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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6698832" data-attributes="member: 4937">You can go an awfully long way with playing to the spirit rather than the letter, but I still prefer the letter and the spirit to be in agreement.  Prestidigitation often is written with the same clause that it can't duplicate the effect of any other spell.  But this clause is meaningless, and just basically gives you the spirit of an idea.   You yourself show just how much you violate the letter of the idea when you say, "distinctly inferior form of Mage Hand".   By the same logic though, Prestidigitation can be used for creating a basically inferior form of every spell with effects that are not explicitly outlawed, as you sort of note when you observe that if you were strict to the letter every function would be outlawed.For myself, one aspect of spell balance that I pay attention to that isn't generally considered is the economic impact.  One of the main reasons I wanted to quantize all possible impacts of the spell is to ensure that allowing someone use the spell to change the flavor of things or the odor of things or to change the color of things, couldn't be used to effectively give the wielder of a 0th level spell the equivalent of something like a +15 skill bonus to cooking or painting or other acts of creation.  So want the spell to be able to give the answer, "How much can you improve the flavor of something?", and the answer be something like, "At best, as much as if you had a +3 bonus on your Craft (cooking) skill check."</blockquote>

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