
Bill Nye 924 |
Hi guys. So, my very first pathfinder campaign that I played in (not gm), I played a wizard. I noticed during that that there were many things you could do as a wizard (or probably other casting classes too) that many others could not, beyond just directly casting spells. For instance, when I took the right feats, discoveries and such, i started making animated brooms to attack my enemies.
In the campaign I'm gming, i'm afraid one of the players, who is new to playing a caster, and is playing a wizard in this case, is missing out on some of the fun, more hidden possibilities of playing a wizard.
Rather than try to explain it to him with my limited mechanic knowledge , I thought It'd be good to ask you guys what you think are some of the fun but not as obvious things you can do as a wizard. This can be for any level, no restrictions I just want to know all the fun possibilities :D

JDLPF |
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0th Level: Prestidigitation
Also known as "Wish, Lesser" this cantrip has a myriad of uses. Create a crude spider and slip it inside the paladin's bedroll before they go to sleep. Change their armour fluorescent pink for an hour. Make their rations taste like dog poop. Soil their undergarments. The delight of gnomish pranksters everywhere!
1st Level: Silent Image
Planning to siege a castle? Create a 3D image of the structure, complete with miniature figurines of your party members that you can rotate, zoom in, and colour code different sections. A thief just stole your coin purse? Create a full image of his appearance to show the city guards. Spreading your group's fame in the local tavern? Give the crowd a big-screen TV show of your latest adventure that would rival any action blockbuster. Or create a porn video starring the paladin in every role.
2nd Level: Invisibility
I didn't do it! Nobody saw me do it! You can't prove a thing!
3rd Level: Explosive Runes
Interesting fact: hiring a messenger to deliver someone a note only costs 2 copper pieces if they're within a mile.
4th Level: Bestow Curse
Impotence or incontinence are always great variant options here.
5th Level: Fabricate
Make whatever you want, whenever you want it. Add on a Crafter's Fortune spell, a Heroism spell and your basic Intelligence based skill bonus to Craft and you too can have a 10 ft. tall marble sculpture of yourself holding a leash standing atop a nude paladin wearing a collar!

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I will never make an arcane caster without Prestidigitation...it just has too many great uses.
Illusion magic is probably some of my favorite...take JDLRF's suggestions above...then add in sound, smells, etc. at higher levels...as well as scale...eventually make them quasi-real.
Beyond just messing with the paladin, you can mess with your enemies...make the BBEG's minions die laughing as you conjure up embarrassing images of their dreaded boss in the nude...doing all sorts of unmentionable stuff...
Or just use illusions for utility...make a pit trap, cover it with an illusion...need to hide? make a boulder larger than yourself and stand inside it...need to impress some kobolds? summon a dragon, and proceed to boss it around, maybe have it boss the kobolds around...
Be sure to know the differences between the types of illusions and what they can/cannot do though...a figment and a glamer are 2 very different tools.

Goddity |

0th Level: Prestidigitation
Also known as "Wish, Lesser" this cantrip has a myriad of uses. Create a crude spider and slip it inside the paladin's bedroll before they go to sleep. Change their armour fluorescent pink for an hour. Make their rations taste like dog poop. Soil their undergarments. The delight of gnomish pranksters everywhere!
1st Level: Silent Image
Planning to siege a castle? Create a 3D image of the structure, complete with miniature figurines of your party members that you can rotate, zoom in, and colour code different sections. A thief just stole your coin purse? Create a full image of his appearance to show the city guards. Spreading your group's fame in the local tavern? Give the crowd a big-screen TV show of your latest adventure that would rival any action blockbuster. Or create a porn video starring the paladin in every role.
2nd Level: Invisibility
I didn't do it! Nobody saw me do it! You can't prove a thing!
3rd Level: Explosive Runes
Interesting fact: hiring a messenger to deliver someone a note only costs 2 copper pieces if they're within a mile.
4th Level: Bestow Curse
Impotence or incontinence are always great variant options here.
5th Level: Fabricate
Make whatever you want, whenever you want it. Add on a Crafter's Fortune spell, a Heroism spell and your basic Intelligence based skill bonus to Craft and you too can have a 10 ft. tall marble sculpture of yourself holding a leash standing atop a nude paladin wearing a collar!
What did paladins ever do to you?

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Goddity wrote:What did paladins ever do to you?They're always getting distracted.
lol
Always remember...Invisibility is a targeted touch spell, and does not have to be cast on a living target...(inanimate objects auto-fail their save against it)
Make a door invisible and close it behind you when being chased...watch someone faceplant into it at a full sprint...or an invisible table in someones way, etc. Or be really evil and combine it with some sort of spikes or a weapon of some kind and watch them impale themselves.
Cast invisibility on the floor of a building to make people think there is a hole leading to the floor below they need to move around it...invisibility on a wall so you can see what is on the other side...at higher levels you can use invisibility to dig a fake pit (100 lbs of material per level)
If your spell DCs are high enough and you don't mind invisible enemies, vanish one of your enemies in front of their buddies, then roll to intimidate the others saying they are next if they don't surrender.
If your GM allows it, turn the bad guys clothes invisible and watch the whole room burst into laughter.

