Create water and considerations

[Sissyl]

Drinking poor elementals is meany mean.

[Remco Sommeling]

Kamelguru wrote:

I know a GM who wants to limit create water and whatnot "in order to make desert/jungle campaigns work".

My solution: I don't play with that GM.

Who the f-bomb wants to FOCUS on the tedium of dealing with thirst and exposure? You are supposed to be world-shaking heroes, with manly men able to shrug off a blast of fire capable of turning a mountain into glass, and then beat the stuffing out of the dragon who breathed said fire. And they pale in comparison with the awe-inspiring magic-users, who takes reality by the scruff of it's neck and tells it to settle down and bloody well do what it is told.

Thirst is easily dealt with because it is a nuisance. There are no mechanics for bladder infections when you don't pee, for tooth-ache when you don't brush your teeth, for back-pain when you carry too heavy loads, for menstrual cramps once a month, for allergies to kittens, for autoimmune and hereditary/genetic diseases, etc etc etc ad infinitum.

Because this is nonsense that SHOULD take a backseat to heroism. The heroes in your desert campaign should be allowed to focus on killing monsters, solving ancient puzzles, curing the magical plague incurred by the Pharaoh's curse, and stopping the cabal of evil genies that is turning the rest of the land into an uninhabitable desert. You know, HERO stuff.

The thing is, should you be able to do that at level 1, isnt it too easy to bypass a certain level of emersion into the game. Personally I like the low level games for not being able to do that stuff yet, around level 5 or 6 sure, I dont think you should be bothered by it much.

[Kamelguru]

You still have to focus a large amount of lv1 resources when you think about it.

1: You NEED to have a cleric or other divine caster who can create water in party.
2: The cleric needs to give up 1 of his orisons to do this, limiting his versatility. Say what you want, I find lots of uses for lv0 spells.
3: You likely have to waste a metric f-ton of lv1 spells on endure element spells so people can wear armor without croaking. Like ALL of the cleric's spells.

This is not easily bypassing a problem. This is hamstringing a character so you can adventure in the sandbox regions.

[cattoy]

VRMH wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Your players will just get rings of sustenance or a decanter of endless water.

What desert-dweller in his right mind would sell those?

sell?

[Remco Sommeling]

Kamelguru wrote:

You still have to focus a large amount of lv1 resources when you think about it.

1: You NEED to have a cleric or other divine caster who can create water in party.
2: The cleric needs to give up 1 of his orisons to do this, limiting his versatility. Say what you want, I find lots of uses for lv0 spells.
3: You likely have to waste a metric f-ton of lv1 spells on endure element spells so people can wear armor without croaking. Like ALL of the cleric's spells.

This is not easily bypassing a problem. This is hamstringing a character so you can adventure in the sandbox regions.

no, you do not have to, there are perfectly fine alternatives to make the trip without magical means. You can wear lighter armor, pack a sufficient ammount of water or suffer the consequences of wearing heavier armor and survival skills, shields are suddenly a more significant part of your AC and you might be inclined to be more careful.

It is quite possible that it is not the optimal way to travel and you have to consider spending your limited resources, seems perfectly fine for low level campaigns. The level where skills like survival should still be relevant.

[Rickmeister]

Sissyl wrote:

At which point they too get houseruled. Really, if you want dehydration to be a consideration, you have to. As a solution to the OP complaint about create water, eventually give the player a note: Due to cleric-caused water emissions, the Elemental plane of Water is now empty.

^^

I lol'ed

[The black raven]

The Gods worshipped in the Desert see created water the same way that Pharasma sees Undead.

In other words, you ask your god for the power to create some water and he says No.

[Frustaro]

I've already said this, but by reading many posts here it looks like some people don't quite get it.
I'm NOT talking about transforming the desert in a jungle.
I'm NOT talking about leaving the characters in need of water risking to die of thirst.
When I say there would be no Sahara, I'm not referring to the general desert, but to the cultural implication of the particular desert which is Sahara.
I'm talking about the uses and costumes of nomads and civilizations that live in the desert, and that inspired my campaign setting.
Who would bother to bring goatskin filled with water, in right amount not to weight too much but to have enough water for the journey, why the camel would have big water reserves in his body, why bother to make caravans pass by oasis, why bother to bring with you a particular carpet that can be used as a cover when the sun is too strong, why all this when the crappiest 1° cleric / adept / druid can create more than one liter of water per second, at will?

There would be no need for traders to pass by oasis, there would be no caravan routes, no fortress in the desert to monitor and defend caravans, there would be no reasons for many of the 'cool' stuff there is in Sahara and that inspired my setting.

In the end, this is how I house ruled it:
0°, Create Water: conjures a maximum of water per day equal to 2 gallons per caster level.

It's still 0°, it's not over powered, it's useful. With 7 liters of water you don't risk to die of thirst, but neither you are a crazy water machine that at 10° pumps something like 12 liters of water per second at will.

