[OOC] Quickleaf's Rime of the Frostmaiden [closed but waitlist is available]

[Quickleaf]

Tl;dr Maybe what you want is a homebrewed Shape Snow cantrip?

So is it a clear no to move snow or ice 5ft (first bullet in the spell description) - only "liquid water" can be moved this way? The first bullet says: You instantaneously move or otherwise change the flow of the water as you direct, up to 5 feet in any direction. This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage.

Using layman's parlance, not scientific parlance, I was saying that if the snow was flowing (i.e. moving) then it could be shaped. So snow in a field? No, you're not able to use the cantrip like mold earth to dig yourself a snow shelter. That seems contrary to its design intent & expanding it to function like another cantrip also. BUT snow moving in a snow-drift that you triggered or during an avalanche? Yes, you could use shape water to steer some of that moving snow. That seems more in line with the cantrip's intent to me.

Can the spell create simple shapes of snow or ice that can be animated? (You cause the water to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction. This change lasts for 1 hour.)

Yes. Same same.

Can the spell change the opacity or color of ice or snow? (You change the water’s color or opacity. The water must be changed in the same way throughout. This change lasts for 1 hour.)

Yes. For example, you could use shape water while trying to find an ally buried in the snow to "see through" a section of snow 5 feet deep to better find them. Or you could turn a 5 foot section of ice red like it had been stained by blood.

Densifying snow to ice is ok, right? Is this movement (i.e. squeezing the snow together)?

Within the caveats already in shape water, yes. So if there's a creature in that snow? No.

Can you de densify ice to snow? Not sure when this could be used but still checking. This is clearly outside the spell's description, so I imagine it's on par as thawing snow, so likely no

I agree, that would be outside the cantrips purview.

One of my house rules is "creative upcasting", and if you wanted to upcast this cantrip using a low level spell slot, I think that's a reasonable and creative use for it.

Could the spell clear out accumulated snow in front of a cave entrance? ( move 5 ft cubes repeatedly)
Could the spell allow moving snow to create a small ice barrier (move 5 foot cube of snow to make a barrier of ice for cover?
With enough castings, could one make an igloo if enough snow is available?
How about an ice igloo?

Those were what I was trying to avoid. The design of shape water is not meant to replicate mold earth.

That said, if this is part of the cantrip you really want to explore... we could homebrew a cantrip. I'm noticing mold earth is also one of those "multiple bulletpoint effect" spells. I can imagine making a shape snow cantrip for your PC that tweaks the language a bit & swaps some bulletpoints and gets closer to what I think you're after.

Could one make a fishing hole in a frozen lake to fish or other (i.e make a hole behind an enemy to push them)?

I think this would be similar to the de-densifying / deicing question you raised earlier. My answer would be the same: "No, but..." you could upcast it with a 1st level spell slot to get that effect.

Could one move snow to hide tracks as one is walking?

"Yes, but..." the intent wouldn't be to replicate 2nd-level pass without trace and not even have to concentrate. That would be broken.

What might work is something like "If you travel at 1/4 pace, stopping to use an action every 5 feet to obscure your tracks and tracks of up to 4 companions, you can increase the DC to track you and those 4 companions by 5." That seems more in line with the power of a cantrip, and reflects that this isn't flawlessly obscuring tracks like the 2nd level pass without trace.

 

[Steve Gorak]

Winter Wolf is one of those rare languages in D&D that's spoken by Winter Wolves (a frost-breathing evil dire wolf that's pretty cunning).

Cool, thanks, I'll go with go with Reghedic then because I'm not sure how my character would have learned Winter Wolf!

Craft (leather worker's tools). Same same.

Cool, thanks. I'll update the skills.

OK, that's my confusion. For "baseline" gear there's two choices: Either (A) use the gear packages from Druid & your Outlander background, or (B) use the druid starting gold 2d4x10 (average 50 gp) to buy everything from scratch.

I think what you're saying is you went with option (A), but you're swapping some stuff around?

You got it, I did A with swapping. Is that ok?

Ok, so I'm very comfortable in the grey areas of the game. For instance, all of what I just posted was not saying "replace 'water' with "liquid water"; instead, I was getting into nuance, design intent, and player intent. I'm comfortable doing that.

If you're not comfortable with that, and you prefer a more hard-coded unambiguous "letter of the spell" approach, in that case going with "replace 'water' with liquid water" is totally fine.

I actually didn't have any goals in my questions. I'm a conceptual thinker, and I like to play around the different spells to find creative uses for them. I agree with you that if we interpret water as all water, then you can use the spell as mould earth with snow and ice, and in this setting, it would likely be too powerful in a single cantrip.