Coidzor |
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A Wizard can start working on building their own place from level 1 thanks to Expeditious Construction.
Carry Companion and Anthropomorphic Animal combine nicely to be able to make friends with animals and then make them into pocket monsters for later deployment to either haul things or even act as a sort of combat summon.
Between ~9th to ~15 levels Anthropomorphic Animal + Permanency + Awaken(via Limited Wish or ally) lets you make decently lasting DIY Minotaurs and the like. If you really try you can hunt down some Colossal whales and retrain them into being relatively effective anti-Kaiju minions even at the highest levels.
Animate Dead can be very useful, producing customizable minions, minions whose eyes you can see through, massed fire minions, or even just minions that are basically indestructible 9 times out of 10 through Bloody Skeletons.
Stone Shape, a Wizard 4 spell, can be highly useful for both getting into places and quarrying as well as for base-building.
Obsidian Flow is another Wizard 4 spell. It's all up to the GM exactly how thin the layer is, but it does permanently create Obsidian, which can then potentially be rendered into a useful form via Stone Shape or Fabricate. It's also not the worst dual-purpose blasting and control spell.
Tears to Wine is a 2nd level Wizard spell and it provide a pretty amazing party-wide buff to Knowledge skills and Perception for a long enough time that it can last you for an entire dungeon crawl at higher levels.
Unseen Engineers is a 3rd level Wizard spell and is basically THE only way to go about making mechanical traps, especially as a player. Doesn't help with the cost, but it massively cuts down on necessary time by taking it from months and months of mundane crafting to a matter of rounds.
Restore Corpse is low level and combined with an ally with Purify Food and Drink and maybe Prestidigitation, you've got yourself a renewable food source. Use Decompose Corpse along with it and you can have a nice, clean, set of bones to carry around with you between times you harvest the meat from the corpse.
Mount can actually be quite handy, as it lasts for hours and is tougher than most creatures you can summon with Summon Monster or Summon Nature's Ally until you get to the 3rd level version. Combine with the Heighten Metamagic and the spell Alter Summoned Monster and you can get yourself a couple of summoned monster bodyguards for the adventuring day, or fortify your camp site by turning your leftover, unprepared slots into bodyguards that can last through the night AND at least the first part of the next day of adventuring.
Ice Spears can be pretty nifty in combat, and it is a source of actual ice that sticks around as long as it doesn't melt.
3rd Level: Explosive Runes
Interesting fact: hiring a messenger to deliver someone a note only costs 2 copper pieces if they're within a mile.
There's also a 1st level version in Incendiary Runes, which, while generally incapable of killing even a level 1 Commoner outright, is great for starting fires, setting every single unattended object within 5 feet on fire.

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Restore Corpse is low level and combined with an ally with Purify Food and Drink and maybe Prestidigitation, you've got yourself a renewable food source. Use Decompose Corpse along with it and you can have a nice, clean, set of bones to carry around with you between times you harvest the meat from the corpse.
That is brilliant...never thought about that kind of use for those spells before...*takes mental notes to use that at some future point*

Coidzor |
Going beyond Wizards, Summon Laborers, Eagle Aerie, and Summon Flight of Eagles are all ways to get in on the fairly long duration summoned disposable minions routine when paired with Alter Summoned Monster.
Rotgut, Enhance Water, Tears to Wine(maybe), and Create Water when cast by a Cleric of Cayden Cailean(IIRC), are all ways to quickly muster up booze for ye olde "get the bad guys minions boozed up and drunk so we can ambush them or sneak by them or something." So that can be kinda nifty or neat. I suppose Rotgut and Enhance Water could also be used to stock up on alcohol for whatever purpose during downtime as well. Could be useful for producing the raw material for some Fabricate'd up basically pure ethanol for some probably flammable purpose.
Allfood is pretty kooky for letting you literally eat whatever objects you want. As long as it isn't magic or exceptional, whatever that last part means. Most likely only ever going to see the light of day on a Hunter, though.
Crafter's Fortune is a 1st level spell that basically means that you don't need to invest any skill points in Craft skills to be able to make something you want to make, especially in the context of Fabricate, Create Armaments, or Unseen Engineers, unless you just really need a high Craft check to make a specific Construct. If for some reason you want to get the best bonus you can, then spamming this will allow even untrained, low-Int assistants to have a decent chance of successfully using Aid Another to buff your check result. Beloved of the Forge is the Cleric/Oracle/Bard/Shaman version.
Greater Shadow Conjuration and regular old Shadow Conjuration can be pretty nifty. Not only because it lets you do things like make floors which are quasi-real and through which people can just up and fall as soon as they're informed that the floor they're standing on is an illusion, but also because you can replicate other spells for free, such as Genius Avaricious, which is a nice untyped buff for various skills, or Draconic Ally which you mostly want as a scout anyway. Also cuts down on casting times, too, so that's fun on two fronts. It's also pretty useful and versatile to be able to prepare one spell and access a whole bunch of other ones, several of which don't care about the limitations of Shadow Conjuration. This also goes for the cousin spell line of Shadow Evocation. Can get pretty kooky with the stuff created by Create Armaments or Iron Stake being all quasi-real, but that kind of stuff would be great bait if one needed to stock one's own dungeon for whatever reason.
Ears of the City is an amazing low-level information gathering spell, and it lets the caster share the spotlight with the characters with the best Diplomacy and/or Perception. Commune with Birds is another pretty useful lower level divination for gathering information.
Call Animal is an amazing minionmancy spell and can also get you some pretty useful information. A Druid with a good Charisma can pretty reliably make friends with the most gnarly creatures in an area. Once you have another way of making friends with animals beyond Wild Empathy, it gets really crazy in the hands of someone who doesn't have that pesky stipulation to revere nature and protect it and all that jazz. If you ever need to get a whole bunch of mammoths in order to use them to carry loot for you via Carry Companion, this is the spell you want to cast in order to get them to come to you once you're in the right neighborhood.
Reckless Infatuation and Unadulterated Loathing can make for an amusing situation where someone is chasing someone else all over town.

