The water created by Beckon Water could be used as the material component for Create Water. That would allow you to, even in a desert, to create enough water to fill a barrel of non-evaporating water.
And with the magic items, you can have a staff of beckon water, and a staff of create water, allowing you to make multiple barrels of water a day, even after the spellcaster dies of old age and wasn't able to pass on their legendary magic Granted it would cost 1000 gold, and require proficiency in both Arcana and woodworking, the former likely requiring private tutelage, and the latter requiring a whole career, not to mention a thousand gold That being said, there would be some guy who did all that, and would likely have become a legendary figure in such a desert village
- the 4 most impactful cantrips (in my opinion): prestidigitation (it just does so much), guidance (+1d4 to all skill checks, when the average person has at most a +2 from their stats), mend (tool wear/attrition is eliminated), elementalism (for the reasons you list in this video) - the most impactful level 1 spell: goodberry (this would solve famine and revolutionise war by making logistics MUCH easier)
Goodberry is insane. Even though it's only 10 a cast, a level 1 spell caster with it can stop an entire village from starving to death. While not ideal you don't need to eat every day and in times of famine, being able to feed a village of 100 each person every 10th day or even every 5th with 2 slots with an entire days worth of caloric intake, this will stop them from dying, or at least stave it off for quite sometime. Again, not ideal by any means as malnutrition and eventually they will die. But you could sustain a community like this for hopefully long enough for the problem to be actually fixed.
@@larstollefsen1236 o yeah if you think about it really any non-goodberry food would probably be considered a luxury. Why toil growing fields of wheat for bread for sustenance when you can just eat goodberry, which one has to presume is probably better for you then a diet of mainly bread. There are no stipulations on goodberry so I feel that it contains not just the calories but also sufficient macros/nutrients that it would not be harmful for longterm consumption. Theres nothing to indicate that sustaining solely off goodberry carries any risk at all.
@@larstollefsen1236 not all humans are the same, same for any race. Adventurers are a cut above the rest, not everyone has "a feat". You're using game mechanics as lore facts
I always love videos like this where you analyze how a seemingly neish spell can cause change in whole goverments, trade, and communication. You're a gem of a channel and have inspired me and many more with great ideas, keep up the good work!
Thank you so much! That's very kind of you to say. I do hope to inspire some creativity in someone with each video, no matter how pedantic I'm being. Glad the videos resonate with you. -Tom
There are two other points with the water that would certainly be made use of. Water suddenly evaporating means it rapidly expands at the end of a minute. It also cools what it is in contact with, as our sweat does to keep us cool, to the equivalent of 144000 cal per casting. I'm not an engineer but I'm sure both those traits could be mechanically useable.
In a recent game, I had a Decanter of Endless Water. I recently ran the numbers and found that if you could put it in a water tower and activate it with magic mouth, it would supply all the water needed for a modern day English town of around 12,000 people. I felt like a bit of an arse for just using it to shoot a water cannon every couple of days. On use as a mould, that 'crude' shape qualifier might be significant: I suspect at least it won't be suitable for fine sculptures, and maybe not what we today would consider normal pottery, depending on interpretation
Yeah.. that item is absurd. I've been tossing around the idea of a video about it for a while, but because I'm so bad at maths, I've avoided it so far.
I head canon that the water is conditional. Used on low settings, the water is just regular water you can safely drink (to avoid nerfing it). On firehose settings, it's more like summoned water, which returns to the source plane after a short while. This way you get all the fun and none of the existential guilt.
some extra points I can see on these: Beckon Earth - one can devise a cilinder (or a few nested ones), that fits a 5 ft cube, hanging verticaly above a basin for collection.. plenty of surface for a decent sand collector, per casting.. Beckon Water - similar to Earth, one could devise a small construct to maximise and funnel the mist that "dampens" said object.. add in Shape Water to move said moisture to a funnel and said construct can be of a cloth to gather as much as possible when "damp".. Beckon Water - another use, an arcane steam engine, a few casters as a team and enough "volume" inside the construct to hold 1 minute of castings by said crew, and after said 1 minute delay, you have water evaporating magicaly and with no need of any fire.. an Artificer would certainly have a field day with these...
Beckon earth doesn't address 3D shapes, except to say "covers surfaces in a 5-foot-square area". Which usually means a game tile, which is a volume. So have a fractal sculpture with extremely high surface area (or simply a bunch of thin walls), and you can cover all the surfaces with one casting. This would exponentially increase the total sand harvested from each casting.
@@GamesFromSpace the idea was that a vertical surface would help with the other half: removing the sand, clearing up the surface for a new casting.. if area instead of cube, fine, make that tall sheet into a spiral.. it could be more compact, but that would help with collecting the sand.
@@zebaklongfang9344 There's some equation which depends on how many contraptions you can set up, and how much time the caster has, versus how fast the contraption must drain the sand. A complex "tree" will have ludicrous amounts of surface area, and may take hours to drain the sand. A series of vertical walls technically fitting in one five foot square will drain very fast.
This makes me imagine a Desert Civilisation, with religous leaders in their settlements, that are divine soul sorceres. Like a Lv. 1 Divine Soul Sorcerer could cast the Prestidigitaion, Elemtalism, Guidance, and Mending, as cantrips, and Ceremony, and Bless as their First Level Spell, with the additional Cure wounds if they are good alinged. They could keep an entire town alive in the middle of an inhospitable desert. (this does require using a mix of 2024 and 2014 Rules as far as I know but it still sounds like it could work)
Love these kind of videos! One of my favs Grungeon. I was also thinking of some other aspects with this spell! Based on the information you showed us in this video. "Beckon Air" + A slight breeze can greatly increase the drying process in clothes on a laundry line especially in humid environments. + Combine airflow with fire and smoke to create simple long-distance communication systems like smoke signals. (This also can work with another person using "Beckon Fire") + With the building of an elevated platforms or a hand held nozzel device (with your hands free to cast the spell) you can use the spell to gently scatter seeds over a prepared field, ensuring even distribution + With some patience you can help dry hides during leather preparation by ensuring steady airflow. "Beckon Earth" + You can create layer sand on muddy or uneven ground to create stable walkways in settlements. + In a survival situation you can use the layers of sand to filter water for drinking and irrigation purposes. + Since it also sticks around you can generate sand quickly for flood defenses or military fortifications OR put into gaps in walls or foundations for added stability. "Beckon Fire" + Though your not making "FIREBALL" level fire the small controlled heat can be use to make fires for refining ores or heating tools without needing traditional flint. + Since you can create a "colored smoke" a non-verbal communication system over distances. Like Smoke signals. (Aided with "Beckon Air") + With generating controlled heat for smoking or drying meat and flavored scented meats. + I think is is SUPER IMPORTANT but since you need a temperature required to light a candle wick is approximately 450°F (232°C) (which is the ignition temperature of most waxes used in candles) with the part of "Beckon Fire" since you create "a thin cloud of harmless embers" and I asume you can control it within a "5-foot Cube" you can use this spell to quickly sterilize metal tools, especially in medical or crafting scenarios or help close wounds and calm the senses of an injured person when medical bandages are not available. "Beckon Water" + You can mix precise amounts of water with clay for pottery, bricks, or other craft projects. (Though with evaporation this can be debated in what would happen if the water evaporates out of the clay is to be up to the GM and Rule Lawyers. + Sanitation is key for health in any civilization you can rinse tools or utensils used in crafting, cooking, or farming. + Something I also thought of was you can prevent sensitive goods like parchment or foodstuffs from drying out by adding moisture to the air. This video always make me realize that magic truly changes the game for standard living way more than just for some murder-hobos. Love videos like these! Keep it up!
The modern implications of the ability to create a thin layer of silica is kind of phenomenal. Assuming that molecular level control is outside of the power level of this spell, which is a reasonable restriction, modern tech could separate the silicon out, and we have so many uses for that
GM's everywhere: "Goodberry and Create or Destroy Water make it really difficult to make survival aspects of the game interesting." 2024 WotC: "Good news, everyone! *slaps down Beckon Water*"
Another great video, even if it broke my brain for a while. I was struck with the idea of, Beckon Water into a bottle, add a cork for a 1 minute timed distraction. Then my brain said what if we add poison, does that evaporate as well? Can we make poison gas? What about cayenne pepper? Can we make tear gas? Luckily I came back to my senses to realize that Beckon Earth only states, and I quote "You create a thin shroud of dust or sand that covers surfaces in a 5-foot-square area", eyeballs are a surface.... Pocket Sand. Lastly I take no credit for this war crime as it was my friend's idea, lungs are a surface. So..... have fun with that thought.
Your comment about the sand staying around even after casting gave me a crazy idea (this also applies for the Decanter of Endless Water) It'd be a really world-changing event if something "undid" all the magic like this. Seeing magically created lakes and ponds dry up, all objects made by summoned sand vanish into thin air as they all turn back into ambient magic. People would be able to eventually figure out that it happened but dealing with the ramifications on a local or global scale might be really fun. I'm going off of the premise that since matter can't be created or destroyed, only changed in shape/composition, that's where the conjuration of nonliving things comes from. They aren't "making" sand. Just turning magic energy *into* sand. The same way that something like sci-fi food cloning or generation is just putting all the relevant atoms together in a proper fashion to give you a hamburger out of what was once an empty container
If we take the mass energy equivalent into consideration this becomes a terrifying scenario. 15 ml of water is enough energy to send a spacecraft into Earth orbit. So having enough energy to convert to mass on your implied scale... I'm not sure the planet would still exist when all that mass suddenly returns to energy.
@@larstollefsen1236 The Hiroshima explosion was the conversion of 0.7 *grams* of matter into energy. This is why the matter is generally described as summoned, not created. One lake of water (not a great measurement) would be about a year's worth of sunlight input for the entire planet. (Going from memory on that last one, don't quote me)
natural bodies of water are already connected to the elemental plane of water much of the time. So there's no actual difference between normal water and water from the decanter of endless water, both are probably from the elemental plane of water
Ooooo. Extend that "Just turning magic energy into sand." further and you just created a magical storage battery. Now make a device that can harness the "unmaking" of that sand back into magical energy and you have Magipunk.
4:05 Small note about the construction thing, desert sand is absolutely useless for cement since the grains dont have the right properties for decent constructs. So even in a desert it would be useful.
With the sand cantrip, I'm imagining a soul draining 9-5 job of just summoning an allotted amount of sand. Might even be the equivalent to those Japanese "Black Jobs" with an overbearing overseer
I was kinda thinking the same thing, only it was some low-paid employees spending their time casting Elementalism and Create Bonfire all day to power the local power plant's steam turbines. Working in 8 hour shifts, with 3 shifts so as to operate non-stop 24 hours per day. Working for wages that might not even be enough for the employees to afford the electricity in their own homes. Possibly even being slaves such as prisoners of war if we want to get even darker with the idea... 🤔...I think I might have just given myself an idea for our next campaign😂
I would also think that it's just enough to create a layer, like about the same amount of a days or two worth of dust. Not like a half inch thick layer that the video says.
