijinks
- torture(!)