Minor Creation - creating food?

[VoodooMike]

The spell description says it creates non-living plant matter. Given that your average cabbage is non-living plant matter, does this mean that minor creation (and obviously its bigger brothers) can be used as a means for wizards to create food?

While it can be argued that the duration can be (depending on the caster level) too short for the material to be digested... but likewise, a poison attack from a summoned creature doesn't "vanish" when the creature's duration ends... it sort'v suggests that anything that is internalized/metabolized during a conjuration spell's duration remains so after the duration expires.

Thoughts?

[Lokie]

Considering that Clerics can Create Food and Water with a 3rd level spell... I do not see why a wizard using a higher level spell could not.

Edit: Suggestions - A mix of nuts and berries (trail mix!), tubers (potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots), grains (wheat germ?)

I wonder if you could use Prestidigitation to heat the resulting potatoes to have instant baked potatoes.

[Rezdave]

The "Flavor" Answer

Creating nourishing food and potable water, like healing, has always been the purview of Clerics, and it is intended as not only a matter of flavor but of balance.

Using the argument presented by Lokie, while logically valid, really brings up the question, "Why can't Wizards cast curative spells, since it's just Conjuration [Healing] and it's just more magic?" Eventually, the question becomes, "Why have Clerics at all?" If wizards can heal or create nourishing and sustainable food and water, if magical energy is magical energy (after all, detect magic and dispel magic don't seem to differentiate arcane and divine magic, and even psionics is officially just another form of magic) then the obvious question is "Why remain beholden to divinities when we don't need them for anything?"

Handwave it, judge it, say that "the gods just don't allow it". Regardless, it remains an integral division within the game.

Judge that the spell text should add the line "non-food". Judge that cells within the cabbage remain "living" despite being cut from their roots longer than the spell duration. I've seen carrots and potatoes and turnips all sprout long after they sat in my pantry.

The "Science" Answer

Really, if you want a "logic" argument, that's it (last paragraph above) ... "food" items are still alive since they can still grow despite having been harvested. Grains can still sprout, berries can still seed, and so forth. In order to be "non-living" they would have to essentially be rotten.

Wood, fiber and other "plant-byproducts" OTOH, cannot alter, change, grow or reproduce in any fashion once harvested. This qualifies them as "non-living" and thus able to be created by the spell.

So, after rambling, there's your answer ...

FWIW,

Rez

[VoodooMike]

First, it should be noted that creating food and water has NOT always been the purview of Clerics alone. Arcane magic can, for example, create both in spells such as "Mage's Magnificent Mansion", on the Wiz/Sor list. Clerics have typically been the ones to get it at lower levels, is all.

As for the "science answer": a whole potato may be able to sprout, but a cube of potato starch cannot - but that is nourishing. Likewise, dried banana chips or raisins are in no danger of turning into banana trees or grape vines, but both make effective foodstuff without having any living cells present.

I'm not sure that allowing it to create food will involve taking much away from clerics since it is A) a higher level spell than create food and water, B) doesn't create water and C) doesn't create as MUCH food per casting, and the food it creates doesn't last as long (cleric can keep their food going up to 48 hours).