I was trying to thread a needle and give you some more utility with the cantrip in a snowy environment.

I get it and appreciate that, but the reality is that the cantrip isn't adapted to move snow in your setting. I'm on board.

I'll delve into these questions next, but we have a style clash here. I'm not the "letter of the spell rules-lawyer, cover every corner case in painstaking detail" GM. That's another GM, but it's not me.

I don't think there is a clash, I was just looking at the limits of the cantrip.

So, I think that's critical to convey to you and everyone. I thought it was clear in the GM bio I posted in my original post, but I want to be abundantly transparent about this.

For me as GM, I'm more interested in your intent with the spell than perfectly sculpting the language of spell to try and account for all circumstances. That's why trying to answer your questions devoid of context or understanding your intent is hard for me.

Got it!

 

[Steve Gorak]

Tl;dr Maybe what you want is a homebrewed Shape Snow cantrip?


Using layman's parlance, not scientific parlance, I was saying that if the snow was flowing (i.e. moving) then it could be shaped. So snow in a field? No, you're not able to use the cantrip like mold earth to dig yourself a snow shelter. That seems contrary to its design intent & expanding it to function like another cantrip also. BUT snow moving in a snow-drift that you triggered or during an avalanche? Yes, you could use shape water to steer some of that moving snow. That seems more in line with the cantrip's intent to me.


Yes. Same same.


Yes. For example, you could use shape water while trying to find an ally buried in the snow to "see through" a section of snow 5 feet deep to better find them. Or you could turn a 5 foot section of ice red like it had been stained by blood.


Within the caveats already in shape water, yes. So if there's a creature in that snow? No.


I agree, that would be outside the cantrips purview.

One of my house rules is "creative upcasting", and if you wanted to upcast this cantrip using a low level spell slot, I think that's a reasonable and creative use for it.


Those were what I was trying to avoid. The design of shape water is not meant to replicate mold earth.

That said, if this is part of the cantrip you really want to explore... we could homebrew a cantrip. I'm noticing mold earth is also one of those "multiple bulletpoint effect" spells. I can imagine making a shape snow cantrip for your PC that tweaks the language a bit & swaps some bulletpoints and gets closer to what I think you're after.

I don't think it's worth creating a bran new cantrip. This may have unforeseen consequences, especially if the cold/snow and ice are meant to be obstacles.

I think this would be similar to the de-densifying / deicing question you raised earlier. My answer would be the same: "No, but..." you could upcast it with a 1st level spell slot to get that effect.


"Yes, but..." the intent wouldn't be to replicate 2nd-level pass without trace and not even have to concentrate. That would be broken.

What might work is something like "If you travel at 1/4 pace, stopping to use an action every 5 feet to obscure your tracks and tracks of up to 4 companions, you can increase the DC to track you and those 4 companions by 5." That seems more in line with the power of a cantrip, and reflects that this isn't flawlessly obscuring tracks like the 2nd level pass without trace.

I was just trying to conceptualize applications. No worries.

I actually haven't read your modified spellcasting write up (the one that optionally replaces Spellcasting) yet, but I have a feeling this is where you are coming from. It's next on my list. Maybe by knowing both shape water plus mould earth, something could be done with snow, but let me have a read first and I'll revert. I don't want to create work that isn't fun!
Thanks for the interesting (at least to me ;-) conversation and cheers,

SG

 

[Quickleaf]

You got it, I did A with swapping. Is that ok?

Yep, definitely ok.

I actually didn't have any goals in my questions. I'm a conceptual thinker, and I like to play around the different spells to find creative uses for them. I agree with you that if we interpret water as all water, then you can use the spell as mould earth with snow and ice, and in this setting, it would likely be too powerful in a single cantrip.

Ah, ok, gotcha. That's fair, I do the same thing when I'm early in my design process in architecture. Thanks for explaining where you're coming from - that helps me put on the right "lens" when you're trying things out with spells.

I get it and appreciate that, but the reality is that the cantrip isn't adapted to move snow in your setting. I'm on board.

Correct. I haven't had the time to review all cantrips/spells for this campaign. I covered the stuff that affects overland travel substantially, but I didn't get into rewriting shape water.

Yeah, just let me know which way you go. I'm (obviously) not adverse to homebrewing.

Edit: Oh, and your PC looks good! I know you're doing a little tweaking, but otherwise Aric is approved

 

[Steve Gorak]

Awesome!

