Can you use water walking to walk on clouds? I mean you can walk on some pretty ridiculous things like lava and clouds are just less condensed than water.
Can you use water walking to walk on clouds? I mean you can walk on some pretty ridiculous things like lava and clouds are just less condensed than water.
There are many kinds of lava, but all of it is incredibly dense, and even the thinnest kind is three times as viscous as water. Lava is significantly easier to walk on than water, if you have some way of not dying to the extreme heat.
Water Walk works on any liquid surface, and a cloud is by definition made of many small droplets of liquid (or tiny solids, which would be easier to walk on, not harder), so yes, you can walk on the droplets. A separate question is what happens to the droplets - water walk ensures you don't in any sense sink into the liquid you're walking on, so you can walk on cloud droplets just like you can rain, but it makes no guarantees about what happens to the liquid. You treat the liquid as "solid ground", which is why you don't sink, but solid ground in the air will fall. There's nothing in the spell that indicates it magically keeps a liquid aloft when you walk on it. So you need to ask your DM whether, when you walk on the cloud, the droplets fall. As I said, the spell will guarantee you don't break into/through the droplets - if they fall, they'll fall intact.
a cloud is by definition made of many small droplets of liquid (or tiny solids, which would be easier to walk on, not harder), so yes, you can walk on the droplets.
By this logic you can carry around a bag of sand, sprinkle it in the water ahead of you, and walk on water because technically you're walking on many small grains of sand, which is earth. A suspension of tiny things in a different media is still overall the primary media. That plus the rest of your paragraph puts it firmly in the "not at all supported by RAW" category as far as I'm concerned.
That being said, I think it's a great idea (especially in combination with other spells) and I'd totally let it work for an adventure with some kind of in-world boost that keeps the ability within the bounds of that adventure only.
I’d also rule no. I mean, where would it end? There’s water vapor in every breath you inhale. Do you want to start tracking the relative humidity and say water walking is ok if it hits a certain percentage?
Im going to go with it having to be liquid water, not water vapor.
a cloud is by definition made of many small droplets of liquid (or tiny solids, which would be easier to walk on, not harder), so yes, you can walk on the droplets.
By this logic you can carry around a bag of sand, sprinkle it in the water ahead of you, and walk on water because technically you're walking on many small grains of sand, which is earth. A suspension of tiny things in a different media is still overall the primary media. That plus the rest of your paragraph puts it firmly in the "not at all supported by RAW" category as far as I'm concerned.
That being said, I think it's a great idea (especially in combination with other spells) and I'd totally let it work for an adventure with some kind of in-world boost that keeps the ability within the bounds of that adventure only.
I mean, yes, you can do that. You can do it in the real world. You can physically walk on sand. I don't know how else to respond to that.
However, if you walk on sand floating in something, the sand may well sink, which was the point of my post. The spell doesn't keep the water aloft in whatever the water is in, it keeps you aloft in the water.
On the one hand, it's trying to RL-science your way into using a spell to do weird shit it's really not intended to do, which is a great way to tweak off a DM who's trying to maintain a fair and consistent fantasy world.
On the other hand, this is how you get Son Goku/Wukong-esque cloud riding.
Walk on Fog Cloud spell? No, but the clouds in the sky? Why the feck not, you're already up there somehow, anyway.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
God, can you imagine that story? A creative PC using Water Walk to save themselves from an Eberron skyship that's going down in the skies above Khorvaire, surfing the clouds down to the point where they can do something more concrete? Or less 'concrete' as it were? Or hell, using Water Walking enemies hiding in and among clouds to attack an airship. That would be such a baller encounter.
Agreed! Imagine running a battle on actual clouds? That'd be awesome.
As a bonus, if playing a Skryim D&D game... "Yes, I've been to the Cloud District, and on actual clouds. **** you, Nazeem!"
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
IF it were in the middle of a heavy rainstorm, AND the clouds were incredibly dense AND it was thematically appropriate, then I'd allow the rule of cool to make it happen. But it would have to be a truly epic moment for me to allow it.
So no, you can't. But it would be cool!
This has actually got me thinking of a new spell: "Fog Walking." Whilst within the space of a cloud, fog, or other heavy mist, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed. Likely a 4th level spell?
However, if you walk on sand floating in something, the sand may well sink, which was the point of my post. The spell doesn't keep the water aloft in whatever the water is in, it keeps you aloft in the water.