@@erikvale3194 It would be. I'd have to give the guards some protective items, which I'm sure the party could make use of it they could acquire them in their initial escape. I'm thinking that the world would be a place where magic users are very rare, Wizards especially so, and are seen as both too dangerous and valuable to be allowed their freedom. They must serve The Emperor or die. A few mages, though, have managed to keep their powers secret and stay hidden. If the party survives escaping they will have to choose what to do. Will they try to seek allies to fight The Emperor and her forces? Will they attempt to flee to the only nation remaining independent from Her Excellency? Will they attempt to change their identities and hide? Or will they come up with a strategy that I haven't considered yet?
This highlights an issue in the 5.24 version of the game. Commoner is a template, as demonstrated by the kobold, goblin, and drow commoner statblocks. Humans, as a species, have an Origin feat. _All of them._ While this video demonstrates how powerful Magic Initiate can be, adding Crafter, Healer, and the daily Heroic Inspiration would make Humanity hands down _the_ dominant species on any world they began on from first principles.
oh damn. You're right. This is insane. Ahahaha wow all humans can take magic initiate and get goodberry/find familiar, presti+Elementalism/Mending. I did not consider this. Along with the other feats, that's a game changer. Mind if I potentially use this in a future video? -Tom
@Grungeon_Master Please! It's why I brought it up. Also, Elementalism, Guidance, Goodberry is likely the ultimate MI combo for civilians. Food, water, magical healing, and a _literally supernatural_ level of competence in all skills? Now THAT'S OP!
@@vakusdrake3224 That's like saying only PC elves have Fey Ancestry. Although anytime you world build with a game as your basis you'll run into fun little illogical snares like this.
I feel thats a bit of a metagamey thing that could be explained away by saying that its meant to represent “human versatility” (ie a particularly strong person might have savage attacker, or a perceptive one having alert) but thats just my thought on it
if the first part of beckon water works RAW and not just spraying out 1 cup of water as RAI probably is then you could set up a 5ft cube of cloth or straw or some high surface area material you could get like a gallon of water per cast. the beckon fire invites creative use since you can always stretch the definition of candle torch or lamp beckon air would be mandatory for metalworking replacing industrial sized bellows. wind enough to push a door closed doesn't sound like much until you consider thats a 5ft cube of air being moved, which will pull more of the surrounding air as well. that's a tremendous amount of airflow and if done inside say a 10ft square intake that narrows down you could get a very strong sustained blast. talking about these spells always ends up going towards a magical industrial revolution but this more than any other would cause an industrial revolution. steel making was the heart of our real world one and this makes industrial scale steel not only possible but easier than doing it at a smaller scale.
a clever mind can still use it... what would be the limit between a surface and a container.. if one sees magic as a form of science, they will find the limits and how to work with it. not much a concern for an adventurer.. but on worldbuilding.
The Mold Earth cantrip is a *gamechanger*. Move a 5x5x5 cube of dirt every six seconds. In an hour, you could replicate every fort the Romans ever built, including the ones that are still around today and intact.
Another video or series of videos I would appreciate would be one on the most malleable spells, like Nystul’s Magic Aura, Fabricate, Creation, the various illusions, Bestow Curse, Planar Binding, True Polymorph, and Wish.
The usefulness of spells does also depend on how many people in a world can actually use magic at all. High elves most definitely have an advantage there, the same for high elf-born half-elves. Though drow and Drow-born half-elves are limited to the dancing lights Cantrip but that’s easier for them to learn and very useful in dark places. They’d make amazing miners and would absolutely make the difference in any mining team. They’d just need to take a few seconds to cast the Cantrip every so often to keep up four roughly torch-sized floating lights. In situations where flammability is normally an issue, it now isn’t because dancing lights isn’t fire and doesn’t produce any heat.
I'd like to blow your mind, Mr Grungeon Master. There is an equivalent of a Cleric cantrip called Create Water, which creates up to 2 gallons of water per level. The effect is instantaneous, which means that the water sticks around. The cost of a magic item that is use-activated is 2,000 * the spell level * the caster level. The item's creator can reduce their caster level to the minimum caster level. Cantrips/Orisons count as a spell level 1/2 for the purpose of magic item creation. It is, therefore, possible to create an on use item with no limits of uses per day that creates 2 gallons of water per use every times it's used for a total of 1,000 gold. Expensive for an individual. Doable for a town. This means that a single expenditure of gold will completely prevent a town from ever suffering from the effects of a drought.
Prestidigitation and mending are the two most valuable spells in the game. Think about it, they are basically an undo button for anything bad. Oops I broke it. Mending. Oops I made a mess of it. Prestidigitation. You could restore a building by yourself, or run a laundry business by yourself. Toss in the two restoration spells and now you're a one man renovation squad. Find a ruined castle, a week later it looks brand new.
Mending especially, in a medieval society where repairing basic items was a significant use of time because you couldn't just replace anything which wore out. And prestidigitation for flavoring food would have an insane impact on international trade. (If the spell still does that in 5e)
Mending is also very useful as an adventurer for a simple reason. Adventurers tend to break things, alot "Sorry barkeep that my barbarian friend smashed your window. Let me fix it for you" Makes your party alot less likely to get thrown out of places, atleast the first few times.
Hi; could you make a video(s) about the impact of spells with permanent effects? For what I am able to quickly gather: Find Familiar Nystul’s Magic Aura (as the spell-shaping spell, this one is my favourite, and I would especially love a video about it) Arcane Lock Continual Flame Magic Mouth (focused on its potential from permanence, rather than as a computer component) Find Steed Galder’s Tower Animate Dead (A particularly big deal) Glyph of Warding (almost certainly deserves a video of its own) [You have already admirably covered Plant Growth] Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum Find Greater Steed Geas Awaken (like with Animate Dead, this can have particularly long-lasting and unpredictable consequences) Reincarnate (different enough in consequences from other resurrection spells to be included here) Hallow Forbiddance Guards and Wards Druid Grove Create Undead Create Homunculus Magic Jar Programmed Illusion (could easily share a video with Magic Mouth) Temple of the Gods Finger of Death Sequester Simulacrum Symbol Demiplane Mighty Fortress Imprisonment
While not permanent, Planar Binding could also make a great topic to cover along with these things. The Permanence spell of earlier editions could also be worth covering.
With Stone Shape and Wall of Stone you can expand into uncharted lands. Think the American West meets the age of global exploration. 10 minutes you have 20 foot high walls and then you can Stone Shape strategic entrances. Bones of the Earth also make permanent objects. It makes 6 cylinders at 5 feet in diameter and of up to 30 feet heigh. That is a lot of rock that can be quarried or better yet just Stone Shaped into the requisite building blocks. A couple interesting way to cheese Galder's Tower. At NO point in the description does it say it has to be on a surface and it has a 30 foot range. So by RAW you could create a tower that just hangs 30 feet in the air. " *You conjure a two-story tower made of stone, wood, or similar suitably sturdy materials* " The only limitation on that is you have to have a sample of the sturdy material. Now is Diamond a "similar suitably sturdy materials"? Is Adamantine a "similar suitably sturdy materials"?
Crazy minutia: Beckon Fire does not specify the embers ever go away. It only specifies the scent leaves eventually. Granted, the verbiage could be interpreted by a very RAW-centric DM to say you can't light anything if you move the embers (cause they can light things "in that area"), but still. (edited for a minor typo)
Ohhhh. You are correct.. Although, like the smoke, which technically only loses its scent, not its existence, I would argue both are affected by normal physical processes after being summoned 'instantaneously' Interesting idea, for sure.
If we go full nitpicky, "harmless" is a wonderfully abusable quality. You could fill a bag with these "non evaporating harmless embers" and have a magical airbag which prevents impact damage.
Of course if you have anything to light with the embers you don't have to move the embers. You light that thing, then use it to light whatever else you want to light.
To start on this one, id say that prestidigitation, druidcraft, thaumaturgy, and the 4 control element cantrips, are all basically upgraded or re-mixed variants of this, but its a nice multi-purpose but weaker option for when you dont need overkill, just elemental control. The airflow would help fires for forges and cooking be FAR more efficient/hotter, you could basically turn a normal clay oven into a vortex forge, it would also be great for cpr, allowing clean and safely controlled airflow instead of using a human’s breath or standardized masks, although there are better spells for that. It could be used to pull the air out of a 5ft area, or to compress the air of a 5ft area… there are options, albeit few. Much like gust, it has… issues The creation of sand could also make a power source via a sandwheel, or, if you can choose what Type of sand, that opens up horrifically wide options of interactions that various stone types and mixes could have, heck, you could even say that its adamantine sand or something else crazy. Heck, for that matter, you could describe it as white hot sand and make things Very uncomfortable. The fire effect is similar to a lot of the effects from the other things mentioned above, but i could see it as a good way to mark escape paths in an emergency situation, or to have a safe to use torch/lamp lighting source for guard patrols and such As others have mentioned it would be easy to combo the water effect and other spells (control water, create water, …) and the like, however, fun note, although the name says water, the spell description leaves what you summon vague, and only mentioned that the Water evaporates, but, what if you mist something with mercury? Or poison? Heck, id make myself a nice cup o milk perhaps… on another use case, it would let people EASILY trap almost anything that flies (almost nothing can fly if every feather or their entire wings are soaked), slow down and exhaust most land creatures by soaking their fur, and making many automata and construct have a Very bad day. Or, you could use it to stave off light heat, or make heavy heat SO MUCH worse… steam broiled orc anyone? Its also super helpful for a lot of food preparation type effects and stuff It IS worth noting that this spell can let you interact with traditionally “hybrid” elements, which is a rare thing to find. On a similar note, and on the cantrips i mentioned at the top, the 4 control elements spells (okay, maybe not as much with gust, tho it does have some uses) can MASSIVELY overhaul major labor tasks, like ditch digging, foundation making, water hauling, ice and chilling… and so many other things.
2:55 I know of a few historical events where entire groups of people were wiped out due to asphyxiation from large quantities of gas with a density higher than atmosphere being trapped in essentially a valley due to the terrain. Being able to just move it away would’ve saved so many lives.
