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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6004635" data-attributes="member: 4937">I would first state that you are right, those rules are poorly worded, abusable, and as such should be avoided.As a general rule, the 3rd edition rules regarding the creation or fabrication of goods are all poorly thought out, because they don't price or balance the spell in terms of its economic impact, but its presumed usefulness in the presumed setting (a 'dungeon'). I consider even the 3.5 description overly broad, imprecise, and prone to abuse.  In general, I try to minimize the ability of spell use to circumvent the skill system entirely. The main guidelines I use for Prestidigitation is that anything it is used for must be superficial and quite temporary.  You can change how something appears, but not what it is.  For example, you could use Prestidigitation to turn water into poison, but it would acquire only the color, taste, and smell of poison (if any, everyone knows Iocain powder is colorless, odorless, and tasteless), while still retaining the properties of water (that is, it would remain harmless).  It would then revert to its normal form after a short time (usually a minute, unless maintained, but I'd allow longer in the case of very slight changes, for example, making low quality wine appear to be of better quality would last the full hour).  I would allow Prestidigitation to for example, cause a poison to appear, taste, and smell like wine (or water), with the result of making the poison temporarily more difficult to detect, but that's as far as I'd let that go.Likewise, you can use Prestidigitation to give objects a temporary glamor, making for example, a bit of glass look more like a real diamond (or conversely, a diamond look like a bit of glass) or a clay ring to look like a gold one.  This is mechanically represented by making the appraise check more difficult.  But you can't use it to make a bit of glass as hard as diamond, much less permenently change something into something else.Note that because I limit the maximum bonus/penalty granted by prestidigitation, in most cases Prestidigitation only fools the foolish.  Most who examine the results of Prestidigitation will see through 'the trick' quite readily.  But yes, the use of this spell as an aide in pulling off simple cons is quite common in my campaign world.  And of course, that is highly illegal, with the penalty ranging from a time in the pillories to getting accused of witchcraft and burned by a lynch mob.IMO, Prestidigitation's primary mechanical effect is to allow the caster to improvise circumstance bonuses/penalties to various skill checks - most obviously bluff, disguise, sleight of hand, hide, forgery, craft, perform and use rope but I'd entertain pretty much anything depending on the players creativity.  I generally award a bonus of between +1 and +5 depending on the players creativity and the suitability of the effect to the desired result.You are also presumed to be able to do pretty much anything you could do as a real world magic trick, only it's real.  So you can move small objects freely about your person (commonly used to bring spell components from a pouch to immediate use), or cause two small objects in your control to change places.  You can notably use it to cheat at cards or with dice, which involves getting a bonus on sleight of hand checks for that purpose.You can use it to cause light objects to levitate, or move or cease to move, so you can for example create an umberella out of telekinetic force, or a slight cooling breeze, or reduce a wind about your person - which might get you a small bonus on endurance or survival survival checks in some situations.  You can do similar tricks with warming and cooling beverages.You can also make things out of nothing, but they have for most everything but appearances the property of nothing.  For example, you can make a rope appear out of thin air, but it would have no weight, no hit points, no hardness, automatically fail saving throws, and would automatically fail any break DC involving more than 1 pound of force.  And such objects automatically revert to nothing after an hour.</blockquote>

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