smbakeresq
Explorer
I would love to put in a plug for the cantrip "Mold Earth"
"You choose a portion of dirt or stone that you can see within range (30 feet) and that fits within a 5-food cube. You can manipulate it in the following ways:
*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 involve enough force to cause damage"
This is the first use of the spell and gives you some very interesting RAW effects. You can manipulate as much earth as fits in a 5-foot cube within 30 feet, but not all of that earth needs to be in a single 5-foot cube. A 5-foot cube is 125 cubic feet of dirt.
This means that you could use this cantrip to create a wall of earth by excavating a 1'x5'x25' line of earth. This translates into a 25 feet long, 5 foot high, 1 food deep wall of earth (potentially with a 1 foot pit (the excavated hole) either in front of or behind it. This is instant cover for archers/caster or road-blocks for enemies. Given how good wall spells are in general, this has amazing potential if you're in a earth/stone surface (like most dungeons).
You can use this spell to create a pretty great mini-fortress in 1 minute, and a really cool one in 1 minutes. So if you're looking at preparing a position for defense this is amazing.
By the same logic as above, the "shape water" cantrip allows you to make a raft of ice that's 1 foot thick and 25 square feet in area. This is big enough and strong enough to park 2 pickup trucks on, and thus serves as an instant boat or bridge across water.
Doesn’t work that way. It targets a 5’ cube, not all earth that would fit into a 5’ cube. You can move it around, but doesn’t say anything about shaping it as you wouldn’t be able to pile earth 5’ high but only 1’ thick, it would collapse.
However, you would be able to quickly make a 2’ deep hole with a 2’ pile of earth in front of it for a quick foxhole with a small earth pile to shoot over. Or use it the Roman way, make a 5’ wide 5’ deep trench, piling the earth up and then packing it down to form a platform then make a quick wall with branches.
You can quickly dig out a moat this way to protect the camp.
The ice is the same way. 25 square feet is big enough for a golf cart maybe, it’s 5x5. The flying carpet in DMG let’s you know how many people you could fit onto that shape as it’s 4x6’, or 24 square feet IIRC.