I don't know if another comment already pointed this out, but even if the water evaporates after you drink it, it's still IN YOU. It might be in a gaseous form, but it will condense back into liquid, so unless you proceed to burp like crazy, you still get the hydration because evaporation doesn't mean it vanishes into nothing
One can also, as a mage, for a solid cost of a magic item, craft a staff of elementalism or a staff of create water for like 500gps each, and if you craft both, then that is many casts of beckon water, creating a temporary cup of water, and then using create water to expand it to fill many cups of water Even if it isn't unlimited use, that is still a crazy magic item combo for any city, warding almost completely against disease or water shortages, even if noone in the city knows magic, as long as there is a bigger kingdom nearby, they might have someone able to craft these Though I will say, because of the new magic item crafting rules, it is quite rare for a druid to be able to craft these kinds of staffs, but as long as someone can do so, they would gain much enterprise from having them sold far and wide
On a similar note, goodberry is mind bogglingly useful for a marching army. As Napoleon said, "An army marches on it's stomach." A level 3 druid can cast goodberry 6 times a day with its 4 level 1 slots and 2 level 2 slots. Thats 60 berries. A berry feeds a person for a day. Thats enough for 59 people and the druid casting it. Logistically, this is insane. An army could more as fast as its slowest troops, as opposed to waiting for supply lines. Historicaly, fast, nimble armies are able to defeat far larger forces because they were able to out-maneuver them.
A cantrip creating physical materials ex-nihilo with no caveats? Yeah this cantrip isn't making it into my games unchanged... Worldbuilding-wise, this is so powerful to the point of being uninteresting.
my view of the issue as a worldbuilder (if it becomes an issue): when seeing magic as a form of science, mana could be found (in the future) to have a matter-energy-mana relation expanding the e=mc^2... and way before a genius consider such a thing, it could be already known that, like having a fire on a closed space or stagnant water, too much magic being used to conjure things from nothing could make an area mana-dry.. at least when suddenly used on a more industrial way.
@@zebaklongfang9344Or, let's imagine, it makes space-time or reality itself unstable and may lead to realities (or planes) crashing in or numerous other sorta of possible apocalypses... That's more or less the take on Lantartia
@@MauroDraco also sound like magic the gathering before the planar thing that nerfed planewalkers after so much abuse by them.. yet, I would think, on the matter if such cantrip creates an issue or not, would pivot around scale.. there was plenty of overly prosperous kigdoms and city-estates.. I guess, any arcane genius abusing this cantrip (along with presti and the shape/mold cantrips) would create another such prosperous place, a limit on range and time (while he lives).. the issue would be, like on our history, not at illumination era, but at an industrial revolution - that would require such "simple" magics to be more spread on a population.. then you would have such a riddle as, if so many is magic inclined/gifted, how much magic is in the world already, vs how much is being spent with the new revolutionary machines.. while an industrial district caused dismay and polution over a city, even the most prosperous empires had an impact with a footpring larger then urbanisation itself or farming..
I think there's a simple solution to this. Nix the "ex-nihilo aspect all together. It is called "Beckon" air/fire/earth/water after all.....as in call apon these things to come to you. -For the cup of water example, rather then creating it out of nothing, you concentrate the water in the armosphere into a container -The earth part likewise can be acomplished from moving the dust from the surounding in one place. This changes nothing about how the spell is used in-game, and is technicly still folowing the rules of the spell without breaking reality😅😅
You should make a video about enspelled armor, weapons, and staves. They basically solve the issue of spell scrolls only being usable by people with class spell lists and essentially make any spell usable by the masses. Any world where they exist would revolutionize absolutely EVERYTHING and they don't even cost that so they shouldn't be too hard to mass produce.
(Before watching it): I have spent hours thinking how to use all of the Elementalism options to create (piece by piece, 1 foot^3 at a time) a personal bathtub made of high quality ceramics, literally "out of nothing" R.A.W. (scenario: party is floating in space after their spelljammer was destroyed; wizards/warlocks provide "Air Bubble" & Tiny Hut); cleric creates water. -> Nothing serious, just to pass time until rescued.
I'm curious as to when the usage of this spell would impact the environment. The wording specifying that the water evaporates means it's not disappearing into aether, that's going to join the water system. Over time usage of this cantrip would slowly increase the amount of overall water on the planetary body, it'd be very slow of course but would eventually have consequences... Now I'm thinking of what other spells have similar consequences like this...
The Earth has about 130 *million* cubic kilometers of water. You could have casters creating a cube of water ten kilometers tall every day, and it still wouldn't have a serious impact on the (non local) systems for many thousands of years. And that would probably take a billion casters all their focus, a cubic kilometer is a lot of "cups".
I absolutely agree with you. I haven't looked up the specific description for the decanter of endless water to see if it's something that could be crafted in a bastion, but (assuming I can find a group to play with), I'm honestly thinking about constantly crafting these, and gifting at least one to an upstanding person in every town or village we visit.
Fun fact, pretty much anybody can learn a handful of cantrips as long as they put... a couple years into being a choir boy, pretty much. You have someone that goes to their local temple twice a week, you have someone that most likely knows how to use cantrips such as Elementalism, Prestidigitation, or Mend. Basic 3rd edition magic, which you might not even need to study for that hard, makes most basic survival needs entirely moot. Every farmer in the world is going to learn Elementalism, every dandy is going to know prestidigitation, every soldier is going to take the time to learn Mend. Why? Because it nearly eliminates an entire system of requirements, you no longer need to find water sources, to purify water, to keep your stuff clean, to stitch together your clothes. Basic 0th level spells have so adversely affected Basic living that if someone does not know one of these spells, they would be mocked for not looking forwards for the future, or just plain being an idiot.
Another possible use for the magically evaporating water could be in refrigeration. It takes energy for a liquid to turn into a gas and if the conjured water is absorbing energy from the environment then it could be used as a refrigerant. Though for everyone's sanity, I imagine that actually using this would take the form of some kind of otherwise mundane device made by dwarven or gnomish craftsmen. Something like a refridgerator or an ice box with a little cup built into it where the user can cast the Beckon Water aspect of the cantrip. The water then goes into the machine through tubes and various one-way valves and when it evaporates in one minute the device releases the vapor out of a vent while cooling the inside of the box. Keep in mind, you can already get magical cooling from Presitdigitation or from Shape Water. The latter of which can create whole blocks of ice per casting though they melt after an hour. On the other hand, salt water has a lower freezing point than fresh water so an enterprising spellcaster could build a well-insulated basement, have some tubs of salt water, cast Shape Water on the salt water to freeze them... and maybe have the natural cooling effect of the salt water be cold enough to naturally freeze some tubs of fresh water they could sell. Maybe some castings of Ray of Frost could speed it up. Anyway, I imagine that even if these basic cantrips are not world changing in themselves then an enterprising person who studies how they operate could create these very specific structures or devices to push the cantrip's effects further. A town could have one 'ice maker' who only has to know a few actual cantrips like Shape Water and Ray of Frost and has big ice cellar or basement set up specifically to turn water to ice, and then they sell blocks of ice or ice cream to the rest of the town.
You can probably make a subplot about a village in the middle of the desert the party arrives at with a sole magically-inclined individual who is kind of an asshole and bullies the village without repercussions. He would lose quickly to the party, but the actual goal isn’t to simply defeat them, because the village would be without clean water for a long distance, and the party won’t stay for a while.
Huh. Elementalism is an entire school of magic in Arcanum. It is an amazingly powerful school and often times i have to nerf it just to balance it with all other spell schools
Also, if a species that recently developed agriculture relies so heavily on a few spellcasters for survival, then over a millennia or two of history, those spellcasters will become more common in the gene pool. People able to use magic -- even just these basic cantrips -- are exceptionally "fit" both personally and for their societies.
A nice note for 5e, with the later books taken into account, ANY npc can take time and funds (admittedly its not the cheapest) to learn any given feat, due to that, they can learn any of the “learn X cantrips…” feats and get access to these spells, even without a class. And, with the new (much more reasonable, tho still sometimes painful) creation rules, a “town wise person” could learn the cantrips, then make spell wands or similar items super easily for the entire rest of the town to use. (And cantrips don’t use up the wand charge)
Assuming water produced by beckon water does evaporate magically after one minute, and isn't boiling, that would be beyond useful. When any liquild evaporates it takes heat along with it according to its latent heat of vaporization, which in the case of water is 2257 joules/gram, therefore 1 cup of water evaporating/minute should produce (2257 joules/gram * 240 grams/cup)/minute = 541.68 kilojoules/minute of cooling, which is more than enough cooling to rapidly cool anything that might need it. Sure boiling water could power a steam engine, but that amount of cooling could definitely power a Stirling engine (they use heat differential).
something i have noticed: the effects say they last for 1 hour, they do NOT say that they disappear if you cast it again and the duration is instantaneous, this means: you can have more than one of these effects going at a time. you can shape a cup of dirt and fill it with water, you can have multiple smoke shapes going at once, you can leave a trail of scented smoke, that smoke can smell like skunk. also it's nice to see another mold earth enjoyer. i make it a point to ALWAYS take mold earth, i consider it the best cantrip in the game. need a wall: mold earth need a trench: mold earth need a moat with a wall: mold earth wanna just hide in a hole: mold earth. wanna get your friend out of harms way: mold earth (take the earth from beneath him and put it under the enemy, by the end they are 5 feet up and he is 5 feet down and out of range, forced movement does not invoke AoO...he IS kinda stuck though...so...) i recently had a fight in a big stone building so i couldn't use mold earth, but i COULD use stone shape, so i made a big well instead, then some kinda skeleton guy, maybe a litch, jumped down into the well on me but i managed to maneuver such that he was on the bottom, then the tank jumped in on top of me, i used benign transposition to swap places with him, since i couldn't see the exit through him, then flew out. then i used stone shape again to seal the well except with a small hole on the top and cast cloud of daggers in there. the tank wasn't TOO happy that i did that...or that the bard also did that. that hole became a blender. but i was ready to heal him if he went down, and he survived in the end.)
The closing or opening of the windows could be useful on a farm in a storm prep less time tou take closing doors the more time you got for something else
Tom, I always love your videos for their thoughtfulness and care and utility, but this one goes above/beyond. You are absolutely right that this small spell would be a game changer for any civilization. WISH we could manage this one IRL.
