Best way to decide is this : should a cantrip or level 1 spell one shot a target ?
No. No it shouldnt. Disintegrate can because its a very high level spell slot. But resources wise, foot the fucking bill please.
But I would allow its use to torture a captured target by waterboarding.
Damage dealing cantrips are pretty much guaranteed to one shot commoners and have a decent chance on low HP enemies.
Create water would have a lower chance if it was created in their lungs since they could cough it out, and at best get disadvantage for a round. Unless they were in a limited space where they couldn’t get their head out, then it would drown them like putting flammable substances on them and then throwing a Fire Blast.
All that said, I wouldn’t allow them to make water in the lungs because it doesn’t fit the theme of the spell any more than being able to cast Create Flame inside the lungs.
Well it depends on the circumstance. The “captured target” you mention is helpless. You absolutely can oneshot him with any number of cantrips, or other mundane actions. You could oneshot him with a “use an object” action if that object is a lever controlling a trapdoor over a deep pit.
Point is, you certainly can drown someone with 30 gallons of water. You just have to set up for it correctly. I don’t really like the implication of your comment and the original post that it’s unreasonable to try such a thing just because the number used to categorize the spell is too low.
If the target is already captured or subdued, nothing can oneshot them. That’s just coup de grace.
“one shot” says to me that it instantly kill or removes as a threat an as-of-yet untouched and un-interacted-with target.
When people try to drown someone with create water they aren’t talking about creating water then drowning the person the old fashioned way, it’s “I cast create water in the lungs of that guy!”
Other popular “ideas” include - -Casting light on someone’s eyes so they go blind -Trying to target eardrums with shatter -Conflating charm person with dominate person -Attacking with mage hand -prestidigitation solves every problem and has no limits
It’s not that there is an arbitrary “number too low” problem, it’s that these spells explicitly state what they can do. Players sometimes feel “creativity” means they perform actions the spell doesn’t allow, and moreover are actually achieved by much more powerful spells.
Casting light on someone’s eyes so they go blind
Funny enough, in b/x D&D this was explicitly allowed. They got a save though, and light was a 1st level spell, not a cantrip so it was more like color spray that also gave you a magical light that followed you around afterward than an infinitely castable save or suck cantrip.
it’s “I cast create water in the lungs of that guy!”
I mean that just obviously doesn’t work because you don’t have a clear path to that guy’s lungs. His clothes and skin and bones are in the way. Furthermore, a creature’s lungs are not a container, and even if they were, it would be difficult to argue that they are an open container. But there are still a wide variety of ways it would be possible to drown someone using create water, and personally, I would sooner assume that the hypothetical player involved is considering one of those ways rather than a completely nonsensical way that doesn’t even begin to fit with the basic rules of spellcasting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/cemh20/using_createdestroy_water_to_kill_someone/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vqyu78/create_or_destroy_water_in_someones_lungs/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/cdtb5c/can_create_food_and_water_be_used_to_drown/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/ql764n/so_weve_all_heard_of_the_fill_their_lungs_with/
https://www.quora.com/Can-you-create-or-destroy-water-to-kill-someone-in-D-D
There are more. So many more. I just got tired of copying and pasting.
Its a resource management game. Either you use your imagination and roll a few chance dice, or you use an appropriate resource for it. Which is why killing a target that isnt already captures with a cantrip one shot doesnt work.
I don’t know why anyone would put that much effort into doing something so convoluted if not just to prove the point that they could. Which feels like it’s against the spirit of the game.
It’s not even the “use object” action that kills them as much as fall damage, which is not defined by the level of the one pulling the lever. This is more comparable binding someone to an anchor and pushing them into a body of water. It’s not a personal ability, it’s an environmental effect.
I don’t really like the implication of your comment and the original post that it’s unreasonable to try such a thing just because the number used to categorize the spell is too low.
This seems the best reason to refuse it, frankly. Spells have a reference of how damaging they ought to be, that’s what HP is supposed to measure. It’d be just as easy to say “but if fire/acid/steel hits the target just in the right way that’d kill them on the spot”. The main reference we have to whether it hit them good and how much they can endure is the HP. Why shouldn’t we be using the numbers the game gave us expressly for the purpose of measuring power?
If we are just gonna bypass these basic mechanics with improv, why not to let the Fighter player say that they are trying to cut off the enemy’s head with every hit? But if we let that fly we aren’t playing D&D anymore, just some loosely d20 based improv.
A 1st level spell focused on damage does at most 3d8, but Create Water is definitely not focused on that. The most generous version of that I could accept is 3d4 damage with a dex save for no damage, because if they close their mouth and stop breathing it just doesn’t work. You might end up running out of spells slots before the target dies.
I’d caveat it slightly: should a cantrip or level 1 spell always one shot a target?
If there’s some creative use in a specific unique situation where it’s justified, I think I might be warranted since it could be cool and fun without breaking the game. If it’s something they can do in almost every encounter, then definitely not
Indeed. Context is key. But lets not count the exceptions to make the basic rules shall we not ?
Of course if you use Produce flame to burn the heavy chandeleer right over the troll to make it fall down, you could make more than 1d8 fire damage in a round. But the chandeleer is doing the heavy lifting here.
I agree with the general sentiment that there are limits to what should be possible even with the rule of cool.
In this specific case we don’t even need to go into the territory of undefined stuff that the DM decides on the fly, the rules as written already explicitly say “You create up to 10 gallons of clean water within range in an open container.”
I’ve had players try to argue that the mouth of a creature etc. is a “container.” It gets frustrating sometimes.
One solution is to make clear that once the PCs start using “creative” solutions, so will the NPCs. The players usually don’t want the game to devolve to that point either.
