Druid Magic in the desert

[Shin Okada]

Create Water is a conjuration spell which even works in planes without water at all. So I don't see any reason to restrict it in desert.

Goodberry, on the other hand, can be another issue. By RAW this spell does not have material component. But the spell description says

Casting goodberry upon a handful of freshly picked berries makes 2d4 of them magical.

It can be hard to find freshly picked berries in the middle of cold desert. But I agree with other posters that you should warn it to your players beforehand if you want to apply such restrictions.

 

[Jhaelen]

Create Water is a conjuration spell which even works in planes without water at all. So I don't see any reason to restrict it in desert.

Well, it was restricted in the 2E Darksun setting. IIRC, they reduced the amount of water created to 1/10.

Anyway, I agree with the consensus so far that you shouldn't penalize the druid's magic.

 

[Set]

Finding prickly pear type fruit to use with the Goodberry spell might be an issue, but nothing that a Survival check wouldn't be able to handle.

Arbitrarily making create water / food spells not work in any environment where you might actually *use them* seems to be counter-intuitive. Obviously, create water isn't going to be that important if the party is sailing down a great river. Why would it only not work the one time it's actually useful? Easier to just get rid of the spells if they bother you. Similarly, if the logic is that create water doesn't work real well in a desert, then it should work like superplusmondo when you're druid is on a sailing ship or standing hip-deep in a lake or something, which seems like a whole lot of strangeness to add to the magic system. (Do fire spells work less well in arctic areas? Is control weather harder to use in some places? Is light harder to create in the underdark, which has no natural light? Where is the line drawn? None of these examples make any more or less sense than being restricted from creating water in a desert.)

If the idea is to make a blasted desert that can't be magically survived, *all* magic could be weakened in the area, for some reason, and, indeed, this might be part of the reason why it's a desert in the first place, having once been a fertile magical kingdom, perhaps...