For me, the "lower water by 10'" effect should be played like a "Moses effect" - Moses parting the Red Sea. In a shallow body of water (a river, a bit of lake between the shore and an island, etc) this could allow folks to move across the muddy bottom to reach their goal. The surrounding water is held back for an unspecified duration.
Would it still be muddy though? Or would it be desert dry because ALL of the water has been moved out of the way?
For me, the "lower water by 10'" effect should be played like a "Moses effect" - Moses parting the Red Sea. In a shallow body of water (a river, a bit of lake between the shore and an island, etc) this could allow folks to move across the muddy bottom to reach their goal. The surrounding water is held back for an unspecified duration.Would it still be muddy though? Or would it be desert dry because ALL of the water has been moved out of the way?
Line of Effect
Source Core Rulebook pg. 457: "In an area effect, creatures or targets must have line of effect to the point of origin to be affected. If there’s no line of effect between the origin of the area and the target, the effect doesn’t apply to that target. For example, if there’s a solid wall between the origin of a fireball and a creature that’s within the burst radius, the wall blocks the effect—that creature is unaffected by the fireball and doesn’t need to attempt a save against it." this means that water in the ground isn't affected as you can't see it so there isn't a line of effect.
For me, the "lower water by 10'" effect should be played like a "Moses effect" - Moses parting the Red Sea. In a shallow body of water (a river, a bit of lake between the shore and an island, etc) this could allow folks to move across the muddy bottom to reach their goal. The surrounding water is held back for an unspecified duration.Would it still be muddy though? Or would it be desert dry because ALL of the water has been moved out of the way?Line of Effect
Source Core Rulebook pg. 457: "In an area effect, creatures or targets must have line of effect to the point of origin to be affected. If there’s no line of effect between the origin of the area and the target, the effect doesn’t apply to that target. For example, if there’s a solid wall between the origin of a fireball and a creature that’s within the burst radius, the wall blocks the effect—that creature is unaffected by the fireball and doesn’t need to attempt a save against it." this means that water in the ground isn't affected as you can't see it so there isn't a line of effect.
Well if it ever comes up in my games, that'll be enough for me. :)
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At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, "what is this spell supposed to do?" and "how far is that in line with a 5th-level spell"?
The problem is the missing parts in the spell perameters and description. Interpreting what is written in strict RAW terms simply doesn't give a satisfactory result.
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I really think the issue here is that the wording of this spell was not written to be mechanically focused at all. The way it is written for this edition makes it a narrative manipulating spell instead of a mechanical one which is particularly frustrating if you are a player bringing a whole lot of mechanical, encounter mode expectations for what it will allow you to do every time you cast the spell.
Fantasy RPGs have a long history of having spells like this and many new editions have taken steps to more clearly mechanically define what these narrative spell do to avoid putting GMs in a spot where a player is very excited about an idea that feels too good for the GM to be true.
Prestidigitation has been used like this in past games and illusions to the extreme. In 2e, Prestidigitation got a very explicit work over to provide constraints to what it can narratively do, as have illusions, but there are still a couple of spells like this one that are written to change the narrative of the encounter in a fairly abstract way that requires a lot of GM arbitration. Control Water is interesting and a bit unusual in that it took a massive step back away from mechanical clarity and towards open-endedness. Why? Someone probably knows but it hasn't been talked about in the multiple years now of us asking about. So it is entirely possible that the answer was: Someone realized that a spell like this would require a lot of space in a book to mechanically define effectively, and it being 5th level, and pretty situational, they just decided it was better to give it a narrative scope and not a very precise mechanical one, so the folks looking at mechanics for balance kind of just passed over it because the spell is written vaguely enough that it basically says "Talk to your GM about this spell" without directly saying that.
There is just no way as a player, you can reasonably have this spell ready to cast multiple times a day and expect to rules lawyer your way into having the GM interpret it one specific way that will favor what you want to do with it (especially if you are playing multiple GMs if you somehow have access to this spell in a PFS type setting).
I totally understand how magic can make impossible things possible, that is what makes it fun, but the language of this spell leaves so much to the imagination that of course interpretations are going to vary. The most common mythical example of this spell, at least in the US, is going to be Moses parting the Red sea, and yet, without a duration, or an understanding of what is happening to the water being controlled, the spell as written has to be strained pretty heavily to accomplish the thing most people would read the title of the spell and assume that it does. Just telling us that it raises or lowers the level of water in a set area, as an instantaneous effect would very much be like if the spell fire ball was written, You instantaneously fill a 20ft burst with intense fire energy...which is kind of what that spell does, except it gives us a clear mechanical explanation for what happens to creatures in that area. It does not give us any explanation for how that fire existing in that area affects anything except creatures, and many of the people in this conversation have found that aspect of the fireball spell to be particularly frustrating because it is essentially left up to the GM to decide as well, with the caveat that destroying stuff accidentally is not very much fun for players or for the world.
Evocation spells become narrative monsters for GMs that try to apply real world physics to them. Control water has basically been written off in this edition as "Sometimes a great story can be told by having a character raise or lower water in an area. Use it to do that without make this a game of Water Controller, Drowner of the Universe...or don't use it as a player and the GM will occasional have some NPC use it is a specific manner that tells an interesting story and you know what level a spell and type it is for the purposes of counter spelling it or dispelling it."