This Cantrip Changes Everything

prestidigitation it's basically you can do magic things the can drip out of all the spells in d d other than perhaps wish it's it's probably the one with the broadest remit this can make it hard to analyze and a nightmare for DMS with creative players but today I want to take a slightly different approach as a cantrip prestidigitation is one of the most commonly cast spells in any Dungeons and Dragons World but how would such a world actually look even the most minor magical effect is still magic and trust me prestidigitation will change your world [Music] prestid digitation is a transmutation cantrip which takes verbal and somatic components to cast takes your action and can affect the object's materials and space around you it can create a range of effects from heating cooling and flavoring material summoning minor sensory flourishes cleaning or soiling objects starting or stopping fires or creating real or illusory objects easy fire is incredible no need for bow drills finding some Flint or gathering a copious amount of kindling now you can cook in any environment as long as you can build a small campfire whether your wood is damp or not is immaterial cooked food was a Kickstarter of civilization so even before Wizards and bards had mastered the performative and research tools to control their magic Sorcerers warlocks and many species who simply get the ability to cast cantrips as part of their ancestry would be integral to the origin of civilization essentially there's little need for any of your classic Stone Age struggles when fire is instantly available and reproducible at will I imagine that there would be Pockets versus civilization that would have to have learned the hard way or rely on the magical creatures of the world to give them fire but I can't Envision a pre-fire societal stage lasting for very long at all and this is just with the cantrip prestidigitation in play the discovery of the creation of fire would be far less slow than in our own civilization and fires developed through magic would be even better than fires made the traditional way as they are instant not only to start but to put out plus you can light them from up to 10 feet away reducing the risks of uh unintentional burning these sheer efficiency in starting and stopping a fire would also lead to the early development of smoke management behaviors which is a surprisingly useful tool in our own history being able to start and stop a fire at will means one smoke signals are incredibly easy to create and far more precise they allow for instantaneous long distance communication if you share the code with the person you're communicating with unlike whistling or simply hand delivering a message smoke is a near Universal deterrent to wild creatures so you're going to get a lot less curious attention than if you simply run to deliver your message through the forest or you're making an awful lot of noise 2. you needn't ever risk a guttering campfire that still belches smoke for minutes after it's been put out by burning embers or still residual hot coals press digitation immediately extinguishes the fire at a moment's notice 3. recovering honey from bees would be so much easier if a user of this can trip were around bees were after all domesticated by the ancient Egyptians it's very likely that an ancient DND world will domesticate bees even quicker smoke is an excellent tool in controlling the movement and activity of a beehive enabling a gatherer to collect as much honey as they may well want as long as they have a controlled way of smoking bees seeing as some species get cantrips simply by existing it stands to reason especially in Elven cohorts that honey smoke signals and cooking have been around since the very dawn of magic it's important to note that all of this is also possible using Druid craft too of course this fire starting and stopping effect has uses Beyond A Primitive past as well tinderboxes and matches may be useful for a non-magic user but any Mage would scoff at the effort it takes their companions to create fire equally where castles once had firelighters employed as part of their full-time Duty a single Mage could light every candle in a castle including the chandeliers without need for a massively tall ladder simply in the time it takes them to walk around the Castle's grounds the same is true for any settlement that uses gas lamps a single magical Lamplighter could cover most of a medieval-sized city in just a few hours using no more taxing magic than a single can trip taking much of the palava out of the old profession of Lamplighter a steady team of individuals perhaps one per District could have all the lamps in a city lit and be home in time for tea this would be in a far less dangerous fashion than a historical ladder climbing lamplighters who had to deal with volatile early gas lamps up close the reduction in labor force as lamplighters were often pulling double duty as night Watchmen would also free up more Guardsmen for actual night patrols rather than glancing over their shoulder to look out for bad guys while they're in the process of lighting a very very dangerous contraption let's talk about heating cooling and flavoring now there's no official guidance about how much we can heat or cool in terms of degrees but it would be safe to say that this spell probably doesn't have the power to freeze or boil water for example as such if we assume the temperature of a random object to be room temperature about 20 degrees Celsius we should imagine that to chill this object we could probably take it no more than 15 degrees Celsius down to about 5 degrees C or the standard operating temperature of many modern refrigerators any cool for that and I would say we move