Have the artificer create a system of glasses and glassware that pushes the water that's newly created through a system of tubes and then once the water evaporates as per the spell description, it will condense into a trapped system that will reform into water. Now you have perfect efficiency. Bingo bango, You have civilization. You're welcome
The water doesn't even need to be superheated to fuel a steam power revolution... The fact that it just becomes vapor is enough. The vapor would take up a larger volume of space than the liquid either way, and that's the end goal of heating the water irl. A group of people conjuring water into enclosed piston frames could easily power trains or electric generators, though I imagine the job would be very boring
God i adore "Useless" spells, i love spells that a player goes "this is ...useless" but an non adventuring wizard would think "yes this is a must for my 1 lv 9 slot"
My brain just LOVES coming up with odd ball questions. It also stores random unconnected facts and bits of trivia. It takes on average 5 minutes for water, just water and nothing else in your stomach, to be absorbed into the body. Even so the fact it evaporates would basically negate any energy cost of cooling down a certain area. Yes it would take a bunch of casting but that little bit if heat loss would add up over time. Dig a hole or have some other well insulated area. Continually cast Elementalism, making sure to vent the moist air, and there you go instant cooling effect. Don't over look the "shape water into a shape". Maybe I am putting to much importance of water holding it's shape but you could shape water and transport it for one hour away from the river, lake or something. One cubic foot of water weights 62.41 pounds (28.31 kg). Shape it in to a barrel shape and just roll it away. Okay the water will get dirty by rolling on the ground. Moving something solid is way easier the moving water. You don't have to design your transport to be water tight for at least the hour. Sloshing is a major concern with hauling liquids. Liquid transport doesn't have just one large container because all the water in that container will continue to move when you brake piling in the front of the container, reverse that for accelerating. Have a crane set up with a length of rope that can be detached. Dip the rope in water, cast it to make it solid around the rope, and then move it into the transport of choice. If the ride takes longer then the hour then have someone besides the driver solidifying the water again.
The response to this cantrip highlights the bigger, ongoing-for-a-while problem with the game's current community, namely the "Umm, I can't do infinite damage with this ability to all my hypothetical enemies therefore it's worthless" thinking. The same kind that has people saying Monks and Rangers are bad classes, or pretending the "Coffeelock" is one of the best builds ever because of course your GM will hand out infinite short rests, right? I love these videos. I struggle to think like this myself, most times, but they've helped me for when I run headlong into things like "What do readily accessible prestidigitation wands anybody can use do to a setting?" and similar issues in my home games. And the fantastical worlds D&D represents have always been more engaging to as a whole than just "I cast fireball modified to something ridiculous." Fun as that can be, too.
I'm most impressed with the smoke ability of this spell. Coloured smoke can allow for very complex smoke messages in early societies or emergency situations. I'd also expect all high end establishments to recast this spell every minute, in the same way businesses have there own scents now. On a more specialised note couloured smoke and enticing scents could be very useful in the entertainment sector.
3.5 million people die every year die to unsafe water. 2.2 million of them are children. Yaaa Elementalism is - societal speaking- an amazing spell. Take that Silvery Barbs!
Honestly, Prestidigitation and Mend are the ultimate “daily life” spells, especially since the effects of Cleanse(/Soil) was folded into Prestidigitation with 3E. The ability to sterilize any surface, object, person’s skin or wound? Prestidigitation has it covered! Need to flavor, chill, or cook food? Prestidigitation has it covered! Need shelter from a storm, but the roof has a hole in it? Mend! Your weapon broke in the middle of a dungeon? Mend! Favorite wooden mug cracked? Mend! There’s a hole in your bucket? Mend it!
Another thing of note regarding Beckon Water is Evaporative Cooling. It's cooled desert civilizations and our own biology via our sweat. You could also dry yourself this way; simply pour this evaporating water over your wet form until it replaces all the normal water and wait. Other cantrips can already do this better, but... While we're here.
Hi Tom! While you mentioned controlling water, I had this idea where priests and their spellcasting followers would march through cropland in a giant row, singing their cantrips and continually watering the ground behind them like a sort of agricultural sea shanty.
The first effect of beckon water does not specify evaporation, it's rather part of the second effect. Thus continuously casting it into a large funnel and having it drip to a basin is fair game.
This water generation could also be an insane fridge. If it actually evaporates (without being hot), then it would be usable in an evaporation fridge. And, if we go with physics, an _entire cup_ evaporating within a minute might even freeze, not just cool.
5:25 you were saying how billowing is borderline pointless but actually I think it would be vital for keeping a flame alive. Picture this your blacksmith that you need a steady source of heat there for a steady source of fire. If you cast Gus you'll blow the fire out and not have a fire so you do billow because you want a lighter air flow to the flame.
This elementalism definitely sounds powerful exactly in the ways I want my character to be. Unfortunately I hadn’t heard about this because I’m playing an Artificer and if there’s one thing WOTC hates, it’s the idea of making Artificers core in any way shape or form. Still though, it’s so cool in all the ways you describe, it changes so much about a world just from beckon water alone. I would to be able to mess about with it.
You missed a HUGE benefit of scented smoke: Insect repellent! There's many plants, that when burned, ward off insects, which is excellent for reducing the spread of disease, or crop-eaters like locusts.
Beckon air over a 5 ft cube directed continuously into a venturi to feed the flames of a kiln, beckon earth then sculpting element to create moulds would be fucking amazing for ironworks !! You could technically use sculpt element to dig as well, turning 1 foot cubes into balls that can be handled and thrown out of a pit.... hell, warfare would love that too... You can now create an unlimited quantity of cannonballs or catapult ammunition out of local dirt.
Realistically, the mist could produce rather large amounts of water if you mist down a 5^3 ft funnel every six seconds and let it collect into a barrel. Gets around the evaporation in the alternate cast method so completely you might as well get rid of it.
If everyone had Beckon Water in our world, that would still be useful even in areas where people have access to clean tap water or bottled water. No need to buy tons and tons of bottled water and then throw the plastic bottles in landfills, or spend all of the fuel required to inefficiently transport around all of that water. Assuming the water does still evaporate, is there anything that would be particularly useful for? It seems like there should be some situation in cooking or chemistry where being able to dilute some substances with water from Beckon Water, mix it up, and then know what all of that excess water is going to be definitely gone in 1 minute without needing to involve heating would be useful. I'm thinking things like extremely fast drying paint, and the making perfect pie crusts (in the same way that some recipes call for alcohol to be used purely so that it will evaporate away later without needing to get too hot). Fast drying mud / clay without needing extreme heating / temperature shocks.
All of these would be just enough for parlor tricks first and function more as an emergency cantrip if you needed something that would be useful. All of the effects described are almost useless without the dm being incredibly nice and allowing what the cantrip shouldn't be able to do. The cup of clean water being the only real useful instead of a that's sorta neat effect. Even using shape elements to make a mold would result in imprecise edges and irregular shapes as it specifies crude in the description. The summon and would most likely summon just enough to cover something, like a couple days worth of dust. It would take days off nothing but casting to get enough sand for a glass bead, let alone something useful. It's a flavor cantrip, not a mechanically useful one. Even for residents of the world, there are better uses of time than brute forcing with elementalism. If dnd had more of a soft magic system, I could see these working for those who spend their time improving a "useless" spell. Dnd has a very rigid magic system. The spells do what they say and nothing more.
Beckon Air could be use to help make forges hotter by pushing a door's worth of fresh air into the fire, or even spin a rotating door style turbine that is twice or 4 times the size of that volume cube and is just partially inside the volume to maximize the asymmetric force, with an axle that is hooked to a air pump of some sort? How often can this be repeated, or how long can a continuous action like that be maintained?
Low-key makes me want to add this to my PF1 setting, just because I took a similar view of Prestidigitation in it and agree with the points in this vid.
Magical materials disapparate back into magical energy when they "evaporate," if I allow myself to be magically nerdy. To be fair, not many may know to use that word, although the use of the word apparate in Harry Potter would probably make it recognizable to many.
Beckon Air: enough cantrip casts can be useful for boats using sails. Not powerful enough, but it's better than nothing and it's free. Beckon earth: use a word with enough capital I's and lowercase l's, and you can make furrows for planting. Nothing said how big the text was.
I always love these world building videos, my only question is when was the the spell first created or did the god of magic bestow the knowledge to everyone that met the requirements for the magic from the beginning.
i think beckon earth would be even better if you have control over the material the sand/dust is made of. like metallic dust or even powdered sugar, if you could specify the material, the general use would skyrocket!
Thanks for the forecast! I need some advice: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How can I transfer them to Binance?
I can already envision the profit seeking arcane sweatshops where each cantrip caster lines up to their sand casting tables to try and meet their quotas today to avoid sliding further into company debt.
Repeated casting of cantrips can break all games. Thus I have ruled that each half a hour of continual use will net you a point of exhaustion. You can reset the clock by taking a short rest, but this will limit abuse quite a bit. Another thing is that I really dislike creating something from nothing. In my games spells like elementalism and create bonfire work by thinning the veil between material plane and various other dimensions or by collecting the material from nearby, like suggested in another comment. This has the benefit of creating potential disaster story line should somebody start using these cantrips in industrial scale.
I have a question for you. Our normal baseline earth, except 1% of people (regardless of genetics) are given the magic initiate feat when they're born, with the 3 spells you think are most world changing. How does society develop? Assume that humans are exactly as curious as normal, and that the same people that came up with stuff like bread and metalworking are looking for applications of these spells.
Yea, I'm still taking prestidigitation if I'm ever offered a cantrip for real-world use. Imagine if you could make boiled broccoli taste like chocolate mousse, baked chicken breasts taste like filet mignon, and sparkling water taste like Coca-Cola. Not only would it become super easy to eat healthy, imagine how much a wealthy person would pay you to make their diet food taste good for a month.
The water created by Beckon Water could be used as the material component for Create Water. That would allow you to, even in a desert, to create enough water to fill a barrel of non-evaporating water.
omg clever
And with the magic items, you can have a staff of beckon water, and a staff of create water, allowing you to make multiple barrels of water a day, even after the spellcaster dies of old age and wasn't able to pass on their legendary magic
Granted it would cost 1000 gold, and require proficiency in both Arcana and woodworking, the former likely requiring private tutelage, and the latter requiring a whole career, not to mention a thousand gold
That being said, there would be some guy who did all that, and would likely have become a legendary figure in such a desert village
- the 4 most impactful cantrips (in my opinion):
prestidigitation (it just does so much), guidance (+1d4 to all skill checks, when the average person has at most a +2 from their stats), mend (tool wear/attrition is eliminated), elementalism (for the reasons you list in this video)
- the most impactful level 1 spell:
goodberry (this would solve famine and revolutionise war by making logistics MUCH easier)
Combined with the fact that _all humans_ have an Origin feat, I imagine MI: Druid is going to be quite popular amongst common citizens.
Goodberry is insane. Even though it's only 10 a cast, a level 1 spell caster with it can stop an entire village from starving to death. While not ideal you don't need to eat every day and in times of famine, being able to feed a village of 100 each person every 10th day or even every 5th with 2 slots with an entire days worth of caloric intake, this will stop them from dying, or at least stave it off for quite sometime. Again, not ideal by any means as malnutrition and eventually they will die. But you could sustain a community like this for hopefully long enough for the problem to be actually fixed.
@@imALazyPanda Again, all humans get an Origin feat. If 1/10 of your population can cast Goodberry daily...