Dastis |
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Puzzle Box. Cast it on literally everything
Shrink Object. Need to carry something? Need through a wall? Can't get the door open? Ever wish the floor beneath your enemies just wasn't there? This spell is more useful than a dagger both in use and what you can just carry around with you. I really don't know how many times a quickly deployed wall has saved my butt
Full Pouch + Alchemical Tinkering. Between these two spells you are the greatest alchemist in the game. All those lists of alchemy items at your fingertips within 2 actions. Not only that but if you invest in heighten spell they all scale with your level
Create Demiplane. Such a fun spell series. Create your own worlds with all kinds of fun rules to play with. Makes everything from literally inescapable prisons to awesome beach house downtime areas
Secluded Spellbook. Also a touch attack

Coidzor |
Going over stuff my level 10 Unsworn Shaman was able to get up to in my last Way of the Wicked game...
Arcane Reinforcement means there's even less reason for a caster to invest in Craft skills even if they want to do mundane crafting, unless they just want to get the highest bonus possible.
If you generate enough Waters of Lamashtu and make a creature live entirely off of said corrupted water, then you can make them into mutants. So that's... something.
Make Whole allows you to repair magic items, even if they've been Sundered into oblivion. So that can be nifty and really help out the team archer.
Telekinetic Assembly is kind of amusing since it lets you set up a siege engine by yourself, although it doesn't let you operate one by yourself, so that's a bit of an unfortunate bit.
Create Treasure Map can be interesting, finding what your enemies valued after killing them.
Create Soul Gem and Summon Cacodaemon were fun, and might still be fun, I'm not sure on the exact details on the soul gem nerf that's supposed to have come out recently.
Beanstalk lets you create a whole bunch of organic matter in the form of compost. Could be useful for certain terraforming applications. Combine with the rammed earth version of Expeditious Construction and you can basically make your own topsoil wherever.
Evaluator's Lens in combination with buffs like Tears to Wine and Fox's Cunning means that you *really* don't need to ever invest ranks in Appraise.
Authenticating Gaze is the anti-Forgery spell.
Aerial Tracks can be useful in that window of time between when you get the ability to fly after a flying creature and when any flyer of note will be able to teleport so you'll need to actually be able to use more powerful divinations to figure out where they've gone.
Embrace Destiny can allow you to game the system by making sure that you get a nat 20 on a check for another spell or ability, especially during downtime.
The Curse Terrain line of spells can be a great way to stock up on various diseases to infect Patient Zero with in order to start a plague of plagues. It can also be fun for starting up a Juju Zombie problem in an area.
Curse of Burning Sleep is amusing in that you cause people to burst into flame the next time they sleep.
Kreighton's Perusal is great for speed reading.
Transfer Tattoo lets you turn enemies' magic tattoos into loot.
Mark of Blood is fun in that it's one of the few ways to be able to permanently know where someone else is.
Collaborative Thaumaturgy can be useful for helping allies get some free metamagic.
Discern Next of Kin can be neat for freaking people out or for doing the legwork for acquiring blackmail or kidnapping and so on.
Sow Thought is basically Inception. Need to be able to pull off a fair bit of it over a prolonged period of time to effect anything really fun with it, though.
Conjure Carriage lets you always get Cinderella to the ball in style.
Illusory Wall is some wonderful interior decorating and can also be useful for hiding traps.
Reincarnate and, IIRC, Resurrection and True Resurrection, all allow for the quite kooky possibility of being able to stockpile multiple bodies of a person and having a real existential crisis when you turn a bunch of them into various forms of undead while the dude is still alive in another separate body.
Planar Ally, Planar Binding, and Entice Fey can all lead to some fun times with getting a little help from creatures with useful and/or powerful SLAs.
Conditional Curse and Lesser Geas have two different ways of coercing someone into working for you, coming from opposite directions as it were.
Secret Speech is a way to send secret messages while talking with basically no chance of interception, short of active mind-reading, and perfect reception. So that's kinda notable and unique.
Using Detect Thoughts, Detect Anxieties, and Detect Desires, you can go ahead and learn half of a creature's ability scores, so that's neat.
Having one character cast Planetarium and another using some other X Image illusion spells can be all you need for a laser light show.
Keep Watch means you never need to sleep again.
Transfiguring Touch can lead to some interesting things with turning one substance into another permanently, or just allow you to do your own DIY lead-lining for anti-divination purposes.