Do you think if you try to walk on water without the use of magic, the water sinks under your weight and that's why it doesn't work?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Typically no, clouds aren't really considered a liquid surface.
And while you can walk on lava using this spell, I wouldn't recommend it without fire immunity. :-)
Technically speaking, air is a “fluid,” just a much, much less dense fluid than liquid fluids.*1 However, the terms “fluid” and “liquid” are not interchangeable terms. (Not scientifically at any rate.) All liquids are fluids, but so are gasses and plasmas.*2
Clouds do contain liquid water but at nowhere near the particle density as liquid water lower in the atmosphere under pressure. When that cloud water does get dense enough, that’s when rain happens. That cloud water is disbursed among dust particles in the atmosphere, so in some ways, clouds are kinda like sky mud.
Clouds aren't made of water, they are made of cotton balls, so, no, water walking wouldn't work on clouds. And rain is the water from the realm of the cloud giants leaking through the bottom of the cotton balls. Everyone knows that.
More seriously, I don't really understand why some people expect that real world science should be rigorously applied to problems in D&D when the whole premise of magic is that real world science doesn't apply. Sure, I get that you want to have a certain degree of similarity between the real world and the fantasy world in order to create a compelling and accessible experience,. Nevertheless, it seems that some people want to insist having their cake - magic - and eating it too - science, and not for reasons of consistency, but rather to find ways to break the game. I'm completely with Yurei1453 on this. I'd go a bit further, if a player is consistently looking for rule exploits and cheese, I wouldn't want them at my table. Working together with the DM and the rest of the party to do something cool that everyone buys into is something else entirely.
I don't think it should be able to let someone walk on like... a fog cloud spell or on mist or anything like that.
But let's say that a PC got a really bad roll on an Acrobatics check on a buttress on a Cloud Giant's castle and is about to plummet to their death... but they also happen to have a ring of Water Walking. If only to let the Player have a cool, creative chance to survive I'd let them land on a cloud. I'd probably rule that it can't support them fully... like maybe they gradually sink into it and need to make Acrobatics checks to keep from sinking through the cloud and someone has to get them, but I'd allow it just for the cool moment.
That said... that's just me as a DM who's willing to occasionally bend or twist the rules for creative reasons. I definitely wouldn't want to set the precedent that someone could use it to start walking around on steam or climbing up rainfall, but if that's the only option a player has to keep from rolling up a new character, I'd be willing to be a little generous.
…I don't really understand why some people expect that real world science should be rigorously applied to problems in D&D when the whole premise of magic is that real world science doesn't apply….
I disagree with your premise. Why wouldn’t scientific concepts and principles be part of what a spellcaster considers when researching and creating a spell? The entire mechanic around Material spell components is directly inspired by the concept of “sympathy,”/“sympathetic magic,.” That is basically the idea that a person could achieved a desired outcome by influence something or someone through a connection achieved by using a suitable device. Two principles of sympathetic magic that most folks will likely recognize are: ”a piece has sympethy with the whole” and “like calls to like.”
There are a few RL examples regarding the idea of pieces connecting to a whole that are probably familiar to people. For example, the notion that if one had a lock of someone’s hair, or a few of their nail clippings, those could temporarily be used to establish a connection to that individual. Of course, those only work until that person cuts their nails or hair again as that would make the older items “once removed” from their source. Blood was generally considered a more permanent connection not easily severed. Blood is also very, very necessary for human survival. Having a portion of someone’s blood is therefore thought to hold a commensurate portion of the person’s life essence. It was (likely) unknown at the time that the human body replaces all of its blood about every month or two. Either that or life essence thing trumps the blood replacement schedule. 🤷♂️ Another RL example of the piece->whole connectivity concept hat should be familiar to people is a “lucky rabbit’s foot.” (I know,, I know, “it didn’t do the rabbit much good.” Har, har.) Actually, as I understand their origin, only a rabbit’s foot acquired in a very specific way could be considered a genuine luck charm. A trapper checks a snare expecting to find the protein for that night’s soup pot. However, instead of finding supper, they found only a foot. Only those rabbit feet were genuine luck charms. After all, it was a darned lucky rabbit to have escaped, even if it didn’t escape “whole.” The “piece” left behind still held a connection to the rest of that very lucky rabbit, as long as the rabbit was still alive. (If I recall correctly, it became a sort of tradition to release any 3-footed rabbits found in a snare, so as to not steal another trapper’s luck.). So they are not “the lucky feet of rabbits,” instead the are “the feet of lucky rabbits.”