@@larstollefsen1236 o yeah if you think about it really any non-goodberry food would probably be considered a luxury. Why toil growing fields of wheat for bread for sustenance when you can just eat goodberry, which one has to presume is probably better for you then a diet of mainly bread. There are no stipulations on goodberry so I feel that it contains not just the calories but also sufficient macros/nutrients that it would not be harmful for longterm consumption. Theres nothing to indicate that sustaining solely off goodberry carries any risk at all.
@@larstollefsen1236 not all humans are the same, same for any race. Adventurers are a cut above the rest, not everyone has "a feat". You're using game mechanics as lore facts
I always love videos like this where you analyze how a seemingly neish spell can cause change in whole goverments, trade, and communication. You're a gem of a channel and have inspired me and many more with great ideas, keep up the good work!
Thank you so much! That's very kind of you to say. I do hope to inspire some creativity in someone with each video, no matter how pedantic I'm being. Glad the videos resonate with you.
-Tom
*niche 🙂
There are two other points with the water that would certainly be made use of. Water suddenly evaporating means it rapidly expands at the end of a minute. It also cools what it is in contact with, as our sweat does to keep us cool, to the equivalent of 144000 cal per casting. I'm not an engineer but I'm sure both those traits could be mechanically useable.
In a recent game, I had a Decanter of Endless Water. I recently ran the numbers and found that if you could put it in a water tower and activate it with magic mouth, it would supply all the water needed for a modern day English town of around 12,000 people. I felt like a bit of an arse for just using it to shoot a water cannon every couple of days.
On use as a mould, that 'crude' shape qualifier might be significant: I suspect at least it won't be suitable for fine sculptures, and maybe not what we today would consider normal pottery, depending on interpretation
Yeah.. that item is absurd. I've been tossing around the idea of a video about it for a while, but because I'm so bad at maths, I've avoided it so far.
I head canon that the water is conditional. Used on low settings, the water is just regular water you can safely drink (to avoid nerfing it). On firehose settings, it's more like summoned water, which returns to the source plane after a short while.
This way you get all the fun and none of the existential guilt.
@@GamesFromSpace Can the summoned water stick around just long enough to turn a portable hole into a Jacuzzi?
@@Trantion It sticks around long enough to do anything except make players feel bad about wasting the utility of free water.
some extra points I can see on these:
Beckon Earth - one can devise a cilinder (or a few nested ones), that fits a 5 ft cube, hanging verticaly above a basin for collection.. plenty of surface for a decent sand collector, per casting..
Beckon Water - similar to Earth, one could devise a small construct to maximise and funnel the mist that "dampens" said object.. add in Shape Water to move said moisture to a funnel and said construct can be of a cloth to gather as much as possible when "damp"..
Beckon Water - another use, an arcane steam engine, a few casters as a team and enough "volume" inside the construct to hold 1 minute of castings by said crew, and after said 1 minute delay, you have water evaporating magicaly and with no need of any fire.. an Artificer would certainly have a field day with these...
Beckon earth doesn't address 3D shapes, except to say "covers surfaces in a 5-foot-square area". Which usually means a game tile, which is a volume. So have a fractal sculpture with extremely high surface area (or simply a bunch of thin walls), and you can cover all the surfaces with one casting. This would exponentially increase the total sand harvested from each casting.
@@GamesFromSpace the idea was that a vertical surface would help with the other half: removing the sand, clearing up the surface for a new casting.. if area instead of cube, fine, make that tall sheet into a spiral.. it could be more compact, but that would help with collecting the sand.
@@zebaklongfang9344 There's some equation which depends on how many contraptions you can set up, and how much time the caster has, versus how fast the contraption must drain the sand.
A complex "tree" will have ludicrous amounts of surface area, and may take hours to drain the sand. A series of vertical walls technically fitting in one five foot square will drain very fast.
This makes me imagine a Desert Civilisation, with religous leaders in their settlements, that are divine soul sorceres.
Like a Lv. 1 Divine Soul Sorcerer could cast the Prestidigitaion, Elemtalism, Guidance, and Mending, as cantrips, and Ceremony, and Bless as their First Level Spell, with the additional Cure wounds if they are good alinged. They could keep an entire town alive in the middle of an inhospitable desert.
(this does require using a mix of 2024 and 2014 Rules as far as I know but it still sounds like it could work)
Love these kind of videos! One of my favs Grungeon. I was also thinking of some other aspects with this spell! Based on the information you showed us in this video.
"Beckon Air"
+ A slight breeze can greatly increase the drying process in clothes on a laundry line especially in humid environments.
+ Combine airflow with fire and smoke to create simple long-distance communication systems like smoke signals. (This also can work with another person using "Beckon Fire")
+ With the building of an elevated platforms or a hand held nozzel device (with your hands free to cast the spell) you can use the spell to gently scatter seeds over a prepared field, ensuring even distribution
+ With some patience you can help dry hides during leather preparation by ensuring steady airflow.
"Beckon Earth"
+ You can create layer sand on muddy or uneven ground to create stable walkways in settlements.
+ In a survival situation you can use the layers of sand to filter water for drinking and irrigation purposes.
+ Since it also sticks around you can generate sand quickly for flood defenses or military fortifications OR put into gaps in walls or foundations for added stability.
"Beckon Fire"
+ Though your not making "FIREBALL" level fire the small controlled heat can be use to make fires for refining ores or heating tools without needing traditional flint.
+ Since you can create a "colored smoke" a non-verbal communication system over distances. Like Smoke signals. (Aided with "Beckon Air")
+ With generating controlled heat for smoking or drying meat and flavored scented meats.
+ I think is is SUPER IMPORTANT but since you need a temperature required to light a candle wick is approximately 450°F (232°C) (which is the ignition temperature of most waxes used in candles) with the part of "Beckon Fire" since you create "a thin cloud of harmless embers" and I asume you can control it within a "5-foot Cube" you can use this spell to quickly sterilize metal tools, especially in medical or crafting scenarios or help close wounds and calm the senses of an injured person when medical bandages are not available.
"Beckon Water"
+ You can mix precise amounts of water with clay for pottery, bricks, or other craft projects. (Though with evaporation this can be debated in what would happen if the water evaporates out of the clay is to be up to the GM and Rule Lawyers.
+ Sanitation is key for health in any civilization you can rinse tools or utensils used in crafting, cooking, or farming.
+ Something I also thought of was you can prevent sensitive goods like parchment or foodstuffs from drying out by adding moisture to the air.
This video always make me realize that magic truly changes the game for standard living way more than just for some murder-hobos.
Love videos like these! Keep it up!
If the dm argues that the water is undrinkable because it evaporates because it's super hot then you just use prestidigitation to cool the water.
The modern implications of the ability to create a thin layer of silica is kind of phenomenal. Assuming that molecular level control is outside of the power level of this spell, which is a reasonable restriction, modern tech could separate the silicon out, and we have so many uses for that
GM's everywhere: "Goodberry and Create or Destroy Water make it really difficult to make survival aspects of the game interesting."
2024 WotC: "Good news, everyone! *slaps down Beckon Water*"
Another great video, even if it broke my brain for a while. I was struck with the idea of, Beckon Water into a bottle, add a cork for a 1 minute timed distraction. Then my brain said what if we add poison, does that evaporate as well? Can we make poison gas? What about cayenne pepper? Can we make tear gas? Luckily I came back to my senses to realize that Beckon Earth only states, and I quote "You create a thin shroud of dust or sand that covers surfaces in a 5-foot-square area", eyeballs are a surface.... Pocket Sand. Lastly I take no credit for this war crime as it was my friend's idea, lungs are a surface. So..... have fun with that thought.
Your comment about the sand staying around even after casting gave me a crazy idea (this also applies for the Decanter of Endless Water)
It'd be a really world-changing event if something "undid" all the magic like this. Seeing magically created lakes and ponds dry up, all objects made by summoned sand vanish into thin air as they all turn back into ambient magic. People would be able to eventually figure out that it happened but dealing with the ramifications on a local or global scale might be really fun.
I'm going off of the premise that since matter can't be created or destroyed, only changed in shape/composition, that's where the conjuration of nonliving things comes from. They aren't "making" sand. Just turning magic energy *into* sand. The same way that something like sci-fi food cloning or generation is just putting all the relevant atoms together in a proper fashion to give you a hamburger out of what was once an empty container
If we take the mass energy equivalent into consideration this becomes a terrifying scenario. 15 ml of water is enough energy to send a spacecraft into Earth orbit. So having enough energy to convert to mass on your implied scale... I'm not sure the planet would still exist when all that mass suddenly returns to energy.
@@larstollefsen1236 The Hiroshima explosion was the conversion of 0.7 *grams* of matter into energy. This is why the matter is generally described as summoned, not created. One lake of water (not a great measurement) would be about a year's worth of sunlight input for the entire planet. (Going from memory on that last one, don't quote me)
natural bodies of water are already connected to the elemental plane of water much of the time. So there's no actual difference between normal water and water from the decanter of endless water, both are probably from the elemental plane of water
Ooooo. Extend that "Just turning magic energy into sand." further and you just created a magical storage battery. Now make a device that can harness the "unmaking" of that sand back into magical energy and you have Magipunk.
4:05 Small note about the construction thing, desert sand is absolutely useless for cement since the grains dont have the right properties for decent constructs. So even in a desert it would be useful.
With the sand cantrip, I'm imagining a soul draining 9-5 job of just summoning an allotted amount of sand. Might even be the equivalent to those Japanese "Black Jobs" with an overbearing overseer
I was kinda thinking the same thing, only it was some low-paid employees spending their time casting Elementalism and Create Bonfire all day to power the local power plant's steam turbines. Working in 8 hour shifts, with 3 shifts so as to operate non-stop 24 hours per day. Working for wages that might not even be enough for the employees to afford the electricity in their own homes. Possibly even being slaves such as prisoners of war if we want to get even darker with the idea... 🤔...I think I might have just given myself an idea for our next campaign😂
I would also think that it's just enough to create a layer, like about the same amount of a days or two worth of dust. Not like a half inch thick layer that the video says.
@@glennschroeder3828 Enslaving people who can set you on fire at will sounds like a dangerous profession.
@@erikvale3194 It would be. I'd have to give the guards some protective items, which I'm sure the party could make use of it they could acquire them in their initial escape. I'm thinking that the world would be a place where magic users are very rare, Wizards especially so, and are seen as both too dangerous and valuable to be allowed their freedom. They must serve The Emperor or die. A few mages, though, have managed to keep their powers secret and stay hidden.
If the party survives escaping they will have to choose what to do. Will they try to seek allies to fight The Emperor and her forces? Will they attempt to flee to the only nation remaining independent from Her Excellency? Will they attempt to change their identities and hide? Or will they come up with a strategy that I haven't considered yet?
This highlights an issue in the 5.24 version of the game.
