The decanter says nothing about what the water does after creation. It does not say you can drink the water afterwards.
"whereupon an amount of fresh water or salt water (your choice) pours out of the flask."
More importantly, it says nothing about subsequent to that. Does this mean it does literally nothing? Does it simply disappear? If you fill a container with the water from the decanter, does the water have no weight?
And once more, since it seems repeatedly ignored, this from the dust is 800 times the amount of water in the decanter's geyser. The geyser that´can knock people down and damage them.
It creates water. Can't help you if you don't know what it is.
Not addressing the volume of water because the decanter is projecting it with force. The dust pebble just makes it appear. It's the difference between a gel pellet fired from a gel gun and popping a water ballon that is sitting still.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
If you're inside the cube, nothing except that you get soaked.
While you seem fixed on the total volume, spread across 360 degrees it isn't that great. The cube would fall straight down and spread from there, not crash out like a wave. At 5 feet there is little velocity, at 10 feet the total volume is negligible, like wave at the beach on a flat day.
A 15ft cube of water is comparable to ~4 above ground pools, which should be enough to sweep medium and smaller creatures off their feet within 10ft.
So, how about a DC 14 STR check to avoid falling prone within the cube, and DC 12 to avoid falling prone within 10ft of the cube. Large+ creatures are immune. Small creatures have disadvantage and are pushed away 10ft.
This makes it comparable to a complicated 30ft radius non-lethal aoe.
Edit: If we want to get more granular, we could increment the DC by +1 and increase the radius by 5ft for reduced angles (Circle >> semi-circle >> cone)
This being applicable if the bead is used beside a cliff or wall.
Has no one thought about sneaking a pellet into someone's food? They bite down and immediate are filled with water to the point of bursting/suffocating.
If the water just "appeared" within a 15' cube regardless of boundaries or objects, then it would immediately kill everyone within that 15' cube as their lungs would be suddenly full of water. I'd have to imagine that the water flows from the point of where the pellet was crushed. Otherwise it would also just "appear" 5' underground, causing quicksand/liquefaction and sucking the burster into the ground.
Yeah, no.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Earlier today my players found some Dust of Dryness. As our setting has Renaissance firearms, one of my players immediately asked if he could fire one of the pellets from a musket. I said he could try it, knowing that would give me until next week to come up with an answer.
I'm thinking this could go one of two ways: The pellet hits the target and disgorges the water, as my players are expecting, or, the pellet breaks inside the gun from the act of firing it and disgorges the water inside the gun.
For the first one, I'd probably say there's a knock back and it renders the target prone, but I'm not clear how to derive the damage.
For the second, I figure the gun is built to take an explosive internal pressure and channel it forward, since that's what a gun usually does. You've basically got a lethal-power water gun then. Still not sure how to derive that damage. Also, just out of curiosity, I got to thinking about what happens when you eject 15 cubic feet of water out of the muzzle of a gun. For ease of math, treat that as a contiguous series of 1 inch water cubes. If you put those in a line that works out to about 97200 squares on a battlemap. I don't think there's any way to tell if it has the energy to eject a line that length, since we don't have a real way to know how much force is exerted by the magical transformation. The same issue exists for trying to come up with realistic damage. I know we don't need to be realistic, but it's fun.
And than there's the issue of weather or not to allow other liquids...
I always ruefully smile at these kind of rule of cool ideas. Almost invariably, the player will try to insert some portion of real world physics into the equation while skipping the portions of Newtonian mechanics that nullify any positive effect. I had a player (he DM's his own campaign) suggest that he could use Mold Earth to topple a building at the top of a steep hill and start an avalanche killing all trapped in the path.
If I was the DM I would it explain it like this to the player:
"You have a choice.
We can say that the pellet explodes in the barrel of the rifle, and the 3375 cu feet of water, which works out to 62 pounds / cu ft * 3375 cu ft = 209, 250 pounds, or a little over 100 tons, destroys the gun and the water harmlessly washes over you and the surrounding area.
Or, we can work out the explosive force of that mass and volume instantly expanding inside a barrel of a gun, and calculate the damage done to you and everyone within, say 20 feet. Rest assured, you will all be dead.
And if a sling was used instead of a rifle, so that the only hard impact on the pellet was on impact rather than on launch?
Then stuff gets wet.
The water has no velocity from the sling.
And what happens when the 105 tons of water is released, rushing in all directions? The water may have no velocity from the sling, but it has a lot of potential energy and will rush with quite a force in all directions. At a minimum, creatures nearby will struggle to keep their feet. That amount of water is also likely to carry people and objects away, as well as damage some structures.
Again, I believe you vastly underestimate the power of such a large amount of water released at once. If you had an above ground swimming pool in your garden and it burst, do you really believe all that would happen is that "stuff gets wet"? No, anyone nearby would be knocked down, many lighter objects would be carried several feet at least, and there would likely be damage to any weaker outbuildings/walls/etc. The above ground pool contains much less water than the 15ft cube, at much lower height (15ft is over a storey high).
