D&D 5E (2014) RAW: Using Purify Food and Drink to cure a party member?

[ichabod]

All nonmagical food

As long as it's not a spell caster, sure.

 

[Kurotowa]

When someone asks about stretching a spell or class feature like this, the very first test I apply is to ask "Is there an already existing ability that does that?" This is an important test for two reasons. One is that it shows what tier or spell level the desired effect is intended to have. The other is that it lets you check for niche protection and expected buy-in. I know first hand how galling it is to invest in feats or class levels to do something special, and then someone else gets to do it just because of Rule Of Cool.

Now with this case, we've got two spells that already do that, Lesser Restoration and Protection from Poison. So, no. You don't get to leverage a 1st level spell to have a 2nd level spell effect just because you play with the definitions a bit.

 

[jgsugden]

In my interpretation, food and drink are a subclass of objects. Creatures are not objects. If you kill your allies and they become corpses, then you could purify food and drink on the corpse. However, I would not allow the spell to work on the living creature.

Yes, this means that raw oysters might not be purifiable if still alive.

 

[Umbran]

If you're a Yuan-Ti.

Not even - unless the description of the Yuan-Ti says that they only eat their pray alive, uncooked.

If the cow is still walking around, it isn't food yet.

 

[Tonguez]

I’d think the Yuan-Ti would have had to first butcher her companions in to prime cuts in order for the spell to work.

 

[Clint_L]

In my interpretation, food and drink are a subclass of objects. Creatures are not objects. If you kill your allies and they become corpses, then you could purify food and drink on the corpse. However, I would not allow the spell to work on the living creature.

Yes, this means that raw oysters might not be purifiable if still alive.

So, this is what I meant by an interesting ontological problem. Basically, whether or not this works, according to RAW, depends on how you categorize food. Clearly some food is eaten while alive. Probably, most food - killing it first is mostly reserved for animals. Some of the time. By some species. It is clear just looking at the real world that food is not really defined by any intrinsic quality within itself (i.e. being "an object," whatever arbitrary thing that means) but by its function in relationship to the eater: food is that which is eaten for nourishment (and drink that which is drunk). Don't believe me? Look up any definition of food that you want, and I promise you won't find the word "object" anywhere.

So it seems like the category of "food" is dependent on the biology and perceptions of the person casting the spell. Which could have all kinds of ramifications, especially in a fantasy game that allows all manner of fantastical creatures with fantastical diets to be characters. For example, what does a plasmoid categorize as food? For a Dhampir, food could be dreams. Or what if the character casting the spell would not recognize the target as food - maybe a Thri-kreen has never encountered the strange food eaten by dwarfs and sees it as totally inedible - could they still cast the spell on it? Also, the "alive" argument is not so easily defined, either. For example, is an egg alive? What about a strawberry, straight off the vine?

I understand and agree with the argument that the spell would be overpowered if used this way, and it seems likely that it was never designed with this intent, especially since, as pointed out, higher level spells do the same thing, arguably less well. However, that is not my argument. My argument is that, RAW, and using normal, dictionary definitions of food and drink, I think that player has a valid point. And it's because of a kind of interesting epistemological problem inherent to the spell: it assumes that there is an agreed upon definition of "food and drink" but that is clearly not the case with D&D species (or even with real world species).

 

[Clint_L]

Here's another example: you pull up some fresh carrots to munch on, but just to make sure they aren't contaminated, you cast purify food and drink on them. They are still alive - you could replant them if you wanted. Does it work?

What if you are a carnivore, but a party member asks you to cast it on their fresh carrots?

What if you are a high level druid shapeshifted into a whale and want to cast it on some krill before you tuck in?

What if you want to make sure your salt supply is safe - does it work on minerals?

Does it only work on things that can potentially be eaten by anything? Things that could only potentially be eaten by you? Only things that would customarily be eaten by you? Do the things being eaten have to be processed in some way before the spell can take effect? How much processing is required? Could the Donner party have...never mind.

What about the things we consume safely and even require in tiny amounts, but which are poisonous in larger amounts? What does it do to almonds, for example? And what about foods that are poisonous to one creature but safe for another?

I have so many questions now.

 

[MGibster]

This seems like something one of my players would try if they were feeling a bit cheeky and my response as a DM would be to tell them to take long walk off a short pier. (We joke around like this a lot.) I can't say I don't appreciate the thought that goes behind these kinds of rules lawyering, but I would hope no player who brought it up would think I'd take it seriously.

 

[Clint_L]

What about cheese?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The lizarfolk stares at harengon and this starts to feel very nervious.

For game effects the living plants are objects.

"Purify food and drink" couldn't work so good in living beings. It would be like swallowing a bar of soap to cleanse your stomach, or taking an overdose of antibiotics

Let's imagine a cow is bitten by a ghoul and it is infected. The spell is used and the cow is healed, but the side effects would be too serious, and the cow may not survive for a long time. You shouldn't worry about this if you wanted to sacrifice and eat it soon.

Maybe somebody with enough knownledge about medicine could create a variant.

Some spellcaster could create a variant of "create food and drink" to produce medicines, but the composition of the medicine should be known.

What if "purify food" was used against an undead like ghouls? It should be work totally in the complete body, because if only a part is healed then it would be reinfected again.

Or maybe "purify food" could work to stop a poisoning but only in a portion of the body, maybe in the zone of the stomach, the heart or the injury. This means the patient could survive, but suffering remains of the poison from other parts of the body.

"Purify food" to heal an infection would be useful to earn time, but only a zone would be healed, and other zones still remain infected.