Playing Rime of the Frost Maiden as a Wild Magic sorc and was wondering if i could use Shape Water on snow to turn it into ice for the sake of cover? I mean it LITERALLY works on water and all snow is is literally just frozen water...I understand the cantrip tries to be like "naw only WATER" but i mean ...all ice is is literally JUST water?
It's interpretation. Some people consider ice to be a mineral because it's crystalized and other criteria. I don't know about that, but...
I would favor the liquid versus solid interpretation - shaping a liquid, not shaping a solid form of the liquid.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Okay so heres my argument - The snow in Rime of the Forst Maiden was created by her magic = the snow isn't "naturally formed" its all "magic" snow. Mineral defines it as " considered a mineral although ice; which is solid, is classified as a mineral as long as it is naturally occurring. Thus ice in a snow bank is a mineral, but ice in an ice cube from a refrigerator is not."
Ergo since the snow is "magical" its not natural thereby its not a mineral its jusut "frozen water". Yes its icewind dale and there is some normal snow, but it state specifically its never been this cold/bad for this long and that "her magic" is the reason why.
I can't answer for RAW, and agree with those who have said that it's a grey area. Though as a DM I would totally let you shape water on snow not just because it's cool, but the fact that one of the things you can do is freeze the water, which gets close enough to snow for me.
However the cantrip states that you can only manipulate enough to fit in a 5 foot cube, so you're gonna need a few castings in order to create any meaningful cover.
If I was DMing I'd probably go with yes, you could make a 5-ft snow fort or small igloo or something. ...unless the snow you're trying to shape is itself being magically controlled and placed where it already is, I'm not familiar with the details of that campaign. If the snow is already being shaped by powerful magic, I wouldn't let a cantrip override it.
I mean a 5 foot cube for a 5'2" person is full cover. a 5 foot cube is HUGE
Yes, it completely fills a square or hex on a battlemat.
The range of Shape Water is limited toa 5' cube, so if you wanted to make a full 5' cube of water/snow/ice, you would need to target an already existing 5' cube. You can shape what is there, but you cannot create more water to fill a partially empty cube, nor does it suck up water from around the cube.
I'm not sure how I'd rule yet, but shape water does give you the option of freezing water. It says "you can freeze water" which then unfreezes in an hour, but it doesn't say "you can unfreeze that ice," or "you can turn water into steam" or "steam into water" or anything like that, so it's reasonable to rule that it's only intended to affect water in the colloquial, fluid sense, not in the chemical H2O sense. I might stretch the limits of the spell to include things like affecting the opacity of mist and fog, but I'm leery of extending it to ice and snow. Partly because it would be such a game changer in RotFM.
I mean a 5 foot cube for a 5'2" person is full cover. a 5 foot cube is HUGE
Yes, it completely fills a square or hex on a battlemat.
The range of Shape Water is limited toa 5' cube, so if you wanted to make a full 5' cube of water/snow/ice, you would need to target an already existing 5' cube. You can shape what is there, but you cannot create more water to fill a partially empty cube, nor does it suck up water from around the cube.
You can grab whatever snow is in one area and plop it into another area 5 feet away.
I would probably rule of cool it to work regardless.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
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"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
More important than the mineral aspect is the elemental aspect. You have four cantrips: mold earth, shape water, control flames, and gust, that correspond to the classic four elements. In D&D Ice, Mud, Magma, and Smoke were all sub-planes or para-elemental planes. Can you suck the water out of mud? Or mold the earth out of it, leaving only water?
And more importantly than that - you can't shape stone with mold earth because there already is a spell that does that: stone shape. Why would you ever use a 4th level slot to do something any 1st level apprentice can do? Similarly, there already is a spell that does what the OP proposes: wall of ice.
I mean, we all want this to work because it's a huge power boost given the environment. But even the OP senses that it's not written that way.
More important than the mineral aspect is the elemental aspect. You have four cantrips: mold earth, shape water, control flames, and gust, that correspond to the classic four elements. In D&D Ice, Mud, Magma, and Smoke were all sub-planes or para-elemental planes. Can you suck the water out of mud? Or mold the earth out of it, leaving only water?
And more importantly than that - you can't shape stone with mold earth because there already is a spell that does that: stone shape. Why would you ever use a 4th level slot to do something any 1st level apprentice can do? Similarly, there already is a spell that does what the OP proposes: wall of ice.
I mean, we all want this to work because it's a huge power boost given the environment. But even the OP senses that it's not written that way.
That is actually an interesting concept - pulling earth or water out of mud.
Wall of Ice is tremendously more powerful than Block of Snow.
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"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?"