Mark Hoover 330 |
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If you're talking "fun" and not always the most combat-efficient options... why are we NOT talking Familiars?
In my games many wizards have taken them; none has ever really used them. They are however in my opinion the unsung heroes of fun for spellcasters, besides Prestidigitation.
Familiars, even at low level with limited communication, are competent scouts and spies with nearly as much Int as the barbarian who took this as their dump stat. They understand your language, even if they can't speak back to you yet. If they can tap an appendage or turn a head, they can answer yes/no questions and count.
Add in all the things you see intelligent animals do in Disney films: sarcastic glances, gleeful cheering, facepalming when their master/mistress does something foolish. These are not just mechanically helpful to the spellcaster but its also, well... fun!
Finally, a note on Wondrous Items - they don't always have to be exactly what the book says. Take Craft Wondrous Item, combine w/a low level spell or Cantrip, and see what ideas shake loose!
Items that automatically clean you; a pair of gloves that float off to open doors/pull levers for you; a dust that puts an obnoxious but otherwise harmless smell on an opponent for an hour. There are so many ways to combine these! Last but not least...
Give these minor things to your familiar.
Heck, the most fun I ever had as a spellcaster in a PF game only lasted 3 levels, but it was a half-elf wizardess with an owl familiar. The owl had the Valet archetype. Between "Mr Nails" the owl's Prestidigitations and the Mending cantrip she always had prepared, my character was constantly getting Circumstance bonuses to Diplomacy for being neat, clean, smelling fresh, and having well-tailored outfits on all the time.

