Quote from WRONGO_DONGO >>

Never mind. I just found the answer (it's 'yes' by the way):  https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/spells/shape-water/

---

Some examples of how you could use this in conjunction with bullet 2:

• Freeze a door, a window, a gear, or another moving part to keep it from moving
• Freeze a water source at a choke point to block its flow
• Free water and give it to someone; unfreeze it to convey a pre-determined message like “we’re in trouble”
• Freeze water in an open body of water to give you something to stand on
• Freeze water in the shape of a flat surface covered in spikes
• Freeze water inside a lock; the expanding water breaks the lock
• Freeze water into a sturdy shape to bridge part of a body of water
• Freeze water into the shape of a sphere then roll it down a hill
• Freeze water into the shape of a wall to give yourself cover
• Freeze water to damage or slow a ship

 

I'd rather not overestimate the applicability of that source, which is notoriously about optimization (and min/maxing). What your GM allows is what really matters. Specifically, my attempts to use this cantrip to freeze water in an open body of water to give my character something to stand on have led every single time to an animated discussion with my 'physics relentlessly applied to fantasy' GM, to the point that I have decided to never use that cantrip again (at least with my current GM).

Quote from TheFatherHircine >>

Can I use this to make myself ice claws? I'm planning on using them to climb walls. A pair of clawed gloves and boots to scale stone walls, is that possible?

 
Make claws, definetly. Actually use them for anything? Unlikely. They're just ice, and ice is brittle, you'd have to make them really chunky to be able to hold the weight of a person without just breaking

Quote from GhostMas7er >>

Here is how I see this.

You can move the water up to 5 ft in any direction, but you can't make it fly higher than 5ft, because the water will simply fall between 2 casts of the spell.

You can make 3D shapes from the water as long as they don't leave the 5ft square. You can then move that shape 5 ft in any direction, but again it will fall after the cast if it is in midair. Otherwise you can make a sphere/halfsphere/wall of water and move it around 5ft with each cast to have movable cover.

 Why would it not be able to leave the initial 5ft cube of water? (which I'd argue need not be a cube to begin with but that's a separate discussion) It's not the first time I've seen or heard that interpretation but it's based on litelarily nothing as far as I can tell. If you grab the full cube of water you effectively can't even use the action to animate it if that were true and I can't see how that could be the intent.

I'd also argue that you should be able to keep it floating within the spell's range as long as you're continously doing the move action, but yeah if you're switching to a different action then it would probably just fall so no freezing the water mid-air (on your own at least (unless you'd rule that you can move the frozen cube which is not unreasonable, you wouldn't be able to do it to any ice just the ice you yourself created with the same spell))

This is a frustrating spell. I fundamentally really love it, but every single row of rules text except the last has very different possible interpretations or edgecases that can massively change the useability of it and there's zero official rulings or whatever that I can find to clarify anything with one exception, that ice created by it probably doesn't melt due to ambient temperature.

So, row by row:

1. "fits within a 5-foot cube"
They could have easily said "no larger than a 5ft cube" or similar which would've been clear but no, they go out of their way to say specifically "fits within a 5ft cube" which to me should mean that it describes the total volume in any shape within the other limitations like line-of-sight and range, not the shape. The predominant interpretation seems to be that it has to be a literal cube but if that were the intent I don't think they would phrase it in such an unusual way.

2. "in any direction"
Up is a direction, so you should be able to lift it up out of the non-targeted water, but some people are adamant that you can not, that gravity would affect it
There's also the question if you can chain this action to continue move the water or if it would fall between every cast. I think you should be able to chain it (staying within range of the spell etc) but changing to any other action would make it fall as you stop focusing on it

3. "simple shapes" & "animate at your direction"
How simple is simple? Is geometric shapes the extent or can you make a humanoid shape for example?
Animate in DnD terms more oftan than not means "make come to life" in some capacity, so can you continue to move it "at your direction" for the entire hour? Or is it just setting up a repeating animation?

4. What happens after the change? Will it magically stay in the original spot of the water or will it dissipate out and mix with the non-targeted water?

5. It just becomes ice, but many seem to think of it as some magical material that isn't brittle. The only magical thing is that it stays frozen for the hour, otherwise it's just ice which should put serious limits to it's useability.
Also raises the general question of if you can target ice with the cantrip because, technically, ice is solid water. And even if you can't target non-liquid water, can you still move the ice block with the first action? Since it was created by the spell to begin with it's not unreasonable that this semi-magical ice would be exempt from a liquid-water limit

6. This is fine, no notes.

What happens if the water starts as ice. Can you still shape it?

Quote from shongshing2 >>

What happens if the water starts as ice. Can you still shape it?

This is one of those things that people have big stupid arguments about but ultimately it's up to the DM to decide. If I'm DMing, in my opinion ice is a form of water, so yes.

Quote from Skyfire_the_star_rock >>

Fun fact the average humanoid is 80% water you know what that means

 Yes that was my first thought 🤔 

I think they might have meant it as 5 cubic feet of water instead of a 5 foot cube. 

5x5x5 = 125 cubic feet which is 935.065 gallons or 7,800 pounds of water.

