This Cantrip Changes Everything

One cantrip can't change how your fantasy world operates, right?
Meet prestidigitation. So powerful, it breaks all our assumptions.

#dnd #prestidigitation #5e #worldbuilding

[MrCafitzgerald]

This is why in my worlds each town or city district has a "Washer Witch". Everyday people stop by her house with the days washing hang out and gossip while she works thru it. Due to this she's a valued community member because she's seen every ones dirty laundry both literal and figuratively.

[ajh]

Prestidigitation makes murder investigation a lot more difficult. A caster can easily erase blood stains or, depending on the DM, add them to someone's weapon

[deusvult]

Also you have to consider that some spices were used to preserve food in hotter climates

[kairunelastreeper]

I work in production. And i can say that 'soil' in an industrial sense could mean the same as applying a coating. You could soil printing plates with ink and leave them perfectly 'soild' so they apply perfectly with every press, to coat gears and chains with oil without disassembly, to oil weaponry to prevent rust, coat barrels with wax and/or other sealants, or to coat arrows with poison or disease durring warfare without risk of self contamination nor dilution.

Soil is scary and useful when you pick what something is soiled with.

[scollin]

Basically the concept of magewrights in the Eberron setting. They common workers that can cast cantrips as rituals. Lighting street lamps, repairs, probably plumbing services too. Love that setting

[CaioLGon]

The ilusiory part the best use I can think of is teaching and prototyping an item. Using image and trinkets to show a concept is absurdly useful. You can literally cut hours of teaching or brainstorming just by making a trinkets or a imagine. Not only you can show the concept in a really concise way you also can inspect the flaws of the prototype even before making the first iteration.

[drewforchic]

As a DM, my rule for cleaning with prestidigitation is to treat it like the chill/warm part, where you affect 1 cubic foot at a time. So you can clean large windows, but it would take multiple castings, each only cleaning a small area.

[hircenedaelen]

You could make a magic item that casts prestidigtition and acts as a fridge, and making a magic item cast a cantrip is fairly cheap

[croakey]

One of my most ingenious uses of prestidigitation is by conjuring a block of gallium and using the heating and cooling while inserting it into a door's keyhole to make a perfectly fitting key. May be difficult to justify it to a DM, but it only takes two sensory effects

[wymbllbymbll]

I love these magic worldbuilding videos!

One other cantrips I believe would have wide application in a settling is Mold Earth. As someone who’s helped dig holes for fence posts, among other digging projects, I can say that having the ability to move 125 cubic feet of dirt every 6 second would’ve been a godsend. This use could also have utility is warfare, whether it’s digging trenches or burrowing under walls. The ability to create 5-foot squares of difficult terrain might be used to slow enemy combatants. Assuming you have advanced knowledge of their arrival (perhaps through a scout with the sending spell), you could have 8 people with this cantrip spend 30 minutes creating an area of difficult terrain bigger than a football field, which would last for another 30 minutes.

[saravelasco]

I remember showing my Players a basic idea of a city and them commenting about how clean it was for a medieval inspired world. My response? It may be a medieval world, but it’s still fantasy. It helped that I reviewed at the Spell List and found Prestidigitation was a cantrip.
I now have a Prestidigitation Cleaning Team running around my city clean stuff on call. Definitely helps since one Player decided to make their character a drunkard. 😅

[Halosty]

The ability to clean rapidly could also have great effects on disease, once people had a basic understanding of it. Even if they didn't know about bacteria, if it was so easy to clean things they might do so as a preference and keep people healthier by accident.

[rowanbowers]

I used Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation on an illusion wizard I had who's background was basically special effects for a traveling show. Which might say more about minor illusion, but still

[doombybbr]

Also, it being a CANTRIP would make learning it more important than many trades. It would be unlikely to find someone who does not know it or at least know someone who does.

Also the created handheld item would result in a very fast development of anti-counterfeiting measures. Shopkeeps will test the weight and shape of every coin and often insist that goods are paid for using lesser currencies when a stranger walks in, being able to pay for something with a gold coin would be a sign of trust.

[kairunelastreeper]

Enchanting plates with prestidigitation to emulate flavours could be a high class novelty for entertaining guests. A great crafting job for the experienced traveler who sells to kings and nobles; or adventurers desperate to pretty up their rations for the next month.

Always a fan of enchanting spell effects; if the DMs world would allow. And many enchanted items use charges that refresh daily or by some interaction. The cheap ones only have a few set charges, the moderate ones recharge when given a spell slot, expesive ones have 2 daily charges.

[prcs]

the flavour changing capabilities of prestidigitation could potentially change the flavour of food in order to make the taste of poison undetectable? I dont know how relevant traditional poison would really be in a world with magic, but hey! A potential use. Great video

[michaelday]

As someone who works in a hostel, this cantrip would cut down on about 75% of my job! If only...

I'd love to hear your take on magic mouth, depending on the DM it can be really OP

[CMGRL]

Prestidigitation is my favorite spell because if you're creative you can do a lot with it. Any object ANY object that can fit in your hand you can make a copy of it. Keys, coins, badges, jewelry, artifacts, organs. The important thing to remember is that the flavor etc are temporary. You use it for a quick effect like my favorite con: fake health potion. The magic snakeoil salesman. Or hiding the smell of poison. Ye ol stone block that looks gold. The smell of a dragon lair or bear to scare animals.
Can you tell I like to play the charlatan mage?
Also I would love the cleaning when adventuring. Fix my robes all the time after a fight. But uh. Hell no I'm not cleaning every villagers clothes every day. But I have trolled a noble by soiling their linnens with it literally every night they looked away.

[Delseius]

I can imagine a wizard wandering through the snow casting prestidigitation on his coat or robe to make it warm for the next hour. Hax

[t-mango]

I love prestidigitation and thaumaturgy, you can do so much, without needing a whole ton