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1001 Uses for Prestidigitation, aka Best Spell Evar!
• “Change” a bucket of paint to paint covering a wall.
• A belt buckle changes shape so it no longer holds the belt in place.
• A hole opens up in a bucket.
• Bite off a piece of your fingernail, spit it at someone, and have it turn into a severed hand in mid air.
• Blow snot out of your nose that turns into a butterfly. Later, when the duration expires, it will turn back. I hope nobody is playing with it. Remember: animal secretions fall under the animal kingdom.
• Create a mirrored surface so you can bounce sunlight down a corridor.
• Cut off a lock of your hair. Make a fake mustache.
• Fix a hole in a bucket for an hour.
• Get tomato seeds. Turn them into tomatoes. Throw them at people. No clean up in an hour.
• If you are paying someone you hate a bag full of gold, change a piece of cloth into a sack. Put the gold in the sack. An hour later (Hopefully while he is crossing the street) the bag reverts to a piece of cloth. Gold goes scattering across the street.
• Make a copper piece look like gold.
• Make a forged document seem aged and brittle.
• Make a gold coin look like it’s made of tin.
• Make alchemist’s fire smell and look like coffee.
• Make an angry wasp appear in someone’s hair.
• Make materials separate from water to get pure water. Now, this doesn’t work with anything that dissolves in the liquid or chemically reacts. If you have muddy water, you can filter out the mud. If you have poison that dissolves in water, you are out of luck.
• Make that thunder stone look like candy.
• Make your foot prints disappear as you walk, for an hour.
• Make your foot prints look like someone else’s.
• Put a hole in a vile of poison someone is holding.
• Put a lump of poison in the bottom of a goblet. Shape the goblet to cover over the poison in a sealed compartment. When the spell expires, the goblet returns to its normal shape, releasing the poison.
• Shape the smoke from a campfire to make your stories that much more dramatic.
• The bottom falls out of the enemy’s quiver.
• Turn a bug into a mouse to distract the wizard’s cat familiar.
• Turn a flask of poison into whiskey.
• Turn coal into diamond.
• Write your name in the snow in “yellow”. Demonstrate amazing penmanship.
• YOU CANNOT Change a shield to have a new insignia. The changed object must be of Fine size and a shield is too big.
• You could animate the corpse of a fine sized animal for an hour. It cannot do any damage, but would count as undead for the duration of the spell.
• You could change a piece of paper into scrap of linen, and then change that into a rose. Likewise, you could change a coin into a ring. You could not, however, turn a strip of leather into a piece of paper.
Chill: You reduce the temperature of an object by about 40° F, but never below freezing (32° F). After an hour the object's temperature returns to normal.
• Chill the wine before serving it to a lady friend when you are on a date.
• In very Humid areas, slowly fill up a glass of water via condensation (1 oz water/minute)
• Keep your chocolate from melting on a hot day.
• Sell lemonade on a hot day.
Clean: You remove dirt, dust, and stains from floors, walls, dishes, windows, and the like, leaving these surfaces or objects spotless. You can clean an object with a volume of 1 cubic foot, or 1 square foot of the surface of a larger object, each round. The effect does not remove any foreign object of Fine size or larger. Dirt you remove is permanently gone, but objects you clean can get dirty again just like anything else.
• Brush your teeth.
• Clean up part of a summoning circle.
• Clean up those pesky blood stains after you murder a nobleman.
• Clean yourself up after a long trip. Improve those diplomatic checks by smelling nice.
• Clean yourself up after a messy crime to help provide an alibi.
• Never have to wash your hands after going to the bathroom again.
• Pick your nose.
• Pick your friend’s nose.
• When the blood is being poured on the sacrificial stone, clean it up.
Color: You bring color to an object. You can restore faded hues or give it a new color. If you add color, it must be from the visible spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, or violet). You cannot change an object's pattern, such as adding or removing stripes or polka dots, but you can change the color in a pattern. If you change something’s color, any one section of the object must change to the same color. For example, if you change on polka dot to green, it is all green.
• A blue garment with white stripes becomes green with yellow stripes.
• Change your clothes to be the same color of an enemy militia or evil god’s clergy.
• Have a “truth stone” that can change red when someone “lies”. Useful when trying to bluff someone.
• Human skin has shading, so you cannot change your skin to another color convincingly. You can make it all the same color to help when it comes to camouflage.
• If you change your hair color, it will all be the same color and thus look somewhat unnatural. Normal hair has slightly different shades to it because color fades as the hair grows. If you don’t mind neon pink hair, then there is no problem.
• Make the paladin’s sword pink.
• Mood Ring.
• The next time you cast enlarge person on someone, turn them green. Encourage them to say, “Hulk Smash!”
• Turn yourself blue. Claim to be prince of the lake people. Tell villagers the lake people are angry and demand tribute or you and your people will slay the land dwellers.
• You can change the color of your clothing. You cannot add patterns or words, but you can change the shading to anything you could pull off with normal dye.
• YOU CANNOT make an insignia out of color. That would be creating a pattern.
Count: You can count how many of a given object are in an area, as long as you can directly sense the entire area, the objects are all the same, and all objects are within 10 feet of one another. The objects are not moved, you just know a total number of said object in your mind. Note, if there are fake coins, you have to make an appraise check to sort them out.
• Count how many coins are in a pile of gold.
• Figure out how many grains are in a sack.
• Make a mark in the dirt ten feet away. Walk up to it. Make another mark ten feet away. Measure any distance. Figure out where secret doors are by mapping out exact dimensions. Hidden passageways have to take up SOME space, after all.
Create: You can create small objects from nothing. They are crude, fragile, and look artificial. They cannot serve as tools, weapons, or spell components.
• A fake dagger to stab someone. Create fake blood after doing so. Play possum.
• A puff of smoke for a momentary distraction.
• Create a field of fake caltrops that you have no problem running through, but may give pursuers pause.
• Create a small cluster of bells that drop and roll down the side of a mountain.
• Create dice for gambling.
• Create rotting garbage to hide something under.
• Have a pebble appear in someone’s shoe. No matter how many times they take off their shoe, there is always a new pebble in there.
• Have a puppet show.
• Make gritty dust fall on someone whenever they speak.
• Make smoke pour out of someone’s nose. Capture it in a bottle. Claim to have captured their soul. Have the smoke in the bottle resemble them and pound on the glass.
• Replace screws and bolts with conjured screws and bolts. Just enough to hold up something, so it collapses under additional weight. A bridge or balcony for example.
• Stab yourself with a fake dagger, making it crumble. Claim to be invulnerable to normal weapons.
• When you get hit with an arrow, have blood just gush out non-stop. Every time you get wounded, the blood just keeps flying out of you, splattering everywhere. Keep fighting and ignore the blood. After a few rounds, your enemies might freak out wondering exactly what’s going on.
• You create a puff of wind that can push something light up to 1 five foot square.
• You’re sneaking up to an enemy camp, but a guard is blocking your way. Use prestidigitation to drop a small object and make a ruckus.
Dampen: You leave an object damp to the touch for 1 hour. Damp objects have fire resistance while the effect lasts.
• Dampen the front of the paladin’s pants just as you find the dragon.
• Put out a small campfire, given a few rounds.
• Put out a torch.
Dirty: You soil, spot, and sully walls, floors, dishes, garments, or the like, leaving them dusty, filthy, or stained. You can dirty an object with a volume of 1 cubic foot, or 1 square foot of the surface of a larger object, each round. Dirt you add remains after the effect ends, but objects you soil can be cleaned again just like anything else.
• Dirty yourself so that you look like you climbed out of a sewer, when you need to fake an alibi.
• Have the local town statue cry blood.
• Lipstick on a man’s collar.
• Look like a leper.
• Make something look worthless so it is overlooked.
• Put blood stains on some sucker and then call the town guards.
• Soil someone’s tunic/pants to embarrass them.
• Suspicious stains on the carpet, ranging from pools of blood to mud tracked in to skid marks left by a dog wiping his butt.
• You could cover your tracks, but it would be slow going.
Dry: You remove dampness and excess moisture from an object. Moisture you remove does not return after the effect ends, but the object can become wet again just like anything else.
• Dry out a book that got wet so the pages don’t curl up.
• Dry socks.
• Evaporate a glass of liquid. (1 cubic foot/round).
• Evaporate just the alcohol from your drink so it appears like you are drinking.
• Evaporate the water out of something to leave behind the concentrated form of whatever isn’t water in the liquid.
• Make a spellcraft roll to dry out a potion until it’s just a highly concentrated drop of liquid. Put it in a fake tooth. Crunch down on it when you really need a +4 to your strength or something. Failing at the spellcraft roll means you ruin the potion while trying to concentrate it. (DC 20 check.)
• Make beef jerky.
• Make trail rations from fruit and nuts by drying out the fruit.
• Make salt from salt water.