The theory behind “Ike:like” is that if you have something “similar enough” to whatever you were trying to affect, it could create a link where none currently exists. So when an RL witch performs a piece if magic designed to bring success and financial prosperity, they often use coins of sufficient value (say gold dollar coins for example) to form the shape of a pentacle where they practice their craft. The coins, being money, for a connection “like to like” with other money and call that money to join them in the witch’s home. Even a purely symbolic object could potentially do the trick if the symbolism (and all of the total accumulated belief in that symbol and what it represents) is truly strong enough to forge and maintain the connection. (Like how holy symbols are used globally IRL as wards against evil. That’s why crucifixes/crosses only warded off Vampires when used as a ward by someone with genuine true faith in the things that symbol represents. A Hindu would likely find symbols of Christianity to be overrated in its protective. However, if their own faith is strong enough, an AUM would likely yield better results for them instead. Theoretically, if an agnostic police officer possesses similar true faith in their call to protect and serve the people of their community (even at the risk of their own life in that pursuit, they might very well find themselves unexpectedly warded by brandishing their shield (badge) against a vampire. (IF their faith is strong enough… if. That officer’s genuine belief in their sworn mission, might potentially “upgrade” their shield from a symbol of their office, and transform it into a symbol of Protection and Service to others. After all, (in my book at leastwould count as true faith in a force of “goodness” sufficient to deter creatures of darkness and evil.
Another significant concept central to RL “Witchcraft/Wicca” is communicated with the simple phrase: “as above, so below.” That phrase holds (and hopefully inspires) concepts of cycles and, balance, cosmic harmony, and the idea that there are patterns to the universe, and that things sposta make sense of one can open themselves up the bigger picture. That concept exists throughout 5e in a number of ways. An example I feel is very applicable to this topic would be the concept of a “Class Spell List” compared to any given PC’s personal list of Class spells. Another example can be seen in the fact that many (but not all) leveled spells can be upcast, and that many (but not all) of the Cantrips also scale in power, though automatically.
For at least the last two paragraphs you have possibly been thinking something along the lines of “exactly, that’s all magic, it has nothing to do with science.”
So, to now address that point:
Pieces of things having inherent connections to the actual thing is quite literally an “everyday occurrence” in the scientific community. Some few examples are:
The process of organ rejection after transplantation, and the medicines required to keep the recipient’s body from rejecting a piece of some other whole person.
The prospects of using someone’s own stem cells to create transplantable organs that will already be pieces of the whole people that will receive those organs. (Including an in-built antiregection system coded into a piece of the person’s whole DNA strand.
The fact that splitting a whole atom to learn about the pieces is very difficult and potentially very dangerous.
Cloning trees using cuttings.
The idea of “like to like” is also quite literally an “everyday occurrence” in the scientific community. Some few examples are:
The fact that transplanting organs between people who are genetically similar is possible at all.
Many different fish will instinctively school with others of the same species.
The fact that birds of the same species instinctively flock together. (Just lump herd animals and pack animals in here instead of making two more points on this list that are similar the the last two.
The human species inherited instinct towards tribalism, and how we are evolving socially.
The fact that ingredients naturally high in umami naturally complement one another, and can make animal proteins, especially red meat taste “meatier.”
Gravity.
Magnetism and the interaction with ferrous metals.
Every system of cataloging and/or organizing anything ever.
Evidence of “as above, so below” being an actual thing is also, also quite literally an “everyday occurrence” in the scientific community. Some few examples are:
A grain of sand viewed under sufficient magnification looks just like a mountain.
An atom and a planetary system viewed side-by-side.
The branches and roots of most trees are almost mirror images of each other. (Quite literally “as above, so below.”)
Fluid dynamics and the fact that our oceans and our atmosphere are just different fluids stratified by density (like Italian salad dressing).
The fact that we have recognized just enough of these occurrences to realize we have barely scratched the surface.
Every farmer and arborist used to be a scientist studying plants. (I honestly do not know enough about modern agriculture to know if that is still true.)
Every chef is a chemist.
Anyone who designs or builds anything physical: physics, mathematics, engineering, and possibly geology, meteorology, or other sciences.
(And that’s just to name a few.)
My question is, how could a spellcaster create a new spell without incorporating some science into their work?