Commoner is a template, as demonstrated by the kobold, goblin, and drow commoner statblocks. Humans, as a species, have an Origin feat. _All of them._
While this video demonstrates how powerful Magic Initiate can be, adding Crafter, Healer, and the daily Heroic Inspiration would make Humanity hands down _the_ dominant species on any world they began on from first principles.
oh damn. You're right. This is insane. Ahahaha wow all humans can take magic initiate and get goodberry/find familiar, presti+Elementalism/Mending. I did not consider this. Along with the other feats, that's a game changer. Mind if I potentially use this in a future video?
-Tom
@Grungeon_Master Please! It's why I brought it up.
Also, Elementalism, Guidance, Goodberry is likely the ultimate MI combo for civilians.
Food, water, magical healing, and a _literally supernatural_ level of competence in all skills? Now THAT'S OP!
The only solution here is to say the PC's are prodigies and npcs are usually too incompetent to take many pc options
@@vakusdrake3224 That's like saying only PC elves have Fey Ancestry.
Although anytime you world build with a game as your basis you'll run into fun little illogical snares like this.
I feel thats a bit of a metagamey thing that could be explained away by saying that its meant to represent “human versatility” (ie a particularly strong person might have savage attacker, or a perceptive one having alert) but thats just my thought on it
if the first part of beckon water works RAW and not just spraying out 1 cup of water as RAI probably is then you could set up a 5ft cube of cloth or straw or some high surface area material you could get like a gallon of water per cast.
the beckon fire invites creative use since you can always stretch the definition of candle torch or lamp
beckon air would be mandatory for metalworking replacing industrial sized bellows. wind enough to push a door closed doesn't sound like much until you consider thats a 5ft cube of air being moved, which will pull more of the surrounding air as well. that's a tremendous amount of airflow and if done inside say a 10ft square intake that narrows down you could get a very strong sustained blast. talking about these spells always ends up going towards a magical industrial revolution but this more than any other would cause an industrial revolution. steel making was the heart of our real world one and this makes industrial scale steel not only possible but easier than doing it at a smaller scale.
as a DM, i'd only say it evaporates if you put it on a surface rather than in a container.
a clever mind can still use it... what would be the limit between a surface and a container.. if one sees magic as a form of science, they will find the limits and how to work with it.
not much a concern for an adventurer.. but on worldbuilding.
@@zebaklongfang9344 Surface area. Or "common sense", since nobody wants a campaign about struggling to define what a container is.
The Mold Earth cantrip is a *gamechanger*. Move a 5x5x5 cube of dirt every six seconds. In an hour, you could replicate every fort the Romans ever built, including the ones that are still around today and intact.
Another video or series of videos I would appreciate would be one on the most malleable spells, like Nystul’s Magic Aura, Fabricate, Creation, the various illusions, Bestow Curse, Planar Binding, True Polymorph, and Wish.
The usefulness of spells does also depend on how many people in a world can actually use magic at all. High elves most definitely have an advantage there, the same for high elf-born half-elves. Though drow and Drow-born half-elves are limited to the dancing lights Cantrip but that’s easier for them to learn and very useful in dark places. They’d make amazing miners and would absolutely make the difference in any mining team. They’d just need to take a few seconds to cast the Cantrip every so often to keep up four roughly torch-sized floating lights. In situations where flammability is normally an issue, it now isn’t because dancing lights isn’t fire and doesn’t produce any heat.
I'd like to blow your mind, Mr Grungeon Master.
There is an equivalent of a Cleric cantrip called Create Water, which creates up to 2 gallons of water per level. The effect is instantaneous, which means that the water sticks around.
The cost of a magic item that is use-activated is 2,000 * the spell level * the caster level. The item's creator can reduce their caster level to the minimum caster level. Cantrips/Orisons count as a spell level 1/2 for the purpose of magic item creation.
It is, therefore, possible to create an on use item with no limits of uses per day that creates 2 gallons of water per use every times it's used for a total of 1,000 gold. Expensive for an individual. Doable for a town. This means that a single expenditure of gold will completely prevent a town from ever suffering from the effects of a drought.
Prestidigitation and mending are the two most valuable spells in the game. Think about it, they are basically an undo button for anything bad.
Oops I broke it. Mending.
Oops I made a mess of it. Prestidigitation.
You could restore a building by yourself, or run a laundry business by yourself. Toss in the two restoration spells and now you're a one man renovation squad. Find a ruined castle, a week later it looks brand new.
Mending especially, in a medieval society where repairing basic items was a significant use of time because you couldn't just replace anything which wore out.
And prestidigitation for flavoring food would have an insane impact on international trade. (If the spell still does that in 5e)
Mending is also very useful as an adventurer for a simple reason. Adventurers tend to break things, alot
"Sorry barkeep that my barbarian friend smashed your window. Let me fix it for you"
Makes your party alot less likely to get thrown out of places, atleast the first few times.
... until the Beckon Fire Nation attacked 😂
Hi; could you make a video(s) about the impact of spells with permanent effects? For what I am able to quickly gather:
Find Familiar
Nystul’s Magic Aura (as the spell-shaping spell, this one is my favourite, and I would especially love a video about it)
Arcane Lock
Continual Flame
Magic Mouth (focused on its potential from permanence, rather than as a computer component)
Find Steed
Galder’s Tower
Animate Dead (A particularly big deal)
Glyph of Warding (almost certainly deserves a video of its own)
[You have already admirably covered Plant Growth]
Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum
Find Greater Steed
Geas
Awaken (like with Animate Dead, this can have particularly long-lasting and unpredictable consequences)
Reincarnate (different enough in consequences from other resurrection spells to be included here)
Hallow
Forbiddance
Guards and Wards
Druid Grove
Create Undead
Create Homunculus
Magic Jar
Programmed Illusion (could easily share a video with Magic Mouth)
Temple of the Gods
Finger of Death
Sequester
Simulacrum
Symbol
Demiplane
Mighty Fortress
Imprisonment
While not permanent, Planar Binding could also make a great topic to cover along with these things. The Permanence spell of earlier editions could also be worth covering.
With Stone Shape and Wall of Stone you can expand into uncharted lands. Think the American West meets the age of global exploration. 10 minutes you have 20 foot high walls and then you can Stone Shape strategic entrances.
Bones of the Earth also make permanent objects. It makes 6 cylinders at 5 feet in diameter and of up to 30 feet heigh. That is a lot of rock that can be quarried or better yet just Stone Shaped into the requisite building blocks.
A couple interesting way to cheese Galder's Tower. At NO point in the description does it say it has to be on a surface and it has a 30 foot range. So by RAW you could create a tower that just hangs 30 feet in the air. " *You conjure a two-story tower made of stone, wood, or similar suitably sturdy materials* " The only limitation on that is you have to have a sample of the sturdy material. Now is Diamond a "similar suitably sturdy materials"? Is Adamantine a "similar suitably sturdy materials"?
Crazy minutia: Beckon Fire does not specify the embers ever go away. It only specifies the scent leaves eventually. Granted, the verbiage could be interpreted by a very RAW-centric DM to say you can't light anything if you move the embers (cause they can light things "in that area"), but still. (edited for a minor typo)
Ohhhh. You are correct..
Although, like the smoke, which technically only loses its scent, not its existence, I would argue both are affected by normal physical processes after being summoned 'instantaneously'
Interesting idea, for sure.
If we go full nitpicky, "harmless" is a wonderfully abusable quality. You could fill a bag with these "non evaporating harmless embers" and have a magical airbag which prevents impact damage.
@GamesFromSpace 😄
Free charcoal?
Of course if you have anything to light with the embers you don't have to move the embers. You light that thing, then use it to light whatever else you want to light.
To start on this one, id say that prestidigitation, druidcraft, thaumaturgy, and the 4 control element cantrips, are all basically upgraded or re-mixed variants of this, but its a nice multi-purpose but weaker option for when you dont need overkill, just elemental control.
The airflow would help fires for forges and cooking be FAR more efficient/hotter, you could basically turn a normal clay oven into a vortex forge, it would also be great for cpr, allowing clean and safely controlled airflow instead of using a human’s breath or standardized masks, although there are better spells for that. It could be used to pull the air out of a 5ft area, or to compress the air of a 5ft area… there are options, albeit few. Much like gust, it has… issues
The creation of sand could also make a power source via a sandwheel, or, if you can choose what Type of sand, that opens up horrifically wide options of interactions that various stone types and mixes could have, heck, you could even say that its adamantine sand or something else crazy. Heck, for that matter, you could describe it as white hot sand and make things Very uncomfortable.
The fire effect is similar to a lot of the effects from the other things mentioned above, but i could see it as a good way to mark escape paths in an emergency situation, or to have a safe to use torch/lamp lighting source for guard patrols and such
As others have mentioned it would be easy to combo the water effect and other spells (control water, create water, …) and the like, however, fun note, although the name says water, the spell description leaves what you summon vague, and only mentioned that the Water evaporates, but, what if you mist something with mercury? Or poison? Heck, id make myself a nice cup o milk perhaps… on another use case, it would let people EASILY trap almost anything that flies (almost nothing can fly if every feather or their entire wings are soaked), slow down and exhaust most land creatures by soaking their fur, and making many automata and construct have a Very bad day. Or, you could use it to stave off light heat, or make heavy heat SO MUCH worse… steam broiled orc anyone? Its also super helpful for a lot of food preparation type effects and stuff
It IS worth noting that this spell can let you interact with traditionally “hybrid” elements, which is a rare thing to find.
On a similar note, and on the cantrips i mentioned at the top, the 4 control elements spells (okay, maybe not as much with gust, tho it does have some uses) can MASSIVELY overhaul major labor tasks, like ditch digging, foundation making, water hauling, ice and chilling… and so many other things.
2:55 I know of a few historical events where entire groups of people were wiped out due to asphyxiation from large quantities of gas with a density higher than atmosphere being trapped in essentially a valley due to the terrain. Being able to just move it away would’ve saved so many lives.
I don't know if another comment already pointed this out, but even if the water evaporates after you drink it, it's still IN YOU. It might be in a gaseous form, but it will condense back into liquid, so unless you proceed to burp like crazy, you still get the hydration because evaporation doesn't mean it vanishes into nothing
One can also, as a mage, for a solid cost of a magic item, craft a staff of elementalism or a staff of create water for like 500gps each, and if you craft both, then that is many casts of beckon water, creating a temporary cup of water, and then using create water to expand it to fill many cups of water
Even if it isn't unlimited use, that is still a crazy magic item combo for any city, warding almost completely against disease or water shortages, even if noone in the city knows magic, as long as there is a bigger kingdom nearby, they might have someone able to craft these
Though I will say, because of the new magic item crafting rules, it is quite rare for a druid to be able to craft these kinds of staffs, but as long as someone can do so, they would gain much enterprise from having them sold far and wide
On a similar note, goodberry is mind bogglingly useful for a marching army. As Napoleon said, "An army marches on it's stomach."