• Make something appear “evil” by having drops of holy water boil away in a puff of white vapor. Claim the item cannot just be destroyed by smashing it, because the evil will just escape. Offer to hold it for safekeeping.
Flavor: You give a substance a better, worse, or different flavor. You could, for example, make porridge taste like lobster bisque. You do not change the substance's quality or wholesomeness. Spoiled food remains spoiled, a poisoned drink is still deadly, and inedible material provides no nourishment -- you can make a twig taste like steak, but it remains a twig.
• Add the flavor of poison to convince someone they only have moments to live.
• Flavor the poison to make it harder to detect.
• Make a cheap spice taste like a rare an expensive one, then sell it to some sucker.
• Make a dwarf’s ale taste fruity.
• Make a gourmet chef’s work go sour.
• Make cheap inn food taste good.
• Make the food taste awful so everyone else eats less and you get to eat more.
Gather: You neatly collect numerous objects. The objects you gather can be no larger than Fine size, no two items can be more than 10 feet apart, and their total weight cannot exceed 1 pound. You can place the gathered objects into a container you touch, or you can form a stack or pile that you touch. You can gather selectively; for instance, you can pick up just the coins from an area.
• Gather sticks as you walk along and ignite them. Make a trail of small fires at night.
• Gather up all the broken bits of a broken vase.
• Gather up all the oil just sprayed on you before it catches fire.
• Gather up spilt milk.
• Gather up the burning oil splattered on you into your hand and throw it back at the enemy, just to be a bad ass.
• Gather up the coins that have fallen in between your couch cushions.
• Pick up just the copper pieces.
Ignition: You cause a jet of flame up to 1/2 foot long to shoot forth from your finger. The flame is hot and ignites combustible materials. Lighting a torch with this effect is a standard action (rather than a full-round action), but lighting any other fire with it takes at least a full-round action (DM's discretion).
• Breathe fire.
• Burp smoke.
• If someone is drinking REALLY strong alcohol, set his drink on fire.
• Ignite a severed hand.
• Ignite a tinder twig without striking it.
• Light a candle.
• Make something appear to smolder.
Lift: You can slowly lift 1 pound of material. The material in question cannot move upward faster then 5 feet a round. An object has no sideways motion, but can be pushed sideways and will maintain its weightlessness and relative height.
• Build a ship in a bottle.
• Cause a small stone to float around your head. Tell everyone it’s an Ioun stone of ultimate magic and the source of all your power. Wait until someone tries to steal it.
• Dig a hole one pound of dirt at a time.
• Fish something you dropped in the sewer out.
• Float oil/sovereign glue over a target.
• Go fishing without a fishing line.
• Have a burning, severed hand float up and flip someone the bird.
• Hold the torch.
• Scratch in that embarrassing place.
• Lift a key off a hook. Use create air puff to slowly blow it your way.
• Lift a sheet. Have it float around. Make soft moaning sounds.
• Lift the curtains to let sunlight into a room.
• Lift the skirt of a comely maiden to make her think it was the result of the guard she was walking past.
• Make a rock float.
• Make a skeleton’s hand rise up and flip someone off.
• Make a small ball float a foot off the ground. Play air hockey.
• Make little fluttering paper butterflies.
• Make the judge’s powdered wig float off his head at trial.
• Make the pages of your spellbook turn without touching them, Tell people it’s because you don’t want the demon bound into it to escape into your skin.
• Pat yourself on the back.
• Pull the target’s hat down over his eyes.
• Rug supported over a hole.
• Your hair moves dramatically.
• Objects in water are lighter then normal, so you could “lift” a heaver object that was under water then normal. At most you could lift 5 pounds up to the surface. Conversely, you could make something 5 pounds heavier and push it under.
Light: You can create small balls of light, or small balls of darkness. These cannot blind or cause anything more then a small amount of light or a faint shadow.
• A glowing “mark of justice” appears on someone’s forehead.
• Have a “glow” about you.
• Have a gem stone sparkle.
• Have a red spark crackle at the tip of your finger.
• Have your eyes glow demonic red.
• Make someone else’s shadow act like it wants to kill.
• Make your shadow move around and do funny things.
• Motion blur, so you look like you have speed lines. Put it on you as you run, on your sword, on the monk’s hands, on your fork.
• Sparkling white teeth.
• YOU CANNOT make things invisible. You can make them transparent.
Polish: You bring lustre to a wood, metal, stone, leather, glass, or ceramic object. The object must be clean to start with. It remains shiny after the effect ends but can become dull again like anything else.
• Actually polish a turd.
• Clean up a suit of armor to make it look better, giving you a +2 for the skill check to sell it.
• Polish the party’s weapons and armor on your shift so they stay rust free and in top condition. Very important in deserts, by the ocean, or any location high in salt content.
Scent: You create a smell. It can be nice or awful, but has no effect on scent based powers other then it can make it easier to follow by enhancing someone’s natural scent, or cover up a smell, making it hard to track someone.
• Always have the best perfume.
• Create a ball that smells like catnip to entertain your familiar.
• Make an orc smell like pork.
• Make it smell like someone else farted.
• The smell of brimstone fills the room as you enter dramatically.
• Your s~#~ don’t stink.
Sketch: You create a two-dimensional visual figment of whatever you desire. You can leave the image hanging in the air, in which case it is immobile, or place it on a mobile object, such as a shield. The image can be no more than 1-foot square, and it lasts a maximum of 1 hour.
• A fake tattoo. It will look fake.
• A good way to interact with people when you are invisible.
• Add a few words or a new insignia over someone’s shield, but only a 1 foot square.
• Create a small mirror floating over someone’s shoulder while you play cards with them. If you are fast and good at distractions, you might even get away with it.
• Make a battle map so you can review the plan of attack.
• Make a floating arrow that says, “They went that way!” then go the other way.
• Put a big target on the back of the paladin’s armor.
• Put a kick me sign on the Monk’s back.
• Put grid lines on something when you are drawing. The grid disappears, but the lines stay straight.
• Put mustaches on a portrait.
• Put Xs over a dead man’s eyes.
• Use sculpt to create a 40 foot wide billboard in the air.
Sleight of Hand: You can perform minor sleight of hand. You effectively can teleport any fine sized object to any other point on your body or clothing. You cannot move it into an extra-dimensional space.
• Be entertaining at a child’s birthday party.
• Dramatically offer a business card.
• Move a coin from your hand to your pocket, or vice versa.
• Pull a coin out of your ear.
• Pull a rabbit out of a hat. Wand of flowers, endless pocket of scarves.
• Run a shell game where the pea is only under the cup when you want it to be.
Sound: A faint tinkling sound is possible. A good rule of thumb is any sound you could make with the human voice box.
• Add a dramatic echo when you speak.
• Add that evil reverb when you speak so it sounds like you gargle broken glass when you talk.
• Make the sound of a closing door.
• Make your words have a few second delay, either happen a second too late, or a few seconds early.
• Play a lullaby for a baby.
• Ring for tea.
• Whoopee Cushion.
• Your sword makes “Swoosh” sounds when you swing it.
Stitch: You magically sew seams in textiles or leather. You can create new stitching or repair old work. Unlike the mending cantrip, you cannot fix rips, holes, or tears (though you can patch or sew them together). If you have thread on hand, the stitches you make remain after the effect ends, but they are no stronger or weaker than normal stitching. You also can sew without thread, but then the seams last only an hour.
• Create something that holds an ingredient suspended over a boiling pot of water. When the spell expires, the ingredient falls in and the alchemical reaction takes place.
• Make a pair of shoes in half the time.
• Stitch together clothing that will fall apart in an hour. Wardrobe Malfunction!
Tie: You magically tie a firm knot (as though taking 10 with the Use Rope skill) in a thread, string, cord, rope, or cable up to 10 feet long. You can knot together two such objects if they're within 1 foot of each other.
• Cut the time it takes for the fighter to get on his armor by half.
• Tie someone’s shoe laces together.
• Tie the peace cord over someone’s sword while it’s in his scabbard.
• Tie your shoes without bending over.
• You don’t need any help tying down the main sail.
Trigger: You can set off any trigger that you are aware of that is in a line of effect and within range. You have to be aware of the trigger and it has to be something that could be set off with approximately 1 pound of pressure. A pressure plate that needs a 100 pound man to walk over it cannot be triggered.
• Make someone’s cocked and loaded crossbow fire. The BAB is effectively zero for whatever he happens to have his crossbow pointed at.
• Set off the dart trap by pushing on the tripwire.
Warm: You increase the temperature of an object by about 40° F, but never above 140° F. After an hour the object's temperature returns to normal.
• Melt a wall of ice. Very, Very, Very slowly.
• Warm a bath.
• Warm your apple cider on a cold night.
• Warm your bedroll on a cold night.
• Warm your soup after you left it unattended to go fight off the goblin ninja assassins.
• Warm your tent.
Untie: You can untie anything that would succumb to 1 pound of pressure. This is just about anything you could untie or unbutton with one hand.
• A no-hands striptease.
• Tie up your dress in the back all by yourself.
• Unbutton a blouse.
• Untie someone’s shoes while trying to outrun a dragon.

