D&D 5E Conjuration and diagonals

[seebs]

The conjurer arcane tradition allows you to conjure something "no more than three feet on a side".

It seems intuitively obvious that you can't use this to conjure a five-foot-long pole.

It also seems intuitively obvious that you can use this to conjure, say, a lightweight box (think cardboard) three feet on a side, and roughly cubical.

But consider the distance from one corner of that box to the farthest corner; it's a bit over five feet. So a five foot pole could fit inside the box. But the box is small enough to conjure, and the pole isn't.

Help.

 

[jaelis]

Let your DM decide how to handle it. I would let you conjure a 5 ft pole.

 

[discosoc]

A. The box can't be conjured, strictly speaking, since it has a side longer than 3 feet (the diagonal).
B. You're overthinking it. Just ask your GM.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

It also seems intuitively obvious that you can use this to conjure, say, a lightweight box (think cardboard) three feet on a side, and roughly cubical.

I rule that the spell can only create something with all measurements 3 ft or under. A 3 ft cube is too big because, as you say, its diagonals are more than 3 ft.

 

[crashtestdummy]

I agree with ask your DM, but why not ask if you can conjure a 3x3x3 box containing a 5' pole? That seems to satisfy all requirements.

As for the diagonal being more than three feet, a diagonal is not a side...

 

[Umbran]

A. The box can't be conjured, strictly speaking, since it has a side longer than 3 feet (the diagonal).

With respect, a line running through the *interior* of the object shouldn't be considered a 'side'.

B. You're overthinking it. Just ask your GM.

Yes. And remember, it is magic. Magic doesn't have to make sense to a logical, modern scientific mind.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The conjurer arcane tradition allows you to conjure something "no more than three feet on a side".

It seems intuitively obvious that you can't use this to conjure a five-foot-long pole.

It also seems intuitively obvious that you can use this to conjure, say, a lightweight box (think cardboard) three feet on a side, and roughly cubical.

But consider the distance from one corner of that box to the farthest corner; it's a bit over five feet. So a five foot pole could fit inside the box. But the box is small enough to conjure, and the pole isn't.

Help.

It's magic, does it need to make sense?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Why limit yourself to boxes, with their ninety-degree angle corners? Why not create something using one-degree angles - with 360 sides - each of which is three feet in length?

The maximum size of an object that could be contained within such a bound grows with the cosine of the angle. By adding additional sides, and shrinking the angles accordingly, you can contain an object of arbitrary size.

 

[seebs]

I agree with ask your DM, but why not ask if you can conjure a 3x3x3 box containing a 5' pole? That seems to satisfy all requirements.

As for the diagonal being more than three feet, a diagonal is not a side...

The box-containing-a-pole is not a single object.

And I think that the objects with more sides are probably disqualified because "on a side" tends to mean "in any dimension" rather than "in each individual flat surface".

 

[Ristamar]

Sounds like a "use your best judgement" spell. Anything that would roughly fit into a 3' sphere would probably be safe.