[Liam Warner]

Quote:

Thirst is easily dealt with because it is a nuisance. There are no mechanics for bladder infections when you don't pee, for tooth-ache when you don't brush your teeth, for back-pain when you carry too heavy loads, for menstrual cramps once a month, for allergies to kittens, for autoimmune and hereditary/genetic diseases, etc etc etc ad infinitum.

Actually there are rules for most of these and I use them, I also use the "shot to the pods" rule for when a guy gets hit in the groin, enough damage can permanently neuter him AND make men nearby have to spend a round wincing in sympathy at the fact.

@Frustraro

I don't think that spell would affect the Sahara the way your thinking of bear in mind that a cleric, any cleric is still an extremely devoted member of their gods church not just some guy going "hey those are cool abilities." and not all of those who meet this criteria are going to be interested in wandering round the desert for the sole purpose of supplying water on demand, even if they are willing to do this the god can always deny a cleric their ability. Depending on the religion/area there might fewer than a hundred priests serving millions of people, even in the best cases its only around 10-20 thousand for millions.

I've always tended to play it as the gods take a long term view of things and while they aren't thinking about their clerics conciously a part of their mind is rationing the spell granting to take into account the world at large. Sure for a party the cleric is generally going to be able to cast what they want when they want. So long as they pray and provide clericly services to the worshipers they meet, weddings, funerals, spiritual guidance etc. However the cleric in the temple of TWOHi isn't necessarily going to be able to cast cure wounds on everyone who comes in because that's not good for them in the long run. He will be able to cast it on someone who'll die without that aid (assuming their not some evil enemy of the god or the like) and sometimes regrow a lost limb but if you go up and ask him to heal that gashed arm which will heal naturally in time the god may well go no.

To address your specific concerns considering the following questions . . .

> Who would bother to bring goatskin filled with water, in right amount
> not to weight too much but to have enough water for the journey

1) How many priests are there in the land? Tallying up the major and minor religions what percentage of the population is going to be a priest? Does every relgiion actually have an organised group to handle their beliefs or do the gods and the worshipers commune in the heart of that worshiper.

2) How many of those priests are clerics? Clerics afterall are more of a holy soldier which means that they aren't going to be as common as your average person who's decided to spend their life in service of their god. You need interest, willingness to suffer and risk being killed fighting things that may be bigger or more powerful than you, your going to be travelling in harsh conditions for long periods of time. Sure the average priest would do this if their god told them too but doing it by choice when they could run the local village temple?

3) Would EVERY caravan in a huge country actually be able to get ahold of a priest/cleric for their travels? Why would these worshipers of their god be willing to travel with a caravan solely so that the people could save time/effort? It does rather turn a divine miracle into a mobile convenience store. Would the god allow that to happen or would they say "No thou shalt only create water in times of harship when the oasis runs dry and the river does not flood."? Every priest who travels in this manner is a priest who isn't in a village tending to the gods worshipers/using their holy weapon to smite the unholy creatures that prey on the faithful. What happens if the priest your travelling with gets sick/injured in a bandit attack and your weeks from an oasis? What would be cheaper for a merchant, trying to pay a church to have a priest spend all their time travelling around trying to convince their god to continually supply you with miracles or packing enough water for the trip?

> why the camel would have big water reserves in his body

Do camels have priests? If not why wouldn't they have evolved to have huge water reserves because I can't see the faithful priest of any god being able to pass a miracle so the beast of burden gets enough to drink. Wild camels aren't going to have even that possibility so they'd have evolved the same way.

> why bother to make caravans pass by oasis

Same reasons as why a priest wouldn't travel with a caravan solely to create water. Its an insult to their god, runs the risk of something going wrong if the priest falls ill/is injured and is generally cheaper for the merchant to try and keep full water stores. This is made even worse because caravans are generally going to be travelling on trade routes which means passing through cities. If you think the problems of having a caravan dependant on a priests presence is bad consider if an entire town with thousands of people were solely dependant on their priests for all their water demands drinking, bathing, crop irrigation? Would you build a city in the middle of the desert where you need the priests to continually supply you with water or next to an oasis where you only need to bother the priests god in times of drought.

Of course this could lend itself to an interesting culture where a theocracy builds their cities in the middle of the desert and declares all oasis's and rivers holy sites to hold control but that's another matter.

> why bother to bring with you a particular carpet that can be used as
> a cover when the sun is too strong.

Would you rather spend 15 shekels for a carpet to keep you cool in the heat of the day, continually bother your god for a miracle every day or spend thousands of shekels for the mage to cast endure elements and other spells on you?

> There would be no need for traders to pass by oasis, there would be
> no caravan routes.

As I said before cities would still be built by oasis's for the convenience and lack of cost, need of an ongoing miracle to survive. The caravans would therefore pass through the oasis's because thats where the cities they trade with are.

> no fortress in the desert to monitor and defend caravans

I would expect these to remain afterall the caravans even if they were continually supplied by a priest would still need protection against bandits, dragons and other assorted desert dwelling beings.