PS- It takes a brand new human between 8 and 18 months to discover and understand enough physics to be able to use all their limbs together just to walk without crashing. Imagine how much physics the caster who created mage hand needed for that one cantrip. Then imagine how much Bigby needed to learn to write his signature spell.
The water vapor (microscopic droplets of water) are held aloft by air density. The moment the water vapor increases in weight (such as when a person steps on it), it's not the water that gives, it's the air beneath it. You'd fall as fast as if you were trying to walk on air.
I mean, you can very well walk on those microscopic droplets, but the air below them (that keeps them aloft) would certainly not support both the droplets and your weight to permit either of you to remain suspended.
I would only personally permit this with many caveats.
First, the cloud would have to be thick enough (dense enough) such as a storm cloud or other tightly packed area of water vapor. I don't even think I'd allow a regular or magical fog cloud to work unless the fog was thick enough to completely blind someone out past 5ft.
You'd have to have both the Water Walking and the Haste spells active. <Haste would be required to keep you moving fast enough to transfer your weight to different areas as the water vapor gives underneath you.
And you would be required to move at least 60ft or more every turn in order to stay airborne. <reason being is that you'd have to overcome the water droplets giving under your weight as you run over them. If you stop running, you basically just drop straight through.
Overall, it would be equivalent to Step of the Wind... just way more costly due to spell slots used... also... maybe a variant of feather fall if you are falling through said clouds/fog.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Can you use water walking to walk on clouds? I mean you can walk on some pretty ridiculous things like lava and clouds are just less condensed than water.
Typically no, clouds aren't really considered a liquid surface.
And while you can walk on lava using this spell, I wouldn't recommend it without fire immunity. :-)
That would be a funny way of getting about combined with fog cloud or Skywrite :D But I wouldn't allow it, too.
There are many kinds of lava, but all of it is incredibly dense, and even the thinnest kind is three times as viscous as water. Lava is significantly easier to walk on than water, if you have some way of not dying to the extreme heat.
Water Walk works on any liquid surface, and a cloud is by definition made of many small droplets of liquid (or tiny solids, which would be easier to walk on, not harder), so yes, you can walk on the droplets. A separate question is what happens to the droplets - water walk ensures you don't in any sense sink into the liquid you're walking on, so you can walk on cloud droplets just like you can rain, but it makes no guarantees about what happens to the liquid. You treat the liquid as "solid ground", which is why you don't sink, but solid ground in the air will fall. There's nothing in the spell that indicates it magically keeps a liquid aloft when you walk on it. So you need to ask your DM whether, when you walk on the cloud, the droplets fall. As I said, the spell will guarantee you don't break into/through the droplets - if they fall, they'll fall intact.
By this logic you can carry around a bag of sand, sprinkle it in the water ahead of you, and walk on water because technically you're walking on many small grains of sand, which is earth. A suspension of tiny things in a different media is still overall the primary media. That plus the rest of your paragraph puts it firmly in the "not at all supported by RAW" category as far as I'm concerned.
That being said, I think it's a great idea (especially in combination with other spells) and I'd totally let it work for an adventure with some kind of in-world boost that keeps the ability within the bounds of that adventure only.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I’d also rule no. I mean, where would it end? There’s water vapor in every breath you inhale. Do you want to start tracking the relative humidity and say water walking is ok if it hits a certain percentage?
Im going to go with it having to be liquid water, not water vapor.
I mean, yes, you can do that. You can do it in the real world. You can physically walk on sand. I don't know how else to respond to that.
However, if you walk on sand floating in something, the sand may well sink, which was the point of my post. The spell doesn't keep the water aloft in whatever the water is in, it keeps you aloft in the water.
On the one hand, it's trying to RL-science your way into using a spell to do weird shit it's really not intended to do, which is a great way to tweak off a DM who's trying to maintain a fair and consistent fantasy world.
On the other hand, this is how you get Son Goku/Wukong-esque cloud riding.
I can't be mad at Wukong cloud riding.
Please do not contact or message me.
Walk on Fog Cloud spell? No, but the clouds in the sky? Why the feck not, you're already up there somehow, anyway.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
So if you cast fog cloud on someone with water walk, you can pin them to the ceiling?
God, can you imagine that story? A creative PC using Water Walk to save themselves from an Eberron skyship that's going down in the skies above Khorvaire, surfing the clouds down to the point where they can do something more concrete? Or less 'concrete' as it were? Or hell, using Water Walking enemies hiding in and among clouds to attack an airship. That would be such a baller encounter.
