Fun uses for Flavor Cantrips?

[Matita]

Well, for starters prestidigitation and druidcraft have a chunk of overlap. Creating sensory effects and lighting and snuffing fires can be done with prestidigitation.

Druidcraft then gets predicting the weather and blooming things and opening seed pods (which I presume to be how you did the peyote and blinding).

Prestidigitation gets:

cleaning and soiling, which lets you keep your clothes clean, and can instantly dirty the clothes of someone else. This one is mostly for social stuff (soil the clothes of a noble on his way to a party, and then use some other magic/disguises to take his place). Turn that slight spill of a beer in a bar into a complete brawl-provoking mess.

chilling, warming, flavouring. Your food is always hot, your beer is always cold, and even the worst cooking tastes great. As others have pointed out, you can cover up the taste of poison (or alchemist's fire, or acid), or make someone think they've consumed some. You can make someone else throw out their delicious food. If you make the centre of something taste truly foul you can probably get someone to hurl or leave the dining table hastily.

Create a nonmagical trinket or illusiory image. As others have said you can show pictures to people "Have you seen this man?". You can also pull off some elaborate bluffs "Oh yeah? Well, we already STOLE the amulet of oblivion! It's right here in my hand! You just have the fake that we replaced it with!". The trinket list includes some useful stuff, like knives, coins, rings, keys and unbendable needles.

Thaumaturgy is a lot more limited. Booming voice has obvious applications, from making yourself heard at a distance, to enhancing your oratory performances. Potentially you could temporarily deafen someone by yelling in their ear with it? Shouting point blank is about 88dB, triple volume adds 30dB to that for 118dB. The threshold of pain is 110dB, so temporary deafness is a distinct possibility. Various singers can reach 105dB, so you could probably get to 130dB with a decent performance score, which is going to cause permanent damage from an instant exposure, and almost certainly deafens and disorients in the short term. If you manage to get a world record loudness in the first place (121.7dB), the 30 extra takes you to eardrum rupture levels.

Flickering, brightening and dimming flames has some uses for stealth.

Tremors should be able to mess with foes that rely on tremorsense, probably in the same way that darkness does: penalties and the ability to hide from them.

Creating sounds - again has some stealth applications, along with signalling your friends.

Opening and shutting things! With some prep you might be able to create something that releases or triggers something more dangerous on the opening or closing of a small door or window. Apart from that, opening a door at range can be useful on any dungeon doorbust.

Ooh I didn't think of Stealth implications for snuffing out flames I guess in trying to be all fancy I'm overlooking common sense haha.

I love your concept of using Thaumatrgy to deafen someone, as well as distracting a noble with a dirty robe and taking his place, I would love to see that used. With all these good suggestions my Party member should have alot of interesting ideas to use in our next session so we can both spice up and annoy my DM for a few hours XD. And bluffing a magical object of supreme power is beyond amazing. *Casually holds up the Necronomicon* "I'll open it. Don't test me."

Thanks again

 

[Voort]

The cleric at my table calls Thaumaturgy 'DJ Mode' when he wants to enhance a Charisma check with amplified voice, drum beats, and the ground shaking in time with the beat.

 

[Horwath]

Prestidigitation is one of the best spells ever. No wonder it was dubbed "minor wish" decades ago.

need warm food? Done
need cold drink? Done
need campfire started? Done
need cleanup after fight/rough day? Done
need distract guard dogs/wolves etc.. with some meat scent? Done
want to avoid making a saving throw in in cold weather? You can keep 3 cubic feet of material warm. more that enough for a set of cloths and boots. even for two people.
want to avoid making a saving throw in scorch heat? See above.


Mold earth could be used at DMs discretion to make small trenches around your camp at night, maybe even divert small creek to fill in the thrench. Impromtu small moat.

Mage hand for all those mechanical trap triggers and poisoned keyholes.

