"Ice more than five inches thick will likely hold a snowmobile, and ice more than eight inches thick will likely support a car or small pickup truck."
(https://www.outsideonline.com/1770296/ice-thick-enough-skate#close)

If you trap someone it's gonna be pretty hard to get out

That fact that this spell functions as a frost grenade is GENIUS for crazy plans or shenanigans...

It will go off after a minute upon casting...leave the globe in a strategic location...and then BOOM.

Frozen mooks.

Also...I have a simple dream...to play a Wizard to a high enough level that I can toss one of these frost grenades after shouting: "THIS is how it feels to chew Five Gum...!"

Wait... Sorcerers don't get this??....
Oh.... Oh my Draconic (White) Sorcerer's future got radically less interesting...
But I guess he will be unlocking the ability to fly at will, and being able to drop these on an enemy from far above would be silly in certain circumstances.
Wait, making Freezing Sphere stones doesn't break concentration and Wizards can prepare fly, and fly faster than me with my wings.
..... Well damn, now I just feel cheated out of a good spell. 

Stop giving the spells different names, or make it possible to turn off. Please. I don’t want this nonexistent spell to keep popping up whenever I try to look at a list of spells.

REJOICE! now sorcerers do get this thanks to Tasha.

Sucks to be the one to throw a sphere 40 feet when it has a 60' radius explosion. 

So, you don’t have to see the point in range that you cast it at? Nice.

Quote from Relux_the_Relux >>

REJOICE! now sorcerers do get this thanks to Tasha.

 Yup, now my (higher level now) white draconic sorcerer laughs at fire based draconic sorcerers and their puny fireballs. I can actually fly above armies and nuke the crap outta them like some insane ice bomber. I know it can't be cast nearly as many times as fireball, but O MY GAWD that 60 ft radius. Being able to fly without concentration, draconic AC, staying out of ranged weapons normal range and having both absorb elements and shield....
I was never trying to power game but apparently I'm as big a threat to a nation as a dragon now. Remember to include battle mages, flying cavalry, and assassins in your DnD campaigns kids, or one character can brute force topple whole nations.

To a sling's... Normal range... So 30 ft. You can actually throw the nuke further than you can sling it? And you can neither sling NOR throw it far enough to get out of the radius. Did they intend to give this a 60 foot diameter? 

Quote from Jellyfish936 >>

"Ice more than five inches thick will likely hold a snowmobile, and ice more than eight inches thick will likely support a car or small pickup truck."

If you trap someone it's gonna be pretty hard to get out

 Good thing your spell save DC will be high by this point then.

Holding your action to cast this until another party member casts create water around a bunch of enemies...

Freezing sphere was cast over a pond, with a Water Elemental Myrmidon submerged 18" within:

- does it take (reduced) damage?

- what does it need to do to break through the 6" of ice?

thanks!

Necromancers, make one of these and give it to a skeleton friend to throw at the opportune moment. Gets around the problem of the thrower being inside the Sphere's range, as your skeletons should be readily disposable for exactly this kind of thing.

Also, combine this with giving another skeleton a delayed blast fireball and call down the ultimate elemental hellscape, dealing at least 22d6 damage, plus additional d6s for every turn you hold off from ordering their execution

How does the freezing work if you use it on a waterfall? Presumably "depth" would be sideways. What about on the corner between a waterfall and a lake? Which direction does the "depth" go then? Aditionally, if someone is not not on the surface but within the 6 inches what happens to them? Presumably the designers believe that after 6 inches you are no longer swimming at the surface, however that is subjective and to someone else being below 3 inches is no longer swimming at the surface. That part of the spell, RAW, relies on something subjective. It also says "on", to be on the surface you have to be above the surface as on means on top of. It also says that the ice can be broken free with a strength check but doesn't say that it can't be broken by other ways (you can break free of the ice, meaning the ice is currently touching your body, which will only cause you to break free of that ice, but then you could be surrounded by a volume of air with ice surrounding that, and since you're no longer trapped in the ice but you are trapped by the ice, you cannot use any way of getting out of that area, and if you can, doesn't give any guidance on what is required there or how difficult, the dc is only for breaking free using str, not any kind of attack or str check to destroy the ice or its AC or HP)

Is no one really gonna comment on the ridiculously small area of water that it actually freezes? =)
"It freezes the liquid to a depth of 6 inches over an area 30 feet square". A 30 square feet area is a 5ft by 6ft rectangle, which is negligibly larger than a 5ft by 5ft (25 square feet). If you were to cast this spell on flat terrain (or the flat surface of a big lake), with the center right at the surface so the overlap area is maximized, the spell would cover a circular area with a 60ft radius, which gives, using the formula for the circle's area of (pi)*radius^2, just over 11300 square feet. That is roughly equivalent to 452 5-by-5 squares.
Yet, RAW, the spell freezes a single 5-by-5 square... which isn't even large enough for more than one medium creature to be standing in during a combat scenario.

I agree with your RAW interpretation, but I choose to intrepret it as a 30' square as in a square that is 30' per side...

Quote from IcyWyz >>

Is no one really gonna comment on the ridiculously small area of water that it actually freezes? =)
"It freezes the liquid to a depth of 6 inches over an area 30 feet square". A 30 square feet area is a 5ft by 6ft rectangle, which is negligibly larger than a 5ft by 5ft (25 square feet). If you were to cast this spell on flat terrain (or the flat surface of a big lake), with the center right at the surface so the overlap area is maximized, the spell would cover a circular area with a 60ft radius, which gives, using the formula for the circle's area of (pi)*radius^2, just over 11300 square feet. That is roughly equivalent to 452 5-by-5 squares.
Yet, RAW, the spell freezes a single 5-by-5 square... which isn't even large enough for more than one medium creature to be standing in during a combat scenario.

 30 feet square are not 30 square feet. the spell freezes 30 x 30 feet of water, or 900 square feet. still less than 10% of the area the spell covers, but way more than you think. why it is a square in a circular spell i don't know. i agree it would make more sense to freeze the entire area or at least a circle with a radius of 30 feet in the center.

Give this and delayed blast fireball to someone (ideally your familiar) for a fun kamikaze. 

So if my wizard casts this and sets the stone down, will shooting the stone cause the stone to explode?