And if a sling was used instead of a rifle, so that the only hard impact on the pellet was on impact rather than on launch?
Then stuff gets wet.
The water has no velocity from the sling.
And again, please understand the context. NO ONE is talking about the water having any velocity on release. Not from the rifle, not from the sling, not from any other source that might be used to propel the pellet.
So please, quit coming back to that straw man.
Trying to fire the pellet from a rifle, regardless of what the water does after release, would release the water, since firing from a rifle involves an immediate application of the entire force of the rifle's charge, usually explosive force from gunpowder, striking the pellet instantaneously.
Firing from a sling, however, does not have that instantaneous energy transfer but rather a more gradual transfer as the sling accelerates. Therefore, I am arguing, a clean deployment of the pellet should be possible.
Now, as for what the water does after release (AGAIN, released WITHOUT momentum at ZERO velocity), if you do not believe that the water would do anything other than get you wet, go look at the design of any water wheel. Such designs can move said heavy wheel, traditionally connected to a grind stone or later to an actual generator, simply by the applied mass of the water.
There is a more direct test you could of course try, namely getting someone to dump bucket of water over your head so you could personally feel the weight of even that far smaller volume of water as it struck your head, but not expecting you to go do so.
Either way, even the column of water directly over your head in such a cube has considerable mass and gravity is an actual thing.
Does the writeup for Dust of Dryness give any stats for damage or effects when the pellet is smashed? Nope. It is very specific when used the other way, so this was not an oversight by the designers. They WANTED it to be effectively harmless when the water is released. That is RAW.
But RAW is not what this thread is about. Rule of cool players want to disregard RAW when it suits them, and substitute some form of Newtonian physics. Fair enough, let's go with that. But damage done by this must be aligned with other spells and effects already detailed by the designers, or are you planning on re-writing the effects of every single spell with a physical effect?
So let's start, shall we?
3rd level spell: Wall of Water: Volume (and naturally mass) of water created: 9% of the pellet. Damage effects: 0. Other effects: Difficult terrain, but even ranged weapons can pass through it at advantage.
4th level spell: Watery Sphere: Volume of water = 524 cu ft = approx 15% of the pellet: Damage done = 0. Other effects = douses fires.
Another 3rd level spell, but Druid: Tidal Wave: Now we are talking.....Volume: 89% of the pellet's water. 4d8 or 2d8 damage with Dex throw, so 18 or 9 expected value. Other effects: Possibly prone, extinguishes fires. ZERO structural damage is discussed.
8th level spell: Tsunami: 4.5 MILLION cu ft = 1333 times larger than the pellet's water. Damage (worst case, assuming all 5 saves are failed, and in the Tidal Wave for the duration) = 21d10 = 116 HP expected value. High strength or lucky chars have a ton less damage done. Taking that damage of 116 and dividing by the mass of the wave, we see that a player can expect about 0.1HP of damage if the Tidal Wave had the volume of the pellet's water.
Oh, and structural damage? None was discussed by the game designers, in ALL cases. And it is not like they totally forgot about structural damage, as spells like Earthquake are very precise in that area, or Earth Elementals.
Now, do I believe that a wall of water weighing close to 140,000 TONS moving at 8.333 feet per second IS going to do massive structural damage? Of course it does. A child knows that, let alone an civil engineer. But the designers did not want to get into that area, since that requires a ton of real math, among other reasons.
So, let's circle back and find the best fit, shall we? That appears to be a 3rd level spell, Tidal Wave, with damage of 2d8/4d8 = 9/18. But hold on...we have another item that works in a similar way to this pellet exploding. That would be the Bead of Force. Its' damage is 5d4 = 12.5 or 6 with a save. It has extra effects that are pretty cool. But it is a Rare item, not Uncommon. And a 3rd level Druid spell effects are far more rare than a Uncommon Item. I can go through all the source doc's and find dozens of examples, but we all know that is true.
So comparing this to other magic: Either this is not an Uncommon Item, more like a Rare item, or it should do zero damage.
Or, if you persist with this rule of cool nonsense, do you plan on rewriting every single spell that has a physical effect? Because if you go that route, remember, DM's can apply the physics of rule of cool as well, and we have EVERYTHING at our disposal.
And if a sling was used instead of a rifle, so that the only hard impact on the pellet was on impact rather than on launch?
Then stuff gets wet.
The water has no velocity from the sling.
And again, please understand the context. NO ONE is talking about the water having any velocity on release. Not from the rifle, not from the sling, not from any other source that might be used to propel the pellet.
So please, quit coming back to that straw man.
Trying to fire the pellet from a rifle, regardless of what the water does after release, would release the water, since firing from a rifle involves an immediate application of the entire force of the rifle's charge, usually explosive force from gunpowder, striking the pellet instantaneously.
Firing from a sling, however, does not have that instantaneous energy transfer but rather a more gradual transfer as the sling accelerates. Therefore, I am arguing, a clean deployment of the pellet should be possible.