HOWEVER

the formula should probably look more like 1.66x1.66x1.66 = 4.98 which is about 5 cubic feet rounded up.

5 cubic feet of water converts to about 37.4026 gallons which is around 311.522 pounds. 
--------------

At the end of the day, i say just discuss it with the dm. To me, the first one honestly seems pretty broken but to each their own!

Quote from Evandell_Wood >>

That is true, but the spell does specify that it only works on just water, regardless if blood is around 50% water, it has to be entirely 100% water.

Couldn't you just use the water in the blood and freeze the blood by the wound and if it is by a main blood flow it would cut it off if you freeze it and therefore result in heart failure or at least make the part of the body without access to blood incapable or dead?

Per the Spellcasting chapter in the PHB, for spells with a cube area of effect:

"The cube's size is expressed as the length of each side."

Your interpretation would make a spell like the 8th level Horrid Wilting nearly useless (and unnecessarily difficult to calculate), as the 30' cube it targets would be comparable in size to a clothes washing machine--not enough to fill even one single tile on the battlefield.

Spells like Faerie Fire, Hypnotic Pattern, Thunderwave, and Slow would become single-target spells.

Hallucinatory Terrain would just be silly if it could only affect an area of 150 cubic feet. A single large creature could occupy more area than the spell could alter. 

Mage hand, inverts a bag of holding full of water, a rectangle 4 x 4 x 6ft of ice plummet up to 30 ft.

Or decanter of endless water action to use Geyser then quickened spell to freeze  the end of the 1 x 1 x 5 ft column to fall up to 30ft.

This one's real simple. It's 125 cubic feet of water, a 5'x5'x5' cube of water... Realistic weight is 7100 lbs(due to water expansion when it's frozen, if one must rules lawyer).

It fills one entire five foot cube on a map, including its height.

I can for instance form it into the shape of a sphere for an hour, and set it to spinning in any direction of my choosing. It stays that way for an hour, no matter what.

Then I can start moving it, say to the edge of a hill, or staircase, or sloped ground. Freeze it, and then relinquish the spell.

The frozen sphere exists for an hour, no matter what...it's already spinning in the direction towards the hill, and when I release control of the spell, gravity takes over. The ice ball doesn't disappear, because I didn't create it from nothing, it's physical, it exists, and it does what physics does until it doesn't.

So a 7000lb ball of ice just rolled downhill into the goblin camp smashing tents, bowling over everything in its path, until it stops. (Using the improvised damage table, a good DM will probably let it fall somewhere between a tunnel collapse and a castle falling on your head, so probably 4-7 d10ish, per thing it hits...this is a rhino falling or rolling over something, not a thrown rock).

I did this exact thing some years back before we entered combat to allow some breathing room and create a diversion.

Also, any direction means, any direction, including up. Up is a direction, and the basic nature of the spell is you taking control of and breaking the natural law of things with the spell. I have used it to drop a block on a dragons head, I have created bridges with it...my players have done some amazing things with it. (One guy was playing this weird species that needed to be submerged in water for an hour a day, so he walked around in a shape of water for an hour a day, pretty cool)...you can do anything your imagination can think of with it.

I've seen it break locks, create a temporary shield, simultaneously stop a wizard from casting, and drown him at the same time(just don't try to freeze it), create steps in broken staircases, become a breathing bubble for underwater species...I had one guy carrying around a goldfish next to his head for an entire 12 session campaign, he just recast the cantrips before the last ended...use your imagination.

And moving it, shaping it, etc.. is not casting the spell the spell was cast, if you have an hour with your creation, then moving it is just an action, an effort of thought if you will, you don't have to recast the spell to move the water, (or ice, as it's still what you called up, freeze it at your leisure). So you can move it with a bonus action(in combat) as opposed to your Magic action. Outside of combat, cantrips have always been free actions, so go nuts.

At the end of the day, it's up to your DM how imaginative they let you be with it...and if your group and your DM are rules lawyers about everything...maybe find a different group.

I encourage imagination at my table. (Besides, there's not a DM alive that hasn't fudged a rule just because)

*125 cubic ft* dang autocorrect.

MARSHalMELLOW

That would be a way of using it I haven't seen yet. I would allow it at my table though. It's imaginative and fun. I have seen a shape of water get set up in a corner as a rotating column of water, a monk throw an enemy combative into the shape, and a wizard drop a wall of force around them in such a manner that they were basically stuck in a five foot corner full of water from head to toe...and said wizard watched as his rival drowned without access to any spellcasting abilities.

It really is a fun spell at the right table.

This would be a pretty cool idea for a thief character for the bonus action usage.

so i did some calculations
if the cube of 3539kg is dropped from 20 feet high the kinetic energy is 211547.893942 J. 
according to google:In terms of dropped objects, it is recognised that any object achieving 40 Joules or more is likely to result in a recordable (MINOR) incident or worse on impact with a human body.
you would instantly die from this cube so much.

Free Fall Calculator
Kinetic Energy Calculator
how many joules impact is lethal 
 *edit this does take a lot of turns to move the water but if you have water already above someone it is really effective

Why is there no longer in the players handbook???