In the end the simple fact is a priest is not a mage or sorcerer. They aren't tapping their internal power or the magic inherent in a world, they are praying to their god for a miracle for every spell they cast from the lowliest osiron to the mighty "miracle". For a priest to cast create water you need two things. The priest has to feel that doing so is in accordance with their gods wishes AND an appropriate request for their gods intervention. Secondly the god itself has to feel the same AND needs to not have some long term/prior experience reason to deny that request. I just can't see both of these working together often enough to fundamentally change the desert culture. Remember create water used once is a miracle granted by the gods to save your life, used daily to provide drinking water its saying "yeah your gods the waiter in my life and if he wants a good tip he better make with the loaves and fishes."

This doesn't mean it wont happen, christianity had moses and his followers fed by divine might during their journey. However that was a major exodus of the main group of worshipers at their gods command NOT a trading company wanting to save on the water bills.

[BigNorseWolf]

Frustaro wrote:

Is not ridiculous that a cleric can create water at will, as standard action, and at rate of more than 9 liters per round? At level 1?

Must be because I work in a small aqueduct, but is sounds crazy to me (it means that a level 10 cleric can create 9x level 10= 90 liters in 1 round; 90x10= 900 in 1 min, 900x60= 54000 liters of water per hour?)
One word: nasty!

I was writing kind of a new campaign for my group, based on some notes of mine I found from old d&d mastering, and since it would be in a desert setting, i will surely house rule this spell!

Dunno why this is comming up a lot lately...

Its not nearly as bad as you think

I did a stint in africa with the peace corps. The amount of water they needed for irrigation FAR outstrips what a 1st level caster can put out.

427 Gallon per minute pump looks about what they had for a small villiage. Three of them. They ran the pumps for a few hours a few times a week.

A caster pump puts out 2 gallons of water every 6 seconds, 20 gallons a minute, 1,200 gallons an hour, 19,200 a day assuming 8 hours of sleep and an inhuman amount of concentration.

The pump can do that in 44 minutes.

The place was still, quite obviously, a desert as soon as you got about 40 feet from the river. In fact a sand dune is slowly but inevitably moving in the direction of some of the fields.

So yes, you can have small villiages in areas that wouldn't otherwise have them, but you're not about to make the desert bloom either. Thats before you consider the fact that a 1st level character standing anywhere in a D&D world is just asking to be eaten by something.

For more pedantic waterworks, see the thread on the aqueduct vs the decanter of endless water.

Even with a 10th level character, you're talking a small city's worth of water, a pretty big oasis, not a landscape wide change (at least not through the cantrip)

[Skaorn]

I know that whenever I've played in that was based in a desert, every one took the feat that made them better adapted to living in such a climate to avoid complications of dehydration and heat(either the one in Sandstorm or Pathfinder Campaign Setting).

As for create water, remember it is a divine spell. Chances are that even a benevolent desert diety would get angry if one its priests started disrespecting its dominion, not to mention what a malevolent god would do or desert druids for that matter if someone starts disrespecting the desert.

[Benchak the Nightstalker]

Basically, it boils down to the fact that Clerics and Druids are rare.

There aren't enough to guide everyone across the desert, and most of them are going to want some compensation for the journey. It's cheaper to carry water/journey from oasis to oasis than it is to hire on a Druid or Cleric for the trip.

Also remember that Adepts don't get unlimited cantrips, so they shouldn't factor into the equation very much to begin with.

[Interzone]

Sissyl wrote:

gustavo iglesias wrote:

LazarX wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

I don't see the point in outlawing it in your desert campaign. Your players will just get rings of sustenance or a decanter of endless water.

Not every campaign has a MagicMart that delivers.

No, but Craft Woundrous Item is a Core Feat.

It is spelled Wonderous. :-)

... Sorry.

Ummm..

hahhaha.

Actually: Wondrous. Sorry, you are both wrong :P
I wouldn't normally ever correct spelling on a board, but I gotta call that.

[Frustaro]

@Liam Warner
I assume that there are druids and clerics, and adepts, and that they can all cast create water. I assume that even the poorest of those who could cast create water at will could compensate and substitute every of the aspects I highlighted in my post (the routs and oasis, the goatskins, the camels), and that in a world where one cleric can create water at will none of those skills and knowledge would exist (who would bother with all that stuff if you could just get a cleric that creates, the poorest cleric of all, one liter of water per second?).
That is the reason why I house ruled it (and I honestly recommend the manual would do the same), to put a stop at the water that can be conjured. I think that for a 0° spell slot, and a 1° character, 7.5 liters of water per day is a fair amount; I don't feel a tyrant or to nerf anyone, it just makes more sense to me (not to mention that conjuration should not be something to be done slightly and at will).
I don't want to bring on the table the aspect of the Desert Gods that don't want him to cast, I consider it a bad dungeon master way out.