Now, as for what the water does after release (AGAIN, released WITHOUT momentum at ZERO velocity), if you do not believe that the water would do anything other than get you wet, go look at the design of any water wheel. Such designs can move said heavy wheel, traditionally connected to a grind stone or later to an actual generator, simply by the applied mass of the water.
There is a more direct test you could of course try, namely getting someone to dump bucket of water over your head so you could personally feel the weight of even that far smaller volume of water as it struck your head, but not expecting you to go do so.
Either way, even the column of water directly over your head in such a cube has considerable mass and gravity is an actual thing.
Does the writeup for Dust of Dryness give any stats for damage or effects when the pellet is smashed? Nope. It is very specific when used the other way, so this was not an oversight by the designers. They WANTED it to be effectively harmless when the water is released. That is RAW.
But RAW is not what this thread is about. Rule of cool players want to disregard RAW when it suits them, and substitute some form of Newtonian physics. Fair enough, let's go with that. But damage done by this must be aligned with other spells and effects already detailed by the designers, or are you planning on re-writing the effects of every single spell with a physical effect?
So let's start, shall we?
3rd level spell: Wall of Water: Volume (and naturally mass) of water created: 9% of the pellet. Damage effects: 0. Other effects: Difficult terrain, but even ranged weapons can pass through it at advantage.
4th level spell: Watery Sphere: Volume of water = 524 cu ft = approx 15% of the pellet: Damage done = 0. Other effects = douses fires.
Another 3rd level spell, but Druid: Tidal Wave: Now we are talking.....Volume: 89% of the pellet's water. 4d8 or 2d8 damage with Dex throw, so 18 or 9 expected value. Other effects: Possibly prone, extinguishes fires. ZERO structural damage is discussed.
8th level spell: Tsunami: 4.5 MILLION cu ft = 1333 times larger than the pellet's water. Damage (worst case, assuming all 5 saves are failed, and in the Tidal Wave for the duration) = 21d10 = 116 HP expected value. High strength or lucky chars have a ton less damage done. Taking that damage of 116 and dividing by the mass of the wave, we see that a player can expect about 0.1HP of damage if the Tidal Wave had the volume of the pellet's water.
Oh, and structural damage? None was discussed by the game designers, in ALL cases. And it is not like they totally forgot about structural damage, as spells like Earthquake are very precise in that area, or Earth Elementals.
Now, do I believe that a wall of water weighing close to 140,000 TONS moving at 8.333 feet per second IS going to do massive structural damage? Of course it does. A child knows that, let alone an civil engineer. But the designers did not want to get into that area, since that requires a ton of real math, among other reasons.
So, let's circle back and find the best fit, shall we? That appears to be a 3rd level spell, Tidal Wave, with damage of 2d8/4d8 = 9/18. But hold on...we have another item that works in a similar way to this pellet exploding. That would be the Bead of Force. Its' damage is 5d4 = 12.5 or 6 with a save. It has extra effects that are pretty cool. But it is a Rare item, not Uncommon. And a 3rd level Druid spell effects are far more rare than a Uncommon Item. I can go through all the source doc's and find dozens of examples, but we all know that is true.
So comparing this to other magic: Either this is not an Uncommon Item, more like a Rare item, or it should do zero damage.
Or, if you persist with this rule of cool nonsense, do you plan on rewriting every single spell that has a physical effect? Because if you go that route, remember, DM's can apply the physics of rule of cool as well, and we have EVERYTHING at our disposal.
I can see and understand your analysis here. However, I believe it may be a little too complex, and also misses an important point.
As nothing is described in the effect except that the water appears when the pellet is broken, that is all that happens according to the rules. However, it is what happens after that which needs to be considered. If a person used a spell to teleport someone 30 ft in the air, would you say "No damage is caused because the spell doesn't say it causes damage"?
No damage is caused by the spell, but there is still a massive amount of water there. If it is in the open, it will rapidly spread which will have some effect on stuff in the surrounding area. If it is in an enclosed space, it will fill that space, which may cause creatures to drown. These are just 2 situations, but we can't say "they just get wet" and ignore the presence and effects of that water IMHO. The DM needs to decide what happens from that point, as there are no specific rules to cover this situation.
I think I'd try to keep effects semi-realistic but minimal. It's only an uncommon item and can make up to 10 beads, so it can't be too powerful.
If the area is fairly open, anyone within 30ft of the bead must make a strength save (maybe DC10, nothing too dificult) or be knocked prone and moved 1d6 ft away from where the bead broke.
If the area is enclosed and would contain the water in roughly the same shape as it appear in, like in a pit or a room with closed doors, the water stays there and floods it. If this floods the area higher than a creature's head, they must hold their breath until they can get their head out of the water somehow.
If the area is enclosed and larger than 15ftx15ft, mix the 2: Save or knock prone and move, then the area floods but to a depth which "fits".
If none of the above really fits, find something which fits the situation. I wouldn't have it do damage, but that quantity of water is going to have some effect... Unless it's just added to an ocean or some other large body of water, of course.
And if a sling was used instead of a rifle, so that the only hard impact on the pellet was on impact rather than on launch?
