One of my players posed the following argument about the shape water cantrip.
You choose an area of water that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube. You manipulate it in one of the following ways:
You instantaneously move or otherwise change the flow of the water as you direct, up to 5 feet in any direction. This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage. You cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction. This change lasts for 1 hour. You change the water’s color or opacity. The water must be changed in the same way throughout. This change lasts for 1 hour. You freeze the water, provided that there are no creatures in it. The water unfreezes in 1 hour.
If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have no more than two of its non-instantaneous effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an effect as an action.
He reads it as each of the non-instantaneous effects are basically a different category for the use of the spell and you can only have no more than 2 of the non-instantaneous categories active at one time. The way I was interpreting it is you may select from any of those HOWEVER you may only have 2 non-instantaneous effects active at any given time. If you freeze water twice and then attempt a third one, the first one breaks because it would create too many instances of non-instantaneous effects.
One of my players posed the following argument about the shape water cantrip.
You choose an area of water that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube. You manipulate it in one of the following ways:
You instantaneously move or otherwise change the flow of the water as you direct, up to 5 feet in any direction. This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage. You cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction. This change lasts for 1 hour. You change the water’s color or opacity. The water must be changed in the same way throughout. This change lasts for 1 hour. You freeze the water, provided that there are no creatures in it. The water unfreezes in 1 hour.
If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have no more than two of its non-instantaneous effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an effect as an action.
He reads it as each of the non-instantaneous effects are basically a different category for the use of the spell and you can only have no more than 2 of the non-instantaneous categories active at one time. The way I was interpreting it is you may select from any of those HOWEVER you may only have 2 non-instantaneous effects active at any given time. If you freeze water twice and then attempt a third one, the first one breaks because it would create too many instances of non-instantaneous effects.
You're correct but also incorrect - attempting to make the third block of ice fails, rather than succeeding and letting the first block melt. If the caster wants the first block to melt, they have to dismiss the effect as an action. While any two non-instantaneous effects are in play, any attempt to make a third fails. There are numerous negative consequences of your interpretation, including needing to track which block is which once he has two, so you know which one melts. If you let him choose one to automelt without an action, he can maintain two blocks of ice, then pick one and cast change shape - it'll automelt and the water will adopt the new shape. Then he can refreeze it. Shape Water is powerful enough without allowing this. Stock, what he actually has to do is melt the ice as an action, then cast change shape as a second action - meaning he will generally need to carry a 5x5x5 waterproof container to engage in this shenanigan, and it's absurdly time consuming. Or he can stick to one block, allowing him to maintain ice while dynamically reshaping it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
One of my players posed the following argument about the shape water cantrip.
You choose an area of water that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube. You manipulate it in one of the following ways:
You instantaneously move or otherwise change the flow of the water as you direct, up to 5 feet in any direction. This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage.
You cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction. This change lasts for 1 hour.
You change the water’s color or opacity. The water must be changed in the same way throughout. This change lasts for 1 hour.
You freeze the water, provided that there are no creatures in it. The water unfreezes in 1 hour.
If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have no more than two of its non-instantaneous effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an effect as an action.
He reads it as each of the non-instantaneous effects are basically a different category for the use of the spell and you can only have no more than 2 of the non-instantaneous categories active at one time. The way I was interpreting it is you may select from any of those HOWEVER you may only have 2 non-instantaneous effects active at any given time. If you freeze water twice and then attempt a third one, the first one breaks because it would create too many instances of non-instantaneous effects.
You're interpreting it correctly. It says "two... effects," not "two types of effect." A second instance of the same category is a second effect.
You are both right. You can have 2 of the same effect or 2 different effects at the same time.
You're correct but also incorrect - attempting to make the third block of ice fails, rather than succeeding and letting the first block melt. If the caster wants the first block to melt, they have to dismiss the effect as an action. While any two non-instantaneous effects are in play, any attempt to make a third fails. There are numerous negative consequences of your interpretation, including needing to track which block is which once he has two, so you know which one melts. If you let him choose one to automelt without an action, he can maintain two blocks of ice, then pick one and cast change shape - it'll automelt and the water will adopt the new shape. Then he can refreeze it. Shape Water is powerful enough without allowing this. Stock, what he actually has to do is melt the ice as an action, then cast change shape as a second action - meaning he will generally need to carry a 5x5x5 waterproof container to engage in this shenanigan, and it's absurdly time consuming. Or he can stick to one block, allowing him to maintain ice while dynamically reshaping it.