You choose a portion of dirt or stone that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube. You manipulate it in one of the following ways:
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If you target an area of loose earth, you can instantaneously excavate it, move it along the ground, and deposit it up to 5 feet away. This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage.
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You cause shapes, colors, or both to appear on the dirt or stone, spelling out words, creating images, or shaping patterns. The changes last for 1 hour.
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If the dirt or stone you target is on the ground, you cause it to become difficult terrain. Alternatively, you can cause the ground to become normal terrain if it is already difficult terrain. This change lasts for 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.
So if I can affect a 5-foot Cube worth of material, and a cube has six square sides. Can I effects six squares of terrain with this spell? Ore does all of the dirt have to be contained within one literal Cube worth of space, thus affecting only one square?
Can the 5 feet of difficult terrain created be used multiple times consecutively? So if you had 4 actions to cast cantrips, could you create square of 10 feet by 10 feet to make more of the terrain difficult?
Creating Difficult Terrain is a non-instantaneous effect, so I would assume you could only have 2 5 foot squares as difficult terrain due to the wording of this: "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."
You could most likely trigger the excavation effect multiple times (or two of the duration effects, and two excavations). That's the way I read it, anyway.
Thanks Johnny
Does this allow you to move/excavate stone? or is it limited to just make shapes and colors appear on stone.
It has to fit in a 5 foot cube, so what you said would work.
May I target and excavate a 5-foot area under the feet of an enemy?
It states 'a' portion of dirt. Only one.
Yes, but it won't cause damage to the enemy: "This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage"
I agree that it doesn't make any damage, but if I make a 5 feet hole under the enemy feet he will fall inside with some consequences.
Which consequences? will he have disadvantage? Will I have advantage? Will he lose a round? Will he need a round to climb out? What else?
If he moves out of your hole its difficult terrain. If he stays inside I would say he has cover and disadvantage inverse to his size. For instance a goblin in a hole is at a greater disadvantage than a bugbear, but the goblin has total cover while the bugbear has about 3/4 cover. I would say it has a negligible affect, (other than difficult terrain) on large creatures becuase they occupy 10by10 which is bigger than your hole.
Can you even make a hole. Says loose dirt, not ground. Unless they are standing on sand it wouldn't be loose.
Can you actually "mold" earth, or just dig and move dirt around on the ground? I understand the loose dirt concept. If I'm holding a small pile of loose dirt, can I cause it to harden?
Say i cast it and make the 5ft cube of earth a human is standing on mold around that person, sucking them partly into the ground?
If you can make a hole and something fell in could you place dirt on top of the hole trapping them under the earth and could it possibly cause suffocating damage? Could you move the dirt into an occupied space trapping the enemy in the dirt or would the enemy be pushed?
This is exactly what I was thinking.. unfortunately it states that is moved "along the ground", meaning that you couldn't remove the cube of earth straight up 5ft and have it fill back in the same turn.
You would move it along the ground one square, what ever is in the space falls into the 5ft square hole, and then they could just climb out on their turn. You would have to have two people casting it and initiative would have to be such that both were able to take an action before the target was able to climb out.
So its possible. Using it defensively thought would be make more since..
Creating a 5ft trench around your parties camp, with a 5ft tall berm behind it.. anything attempting to climb over would have to have navigate a 5ft deep trench and then a 10ft high wall, which could be instantaneously filled in, 5ft cubic per tern, effectively burying them. Unless you were being swarmed by a large group, you open a small gap and channel them.
A group with 2-3 people using this could setup a defensive position pretty quick and/or all manner of earth work obstacles.
Could I use this to cut a block out of the ceiling of a cave, and simply drop it letting gravity do the work (since I am not trying to move it, because it is not loose earth).
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JC has said (para) " anything not solid stone" when it comes to moving that excavated 5ft cube of earth.