Then stuff gets wet.
The water has no velocity from the sling.
And again, please understand the context. NO ONE is talking about the water having any velocity on release. Not from the rifle, not from the sling, not from any other source that might be used to propel the pellet.
So please, quit coming back to that straw man.
Trying to fire the pellet from a rifle, regardless of what the water does after release, would release the water, since firing from a rifle involves an immediate application of the entire force of the rifle's charge, usually explosive force from gunpowder, striking the pellet instantaneously.
Firing from a sling, however, does not have that instantaneous energy transfer but rather a more gradual transfer as the sling accelerates. Therefore, I am arguing, a clean deployment of the pellet should be possible.
Now, as for what the water does after release (AGAIN, released WITHOUT momentum at ZERO velocity), if you do not believe that the water would do anything other than get you wet, go look at the design of any water wheel. Such designs can move said heavy wheel, traditionally connected to a grind stone or later to an actual generator, simply by the applied mass of the water.
There is a more direct test you could of course try, namely getting someone to dump bucket of water over your head so you could personally feel the weight of even that far smaller volume of water as it struck your head, but not expecting you to go do so.
Either way, even the column of water directly over your head in such a cube has considerable mass and gravity is an actual thing.
Does the writeup for Dust of Dryness give any stats for damage or effects when the pellet is smashed? Nope. It is very specific when used the other way, so this was not an oversight by the designers. They WANTED it to be effectively harmless when the water is released. That is RAW.
But RAW is not what this thread is about. Rule of cool players want to disregard RAW when it suits them, and substitute some form of Newtonian physics. Fair enough, let's go with that. But damage done by this must be aligned with other spells and effects already detailed by the designers, or are you planning on re-writing the effects of every single spell with a physical effect?
So let's start, shall we?
3rd level spell: Wall of Water: Volume (and naturally mass) of water created: 9% of the pellet. Damage effects: 0. Other effects: Difficult terrain, but even ranged weapons can pass through it at advantage.
4th level spell: Watery Sphere: Volume of water = 524 cu ft = approx 15% of the pellet: Damage done = 0. Other effects = douses fires.
Another 3rd level spell, but Druid: Tidal Wave: Now we are talking.....Volume: 89% of the pellet's water. 4d8 or 2d8 damage with Dex throw, so 18 or 9 expected value. Other effects: Possibly prone, extinguishes fires. ZERO structural damage is discussed.
8th level spell: Tsunami: 4.5 MILLION cu ft = 1333 times larger than the pellet's water. Damage (worst case, assuming all 5 saves are failed, and in the Tidal Wave for the duration) = 21d10 = 116 HP expected value. High strength or lucky chars have a ton less damage done. Taking that damage of 116 and dividing by the mass of the wave, we see that a player can expect about 0.1HP of damage if the Tidal Wave had the volume of the pellet's water.
Oh, and structural damage? None was discussed by the game designers, in ALL cases. And it is not like they totally forgot about structural damage, as spells like Earthquake are very precise in that area, or Earth Elementals.
Now, do I believe that a wall of water weighing close to 140,000 TONS moving at 8.333 feet per second IS going to do massive structural damage? Of course it does. A child knows that, let alone an civil engineer. But the designers did not want to get into that area, since that requires a ton of real math, among other reasons.
So, let's circle back and find the best fit, shall we? That appears to be a 3rd level spell, Tidal Wave, with damage of 2d8/4d8 = 9/18. But hold on...we have another item that works in a similar way to this pellet exploding. That would be the Bead of Force. Its' damage is 5d4 = 12.5 or 6 with a save. It has extra effects that are pretty cool. But it is a Rare item, not Uncommon. And a 3rd level Druid spell effects are far more rare than a Uncommon Item. I can go through all the source doc's and find dozens of examples, but we all know that is true.
So comparing this to other magic: Either this is not an Uncommon Item, more like a Rare item, or it should do zero damage.
Or, if you persist with this rule of cool nonsense, do you plan on rewriting every single spell that has a physical effect? Because if you go that route, remember, DM's can apply the physics of rule of cool as well, and we have EVERYTHING at our disposal.
I can see and understand your analysis here. However, I believe it may be a little too complex, and also misses an important point.
As nothing is described in the effect except that the water appears when the pellet is broken, that is all that happens according to the rules. However, it is what happens after that which needs to be considered. If a person used a spell to teleport someone 30 ft in the air, would you say "No damage is caused because the spell doesn't say it causes damage"?
No damage is caused by the spell, but there is still a massive amount of water there. If it is in the open, it will rapidly spread which will have some effect on stuff in the surrounding area. If it is in an enclosed space, it will fill that space, which may cause creatures to drown. These are just 2 situations, but we can't say "they just get wet" and ignore the presence and effects of that water IMHO. The DM needs to decide what happens from that point, as there are no specific rules to cover this situation.
I think I'd try to keep effects semi-realistic but minimal. It's only an uncommon item and can make up to 10 beads, so it can't be too powerful.