Please do not contact or message me.
Agreed! Imagine running a battle on actual clouds? That'd be awesome.
As a bonus, if playing a Skryim D&D game... "Yes, I've been to the Cloud District, and on actual clouds. **** you, Nazeem!"
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
IF it were in the middle of a heavy rainstorm, AND the clouds were incredibly dense AND it was thematically appropriate, then I'd allow the rule of cool to make it happen. But it would have to be a truly epic moment for me to allow it.
So no, you can't. But it would be cool!
This has actually got me thinking of a new spell: "Fog Walking." Whilst within the space of a cloud, fog, or other heavy mist, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed. Likely a 4th level spell?
Do you think if you try to walk on water without the use of magic, the water sinks under your weight and that's why it doesn't work?
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Technically speaking, air is a “fluid,” just a much, much less dense fluid than liquid fluids.*1 However, the terms “fluid” and “liquid” are not interchangeable terms. (Not scientifically at any rate.) All liquids are fluids, but so are gasses and plasmas.*2
Clouds do contain liquid water but at nowhere near the particle density as liquid water lower in the atmosphere under pressure. When that cloud water does get dense enough, that’s when rain happens. That cloud water is disbursed among dust particles in the atmosphere, so in some ways, clouds are kinda like sky mud.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Clouds aren't made of water, they are made of cotton balls, so, no, water walking wouldn't work on clouds. And rain is the water from the realm of the cloud giants leaking through the bottom of the cotton balls. Everyone knows that.
More seriously, I don't really understand why some people expect that real world science should be rigorously applied to problems in D&D when the whole premise of magic is that real world science doesn't apply. Sure, I get that you want to have a certain degree of similarity between the real world and the fantasy world in order to create a compelling and accessible experience,. Nevertheless, it seems that some people want to insist having their cake - magic - and eating it too - science, and not for reasons of consistency, but rather to find ways to break the game. I'm completely with Yurei1453 on this. I'd go a bit further, if a player is consistently looking for rule exploits and cheese, I wouldn't want them at my table. Working together with the DM and the rest of the party to do something cool that everyone buys into is something else entirely.
I don't think it should be able to let someone walk on like... a fog cloud spell or on mist or anything like that.
But let's say that a PC got a really bad roll on an Acrobatics check on a buttress on a Cloud Giant's castle and is about to plummet to their death... but they also happen to have a ring of Water Walking. If only to let the Player have a cool, creative chance to survive I'd let them land on a cloud. I'd probably rule that it can't support them fully... like maybe they gradually sink into it and need to make Acrobatics checks to keep from sinking through the cloud and someone has to get them, but I'd allow it just for the cool moment.
That said... that's just me as a DM who's willing to occasionally bend or twist the rules for creative reasons. I definitely wouldn't want to set the precedent that someone could use it to start walking around on steam or climbing up rainfall, but if that's the only option a player has to keep from rolling up a new character, I'd be willing to be a little generous.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
No.
I disagree with your premise. Why wouldn’t scientific concepts and principles be part of what a spellcaster considers when researching and creating a spell? The entire mechanic around Material spell components is directly inspired by the concept of “sympathy,”/“sympathetic magic,.” That is basically the idea that a person could achieved a desired outcome by influence something or someone through a connection achieved by using a suitable device. Two principles of sympathetic magic that most folks will likely recognize are: ”a piece has sympethy with the whole” and “like calls to like.”
There are a few RL examples regarding the idea of pieces connecting to a whole that are probably familiar to people. For example, the notion that if one had a lock of someone’s hair, or a few of their nail clippings, those could temporarily be used to establish a connection to that individual. Of course, those only work until that person cuts their nails or hair again as that would make the older items “once removed” from their source. Blood was generally considered a more permanent connection not easily severed. Blood is also very, very necessary for human survival. Having a portion of someone’s blood is therefore thought to hold a commensurate portion of the person’s life essence. It was (likely) unknown at the time that the human body replaces all of its blood about every month or two. Either that or life essence thing trumps the blood replacement schedule. 🤷♂️
Another RL example of the piece->whole connectivity concept hat should be familiar to people is a “lucky rabbit’s foot.” (I know,, I know, “it didn’t do the rabbit much good.” Har, har.) Actually, as I understand their origin, only a rabbit’s foot acquired in a very specific way could be considered a genuine luck charm. A trapper checks a snare expecting to find the protein for that night’s soup pot. However, instead of finding supper, they found only a foot. Only those rabbit feet were genuine luck charms. After all, it was a darned lucky rabbit to have escaped, even if it didn’t escape “whole.” The “piece” left behind still held a connection to the rest of that very lucky rabbit, as long as the rabbit was still alive. (If I recall correctly, it became a sort of tradition to release any 3-footed rabbits found in a snare, so as to not steal another trapper’s luck.). So they are not “the lucky feet of rabbits,” instead the are “the feet of lucky rabbits.”