A level 3 druid can cast goodberry 6 times a day with its 4 level 1 slots and 2 level 2 slots. Thats 60 berries. A berry feeds a person for a day. Thats enough for 59 people and the druid casting it.
Logistically, this is insane. An army could more as fast as its slowest troops, as opposed to waiting for supply lines. Historicaly, fast, nimble armies are able to defeat far larger forces because they were able to out-maneuver them.
A cantrip creating physical materials ex-nihilo with no caveats? Yeah this cantrip isn't making it into my games unchanged... Worldbuilding-wise, this is so powerful to the point of being uninteresting.
my view of the issue as a worldbuilder (if it becomes an issue): when seeing magic as a form of science, mana could be found (in the future) to have a matter-energy-mana relation expanding the e=mc^2... and way before a genius consider such a thing, it could be already known that, like having a fire on a closed space or stagnant water, too much magic being used to conjure things from nothing could make an area mana-dry.. at least when suddenly used on a more industrial way.
@@zebaklongfang9344Or, let's imagine, it makes space-time or reality itself unstable and may lead to realities (or planes) crashing in or numerous other sorta of possible apocalypses... That's more or less the take on Lantartia
@@MauroDraco also sound like magic the gathering before the planar thing that nerfed planewalkers after so much abuse by them..
yet, I would think, on the matter if such cantrip creates an issue or not, would pivot around scale.. there was plenty of overly prosperous kigdoms and city-estates.. I guess, any arcane genius abusing this cantrip (along with presti and the shape/mold cantrips) would create another such prosperous place, a limit on range and time (while he lives).. the issue would be, like on our history, not at illumination era, but at an industrial revolution - that would require such "simple" magics to be more spread on a population.. then you would have such a riddle as, if so many is magic inclined/gifted, how much magic is in the world already, vs how much is being spent with the new revolutionary machines.. while an industrial district caused dismay and polution over a city, even the most prosperous empires had an impact with a footpring larger then urbanisation itself or farming..
I think there's a simple solution to this. Nix the "ex-nihilo aspect all together.
It is called "Beckon" air/fire/earth/water after all.....as in call apon these things to come to you.
-For the cup of water example, rather then creating it out of nothing, you concentrate the water in the armosphere into a container
-The earth part likewise can be acomplished from moving the dust from the surounding in one place.
This changes nothing about how the spell is used in-game, and is technicly still folowing the rules of the spell without breaking reality😅😅
@@viktormadzov5286even breaking down nearby stone to make the sand
You should make a video about enspelled armor, weapons, and staves. They basically solve the issue of spell scrolls only being usable by people with class spell lists and essentially make any spell usable by the masses. Any world where they exist would revolutionize absolutely EVERYTHING and they don't even cost that so they shouldn't be too hard to mass produce.
(Before watching it): I have spent hours thinking how to use all of the Elementalism options to create (piece by piece, 1 foot^3 at a time) a personal bathtub made of high quality ceramics, literally "out of nothing" R.A.W.
(scenario: party is floating in space after their spelljammer was destroyed; wizards/warlocks provide "Air Bubble" & Tiny Hut); cleric creates water.
-> Nothing serious, just to pass time until rescued.
I'm curious as to when the usage of this spell would impact the environment. The wording specifying that the water evaporates means it's not disappearing into aether, that's going to join the water system. Over time usage of this cantrip would slowly increase the amount of overall water on the planetary body, it'd be very slow of course but would eventually have consequences... Now I'm thinking of what other spells have similar consequences like this...
I've been saying this about the Decanter of Endless Water for decades now.
The Earth has about 130 *million* cubic kilometers of water. You could have casters creating a cube of water ten kilometers tall every day, and it still wouldn't have a serious impact on the (non local) systems for many thousands of years. And that would probably take a billion casters all their focus, a cubic kilometer is a lot of "cups".
5:42 I have brought peace, freedom, justice, freedom, peace, justice, and free sand to my new empire!
I absolutely agree with you. I haven't looked up the specific description for the decanter of endless water to see if it's something that could be crafted in a bastion, but (assuming I can find a group to play with), I'm honestly thinking about constantly crafting these, and gifting at least one to an upstanding person in every town or village we visit.
Beckon air would be useful to help sort particulate matter by density. So if you want to separate sand from flour, for example. Or husks from seeds.
Fun fact, pretty much anybody can learn a handful of cantrips as long as they put... a couple years into being a choir boy, pretty much. You have someone that goes to their local temple twice a week, you have someone that most likely knows how to use cantrips such as Elementalism, Prestidigitation, or Mend.
Basic 3rd edition magic, which you might not even need to study for that hard, makes most basic survival needs entirely moot. Every farmer in the world is going to learn Elementalism, every dandy is going to know prestidigitation, every soldier is going to take the time to learn Mend. Why? Because it nearly eliminates an entire system of requirements, you no longer need to find water sources, to purify water, to keep your stuff clean, to stitch together your clothes.
Basic 0th level spells have so adversely affected Basic living that if someone does not know one of these spells, they would be mocked for not looking forwards for the future, or just plain being an idiot.
Another possible use for the magically evaporating water could be in refrigeration. It takes energy for a liquid to turn into a gas and if the conjured water is absorbing energy from the environment then it could be used as a refrigerant. Though for everyone's sanity, I imagine that actually using this would take the form of some kind of otherwise mundane device made by dwarven or gnomish craftsmen. Something like a refridgerator or an ice box with a little cup built into it where the user can cast the Beckon Water aspect of the cantrip. The water then goes into the machine through tubes and various one-way valves and when it evaporates in one minute the device releases the vapor out of a vent while cooling the inside of the box.
Keep in mind, you can already get magical cooling from Presitdigitation or from Shape Water. The latter of which can create whole blocks of ice per casting though they melt after an hour. On the other hand, salt water has a lower freezing point than fresh water so an enterprising spellcaster could build a well-insulated basement, have some tubs of salt water, cast Shape Water on the salt water to freeze them... and maybe have the natural cooling effect of the salt water be cold enough to naturally freeze some tubs of fresh water they could sell. Maybe some castings of Ray of Frost could speed it up.
Anyway, I imagine that even if these basic cantrips are not world changing in themselves then an enterprising person who studies how they operate could create these very specific structures or devices to push the cantrip's effects further. A town could have one 'ice maker' who only has to know a few actual cantrips like Shape Water and Ray of Frost and has big ice cellar or basement set up specifically to turn water to ice, and then they sell blocks of ice or ice cream to the rest of the town.
You can probably make a subplot about a village in the middle of the desert the party arrives at with a sole magically-inclined individual who is kind of an asshole and bullies the village without repercussions. He would lose quickly to the party, but the actual goal isn’t to simply defeat them, because the village would be without clean water for a long distance, and the party won’t stay for a while.
Huh. Elementalism is an entire school of magic in Arcanum. It is an amazingly powerful school and often times i have to nerf it just to balance it with all other spell schools
Also, if a species that recently developed agriculture relies so heavily on a few spellcasters for survival, then over a millennia or two of history, those spellcasters will become more common in the gene pool. People able to use magic -- even just these basic cantrips -- are exceptionally "fit" both personally and for their societies.
A nice note for 5e, with the later books taken into account, ANY npc can take time and funds (admittedly its not the cheapest) to learn any given feat, due to that, they can learn any of the “learn X cantrips…” feats and get access to these spells, even without a class. And, with the new (much more reasonable, tho still sometimes painful) creation rules, a “town wise person” could learn the cantrips, then make spell wands or similar items super easily for the entire rest of the town to use. (And cantrips don’t use up the wand charge)
Assuming water produced by beckon water does evaporate magically after one minute, and isn't boiling, that would be beyond useful. When any liquild evaporates it takes heat along with it according to its latent heat of vaporization, which in the case of water is 2257 joules/gram, therefore 1 cup of water evaporating/minute should produce (2257 joules/gram * 240 grams/cup)/minute = 541.68 kilojoules/minute of cooling, which is more than enough cooling to rapidly cool anything that might need it. Sure boiling water could power a steam engine, but that amount of cooling could definitely power a Stirling engine (they use heat differential).
something i have noticed:
the effects say they last for 1 hour, they do NOT say that they disappear if you cast it again and the duration is instantaneous, this means:
you can have more than one of these effects going at a time. you can shape a cup of dirt and fill it with water, you can have multiple smoke shapes going at once, you can leave a trail of scented smoke, that smoke can smell like skunk.
also it's nice to see another mold earth enjoyer. i make it a point to ALWAYS take mold earth, i consider it the best cantrip in the game.
need a wall: mold earth
need a trench: mold earth
need a moat with a wall: mold earth
wanna just hide in a hole: mold earth.
wanna get your friend out of harms way: mold earth (take the earth from beneath him and put it under the enemy, by the end they are 5 feet up and he is 5 feet down and out of range, forced movement does not invoke AoO...he IS kinda stuck though...so...)
i recently had a fight in a big stone building so i couldn't use mold earth, but i COULD use stone shape, so i made a big well instead, then some kinda skeleton guy, maybe a litch, jumped down into the well on me but i managed to maneuver such that he was on the bottom, then the tank jumped in on top of me, i used benign transposition to swap places with him, since i couldn't see the exit through him, then flew out. then i used stone shape again to seal the well except with a small hole on the top and cast cloud of daggers in there. the tank wasn't TOO happy that i did that...or that the bard also did that. that hole became a blender. but i was ready to heal him if he went down, and he survived in the end.)
A casting of Beckon Water followed by a casting of Create Water could be extremely potent
The closing or opening of the windows could be useful on a farm in a storm prep less time tou take closing doors the more time you got for something else
Tom, I always love your videos for their thoughtfulness and care and utility, but this one goes above/beyond. You are absolutely right that this small spell would be a game changer for any civilization. WISH we could manage this one IRL.
Have the artificer create a system of glasses and glassware that pushes the water that's newly created through a system of tubes and then once the water evaporates as per the spell description, it will condense into a trapped system that will reform into water. Now you have perfect efficiency.
Bingo bango, You have civilization. You're welcome
The water doesn't even need to be superheated to fuel a steam power revolution... The fact that it just becomes vapor is enough. The vapor would take up a larger volume of space than the liquid either way, and that's the end goal of heating the water irl. A group of people conjuring water into enclosed piston frames could easily power trains or electric generators, though I imagine the job would be very boring
God i adore "Useless" spells, i love spells that a player goes "this is ...useless" but an non adventuring wizard would think "yes this is a must for my 1 lv 9 slot"
My brain just LOVES coming up with odd ball questions. It also stores random unconnected facts and bits of trivia.