If the area is fairly open, anyone within 30ft of the bead must make a strength save (maybe DC10, nothing too dificult) or be knocked prone and moved 1d6 ft away from where the bead broke.
If the area is enclosed and would contain the water in roughly the same shape as it appear in, like in a pit or a room with closed doors, the water stays there and floods it. If this floods the area higher than a creature's head, they must hold their breath until they can get their head out of the water somehow.
If the area is enclosed and larger than 15ftx15ft, mix the 2: Save or knock prone and move, then the area floods but to a depth which "fits".
If none of the above really fits, find something which fits the situation. I wouldn't have it do damage, but that quantity of water is going to have some effect... Unless it's just added to an ocean or some other large body of water, of course.
All your potential effects are reasonable, in a real world setting. And if you look through any of my past posts (assuming they have not been deleted), you would see I am all about more realism in the game.
But I will say it again. As soon as you open up Pandora's box on "what would REALLY happen". be prepared for a lot of redesign of the game, where anything has an attendant physical effect. I found the closest effect/ spell that I could that matched the volume/mass of that pellet's water. I detailed what the game designers expected from Tidal Wave.
If you rewrite the Uncommon item Dust of Dryness, what do you plan on doing with the 8th level spell Tsunami, which just drowned an entire low lying section of a city? Imagine casting Tsunami in New Orleans, or Houston, or any number of cities in the Netherlands.
Or how about Mold Earth on an old flagstone wall (no mortar) supporting a building, causing the building to crash to the ground over 2 turns as a 10 foot x 5 section of a wall is "moved".
Or how about using the 1st level Catapult spell to move a 5 pound rock into the air, 60 feet away, but , but also 60 plus feet up (using trig), and then letting it fall on someone, doing what, how much damage, when the spell specifies a max of 3d8?
I can go on and on, citing examples, but you get the picture.
The usual gatekeeping anti-player aggression aside...for once, Vince actually has a point. The effects of Tidal Wave could be a good basis for a DM ruling on what happens if a player throws a bead of Dryness from a ranged weapon. Dust of Dryness is a very cool item that invites Hijinks, enough so that I imagine a DM that awards the item to their player is hoping for cool tricks such as this, and the dust is consumable which generally means that when players choose to consume it, it should pack some punch and offer a solid edge (provided it's used intelligently). Automatic victory and/or catastrophic structural damage seems a bit much under most circumstances though.
Leaving aside the issue of what happens when fired from a musket (the first page handled "lolno levels of chamber overpressure" well enough, though one could download the charge to produce less pressure and less chance of breaking the marble prematurely, cutting the musket's range to...no, no, bad Yurei. Leave it be, ballistics aren't the point), the idea of treating the dust as a man-portable Tidal Wave isn't a terrible one. I can think of lots of situations where being able to hand a Dryness marble to someone with a sling or blowgun - or possibly even attached to an arrow shaft, if one wants a little Green Arrow in their life/better range for their attack - would be a really excellent way to spread the magical* love. If the party includes an artificer or anyone else proficient with tinker's tools, that should be a pretty straightforward check to create a one-shot trick arrow designed to crush the Dryness marble on a successful hit.
At that point, everything in a ten or fifteen foot box, depending on how stringent the DM wants to be about the water's expansion - remember, the original water chunk the dust absorbed was fifteen feet to a side, so by the time it reaches that volume again there's no compression driving its expansion, only inertia. There's an argument that the 'damage radius' for the marble should be lower than the original absorb radius - is subjected to the effects of the Tidal Wave spell, unless the DM rules something else happens due to circumstances. With my DM Hat on, I'd probably rule that anything directly struck by a Dust of Dryness-enhanced piece of ammunition has disadvantage on the Dex save against the spell effect, since missing the attack roll means the ammunition didn't hit correctly enough to crunch the Dryness marble at all.
Would turn Dust of Dryness into a pretty potent booster shot for a single given attack, if one with some serious friendly fire concerns. Fantastic way to try and knock an annoying flying enemy out of the air, though - all "HEY, HARPY! HERE'S SEVERAL TONS OF FACE-WATER! GEDDOWNERE!" Heh. Bad harpy.
But yeah. Overall, the idea of using Dust of Dryness as ammunition is cool, and players should be encouraged and rewarded for trying cool things. So long as they're doing so intelligently, and in service to the good of the game. Cramming Dust of Dryness down a musket bore with no precautions against premature destruction of the marble is not all that intelligent and so may end up requiring saves, but there's plenty of other ways to weaponize the ability to produce a fifteen-foot cube of water on command.
Pro Player Tip: find a way to boil the fifteen-foot cube of water, first. That will require an absolute smegload of thermal energy, but you may be able to win a debate with the DM over whether the water the Dust absorbs retains its properties when absorbed - such as temperature. Dumping a fifteen-foot cube of boiling water on your enemies is a whole new ball game. If the players found a way to pull off boiling several tons of water prior to Dusting it, I'd be willing to let them have some extra fire damage on the blast when they eventually release it. Not, like, "have a free Fireball" levels of extra fire damage, but considering this is effectively a magical AoE attack that any old martial guy with sling proficiency can execute? Tidal Wave + a few d6 fire damage is pretty damn good from a single Attack action.
