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 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.
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.