Beyond being chilled to being frozen thus it stands to reason to warm a similar object we can probably bring it up to around 35 40 degrees celsius this is not a stable or safe temperature to hold food at or serve food at which would be considered hot but it is still slightly above the internal human body temperature so it would be warm to the touch I'd rule about a 15 degree celsius leeway each way to keep things reasonable for a counter so what can be done with this well you won't be able to scold anyone or give them frostbite but you can affect all sorts of things have you got a frozen pond well if you warm the ice by about 15 degrees Celsius it's liable to melt if it's not too thick and you give it enough sustained heat if your wayfinding equipments have frosted over making them immobile a little bit of warming may go a long way to making them usable again equally if an object is too hot to hold applying a little bit of a chill to it might make it just about bearable this could also be applied theoretically to items of clothing to make it slightly more comfortable to exist in a extremely hot or extremely cold environment and then of course we get to food while 24 consecutive hourly castings of prestidigitation could theoretically keep a foodstuff chilled and refrigerated forever for long-term use this seems a little unreasonable essentially it requires two full-time casters with extremely accurate time keeping methods to effectively refrigerate three cubic feet worth of food while certainly possible it would take a well-advanced civilization to affect this especially if they can afford to lose two spellcasters from other duties this is only realistic in spaces where cantrips are normal like in high elf Societies or in military field applications where having three cubic feet worth of refrigerated food might prove a godsend to a marching Army even in this case it would not always be used as create food and water Magic's up 45 pounds of edible but not tasty food which does weigh about the same as one cubic foot of mince meat yes for flavor reasons officials may choose to Lug around three or many cubic feet worth of meat or vegetables held at a chilled temperature but we must remember that unlike creating the food and water this requires transport as well as the regular time-kept effort of two Mages working in concert this brings us nicely onto prestidigitation's ability to flavor food some have suggested that a spice trade may be rendered entirely obsolete by the existence of this spell suggesting that any flavor Under the Sun could be replicated and passed into otherwise meager Fair perhaps even the 45 pounds of food created by create food and water which May well fit within A1 foot Cube however I disagree firstly spices are not just used in food they have uses in census aromats and even medicine secondly a good spice mix is a concert of flavors which is very complex indeed even professional gourmands occasionally struggle to pick out the complex and layered flavors that spices can bring to a particular dish so to have a spellcaster be a Gourmand of high enough standing to accurately represent these flavors using magic would be very rare indeed furthermore without a spice trade this Mage gourmand would have a hard time actually tasting many of these spaces that are used in international cuisine around the world having no real way to synthesize complex flavors that they've never themselves tasted and any that can afford to travel the world tasting and cataloging the various effects of spices would fetch a much higher price tag than simply shipping those spices over with a competent Chef in addition certain spices aromats berries and buds like Cesar and peppercorns or Miracle Berries or simply chili itself have additional sensory effects which are irreproducible by Flavor alone any suggestion that the wealthiest folk may be seeking a prestidigitation crafted tasting menu is really actually fairly ludicrous the best we're likely to get in a pre-globalization world are Mages along the road flavoring their companions gruel with the spices from their Homeland or their youth but in our history we've invented some pretty heinous traveling rations from hard tack to ships biscuits so I don't think there would be an even more bland food stuff that would be made edible by prestidigitation try as I might the only World building impact that I can Envision from prestidigitation's ability to flavor food is that Global Food and spice varieties may be more accepted and understood in different locales reproducible to some extent without the need for expensive spices which I can potentially see inspiring a more active spice trade as people want to taste the real thing it's also worth quickly mentioning that in a food context prestidigitation's heating aspect is the least useful while it may eliminate the necessity for Palace kitchens to have plate warming sections in their ovens any warming in temperature available through pestidigitation is unlikely to be sufficient to safely cook even using a sous-vide method any food besides a suvi method is very unlikely to even develop alongside a world of magical potential anyway it's best use in heating is probably for scatterbrained wizards who have a habit of leaving their tea too long while creating minor sensory effects may be useful for cheaply fooling the senses of those around especially animals who may react in very predictable ways to conjured Showers of Sparks or for example the smell of catnip these Myriad options are too many and varied for me to cover effectively in a deep dive like this suffice it to say that the ability to create objects Illusions sounds smells wind or other sensory effects might be found useful in some ways but are unlikely to change the