I'll be playing a Druid in a very sea-centric campaign soon, so I'm figuring on using Shape Water quite a bit. Somehow this simple spell leads quickly to complicated questions about space, time, and gravity in 5E.
You often see posts saying you can use Shape Water to move water over someone, freeze it, and drop it on them. Given that a 5' cube of water would weigh about 4 tons, that sure sounds like a death sentence. On the other hand, you can only move the water 5', so unless you're talking about a Tiny creature standing directly adjacent to a large water source, but is nonetheless on firm ground themselves, I just don't see how you could ever actually do that, the geometry just doesn't work.
The solution might lay in posts that also imply that you can just keep moving the water 5' again and again with repeated uses of the cantrip. but doesn't the water fall in between castings of the cantrip, on its "turn"?
On the other hand, the spell can also be used to create simple animated shapes, and they will "hold" for an hour. Are these shapes levitating for one hour in that form? Can you then recast the spell on the animated shape and move it again and again, potentially for an entire hour of castings (600 castings, therefore 3000')? If it's not levitating, are these animated shapes really just puddles on the ground?
As a DM, I'd allow you to hold water in the air using the cantrip by concentrating, but RAW, there's nothing saying it falls to the ground.
But it's worth mentioning that this is primarily a role-play/utility cantrip. You're better off using an actual damage cantrip, spell, or weapon as a reliable source of damage. Then again, as a druid, you need to consider your role in the party. Are you a Frontliner? Tank? Support? Ranged? Healer? What role you play will determine what you will use this cantrip and other spells for.
I'll be playing a Druid in a very sea-centric campaign soon, so I'm figuring on using Shape Water quite a bit. Somehow this simple spell leads quickly to complicated questions about space, time, and gravity in 5E.
You often see posts saying you can use Shape Water to move water over someone, freeze it, and drop it on them. Given that a 5' cube of water would weigh about 4 tons, that sure sounds like a death sentence. On the other hand, you can only move the water 5', so unless you're talking about a Tiny creature standing directly adjacent to a large water source, but is nonetheless on firm ground themselves, I just don't see how you could ever actually do that, the geometry just doesn't work.
The solution might lay in posts that also imply that you can just keep moving the water 5' again and again with repeated uses of the cantrip. but doesn't the water fall in between castings of the cantrip, on its "turn"?
On the other hand, the spell can also be used to create simple animated shapes, and they will "hold" for an hour. Are these shapes levitating for one hour in that form? Can you then recast the spell on the animated shape and move it again and again, potentially for an entire hour of castings (600 castings, therefore 3000')? If it's not levitating, are these animated shapes really just puddles on the ground?
Shape Water can't hold the water up in the air, I don't know where you're seeing claims that it can. You can tell water to go up, but it will fall as soon as the movement finishes. If you want to crush someone with a block of ice, you'll need to make the ice first (Shape Water can levitate water in any state, including solid), then levitate it 5 feet diagonally so it moves from next to your enemy to above your enemy. At the end of the movement, the ice will drop.
Note that the duration of the spell is Instantaneous. In the instances where the effect lasts longer such as freezing, the duration of that effect is spelled out in the description. Since the moving effect does not have a specially-stated duration, the spells effect ends immediately after you have moved it 5 feet and then it acts like mundane water again.
Note that the duration of the spell is Instantaneous. In the instances where the effect lasts longer such as freezing, the duration of that effect is spelled out in the description. Since the moving effect does not have a specially-stated duration, the spells effect ends immediately after you have moved it 5 feet and then it acts like mundane water again.
Exactly, that's why I don't quite get the posts saying you can somehow use it to drop blocks of ice on anything with it. Except.... that animated shapes effect is one of the ones that last an hour, and they don't make it clear whether those shapes are 3 dimensional things in the air, and therefore levitating for an hour, or just flat puddles on the ground.
As a DM, I'd allow you to hold water in the air using the cantrip by concentrating, but RAW, there's nothing saying it falls to the ground.
But it's worth mentioning that this is primarily a role-play/utility cantrip. You're better off using an actual damage cantrip, spell, or weapon as a reliable source of damage. Then again, as a druid, you need to consider your role in the party. Are you a Frontliner? Tank? Support? Ranged? Healer? What role you play will determine what you will use this cantrip and other spells for.
Yeah, I wouldn't actually want to use it in combat, but in trying to understand just how this spell works. The implication that you can somehow use it to lift water high enough to drop it on anything, implies that people think you can move the water more than once before it falls. Bering able to move the water more than once makes a massive difference in what you can do with this one as a utility spell.
I'll be playing a Druid in a very sea-centric campaign soon, so I'm figuring on using Shape Water quite a bit. Somehow this simple spell leads quickly to complicated questions about space, time, and gravity in 5E.