Sure you can do create water in his mouth. Next turn as his free action he swallows, then he attacks you, hits, and you take 2d6 dmg.
Yup. When I DM my rule of thumb had always been “if you have to argue the point, then it’s just not valid”.
We’re not struggling creativity, we’re just cutting off rules mangling like this situation.
No problem. There is a reflex called “coughing”. Wonder why we all have that :p
Or simply opening the mouth?
I assumed they’d treat the mouth down to the lungs as one “open container”
“open mouth” as an open container is already a stretch.
“open mouth all the way down the lungs” as an open container is just bullshit. Rule of Cool definitely does not apply. That is not creative or cool in any way.
I don’t see a flaw, but it shouldn’t be instant death either. An easy constitution check or something to cough it up?
That’s why you need to dump the enemy in a empty vat and then use create water. lol or for regular use just tie them up and pour a bucket you are always refiling into their mouth.
If you are going to attempt to water board them like that, I would have no issue because at that point both the enemy and encounter have been defeated.
Of course when the person playing the paladin gets a little, uh, carried away and enthusiastically engages in such behavior… consequences? 😉
I’d simply argue that lungs are too convoluted in their layout to be considered a container. Mouth is theoretically not an open container because it has multiple openings.
Create water: stomach
Enemy forcibly shits themselves while vomiting water.
Enemy is out of combat briefly.
This cannot be done. The spell will fail. See my above earlier comment. The creature (the entire creature) is considered a… creature. This spell requires an object to be cast because container is a subcategory of object. Both RAW and RAI prevent this mentality entirely.
Yeah, you’re no fun.
Hateful Defecation
Is a watering can not a container?
No player creativity in my game, you snowflake!
The test I have is if my players would call BS on an NPC doing that to them.
Drowning a PC a turn using a cantrip? That’s BS and every player knows it.
There are rules for drowning. I believe the shortest amount of time before someone runs out of air and falls unconscious is 60 seconds, so 10 rounds.
That’s if you have air in your lungs, or rather, at least not water. The common create water trope this meme is mocking is a player wanting to create water directly in someone’s lungs. At that point, you’re actively drowning.
Calling lungs an “open container” is a massive stretch and not even technically close considering all the ways the body has to obstruct the entrance of foreign materials
Even if we do a version where the NPC is coughing up gallons of water, that’s effectively a save or die spell. The NPC can’t cast, fight effectively or run away.
If you allow that usage then create water becomes one of the most powerful spells in the game.
I allow for creativity, but doing something cool without resources requires to be lucky. Either you use resources (abilities, spell slots, items, weapons, terrain, etc) or you hope to get lucky on a low chance plan.
Just gently remind the player that it is a game, if they insist tell them that a Chimpanzee has a STR of 14 and since most fighters would have that or well above instead of doing the ole ‘have at thee’ they’d could just grapple them and crush their windpipe, if you have some ogre they realistically would just grab the wizard and pop them like a waterballoon but obviously no one does this because it’s boring and makes for a bad game.
I think that sounds really interesting, but for a different kind of game from what many people would want to play.
What if I used a combination of Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere and create water, encasing the victim in an unbreakable globe and then filling it with water? While nothing may pass through the sphere, barring some specific niche items, the rules do not state I could not create something inside of it.
Nothing, not physical objects, energy, or other spell effects, can pass through the barrier.
Hm…
- One Decanter of Endless Water
- Two items that you can attack to this decanter
- Two castings of Magic Mouth on these items:
- Condition: “(The decanter is uncorked and thrown, then gets within 1 foot of a creature other than who has thrown it OR six seconds after someone says ‘Geyser’) AND nobody has said ‘Frixfraxfrux’ in the last six seconds”. What to say: “Geyser”.
- Condition: “Six seconds after someone says ‘Geyser’ AND nobody has said ‘Frixfraxfrux’ in the last six seconds.” What to say: “Geyser”.
- Resilient Sphere in a Ring of Spell Storing given to the familiar.
Tell the Familiar to ready an action: cast Resilient Sphere on a given enemy just as the decanter is within 1 foot of them. Then uncork the decanter and throw it at the enemy.
When the Decanter is within 1 foot of the enemy, your familiar casts Resilient Sphere to encase the enemy, and MM1 activates, saying Geyser. The decanter starts producing 30 gallons per round because MM1’s activation activates MM2, and MM2’s activation activates MM1 again. And so on.
I’ll switch to metric because I like units that actually make a modicum of sense. Let’s say a medium creature is at most 8 feet tall, that’s 2.4 m, the enclosing sphere has a radius of 1.2 m. The decanter produces 30 gallons per round, that’s 113 liters. The enclosing sphere’s volume is 7.23 m^3 which is 7230 liters. A bipedal medium creature that tall is likely going to weigh around 150 kilos, if it’s a humanoid then its density is roughly equal to water’s so that’s 150 liters of the sphere occupied by the creature. This leaves us 7088 liters to fill which is unfortunately much more than what the decanter can fill in 1 minute. In fact, it would take around 6 minutes to fill the sphere.
Bummer.
Maybe you can tie together 10 decanters?
(Though TBF a bit of alchemy could likely create a CO-producing bomb. Doing that with the familiar-spell-storing-ring trick could work, enclosing the enemy in a sphere of lethal gas for 1 minute. But even that is an awful lot of prep for suffocating someone when you could use the same spell slot to summon an azer and hug the enemy to death or 4 magma mephits and roast them in their armor.)
If you tied together 10 decanters, it would take 10 actions to cast the cantrip and fill the sphere at which point the sphere would have already blocked it off.
Does anyone have the video for this slap-off? I can’t seem to find this exact one.
