Scary situations that aren't

[Dessert Nomad]

In the purple worm scenario, I'd assume any container of that size would be on a pack animal leaving perhaps only a few smaller water skins for filling.

Better hope you have a clean barrel in which to store those 10 gallons. The spell doesn't create a container. And it's ONE container - unlike the 3rd level spell.

I would not assume that every tarp and tent was on the deceased pack animals and is now consumed, that every barrel, cart, or large pot was completely obliterated, and that they players can never find a cactus or tree to hollow out. The spell only requires a single container, it doesn't require something like 'a single container suitable for long-term storage and transport', so a mostly waterproof tarp or tent made into a bag works fine as the place to summon the water. You then fill the smaller portable containers that you have from the single large vessel and drink as much of the leftover water as you can before it leaks out of imperfections in the vessel. "Clean" can be dealt with either by prestidigitation or spending 10 minutes to ritual cast purify food and water (which the classes that create water also have).

Things like 'there are absolutely no items you can use to improvise a short-term container to summon water in' or 'your party doesn't have a drop of water in any of their waterskins and can't manage to cry about their situation and someone stole all of your holy symbols and druidic focuses' don't feel like actual world obstacles to me, they feel completely arbitrary and non-immersive. That kind of thing reminds me of the bits in the Fallout games where you'll have a locked door with a large broken window in it but can only get through the door by picking the lock, you can't possibly knock out the rest of the glass and climb in or use your power armor to punch through 200 year old drywall; it's the kind of thing that can take you right out of the game world.

Either way, any time the party needs to expend slots to deal with this stuff, it's less slots for bless, healing and the like. The DM is placing strain on the party. It doesn't always have to be killing PCs or reducing them to single digit hit points.

Again, spending a first level spell slot is a mild annoyance, it's just not a huge deal unless you have some other, much more extreme stress on the party - and if you do that, the more extreme stress is going to end up with the focus, not mild inconvenience of the lack of water. A mild annoyance is just not in any way commensurate with the 'stranded in a real-world desert with no water supply' scenario that people try to relate the situation to. Or worth a significant amount of 'justify to me how a character could possibly make a container that can temporarily hold water long enough to fill waterskins from it' discussion (especially if the party has someone with proficiency in survival).

 

[Quartz]

You're quite correct, of course, but a DM is perfectly entitled to say something like, "The cauldron only holds half the water; the rest spills over onto and into the sand and is wasted."

 

[MNblockhead]

All of this stuff happens in action movies all the time.

Stop thinking of D&D as a simulation of real life.

Heck it has happened in real life. "U.S. Army Air Force Staff Sgt. Alan Magee fell out of a plane at 22,000 feet without a parachute while the plane was on fire.... Magee was knocked unconscious and thrown from the aircraft. When he woke up, he was falling through the air.... The young noncommissioned officer fell into the town of St. Nazaire and through the glass roof of the train station. He was later found dangling on the steel girders that supported the ceiling....[He] made a full recovery. He spent most of the rest of the war as a POW." https://www.businessinsider.com/the...000-feet-without-a-parachute-and-lived-2016-4

Also in WWII: "Flight Sergeant Nicholas Stephen Alkemade (10 December 1922 – 22 June 1987) was a rear gunner in Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster heavy bombers during World War II, who survived—without a parachute—a fall of 18,000 feet (5500 m) when abandoning his out-of-control, burning aircraft over Germany." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade

This was in the real world with no healing magic.

Of course, far more people die slipping on the ice on sidewalks or drown in shallow water than they do falling off high cliffs, but I never hear anyone claim about D&D being unrealistic because I don't require their characters to make a dex save with a small chance of drowning when getting into a hot bath.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

You're quite correct, of course, but a DM is perfectly entitled to say something like, "The cauldron only holds half the water; the rest spills over onto and into the sand and is wasted."

Is it a Black Cauldron? If it is, the DM would say the cauldron is full of undead and you might have bigger worries than filling it with water...

 

[WaterRabbit]

This was in the real world with no healing magic.

Of course, far more people die slipping on the ice on sidewalks or drown in shallow water than they do falling off high cliffs, but I never hear anyone claim about D&D being unrealistic because I don't require their characters to make a dex save with a small chance of drowning when getting into a hot bath.

The exceptions make the rule though. For every one person that has survived a traumatic event (like a fall) 100,000 die.

Also, people don't willing bathe in D&D unless they are elves. Hot baths are straight out. They don't have sidewalks, but cobblestones at best. Now those should require DC 20 Acrobatics checks to cross in the winter.

 

[cmad1977]

Scary situation in real life that isn’t in D&D? Combat.

 

[Older Beholder]

You can add fear just with storytelling...

The party comes across a village that's been utterly destroyed, buildings reduced to splinters, no one left alive. A set of massive footprints leading away can only have been made by a Tarrasque.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You can add fear just with storytelling...

The party comes across a village that's been utterly destroyed, buildings reduced to splinters, no one left alive. A set of massive footprints leading away can only have been made by a Tarrasque.

That's not scary at all. I will follow the footprints until I find the Tarrasque, where I will beat it to death with my sword, because I know with 100% certainty that it is physically incapable of inflicting lasting harm on me.

 

[Older Beholder]

That's not scary at all. I will follow the footprints until I find the Tarrasque, where I will beat it to death with my sword, because I know with 100% certainty that it is physically incapable of inflicting lasting harm on me.

The scary part is finding it's droppings along the way.