Yeah i mean its a cantrip it's pretty much something your mind has adapted to essentially being able to just "DO". I like to see everybody s thoughts on something like this as i feel it brings forth good discussion (im not intending on any hostilities here or offenses) Genuinely think shape water should work on a chunk of ice as if the functionality of the cantrip allows you to MOVE a 5 foot of water and then FREEZE IT, why can you not then move the ice? I would also accept that you'd only be able to create 5 foot layers of ice and slowly form a wall, but would not be able to move those 5 foot things of ice.
Wall of Ice is tremendously more powerful than Block of Snow.
Wall of Ice has some damage-dealing properties, but it's mostly a defensive battleground-shaping spell. This feels like it leads into discussing the relative merits of different kinds of cover. Will 5 feet of snow stop a magic missile? Will it stop a crossbow bolt? Would 1 foot of ice? The OP wants to manipulate ice to use for cover, so it sounds to me like he's looking to turn Wall of Ice into a cantrip. Or Fabricate. Or Leomund's Tiny Hut. Or Create and Destroy Water. Or Purify Food and Drink ("I move the water to another glass. Anything that isn't water, I couldn't move. Therefore, the poison stayed in that glass.") That cantrip has a lot of applications once you break the locks.
That is actually an interesting concept - pulling earth or water out of mud.
They key material component to forming the block of snow is 5 foot cube of snow. Unless you're in the right environment, you can't.
Under ideal conditions, you could only create two the snow blocks and they would only last an hour. Unless your bad guys never move, it's not a big deal.
As a side note, very FEW things block magic missiles.
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"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?"
How much ice can be made from a 5' cube within that same space from snow that has a great amount of air in it? If the snow is deep enough to provide the cube with enough water to make an ice wall, your shield is below snow level and you might as well just jump into the resulting hole and hope. If the snow isn't 5' deep, your resulting "shield" becomes thinner and thinner rather quickly as the depth available is reduced.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
How much ice can be made from a 5' cube within that same space from snow that has a great amount of air in it? If the snow is deep enough to provide the cube with enough water to make an ice wall, your shield is below snow level and you might as well just jump into the resulting hole and hope. If the snow isn't 5' deep, your resulting "shield" becomes thinner and thinner rather quickly as the depth available is reduced.
An inch of rain is usually equal to about a foot of snow, but it depends on what kind of snow it is. If the snow is light and fluffy, an inch worth of rain could make over 20 inches of snow!
Water does expand when frozen, but only by about 9% at freezing point (source: http://www.iapws.org/faq1/freeze.html). So generously, counting, if you have 5' of snow, you have 5" of water, which expands to 5,5" of ice when frozen. That's considerably thicker than an average door so one can assume it provides at least as much cover as a closed door would, despite having somewhat lower AC and hp (when determining how hard it is to break an object), and a closed door obviously provides cover. A solitary door standing on it's own in the frozen wastes would only provide total cover if it was directly between the source of damage and the target though, any little angle from the sides and it goes down to 3/4 or 1/2 cover.
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Playing Rime of the Frost Maiden as a Wild Magic sorc and was wondering if i could use Shape Water on snow to turn it into ice for the sake of cover? I mean it LITERALLY works on water and all snow is is literally just frozen water...I understand the cantrip tries to be like "naw only WATER" but i mean ...all ice is is literally JUST water?
Based on the wording it seems to be in that grey area that is the DM's discretion. I'd say yes, personally, but I can also see how some might say no.
Ask your DM.
It's interpretation. Some people consider ice to be a mineral because it's crystalized and other criteria. I don't know about that, but...
I would favor the liquid versus solid interpretation - shaping a liquid, not shaping a solid form of the liquid.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Okay so heres my argument - The snow in Rime of the Forst Maiden was created by her magic = the snow isn't "naturally formed" its all "magic" snow. Mineral defines it as " considered a mineral although ice; which is solid, is classified as a mineral as long as it is naturally occurring. Thus ice in a snow bank is a mineral, but ice in an ice cube from a refrigerator is not."
Ergo since the snow is "magical" its not natural thereby its not a mineral its jusut "frozen water". Yes its icewind dale and there is some normal snow, but it state specifically its never been this cold/bad for this long and that "her magic" is the reason why.
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InsiderI can't answer for RAW, and agree with those who have said that it's a grey area. Though as a DM I would totally let you shape water on snow not just because it's cool, but the fact that one of the things you can do is freeze the water, which gets close enough to snow for me.
However the cantrip states that you can only manipulate enough to fit in a 5 foot cube, so you're gonna need a few castings in order to create any meaningful cover.
Find me on Twitter: @OboeLauren
I mean a 5 foot cube for a 5'2" person is full cover. a 5 foot cube is HUGE
Yes, it completely fills a square or hex on a battlemat.