You often see posts saying you can use Shape Water to move water over someone, freeze it, and drop it on them. Given that a 5' cube of water would weigh about 4 tons, that sure sounds like a death sentence. On the other hand, you can only move the water 5', so unless you're talking about a Tiny creature standing directly adjacent to a large water source, but is nonetheless on firm ground themselves, I just don't see how you could ever actually do that, the geometry just doesn't work.
The solution might lay in posts that also imply that you can just keep moving the water 5' again and again with repeated uses of the cantrip. but doesn't the water fall in between castings of the cantrip, on its "turn"?
On the other hand, the spell can also be used to create simple animated shapes, and they will "hold" for an hour. Are these shapes levitating for one hour in that form? Can you then recast the spell on the animated shape and move it again and again, potentially for an entire hour of castings (600 castings, therefore 3000')? If it's not levitating, are these animated shapes really just puddles on the ground?
Shape Water can't hold the water up in the air, I don't know where you're seeing claims that it can. You can tell water to go up, but it will fall as soon as the movement finishes. If you want to crush someone with a block of ice, you'll need to make the ice first (Shape Water can levitate water in any state, including solid), then levitate it 5 feet diagonally so it moves from next to your enemy to above your enemy. At the end of the movement, the ice will drop.
OK, so the one hour duration "cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction" are not 3d shapes above the ground, but flat puddles lying on the ground then?
OK, so the one hour duration "cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction" are not 3d shapes above the ground, but flat puddles lying on the ground then?
You can make a fun animated 3D water sculpture of up to a 5ft cube, but it doesn't levitate off the ground. You could freeze that sculpture or you could change its colour. You can't generally use it effectively as a weapon.
In a sea-based campaign you might find many uses for the spell: creating ice stepping stones to walk over water, pushing a boat to increase its speed, casting as a readied reaction to disrupt the most damaging part of wave before it hits your ship, turning some water murky to hide behind underwater, bailing out a vessel, carving delicate ice trinkets - but trying to use this cantrip for damage purposes is not feasible without absolute DM cooperation.
People probably get to being able to levitate water around by combining the animate effect with the move water 5ft effect.
"You cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction." Is open to interpretation and so very much up to DM discretion.
In general I agree that levitating water as a necessary consequence of the animation effect. I picture animating the water as being like water bending in Avatar, just confined to the targeted 5ft cube. That means the animation effect can support the weight of the water. Regardless this is hard to avoid with the animation effect. Anything that would be noticable beyond the normal behavior of water would require supporting the weight of some amount of water.
A DM that wants to argue against this could say that the animation targets a square in space and doesn't move with the water. So once you move the water outside the cube of space target by the animation effect the water reverts to its normal behavior (i.e. falling, following downhill, etc).
However Shape Water does allow you to maintain two non-instantaneous effects. So you could target the water and an adjacent square, then move the water between them. In the end though the water is only moving 5ft every two rounds or 5 inches a second.
In any case I don't see this as being significantly different than a player setting up a trap with mundane tools. Remember you are limited to a range of 30ft so you definitely not levitating water up to incredible heights without somehow lifting yourself up as well.
Oh that isn't quite what I was trying to convey Kotath but the specifics aren't important. In the end it all depends on how the rules are interpreted at a given table. My main point is that even a generous interpretation of the rules for this spell do not yield game breaking results.
Using this cantrip to move a block of ice into the Tarrasque wouldn't kill or even hurt it because this effect expressly states it doesn't exert enough force to cause damage. Sure putting or dropping something heavy like a block of ice would hurt. But you have to lift the heavy object up in the first place. This can be done many ways, Shape Water may just be one debatable method. Given the time this would take there are a plethora of other traps players could make depending on their resources.
Also you absolutely could use Shape Water to make ammunition for a catapult. But then again your catapult could be hurling actual boulders which in general are denser than water.
if the shapes are anything other than flat puddles then you are by definition levitating all of the water that is not on the ground. If you make an actual sphere out of the water, you are levitating every ounce of that water other than the very small bit sitting on the ground. If it's not levitating, but solid water is frozen water, and freezing is explicitly a different effect. Plus it literally says it can "animate at your direction", so it sure isn't a solid.
Let's suppose you make a 5' cube of water in a lake, just below the surface. It holds that shape for an hour, per the spell description. It may be shaped, but it's still water and not ice, since that is a different effect. Therefore, you can cast the cantrip again to move that water vertically 5'. Now that shaped cube of water is sitting directly on the surface of the regular water. it won't fall into it, since it's the same density, it just sits in equilibrium. Then you cast the spell a few more times to move it in 5' increments to shore. Now that water is sitting on the ground, and you are a minute or so into the 1 hour duration. It is definitely less dense than the ground, so it sits on it. All of the molecules of water that aren't in contact with the ground are levitating above it.