 

[Matita]

Prestidigitation is one of the best spells ever. No wonder it was dubbed "minor wish" decades ago.

need warm food? Done
need cold drink? Done
need campfire started? Done
need cleanup after fight/rough day? Done
need distract guard dogs/wolves etc.. with some meat scent? Done
want to avoid making a saving throw in in cold weather? You can keep 3 cubic feet of material warm. more that enough for a set of cloths and boots. even for two people.
want to avoid making a saving throw in scorch heat? See above.


Mold earth could be used at DMs discretion to make small trenches around your camp at night, maybe even divert small creek to fill in the thrench. Impromtu small moat.

Mage hand for all those mechanical trap triggers and poisoned keyholes.

You. Are pretty smart. I like the use of Mold Earth for the trench idea And distracting guards/animals with the scent of food is a great idea!

 

[Matita]

Our party was on a really "cracked and crumbling" tower floor when the Warlock used Thaumaturgy to try and scare the archers shooting at us up above. Good news was the "harmless tremours" caused them all to fall down to us.

Bad news was my Dwarf was directly under the floor, and Stonecunning doesn't help when giant blocks of stone are falling on you.

I beyond love that idea! Bless the Warlock he sounds great XD.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

The problem with using a relatively short range spell like this, to somehow distract guards, is that you are presumably having to cast it with its verbal component (metamagic to silent cast being the obvious exception).

 

[Rhogar_Rarr]

So my wizard unfortunately had no fire spells when fighting a group of scarecrows. But he did have lantern oil and the ability to prestidigitate some sparks. That got them burning rather well, and was far more useful than Ray of Frost or my party-member's non-magical weapons. My wizard has also used the trinket portion of Prestidigitation to bluff a number of times.

"Of course I'm allowed to cast within Mulmaster, I am a Cloak after after all." Conjures their badge in his hand.
"Yes I am a Harper," Conjures Pin. "Tell me everything you know."
Etc.

Also Mold Earth has been a great at-will utility spell found in the Elemental Evil Player's Companion. You can make a 5x5 ft hole that's 30 ft deep in about half a minute. Or a full trench in a few minutes. It can also be used to make simple land-bridges or even create cover by moving 5 ft cubes of earth around. I tend to carry a cheap sack of dirt/mud with my sorcerer who knows Mold Earth. I once used the mud I carry around to seal a door shut. I slathered mud around the door and frame and then used the harden/difficult terrain feature to "lock" it shut.

Obviously this is all up to DM discretion, but the ones I've played with seem to reward creativity.

 

[Rhogar_Rarr]

Shape Water, also found in the Elemental Evil Player's Companion, can also work for sealing things shut of opening them. Pour water in a lock or between some cracks and then freeze it. The water expands and deforms the lock or expands the crack. Then you can unfreeze the water and repeat the process. Eventually you can break through the container or door or whatever you were working on.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The problem with using a relatively short range spell like this, to somehow distract guards, is that you are presumably having to cast it with its verbal component (metamagic to silent cast being the obvious exception).

Well, except for the fact that the PHB doesn't say verbal components have to be spoken loudly, so you can make them really quiet. Let's not continue talking about this here - the topic has been done to death and debate about it gets quite fierce, and I think the topic of cool cantrips is better off with a derailment. Your mileage might vary depending on your DM, suffice to say.

Shape Water, also found in the Elemental Evil Player's Companion, can also work for sealing things shut of opening them. Pour water in a lock or between some cracks and then freeze it. The water expands and deforms the lock or expands the crack. Then you can unfreeze the water and repeat the process. Eventually you can break through the container or door or whatever you were working on.

You can also make a 5' cube of water climb out of a pond (form simple shapes and animate) and follow you around. Then you can freeze the entire 5' cube anywhere you choose. You can even reshape it (into a 5' ladder for instance) before freezing. You can probably apply Rhogar's principle to knock down fairly serious engineering structures like walls and bridges once you can wrap a 5' cube of water around them.

 

[Curmudjinn]

I am a huge fan of Prestidigitation. My last caster was a Knight of Mystic Fire(order of Mystra) who made constant use of the cantrip. He believed it was his duty to show magic to the masses, from making sparks in his hands for kids, flattening cobblestones in the street or melting snow for people to drink. It truly is a fantastic storytelling tool.