Because if you go that route, remember, DM's can apply the physics of rule of cool as well, and we have EVERYTHING at our disposal.
Ugh... "Don't do anything we don't like, or we might get unpleasant."
No player should ever assume that a player can do something that the DM will not also utilize.
No DM should ever feel the need to threaten their players with in-game consequences.
You are digressing from the point of this thread. Stay on point.
I think I am on point. Other spells and situations are tangentially relevant at best. If there’s a problem with them, then we can fix that as it becomes an issue. But vague threats of “if you do this, I might well do something a lot worse and I don’t think you want that” are not constructive.
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I will simply point out that The Sacred Rules themselves state "if the players attempt something not covered by the rules of the game, it's up to the DM to make a ruling and determine how that attempted action works within the narrative of the game."
In this case, Vince hit upon a good, solid DM ruling - weaponized Dust of Dryness has the same effect as Tidal Wave unless the specific situation of its use merits alternative treatment. There's no need to punish the players for trying to be creative and use their tools to the maximum extent they can - that's just good play. The way they choose to try and do so determines whether they succeed or not, and how easy it is for them to do so, but the attempt itself should be encouraged rather than scourged.
Frankly? An enemy hitting the party with a Tidal Wave arrow would be a damn cool way of highlighting that enemy's resources and inventiveness, as well as signaling to the party that they should be matching suit and finding cool ways to use their own items. Heh, just imagine the "wait WHAT" reaction when you narrate an arrow striking your frontline fighter's plate armor with an uncharacteristic crrrnch before a vast cube of water explodes with a deep, resounding thunderclap in his space, battering him mercilessly and potentially knocking him prone. Great way to get a party to respect the threat a single powerful archer can pose.
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It creates water. Can't help you if you don't know what it is.
Not addressing the volume of water because the decanter is projecting it with force. The dust pebble just makes it appear. It's the difference between a gel pellet fired from a gel gun and popping a water ballon that is sitting still.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
If you're inside the cube, nothing except that you get soaked.
While you seem fixed on the total volume, spread across 360 degrees it isn't that great. The cube would fall straight down and spread from there, not crash out like a wave. At 5 feet there is little velocity, at 10 feet the total volume is negligible, like wave at the beach on a flat day.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I think you vastly underestimate the effect of 105 tons of water, even if all it does is "fall straight down and spread from there"...
A 15ft cube of water is comparable to ~4 above ground pools, which should be enough to sweep medium and smaller creatures off their feet within 10ft.
So, how about a DC 14 STR check to avoid falling prone within the cube, and DC 12 to avoid falling prone within 10ft of the cube. Large+ creatures are immune. Small creatures have disadvantage and are pushed away 10ft.
This makes it comparable to a complicated 30ft radius non-lethal aoe.
Edit: If we want to get more granular, we could increment the DC by +1 and increase the radius by 5ft for reduced angles (Circle >> semi-circle >> cone)
This being applicable if the bead is used beside a cliff or wall.
The space within creatures, "underground", and "air" are largely ignored unless specifically addressed.
Spells like teleport become a lot more dangerous if you have a significant chance of appearing buried under the earth or in space.
Yeah, no.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Just ow.
Outside the Lines Fantasy – A collection of self published fiction stories.
I always ruefully smile at these kind of rule of cool ideas. Almost invariably, the player will try to insert some portion of real world physics into the equation while skipping the portions of Newtonian mechanics that nullify any positive effect. I had a player (he DM's his own campaign) suggest that he could use Mold Earth to topple a building at the top of a steep hill and start an avalanche killing all trapped in the path.
If I was the DM I would it explain it like this to the player:
"You have a choice.
We can say that the pellet explodes in the barrel of the rifle, and the 3375 cu feet of water, which works out to 62 pounds / cu ft * 3375 cu ft = 209, 250 pounds, or a little over 100 tons, destroys the gun and the water harmlessly washes over you and the surrounding area.
Or, we can work out the explosive force of that mass and volume instantly expanding inside a barrel of a gun, and calculate the damage done to you and everyone within, say 20 feet. Rest assured, you will all be dead.
Your choice."
Then stuff gets wet.
The water has no velocity from the sling.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
And what happens when the 105 tons of water is released, rushing in all directions? The water may have no velocity from the sling, but it has a lot of potential energy and will rush with quite a force in all directions. At a minimum, creatures nearby will struggle to keep their feet. That amount of water is also likely to carry people and objects away, as well as damage some structures.
Again, I believe you vastly underestimate the power of such a large amount of water released at once. If you had an above ground swimming pool in your garden and it burst, do you really believe all that would happen is that "stuff gets wet"? No, anyone nearby would be knocked down, many lighter objects would be carried several feet at least, and there would likely be damage to any weaker outbuildings/walls/etc. The above ground pool contains much less water than the 15ft cube, at much lower height (15ft is over a storey high).