world they may well be relegated to politics or gimmicks however if you have seen a cool use for these specific aspects of the prestidigitation spell please do let me know perhaps if I gather enough data I could take a crack at the World building implications of these seemingly near Limitless edge cases final major use of prestidigitation that we should talk about is its ability to soil or clean an object this is actually a little more limited than it seems if the object concerned is larger than one foot cubed it cannot be affected by this spell this means that you can't clear large Windows a dirty wagon or technically plate armor although most reasonable DMS will allow that last one if the object either can be folded and placed into a one foot Cube worth of space or even more generously has one foot cubed of volume theoretically if even the first of these clarifications is made then yes this specific part of prestidigitation is world changing firstly it means that a single item of clothing or bedding is cleanable in six seconds by someone with the spell with far less physical effort than is traditionally associated with cleaning Linens and without any need for tedious or lengthy drying processes this would fundamentally shift the balance of Labor in any pre-industrial society cleaning a whole family's clothes under clothes and pots and pans would probably take just a few minutes of dedicated work with prestidigitation this work could be done indoors with no Reliance on the weather or physical labor to dry these effects in other words in a village of a hundred people if just one of a hundred can cast president they can most likely take care of the cleaning for the entire Village in a traditional agrarian society this may mean that the women who are usually burdened historically with the task of household labor may find themselves Freer to explore crafts or any variety of other trade opportunities in their local region and would also likely mean that any Mage who could do this for a village would be such a valued member of the local village community that their every need and whim would be taken care of of course this requires a benevolent spellcaster but to keep them on side they would have access to the settlements best produce kind of the opposite of the wicked wise woman Trope indeed if magic were common enough hedge Wizards or Saucier from the French might become a massively valued Community member much like the lamplighters discussed earlier all for the ability to cast a single cantrip the thing is with household labor diminished it's entirely possible that your fantasy world may develop in a wildly different direction to our own again that's assuming that even only one in a hundred people can cast a cantrip you see child rearing duties may be about the only homebound job left which would still likely be biologically determined in the first few months while babies need milk it's entirely possible though that a single wet nurse and a rotating Carousel of child minders could adequately fulfill this job leaving more people simply to work in agriculture farming crafts and Gathering the simple fact that magic makes things easier means folks of all genders have more time to do things for the communities continued survival likely leading to both more prosperous less patriarchal and more communitarian social structures indeed it could be said that alongside local Leaders The Village Mage and The Village's wet nurse maybe the best treated of all after all they're the only non-expendable workers in the village and do the Lion's Share of the specialized labor that's only one possibility for developmental mechanics of magic of course and I happen to like it but it may be considered a little too optimistic when we look to our own history of how we treat those who are different from us you can of course create a world where the minor helps that prestidigitation may give are outweighed by a general fear of magic or a concern for what the Mage may bring to bear on the community if they continue exercising these powers in full view of the magical creatures of the world of course I also haven't really talked about using prestidigitation to soil things because that strikes me as a little less useful but you can use it to dirty anything you might desire undergarments dishcloths or even each individual tile in an entire Castle's floor if you have the time yet another reason I suppose really why you shouldn't annoy the local witchy wise woman or hedge wizard soiling A pompous Nobles garments is certainly one way to show displeasure for them but considering prestigitation has verbal and somatic components I wouldn't expect it to be a common occurrence unless you're dealing with a particularly raucous group of three to six individuals who seem to be bristling with weapons and arguing with each other about the class of their armor thank you for watching I hope this has started your mind worrying about the possibilities involved in incorporating can trips and other magic into your foundational World building I have plenty of videos on other Concepts in this style and I try to fit in a little bit of History wherever I can if you have any thoughts on prestidigitation or what I should cover next please do let me know and if you enjoy these deep dives into reasonable World building please do subscribe so I know you want more like this speaking of Law YouTube thinks you're really gonna get on well with this video with that said I've been Tom otherwise known as the grungeon master thank you for watching and I will see you in the next video

Channel: The Grungeon Master

Views: 14,788

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Length: 23min 12sec (1392 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2023