"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 I was DMing I'd probably go with yes, you could make a 5-ft snow fort or small igloo or something. ...unless the snow you're trying to shape is itself being magically controlled and placed where it already is, I'm not familiar with the details of that campaign. If the snow is already being shaped by powerful magic, I wouldn't let a cantrip override it.
The range of Shape Water is limited toa 5' cube, so if you wanted to make a full 5' cube of water/snow/ice, you would need to target an already existing 5' cube. You can shape what is there, but you cannot create more water to fill a partially empty cube, nor does it suck up water from around the cube.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
I'm not sure how I'd rule yet, but shape water does give you the option of freezing water. It says "you can freeze water" which then unfreezes in an hour, but it doesn't say "you can unfreeze that ice," or "you can turn water into steam" or "steam into water" or anything like that, so it's reasonable to rule that it's only intended to affect water in the colloquial, fluid sense, not in the chemical H2O sense. I might stretch the limits of the spell to include things like affecting the opacity of mist and fog, but I'm leery of extending it to ice and snow. Partly because it would be such a game changer in RotFM.
You can grab whatever snow is in one area and plop it into another area 5 feet away.
I would probably rule of cool it to work regardless.
"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 snow/ice is a mineral, then it should count as dirt for Mold Earth.
That seems stupid. Ice and snow are water, Shape Water works on them, not Mold Earth.
More important than the mineral aspect is the elemental aspect. You have four cantrips: mold earth, shape water, control flames, and gust, that correspond to the classic four elements. In D&D Ice, Mud, Magma, and Smoke were all sub-planes or para-elemental planes. Can you suck the water out of mud? Or mold the earth out of it, leaving only water?
And more importantly than that - you can't shape stone with mold earth because there already is a spell that does that: stone shape. Why would you ever use a 4th level slot to do something any 1st level apprentice can do? Similarly, there already is a spell that does what the OP proposes: wall of ice.
I mean, we all want this to work because it's a huge power boost given the environment. But even the OP senses that it's not written that way.
That is actually an interesting concept - pulling earth or water out of mud.
Wall of Ice is tremendously more powerful than Block of Snow.
"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
Yeah i mean its a cantrip it's pretty much something your mind has adapted to essentially being able to just "DO". I like to see everybody s thoughts on something like this as i feel it brings forth good discussion (im not intending on any hostilities here or offenses) Genuinely think shape water should work on a chunk of ice as if the functionality of the cantrip allows you to MOVE a 5 foot of water and then FREEZE IT, why can you not then move the ice? I would also accept that you'd only be able to create 5 foot layers of ice and slowly form a wall, but would not be able to move those 5 foot things of ice.
Wall of Ice has some damage-dealing properties, but it's mostly a defensive battleground-shaping spell. This feels like it leads into discussing the relative merits of different kinds of cover. Will 5 feet of snow stop a magic missile? Will it stop a crossbow bolt? Would 1 foot of ice? The OP wants to manipulate ice to use for cover, so it sounds to me like he's looking to turn Wall of Ice into a cantrip. Or Fabricate. Or Leomund's Tiny Hut. Or Create and Destroy Water. Or Purify Food and Drink ("I move the water to another glass. Anything that isn't water, I couldn't move. Therefore, the poison stayed in that glass.") That cantrip has a lot of applications once you break the locks.
Thank you. I'm very creative. :)
They key material component to forming the block of snow is 5 foot cube of snow. Unless you're in the right environment, you can't.
Under ideal conditions, you could only create two the snow blocks and they would only last an hour. Unless your bad guys never move, it's not a big deal.
As a side note, very FEW things block magic missiles.
"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 would actually ask whoever's Casting it to make an Arcana check
Ignoring the solid-liquid separation:
How much ice can be made from a 5' cube within that same space from snow that has a great amount of air in it? If the snow is deep enough to provide the cube with enough water to make an ice wall, your shield is below snow level and you might as well just jump into the resulting hole and hope. If the snow isn't 5' deep, your resulting "shield" becomes thinner and thinner rather quickly as the depth available is reduced.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Randall Munroe might have the answer in https://what-if.xkcd.com/104/ regarding snow height/water depth:
Water does expand when frozen, but only by about 9% at freezing point (source: http://www.iapws.org/faq1/freeze.html). So generously, counting, if you have 5' of snow, you have 5" of water, which expands to 5,5" of ice when frozen. That's considerably thicker than an average door so one can assume it provides at least as much cover as a closed door would, despite having somewhat lower AC and hp (when determining how hard it is to break an object), and a closed door obviously provides cover. A solitary door standing on it's own in the frozen wastes would only provide total cover if it was directly between the source of damage and the target though, any little angle from the sides and it goes down to 3/4 or 1/2 cover.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.