Does the writeup for Dust of Dryness give any stats for damage or effects when the pellet is smashed? Nope. It is very specific when used the other way, so this was not an oversight by the designers. They WANTED it to be effectively harmless when the water is released. That is RAW.
But RAW is not what this thread is about. Rule of cool players want to disregard RAW when it suits them, and substitute some form of Newtonian physics. Fair enough, let's go with that. But damage done by this must be aligned with other spells and effects already detailed by the designers, or are you planning on re-writing the effects of every single spell with a physical effect?
So let's start, shall we?
3rd level spell: Wall of Water: Volume (and naturally mass) of water created: 9% of the pellet. Damage effects: 0. Other effects: Difficult terrain, but even ranged weapons can pass through it at advantage.
4th level spell: Watery Sphere: Volume of water = 524 cu ft = approx 15% of the pellet: Damage done = 0. Other effects = douses fires.
Another 3rd level spell, but Druid: Tidal Wave: Now we are talking.....Volume: 89% of the pellet's water. 4d8 or 2d8 damage with Dex throw, so 18 or 9 expected value. Other effects: Possibly prone, extinguishes fires. ZERO structural damage is discussed.
8th level spell: Tsunami: 4.5 MILLION cu ft = 1333 times larger than the pellet's water. Damage (worst case, assuming all 5 saves are failed, and in the Tidal Wave for the duration) = 21d10 = 116 HP expected value. High strength or lucky chars have a ton less damage done. Taking that damage of 116 and dividing by the mass of the wave, we see that a player can expect about 0.1HP of damage if the Tidal Wave had the volume of the pellet's water.
Oh, and structural damage? None was discussed by the game designers, in ALL cases. And it is not like they totally forgot about structural damage, as spells like Earthquake are very precise in that area, or Earth Elementals.
Now, do I believe that a wall of water weighing close to 140,000 TONS moving at 8.333 feet per second IS going to do massive structural damage? Of course it does. A child knows that, let alone an civil engineer. But the designers did not want to get into that area, since that requires a ton of real math, among other reasons.
So, let's circle back and find the best fit, shall we? That appears to be a 3rd level spell, Tidal Wave, with damage of 2d8/4d8 = 9/18. But hold on...we have another item that works in a similar way to this pellet exploding. That would be the Bead of Force. Its' damage is 5d4 = 12.5 or 6 with a save. It has extra effects that are pretty cool. But it is a Rare item, not Uncommon. And a 3rd level Druid spell effects are far more rare than a Uncommon Item. I can go through all the source doc's and find dozens of examples, but we all know that is true.
So comparing this to other magic: Either this is not an Uncommon Item, more like a Rare item, or it should do zero damage.
Or, if you persist with this rule of cool nonsense, do you plan on rewriting every single spell that has a physical effect? Because if you go that route, remember, DM's can apply the physics of rule of cool as well, and we have EVERYTHING at our disposal.
Ugh... "Don't do anything we don't like, or we might get unpleasant."
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No player should ever assume that a player can do something that the DM will not also utilize.
No DM should ever feel the need to threaten their players with in-game consequences.
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You are digressing from the point of this thread. Stay on point.
I can see and understand your analysis here. However, I believe it may be a little too complex, and also misses an important point.
As nothing is described in the effect except that the water appears when the pellet is broken, that is all that happens according to the rules. However, it is what happens after that which needs to be considered. If a person used a spell to teleport someone 30 ft in the air, would you say "No damage is caused because the spell doesn't say it causes damage"?
No damage is caused by the spell, but there is still a massive amount of water there. If it is in the open, it will rapidly spread which will have some effect on stuff in the surrounding area. If it is in an enclosed space, it will fill that space, which may cause creatures to drown. These are just 2 situations, but we can't say "they just get wet" and ignore the presence and effects of that water IMHO. The DM needs to decide what happens from that point, as there are no specific rules to cover this situation.
I think I'd try to keep effects semi-realistic but minimal. It's only an uncommon item and can make up to 10 beads, so it can't be too powerful.
If none of the above really fits, find something which fits the situation. I wouldn't have it do damage, but that quantity of water is going to have some effect... Unless it's just added to an ocean or some other large body of water, of course.
All your potential effects are reasonable, in a real world setting. And if you look through any of my past posts (assuming they have not been deleted), you would see I am all about more realism in the game.
But I will say it again. As soon as you open up Pandora's box on "what would REALLY happen". be prepared for a lot of redesign of the game, where anything has an attendant physical effect. I found the closest effect/ spell that I could that matched the volume/mass of that pellet's water. I detailed what the game designers expected from Tidal Wave.
If you rewrite the Uncommon item Dust of Dryness, what do you plan on doing with the 8th level spell Tsunami, which just drowned an entire low lying section of a city? Imagine casting Tsunami in New Orleans, or Houston, or any number of cities in the Netherlands.
Or how about Mold Earth on an old flagstone wall (no mortar) supporting a building, causing the building to crash to the ground over 2 turns as a 10 foot x 5 section of a wall is "moved".