It takes on average 5 minutes for water, just water and nothing else in your stomach, to be absorbed into the body.
Even so the fact it evaporates would basically negate any energy cost of cooling down a certain area. Yes it would take a bunch of casting but that little bit if heat loss would add up over time. Dig a hole or have some other well insulated area. Continually cast Elementalism, making sure to vent the moist air, and there you go instant cooling effect.
Don't over look the "shape water into a shape". Maybe I am putting to much importance of water holding it's shape but you could shape water and transport it for one hour away from the river, lake or something. One cubic foot of water weights 62.41 pounds (28.31 kg). Shape it in to a barrel shape and just roll it away. Okay the water will get dirty by rolling on the ground.
Moving something solid is way easier the moving water. You don't have to design your transport to be water tight for at least the hour. Sloshing is a major concern with hauling liquids. Liquid transport doesn't have just one large container because all the water in that container will continue to move when you brake piling in the front of the container, reverse that for accelerating. Have a crane set up with a length of rope that can be detached. Dip the rope in water, cast it to make it solid around the rope, and then move it into the transport of choice. If the ride takes longer then the hour then have someone besides the driver solidifying the water again.
The response to this cantrip highlights the bigger, ongoing-for-a-while problem with the game's current community, namely the "Umm, I can't do infinite damage with this ability to all my hypothetical enemies therefore it's worthless" thinking. The same kind that has people saying Monks and Rangers are bad classes, or pretending the "Coffeelock" is one of the best builds ever because of course your GM will hand out infinite short rests, right?
I love these videos. I struggle to think like this myself, most times, but they've helped me for when I run headlong into things like "What do readily accessible prestidigitation wands anybody can use do to a setting?" and similar issues in my home games.
And the fantastical worlds D&D represents have always been more engaging to as a whole than just "I cast fireball modified to something ridiculous."
Fun as that can be, too.
I'm most impressed with the smoke ability of this spell.
Coloured smoke can allow for very complex smoke messages in early societies or emergency situations.
I'd also expect all high end establishments to recast this spell every minute, in the same way businesses have there own scents now.
On a more specialised note couloured smoke and enticing scents could be very useful in the entertainment sector.
3.5 million people die every year die to unsafe water. 2.2 million of them are children. Yaaa Elementalism is - societal speaking- an amazing spell. Take that Silvery Barbs!
Honestly, Prestidigitation and Mend are the ultimate “daily life” spells, especially since the effects of Cleanse(/Soil) was folded into Prestidigitation with 3E.
The ability to sterilize any surface, object, person’s skin or wound? Prestidigitation has it covered! Need to flavor, chill, or cook food? Prestidigitation has it covered!
Need shelter from a storm, but the roof has a hole in it? Mend! Your weapon broke in the middle of a dungeon? Mend! Favorite wooden mug cracked? Mend! There’s a hole in your bucket? Mend it!
Another thing of note regarding Beckon Water is Evaporative Cooling. It's cooled desert civilizations and our own biology via our sweat.
You could also dry yourself this way; simply pour this evaporating water over your wet form until it replaces all the normal water and wait.
Other cantrips can already do this better, but... While we're here.
Hi Tom!
While you mentioned controlling water, I had this idea where priests and their spellcasting followers would march through cropland in a giant row, singing their cantrips and continually watering the ground behind them like a sort of agricultural sea shanty.
The first effect of beckon water does not specify evaporation, it's rather part of the second effect. Thus continuously casting it into a large funnel and having it drip to a basin is fair game.
Cantrip wand of Elementalism, an investment for any village
This water generation could also be an insane fridge.
If it actually evaporates (without being hot), then it would be usable in an evaporation fridge. And, if we go with physics, an _entire cup_ evaporating within a minute might even freeze, not just cool.
5:25 you were saying how billowing is borderline pointless but actually I think it would be vital for keeping a flame alive. Picture this your blacksmith that you need a steady source of heat there for a steady source of fire. If you cast Gus you'll blow the fire out and not have a fire so you do billow because you want a lighter air flow to the flame.
This elementalism definitely sounds powerful exactly in the ways I want my character to be. Unfortunately I hadn’t heard about this because I’m playing an Artificer and if there’s one thing WOTC hates, it’s the idea of making Artificers core in any way shape or form.
Still though, it’s so cool in all the ways you describe, it changes so much about a world just from beckon water alone. I would to be able to mess about with it.
It's this kind of magical thinking, that puts the magical thinker to sleep!
You missed a HUGE benefit of scented smoke: Insect repellent! There's many plants, that when burned, ward off insects, which is excellent for reducing the spread of disease, or crop-eaters like locusts.
The mist aspect of bekon water conceptually funtional in knocking dust from the air.
Beckon air over a 5 ft cube directed continuously into a venturi to feed the flames of a kiln, beckon earth then sculpting element to create moulds would be fucking amazing for ironworks !! You could technically use sculpt element to dig as well, turning 1 foot cubes into balls that can be handled and thrown out of a pit.... hell, warfare would love that too... You can now create an unlimited quantity of cannonballs or catapult ammunition out of local dirt.
Realistically, the mist could produce rather large amounts of water if you mist down a 5^3 ft funnel every six seconds and let it collect into a barrel. Gets around the evaporation in the alternate cast method so completely you might as well get rid of it.
The ability for the PF Witch to cast Cure Light Wounds 600 times an hour was always a favorite of mine
If everyone had Beckon Water in our world, that would still be useful even in areas where people have access to clean tap water or bottled water. No need to buy tons and tons of bottled water and then throw the plastic bottles in landfills, or spend all of the fuel required to inefficiently transport around all of that water.
Assuming the water does still evaporate, is there anything that would be particularly useful for? It seems like there should be some situation in cooking or chemistry where being able to dilute some substances with water from Beckon Water, mix it up, and then know what all of that excess water is going to be definitely gone in 1 minute without needing to involve heating would be useful.
I'm thinking things like extremely fast drying paint, and the making perfect pie crusts (in the same way that some recipes call for alcohol to be used purely so that it will evaporate away later without needing to get too hot). Fast drying mud / clay without needing extreme heating / temperature shocks.
All of these would be just enough for parlor tricks first and function more as an emergency cantrip if you needed something that would be useful. All of the effects described are almost useless without the dm being incredibly nice and allowing what the cantrip shouldn't be able to do.
The cup of clean water being the only real useful instead of a that's sorta neat effect. Even using shape elements to make a mold would result in imprecise edges and irregular shapes as it specifies crude in the description. The summon and would most likely summon just enough to cover something, like a couple days worth of dust. It would take days off nothing but casting to get enough sand for a glass bead, let alone something useful.
It's a flavor cantrip, not a mechanically useful one. Even for residents of the world, there are better uses of time than brute forcing with elementalism.
If dnd had more of a soft magic system, I could see these working for those who spend their time improving a "useless" spell. Dnd has a very rigid magic system. The spells do what they say and nothing more.
Beckon Air could be use to help make forges hotter by pushing a door's worth of fresh air into the fire, or even spin a rotating door style turbine that is twice or 4 times the size of that volume cube and is just partially inside the volume to maximize the asymmetric force, with an axle that is hooked to a air pump of some sort? How often can this be repeated, or how long can a continuous action like that be maintained?
Toss a small candle. Beckon Earth to cover a 5ft area with dust. Beckon Air to send that dust airborne. Beckon Fire, thermobaric airburst.
Low-key makes me want to add this to my PF1 setting, just because I took a similar view of Prestidigitation in it and agree with the points in this vid.
Magical materials disapparate back into magical energy when they "evaporate," if I allow myself to be magically nerdy. To be fair, not many may know to use that word, although the use of the word apparate in Harry Potter would probably make it recognizable to many.
Beckon Air: enough cantrip casts can be useful for boats using sails. Not powerful enough, but it's better than nothing and it's free.
Beckon earth: use a word with enough capital I's and lowercase l's, and you can make furrows for planting. Nothing said how big the text was.
I always love these world building videos, my only question is when was the the spell first created or did the god of magic bestow the knowledge to everyone that met the requirements for the magic from the beginning.
Step 1: beckon water
Step 2: fill airtight container with magic water and shrapnel.
Step 3: throw at your enemies
Beckon water and enspelled weapon of Goodberry sounds like an awesome combo now
i think beckon earth would be even better if you have control over the material the sand/dust is made of.
like metallic dust or even powdered sugar, if you could specify the material, the general use would skyrocket!
Thanks for the forecast! I need some advice: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How can I transfer them to Binance?
Imagine the effect that would have on the water cycle in that world. Would we see massively rising sea levels with this on an industrial scale?
What episode do you talk about the washer witch? I can't find it.
Wouldn't Beckon Air help replace mechanical bellows for furnaces and metalcrafting?
I can already envision the profit seeking arcane sweatshops where each cantrip caster lines up to their sand casting tables to try and meet their quotas today to avoid sliding further into company debt.
Beckon Air: keeping the wizard upwind of gnolls since 2024
Your videos make me want to make an economics wizard that has all the useful spells
Little known fact that Longinus' spear was enchanted with a Revivify spell
Beckon air is useful for drying clothes, if you need to, so actually pretty useful magic.
The ones from Xanathar were so much better and flavourful. Damm you wizards of the coast
this is the spell people used to make agrabah in Aladdin, the only justifiable explanation
I love that at least one other person thinks about world balance as power like i do…
I had no idea prestidigitation could do all that. I've only ever seen people use it to clean
'Purify Water' is just basically 'uv light'
Repeated casting of cantrips can break all games. Thus I have ruled that each half a hour of continual use will net you a point of exhaustion. You can reset the clock by taking a short rest, but this will limit abuse quite a bit.
Another thing is that I really dislike creating something from nothing. In my games spells like elementalism and create bonfire work by thinning the veil between material plane and various other dimensions or by collecting the material from nearby, like suggested in another comment. This has the benefit of creating potential disaster story line should somebody start using these cantrips in industrial scale.
I think if I could have one cantrip I'd have Prestidigitation. If I could have one full-on spell it would be Locate Object.
I have a question for you. Our normal baseline earth, except 1% of people (regardless of genetics) are given the magic initiate feat when they're born, with the 3 spells you think are most world changing.
How does society develop?
Assume that humans are exactly as curious as normal, and that the same people that came up with stuff like bread and metalworking are looking for applications of these spells.
But does it compare at all to prestidigitation
Yea, I'm still taking prestidigitation if I'm ever offered a cantrip for real-world use.
Imagine if you could make boiled broccoli taste like chocolate mousse, baked chicken breasts taste like filet mignon, and sparkling water taste like Coca-Cola.
Not only would it become super easy to eat healthy, imagine how much a wealthy person would pay you to make their diet food taste good for a month.