Another cantrip question for you! ;-)

Create bondfire says: You create a bonfire on ground that you can see within range. So, can you do it on snow-covered ground? If so, How thick can the snow be? How about on ice? And snow covered ice?
I know, I'm a pain, but it's my darn engineering mind!

And it's also starting to seem that the elemental cantrips are going to be tough to use (except for the air one): mold earth is a no-go because there is no loose dirt (it's frozen), ditto for shape water because most water is frozen, and I think it'd also be appropriate to have the fire cantrip suppressed. It fits the narrative, and would likely attract the attention of druids!

An engineer and an architect, in their forties, who would have known? ;-)

Cheers,

SG

 

[Quickleaf]

Awesome!

Another cantrip question for you! ;-)

Create bondfire says: You create a bonfire on ground that you can see within range. So, can you do it on snow-covered ground? If so, How thick can the snow be? How about on ice? And snow covered ice?
I know, I'm a pain, but it's my darn engineering mind!

And it's also starting to seem that the elemental cantrips are going to be tough to use (except for the air one): mold earth is a no-go because there is no loose dirt (it's frozen), ditto for shape water because most water is frozen, and I think it'd also be appropriate to have the fire cantrip suppressed. It fits the narrative, and would likely attract the attention of druids!

An engineer and an architect, in their forties, who would have known? ;-)

Haha, that gave me a good chuckle. Yeah, I feel like we could tell pretty quick just chatting now who was the head-in-the sky architect. Honestly, some of my best conversations are with engineers because of how we think differently.

For create bonfire, yes to snow-covered ground or ice, no limit on the depth of the snow or ice. If you're on a glacier or an ice flow, the spell should still work. Limiting factor is the range of 60 feet... if you want to cast it on really thin ice, you've got to take the chance getting close enough.

Yeah, the implied restrictions on magic are interesting.

For example, the way I'm portraying the Eternal Rime is that it wasn't "lights out all of a sudden", but rather daylight hours have been diminishing steadily for the last two years, there's this bubble of cold around the region, and it's getting worse. Right now there's just about 1 hour of diffuse sunlight a day, surrounded hour-and-a-half of twilight on either end. But what happens to "once per day" abilities or magic items that "regain expended charges daily at dawn" when there's no more sunlight at all? It gets scary when you consider how extensive the implications are.

 

[Aethmud]

Awesome!

Another cantrip question for you! ;-)

Create bondfire says: You create a bonfire on ground that you can see within range. So, can you do it on snow-covered ground? If so, How thick can the snow be? How about on ice? And snow covered ice?
I know, I'm a pain, but it's my darn engineering mind!

And it's also starting to seem that the elemental cantrips are going to be tough to use (except for the air one): mold earth is a no-go because there is no loose dirt (it's frozen), ditto for shape water because most water is frozen, and I think it'd also be appropriate to have the fire cantrip suppressed. It fits the narrative, and would likely attract the attention of druids!

An engineer and an architect, in their forties, who would have known? ;-)

Cheers,

SG

Hey just wanted to thank both of you (@Steve Gorak and @Quickleaf) for getting the snowball rolling for discussions of nuances on interactions between spells and environment in the tundra setting. Jack Everfrost has Shape Water as a cantrip too, and I'm sure I'll have some nutty ideas on how to use the spell in strange ways. @Quickleaf I may take you up on homebrewing some sort of "Shape Snow" or "Sculpt Ice" spells, eventually. And may add Snilloc's Snowball Swarm too, at some point. But for now will plan to stick with my spells as chosen so far.

 

[domminniti]

I'm away this weekend doing english civil war reenactment and will be back tuesday. It can be assumed that Russet relays all the info he has to the party.

 

[happylace]

I'm away this weekend doing english civil war reenactment and will be back tuesday. It can be assumed that Russet relays all the info he has to the party.

woah that sounds like fun have a great time

 

[Steve Gorak]

Hey just wanted to thank both of you (@Steve Gorak and @Quickleaf) for getting the snowball rolling for discussions of nuances on interactions between spells and environment in the tundra setting. Jack Everfrost has Shape Water as a cantrip too, and I'm sure I'll have some nutty ideas on how to use the spell in strange ways. @Quickleaf I may take you up on homebrewing some sort of "Shape Snow" or "Sculpt Ice" spells, eventually. And may add Snilloc's Snowball Swarm too, at some point. But for now will plan to stick with my spells as chosen so far.

Hey @Aethmud,

Worse comes to worse, we’ll be a team with my character melting snow using create bond fire and yours playing around with the liquid water. Probably the easiest solution!
Cheers

SG