shaventalz |
What's the source for all the more-specific Prestidigitation limitations?
Found it - mostly.
As far as I can tell, 3.5 and 3.0 both used the same wording that Pathfinder uses (don't have a 3.0 PHB on me, but the conversion guide Wizards put out doesn't list it under "substantial changes to effect".)However, the 3.0 book Tome and Blood gives MOST of Slyme's list (Ignition was Firefinger, and the book was missing Lift/Sleight of Hand/Trigger/Tie/Untie/Scent/Light.) I don't know where they came up with that list of things the spell can do, since (as far as I can tell) that WASN'T what the spell was limited to doing.

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That was just a list I found compiled on a thread somewhere a while back. It was based on the 3.5 rules for the spell, but most (if not all) the uses still apply to the current version of the spell...and they are not the only uses...you can basically do anything with it (that your GM will allow).
There is a reason a lot of people refer to Prestidigitation as Minor Wish.

shaventalz |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That was just a list I found compiled on a thread somewhere a while back. It was based on the 3.5 rules for the spell, but most (if not all) the uses still apply to the current version of the spell...and they are not the only uses...you can basically do anything with it (that your GM will allow).
There is a reason a lot of people refer to Prestidigitation as Minor Wish.
That's the bit in question, though. The current version of prestidigitation lists what it can do, and what it can't. "Change" isn't listed (although conjuration of objects) is.) "Light" and "Ignition" would duplicate existing spells (both of which are cantrips, actually,) which Prestidigitation explicitly cannot do. Any extra functions of the spell not written would probably run up against those "severe limitations" it mentions and just not work.
EDIT: Wow. The current wording of Prestidigitation goes at least back to the AD&D's Magic-User version of that spell. Apparently the "expanded" stuff was originally in a Dragon magazine article for 2.0 and got reprinted in 3.0's Tome and Blood.