It's at this point you could do the move water thing again to move it 5' vertically, and now your 5' cube of water is 5' above the ground, but only instantaneously, because now gravity is suddenly a thing again and it falls back down. But where was gravity six seconds ago? And when it falls down, it's still a cube, because there's still 50 minutes left on that one hour duration, so gravity only effects the cube long enough to get that sheet of molecules that form the base of the cube back in contact with the ground, and then the rest of the water is levitating again.
The only way to make sense of this spell is to use the way we already levitate water without magic - with a container like a barrel. The sides of the barrel exert a force on the water it contains, holding it up off the ground. But the barrel can't push itself off the ground. So we can say the second bullet point of Shape Water can make an invisible barrel that can push water up off the ground, but that can't push itself off the ground, because that would be levitation.
Shape Water doesn't make an invisible barrel as far as I've read.
And the shapes you make with it don't have to be 2D puddles, they can be 3D shapes that hold their shape for the 1 hour duration... just like it says it can do in the spell... if you want to call this levitation, go ahead... but the spell does exactly what it says it can do.
you can also use another casting to now freeze that shape, the 1st casting no longer matters now because the 2nd casting has made your shape into ice... voila, the ice boat
ok yeah, if it's not somehow making an invisible container holding the water in the 3D shape, then the only thing you can conclude is it has made the water weightless, otherwise the shape would instantly collapse rather than last for one hour. In that case, you can then go on to recast the cantrip using the first bullet point, and then you can start moving that weightless shape of water wherever you like. well, wherever within 30' of yourself that you like.
"but the spell does exactly what it says it can do" If only it said what it exactly can do, there wouldn't be these threads about it. :)
I'll be playing a Druid in a very sea-centric campaign soon, so I'm figuring on using Shape Water quite a bit. Somehow this simple spell leads quickly to complicated questions about space, time, and gravity in 5E.
You often see posts saying you can use Shape Water to move water over someone, freeze it, and drop it on them. Given that a 5' cube of water would weigh about 4 tons, that sure sounds like a death sentence. On the other hand, you can only move the water 5', so unless you're talking about a Tiny creature standing directly adjacent to a large water source, but is nonetheless on firm ground themselves, I just don't see how you could ever actually do that, the geometry just doesn't work.
The solution might lay in posts that also imply that you can just keep moving the water 5' again and again with repeated uses of the cantrip. but doesn't the water fall in between castings of the cantrip, on its "turn"?
On the other hand, the spell can also be used to create simple animated shapes, and they will "hold" for an hour. Are these shapes levitating for one hour in that form? Can you then recast the spell on the animated shape and move it again and again, potentially for an entire hour of castings (600 castings, therefore 3000')? If it's not levitating, are these animated shapes really just puddles on the ground?
As a DM, I'd allow you to hold water in the air using the cantrip by concentrating, but RAW, there's nothing saying it falls to the ground.
But it's worth mentioning that this is primarily a role-play/utility cantrip. You're better off using an actual damage cantrip, spell, or weapon as a reliable source of damage. Then again, as a druid, you need to consider your role in the party. Are you a Frontliner? Tank? Support? Ranged? Healer? What role you play will determine what you will use this cantrip and other spells for.
Shape Water can't hold the water up in the air, I don't know where you're seeing claims that it can. You can tell water to go up, but it will fall as soon as the movement finishes. If you want to crush someone with a block of ice, you'll need to make the ice first (Shape Water can levitate water in any state, including solid), then levitate it 5 feet diagonally so it moves from next to your enemy to above your enemy. At the end of the movement, the ice will drop.
Note that the duration of the spell is Instantaneous. In the instances where the effect lasts longer such as freezing, the duration of that effect is spelled out in the description. Since the moving effect does not have a specially-stated duration, the spells effect ends immediately after you have moved it 5 feet and then it acts like mundane water again.
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
Exactly, that's why I don't quite get the posts saying you can somehow use it to drop blocks of ice on anything with it. Except.... that animated shapes effect is one of the ones that last an hour, and they don't make it clear whether those shapes are 3 dimensional things in the air, and therefore levitating for an hour, or just flat puddles on the ground.
Yeah, I wouldn't actually want to use it in combat, but in trying to understand just how this spell works. The implication that you can somehow use it to lift water high enough to drop it on anything, implies that people think you can move the water more than once before it falls. Bering able to move the water more than once makes a massive difference in what you can do with this one as a utility spell.
OK, so the one hour duration "cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction" are not 3d shapes above the ground, but flat puddles lying on the ground then?