Or how about using the 1st level Catapult spell to move a 5 pound rock into the air, 60 feet away, but , but also 60 plus feet up (using trig), and then letting it fall on someone, doing what, how much damage, when the spell specifies a max of 3d8?
I can go on and on, citing examples, but you get the picture.
The usual gatekeeping anti-player aggression aside...for once, Vince actually has a point. The effects of Tidal Wave could be a good basis for a DM ruling on what happens if a player throws a bead of Dryness from a ranged weapon. Dust of Dryness is a very cool item that invites Hijinks, enough so that I imagine a DM that awards the item to their player is hoping for cool tricks such as this, and the dust is consumable which generally means that when players choose to consume it, it should pack some punch and offer a solid edge (provided it's used intelligently). Automatic victory and/or catastrophic structural damage seems a bit much under most circumstances though.
Leaving aside the issue of what happens when fired from a musket (the first page handled "lolno levels of chamber overpressure" well enough, though one could download the charge to produce less pressure and less chance of breaking the marble prematurely, cutting the musket's range to...no, no, bad Yurei. Leave it be, ballistics aren't the point), the idea of treating the dust as a man-portable Tidal Wave isn't a terrible one. I can think of lots of situations where being able to hand a Dryness marble to someone with a sling or blowgun - or possibly even attached to an arrow shaft, if one wants a little Green Arrow in their life/better range for their attack - would be a really excellent way to spread the magical* love. If the party includes an artificer or anyone else proficient with tinker's tools, that should be a pretty straightforward check to create a one-shot trick arrow designed to crush the Dryness marble on a successful hit.
At that point, everything in a ten or fifteen foot box, depending on how stringent the DM wants to be about the water's expansion - remember, the original water chunk the dust absorbed was fifteen feet to a side, so by the time it reaches that volume again there's no compression driving its expansion, only inertia. There's an argument that the 'damage radius' for the marble should be lower than the original absorb radius - is subjected to the effects of the Tidal Wave spell, unless the DM rules something else happens due to circumstances. With my DM Hat on, I'd probably rule that anything directly struck by a Dust of Dryness-enhanced piece of ammunition has disadvantage on the Dex save against the spell effect, since missing the attack roll means the ammunition didn't hit correctly enough to crunch the Dryness marble at all.
Would turn Dust of Dryness into a pretty potent booster shot for a single given attack, if one with some serious friendly fire concerns. Fantastic way to try and knock an annoying flying enemy out of the air, though - all "HEY, HARPY! HERE'S SEVERAL TONS OF FACE-WATER! GEDDOWNERE!" Heh. Bad harpy.
But yeah. Overall, the idea of using Dust of Dryness as ammunition is cool, and players should be encouraged and rewarded for trying cool things. So long as they're doing so intelligently, and in service to the good of the game. Cramming Dust of Dryness down a musket bore with no precautions against premature destruction of the marble is not all that intelligent and so may end up requiring saves, but there's plenty of other ways to weaponize the ability to produce a fifteen-foot cube of water on command.
Pro Player Tip: find a way to boil the fifteen-foot cube of water, first. That will require an absolute smegload of thermal energy, but you may be able to win a debate with the DM over whether the water the Dust absorbs retains its properties when absorbed - such as temperature. Dumping a fifteen-foot cube of boiling water on your enemies is a whole new ball game. If the players found a way to pull off boiling several tons of water prior to Dusting it, I'd be willing to let them have some extra fire damage on the blast when they eventually release it. Not, like, "have a free Fireball" levels of extra fire damage, but considering this is effectively a magical AoE attack that any old martial guy with sling proficiency can execute? Tidal Wave + a few d6 fire damage is pretty damn good from a single Attack action.
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I think I am on point. Other spells and situations are tangentially relevant at best. If there’s a problem with them, then we can fix that as it becomes an issue. But vague threats of “if you do this, I might well do something a lot worse and I don’t think you want that” are not constructive.
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I will simply point out that The Sacred Rules themselves state "if the players attempt something not covered by the rules of the game, it's up to the DM to make a ruling and determine how that attempted action works within the narrative of the game."
In this case, Vince hit upon a good, solid DM ruling - weaponized Dust of Dryness has the same effect as Tidal Wave unless the specific situation of its use merits alternative treatment. There's no need to punish the players for trying to be creative and use their tools to the maximum extent they can - that's just good play. The way they choose to try and do so determines whether they succeed or not, and how easy it is for them to do so, but the attempt itself should be encouraged rather than scourged.
Frankly? An enemy hitting the party with a Tidal Wave arrow would be a damn cool way of highlighting that enemy's resources and inventiveness, as well as signaling to the party that they should be matching suit and finding cool ways to use their own items. Heh, just imagine the "wait WHAT" reaction when you narrate an arrow striking your frontline fighter's plate armor with an uncharacteristic crrrnch before a vast cube of water explodes with a deep, resounding thunderclap in his space, battering him mercilessly and potentially knocking him prone. Great way to get a party to respect the threat a single powerful archer can pose.
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