The Sideromancer |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One of the best ways to describe prestidigitation is to say that it looks like 90's style CGI. It always looks artificial and you aren't going to fool anybody with it. And being a 0th level spell, everybody has seen prestidigitation. It's still useful, but it's not replacing real illusion spells.
As somebody who describes binary mindscapes as the renderings of 16-bit fighting games, I can get behind this.

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I would argue that the 'light' section does not duplicate an existing spell...the Light cantrip provides light in an area...just giving things a minor glow or sparkle would easily fall under 'minor tricks'.
Ignition I'll give you...since they added Spark, that takes it's place...slightly reducing Prestidigitation.
It specifically calls out color, clean, soil, chill, warm, flavor, create and lift in the current wording.
Some of the categories in my previous post could be viewed as a combination of these...tie/untie, trigger, stitch, sketch could easily fall under the lift category, light could fall under create, etc.
Basically it comes down to GM interpretation. Most GM's I know will let you use it for all sorts of fun stuff, so long as it doesn't have any real mechanical benefit/damage/duplication.

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Yeah, some of those effects are outside the realm of prestidigitation in its current form and context.
Depending on your GM's interpretation of the spell.
Even if you strictly limit it the the categories laid out in the spell description, it is still the most versatile spell in the game, on top of just being fun and flavorful.

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Two things: I haven't seen these done personally but I've heard stories
Wall of horse- using communal mount as a barricade between the charging big bad guy and the party down a tight hallway
Also: using mount to get around difficult terrain- the horse sits on the hazardous squares while the party take turns to mount up the horse on one side and dismount on the other.

Nodrog |

Mage Hand = shenanigans
Unseen Servant is just as good
Use either to poke, shove, prod a guard so he turns and attacks another nearby guard.
Gota make a discreet distraction, either can knock over a tavern parton's ale, or bump a burning candle into a flammable tapestry.
Rogue out of lock picks or behind bars? Either can open a locked door from the other side. As you don't need a disable device check to just use the lock's knob or latch.
Smudge dirt on the paladin's shiny armor.
Scare the crap out of the rogue.
Need to catch someone who is running away and has a head start? Mage hand and punch them right in the jimmies with 5 pounds of force. Or have the Unseen Servant trip or just stand in the way.

QuidEst |

Mage Hand = shenanigans
Unseen Servant is just as goodUse either to poke, shove, prod a guard so he turns and attacks another nearby guard.
Gota make a discreet distraction, either can knock over a tavern parton's ale, or bump a burning candle into a flammable tapestry.
Rogue out of lock picks or behind bars? Either can open a locked door from the other side. As you don't need a disable device check to just use the lock's knob or latch.
Smudge dirt on the paladin's shiny armor.
Scare the crap out of the rogue.
Need to catch someone who is running away and has a head start? Mage hand and punch them right in the jimmies with 5 pounds of force. Or have the Unseen Servant trip or just stand in the way.
A lot of those aren’t things the spells can actually do, though. Mage Hand doesn’t create a hand, it just targets an unattended object to slowly move it. It requires line of effect, so you can’t reach through doors. No poking or punching. Unseen Servant can’t make attack rolls, so no tripping. GM call on passing through door cracks or whether poking a guard is a bluff check, though.

Nodrog |

A lot of those aren’t things the spells can actually do, though. Mage Hand doesn’t create a hand, it just targets an unattended object to slowly move it. It requires line of effect, so you can’t reach through doors. No poking or punching. Unseen Servant can’t make attack rolls, so no tripping. GM call on passing through door cracks or whether poking a guard is a bluff check, though.
I don't think an attack roll is needed for an invisible thing to lay down infront of someone to trip them...
And since the point of poking or punching the guard is to get them riled up, not cause them harm, its not really an attack.
And honestly, I never knew mage hand didn't make a hand... Everyone I have ever played with just treated it as a ghost hand. All of the uses we use it for are basically: silly, stupid or b#*+*@*+, like punching someone's balls or looking in a window and unlocking a door.

QuidEst |

QuidEst wrote:A lot of those aren’t things the spells can actually do, though. Mage Hand doesn’t create a hand, it just targets an unattended object to slowly move it. It requires line of effect, so you can’t reach through doors. No poking or punching. Unseen Servant can’t make attack rolls, so no tripping. GM call on passing through door cracks or whether poking a guard is a bluff check, though.I don't think an attack roll is needed for an invisible thing to lay down infront of someone to trip them...
And since the point of poking or punching the guard is to get them riled up, not cause them harm, its not really an attack.
And honestly, I never knew mage hand didn't make a hand... Everyone I have ever played with just treated it as a ghost hand. All of the uses we use it for are basically: silly, stupid or b%!$~##@, like punching someone's balls or looking in a window and unlocking a door.
It's a shapeless force, so laying down in front of them wouldn't do anything. (Otherwise you could use a wand of Unseen Servant to create mobile invisible mazes.) Trip attempts are normally attack rolls, so that's what I was going with.
The poking thing might be a bluff (which the servant probably can't do because of the DC 10 cap) or a touch attack (ditto), but that's why I mentioned it as "GM call".
I see a lot of people who haven't really looked at what Mage Hand actually does. Sounds like you're having fun with it, though.