You can make a fun animated 3D water sculpture of up to a 5ft cube, but it doesn't levitate off the ground. You could freeze that sculpture or you could change its colour. You can't generally use it effectively as a weapon.
In a sea-based campaign you might find many uses for the spell: creating ice stepping stones to walk over water, pushing a boat to increase its speed, casting as a readied reaction to disrupt the most damaging part of wave before it hits your ship, turning some water murky to hide behind underwater, bailing out a vessel, carving delicate ice trinkets - but trying to use this cantrip for damage purposes is not feasible without absolute DM cooperation.
People probably get to being able to levitate water around by combining the animate effect with the move water 5ft effect.
"You cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction." Is open to interpretation and so very much up to DM discretion.
In general I agree that levitating water as a necessary consequence of the animation effect. I picture animating the water as being like water bending in Avatar, just confined to the targeted 5ft cube. That means the animation effect can support the weight of the water. Regardless this is hard to avoid with the animation effect. Anything that would be noticable beyond the normal behavior of water would require supporting the weight of some amount of water.
A DM that wants to argue against this could say that the animation targets a square in space and doesn't move with the water. So once you move the water outside the cube of space target by the animation effect the water reverts to its normal behavior (i.e. falling, following downhill, etc).
However Shape Water does allow you to maintain two non-instantaneous effects. So you could target the water and an adjacent square, then move the water between them. In the end though the water is only moving 5ft every two rounds or 5 inches a second.
In any case I don't see this as being significantly different than a player setting up a trap with mundane tools. Remember you are limited to a range of 30ft so you definitely not levitating water up to incredible heights without somehow lifting yourself up as well.
There are a ton of things you can do that would be more effective than freezing a block of water and dropping it on somebody.
"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
Oh that isn't quite what I was trying to convey Kotath but the specifics aren't important. In the end it all depends on how the rules are interpreted at a given table. My main point is that even a generous interpretation of the rules for this spell do not yield game breaking results.
Using this cantrip to move a block of ice into the Tarrasque wouldn't kill or even hurt it because this effect expressly states it doesn't exert enough force to cause damage. Sure putting or dropping something heavy like a block of ice would hurt. But you have to lift the heavy object up in the first place. This can be done many ways, Shape Water may just be one debatable method. Given the time this would take there are a plethora of other traps players could make depending on their resources.
Also you absolutely could use Shape Water to make ammunition for a catapult. But then again your catapult could be hurling actual boulders which in general are denser than water.
if the shapes are anything other than flat puddles then you are by definition levitating all of the water that is not on the ground. If you make an actual sphere out of the water, you are levitating every ounce of that water other than the very small bit sitting on the ground. If it's not levitating, but solid water is frozen water, and freezing is explicitly a different effect. Plus it literally says it can "animate at your direction", so it sure isn't a solid.
Let's suppose you make a 5' cube of water in a lake, just below the surface. It holds that shape for an hour, per the spell description. It may be shaped, but it's still water and not ice, since that is a different effect. Therefore, you can cast the cantrip again to move that water vertically 5'. Now that shaped cube of water is sitting directly on the surface of the regular water. it won't fall into it, since it's the same density, it just sits in equilibrium. Then you cast the spell a few more times to move it in 5' increments to shore. Now that water is sitting on the ground, and you are a minute or so into the 1 hour duration. It is definitely less dense than the ground, so it sits on it. All of the molecules of water that aren't in contact with the ground are levitating above it.
It's at this point you could do the move water thing again to move it 5' vertically, and now your 5' cube of water is 5' above the ground, but only instantaneously, because now gravity is suddenly a thing again and it falls back down. But where was gravity six seconds ago? And when it falls down, it's still a cube, because there's still 50 minutes left on that one hour duration, so gravity only effects the cube long enough to get that sheet of molecules that form the base of the cube back in contact with the ground, and then the rest of the water is levitating again.
The only way to make sense of this spell is to use the way we already levitate water without magic - with a container like a barrel. The sides of the barrel exert a force on the water it contains, holding it up off the ground. But the barrel can't push itself off the ground. So we can say the second bullet point of Shape Water can make an invisible barrel that can push water up off the ground, but that can't push itself off the ground, because that would be levitation.
Lot of trouble to go through to produce an inferior weapon.
"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
ok yeah, if it's not somehow making an invisible container holding the water in the 3D shape, then the only thing you can conclude is it has made the water weightless, otherwise the shape would instantly collapse rather than last for one hour. In that case, you can then go on to recast the cantrip using the first bullet point, and then you can start moving that weightless shape of water wherever you like. well, wherever within 30' of yourself that you like.
"but the spell does exactly what it says it can do" If only it said what it exactly can do, there wouldn't be these threads about it. :)