The theory behind “Ike:like” is that if you have something “similar enough” to whatever you were trying to affect, it could create a link where none currently exists. So when an RL witch performs a piece if magic designed to bring success and financial prosperity, they often use coins of sufficient value (say gold dollar coins for example) to form the shape of a pentacle where they practice their craft. The coins, being money, for a connection “like to like” with other money and call that money to join them in the witch’s home.
Even a purely symbolic object could potentially do the trick if the symbolism (and all of the total accumulated belief in that symbol and what it represents) is truly strong enough to forge and maintain the connection. (Like how holy symbols are used globally IRL as wards against evil. That’s why crucifixes/crosses only warded off Vampires when used as a ward by someone with genuine true faith in the things that symbol represents. A Hindu would likely find symbols of Christianity to be overrated in its protective. However, if their own faith is strong enough, an AUM would likely yield better results for them instead.
Theoretically, if an agnostic police officer possesses similar true faith in their call to protect and serve the people of their community (even at the risk of their own life in that pursuit, they might very well find themselves unexpectedly warded by brandishing their shield (badge) against a vampire. (IF their faith is strong enough… if. That officer’s genuine belief in their sworn mission, might potentially “upgrade” their shield from a symbol of their office, and transform it into a symbol of Protection and Service to others. After all, (in my book at leastwould count as true faith in a force of “goodness” sufficient to deter creatures of darkness and evil.
Another significant concept central to RL “Witchcraft/Wicca” is communicated with the simple phrase: “as above, so below.” That phrase holds (and hopefully inspires) concepts of cycles and, balance, cosmic harmony, and the idea that there are patterns to the universe, and that things sposta make sense of one can open themselves up the bigger picture. That concept exists throughout 5e in a number of ways. An example I feel is very applicable to this topic would be the concept of a “Class Spell List” compared to any given PC’s personal list of Class spells. Another example can be seen in the fact that many (but not all) leveled spells can be upcast, and that many (but not all) of the Cantrips also scale in power, though automatically.
Pieces of things having inherent connections to the actual thing is quite literally an “everyday occurrence” in the scientific community. Some few examples are:
The idea of “like to like” is also quite literally an “everyday occurrence” in the scientific community. Some few examples are:
Evidence of “as above, so below” being an actual thing is also, also quite literally an “everyday occurrence” in the scientific community. Some few examples are:
My question is, how could a spellcaster create a new spell without incorporating some science into their work?
PS- It takes a brand new human between 8 and 18 months to discover and understand enough physics to be able to use all their limbs together just to walk without crashing. Imagine how much physics the caster who created mage hand needed for that one cantrip. Then imagine how much Bigby needed to learn to write his signature spell.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
The water vapor (microscopic droplets of water) are held aloft by air density. The moment the water vapor increases in weight (such as when a person steps on it), it's not the water that gives, it's the air beneath it. You'd fall as fast as if you were trying to walk on air.
I mean, you can very well walk on those microscopic droplets, but the air below them (that keeps them aloft) would certainly not support both the droplets and your weight to permit either of you to remain suspended.
I would only personally permit this with many caveats.
First, the cloud would have to be thick enough (dense enough) such as a storm cloud or other tightly packed area of water vapor. I don't even think I'd allow a regular or magical fog cloud to work unless the fog was thick enough to completely blind someone out past 5ft.
You'd have to have both the Water Walking and the Haste spells active. <Haste would be required to keep you moving fast enough to transfer your weight to different areas as the water vapor gives underneath you.
And you would be required to move at least 60ft or more every turn in order to stay airborne. <reason being is that you'd have to overcome the water droplets giving under your weight as you run over them. If you stop running, you basically just drop straight through.
Overall, it would be equivalent to Step of the Wind... just way more costly due to spell slots used... also... maybe a variant of feather fall if you are falling through said clouds/fog.