Cleric Purify Food and Water Vs Seawater question

[Senko]

RAI?

How do you know someone wouldn't design a spell to purify a human? for all we know the spell was designed by a non-human culture in the middle of a desert and what better source of water is there to suppliment your supplies than one of those strange scaleless bipeds that keep raiding your settlements as easily as it could have been done by a sailor or someone from a mountain who didn't consider salt a contaminant because they never encountered salt water.

If it can purify seawater because salts a contaminant there's no reason it shouldn't purify a human of all those nasty chemicals to produce a fairly large amount of fresh drinking water.

 

[Alexander123]

That is acting dumb. To "purify" a human being would be an evil act. Does this spell have the evil discriptor? And also, I think a spell designed to "purify" a human being would occupy a higher level than second and would probably be a necromancy spell. In fact we have such a spell, it's called horrid wilting!

 

[Senko]

I'm a goblin why is it an evil act to get rid of one of those beings who seem to enjoy hunting us down and slaughtering us?

Yes I am using an extreme argument but seriously there is no difference between saying I can remove salt from sewater because its a contaminant from my perspective and I can remove chemicals from that dead/living human because those chemicals are a contaminant from my perspective. There ARE beings in the game who wouldn't even consider humans a sentient species much less something that purifying them into a useable resource would be an evil act.

Which isn't even addressing the fact that the main argument here seems to be that its common sense to allow sea-water and not humans but how about everything in between? That poisonous plant is now edible, that large elf is immune, that troll isn't, that mysterious being from another dimension uses one that turns fresh water into salt because without that vital ingreident they'll die.

 

[IronWolf]

RAI?

Rules as Intended (not sure if you were asking or not, but if you were).

How do you know someone wouldn't design a spell to purify a human? for all we know the spell was designed by a non-human culture in the middle of a desert and what better source of water is there to suppliment your supplies than one of those strange scaleless bipeds that keep raiding your settlements as easily as it could have been done by a sailor or someone from a mountain who didn't consider salt a contaminant because they never encountered salt water.

I'm not real sure how you went from not being able to purify seawater to suddenly trying to purify humans, but...

The target of the spell is contaminated food or water. And while a human might be made of water, it is not water. Whereas there is little doubt that seawater is water.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I'm not real sure how you went from not being able to purify seawater to suddenly trying to purify humans, but...

The target of the spell is contaminated food or water. And while a human might be made of water, it is not water. Whereas there is little doubt that seawater is water.

Plus, you don't have line of sight or effect.

As someone above said, salts in seawater ARE a contaminant. Pure water (pure being the root of "purify" afterall) would have no salts or minerals or flouride (yay, modern drinking water!) or anything else in it. Just H2O.

Also as Jack mentioned, Create Water is a level 0 spell the player could alternatively cast anyway, so why is this even an issue?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You may have noticed that magic spells in D&D behave as if they had a rudimentary "target programming" to them; they can only hit certain targets. You can't target glass bottles with Magic Missile- even if they are thrown at you- unless those bottles are somehow magically animated to become independently moving foes.

PF&D targets "food & drink", material that is already in some kind of inert state ready to be consumed. It cannot target a living deer, a fellow human or an attacking water elemental, since they have not yet been reduced to such a state.

For an attack spell that targets the water within a living being, you need Horrid Wilting :: d20srd.org

 

[steeldragons]

It doesn't really need saying, as everyone else has covered it and it sounds like you've admitted defeat...but the point blank is you are making a ruling (or attempting to make a ruling) that goes against exactly the kind of usage the spell was created for.

PF&W makes it suitable for drinking. Is seawater suitable for drinking? Is it a natural state? Sure...if you want to cling to that, you're right. Seawater exists as it does. But as someone else pointed out, so do many poisons. The spell, as written AND intended, makes the water suitable for drinking.

I'll confess, I am a little surprised that this would even be/become a question in a game.

But good for you looking for some clarity...even if it's not the answer you were hoping for.

Have fun and happy diluting.
-Steel Dragons

 

[Vegepygmy]

I just feel that there's a difference between turning seawater into fresh and removing say the town's outflow from water taken from a stream...

How would you rule if the party's cleric wanted to purify an oceanside town's communal freshwater well, which had become contaminated with saltwater seepage?

I know how I would rule, and that informs me on how to handle the situation you have described.

 

[Wispr]

Here's some scientific facts about salt water and the effects of drinking it which may help...

*Water is considered highly saline if it contains anywhere from 10,000-35,000 ppm of dissolved salts, ocean water is 35,000 ppm. Water is considered fresh if it contains less than 1,000 ppm of salt.

Humans can't drink salt water because the kidneys can only make urine that is less salty than salt water. Therefore, to get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking salt water, you have to urinate more water than you drank, so you die of dehydration.*

So for the spell to make the water pure and suitable for drinking you would need to remove 34,000 ppm of dissolved salts, thus changing it from sea water to fresh water.

Hope this helps...


Wispr

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What is sea water?

River water that has been contaminated by the salt of the ocean.

Of course you can purify it!