New spell: Water to Powder

Water to Powder

Transmutation
Level: Sorcerer 3, Wizard 3
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: 1 gallon of water / 2 levels or One living creature / 2 levels, no 2 of which can be more than 20 feet apart
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude partial; see text
Spell Resistance: Yes

You transmute water in range into powdered water (see below). The caster should either cast on small volumes of water in isolated containers or be certain the entire volume is within his limit as any remaining water in contact with the powder will immediately reverse the effect.

If cast on living creatures, the effect is like Sunstroke with the exception that they can recover from the nonlethal damage normally without treatment as the remaining water in their bodies gradually rehydrates the isolated bits of powdered water.

Originally Posted by Dragon Magazine #280, page 52
Powdered Water
5sp, 1 oz. not including the jug; Alchemy DC 10
This fine white powder sparkles faintly. An ounce, when mixed with a drop of water, becomes a gallon of drinkable water. The powder is usually put in a vessel that can contain the full gallon of water before the drop of activating liquid is added. The vessel is then shaken to agitate the mixture. It takes a full round for the gallon of water to form. The powder must be kept in a water-tight container to remain effective, but it is an easy way to transport large amounts of water over great distances.

EDIT: Dropped it down from 4th level to 3rd level per feedback.

This fits at 4th level only because it's basically mass sunstroke. Otherwise it would be 2nd and 3rd. And you could even get away with mass sunstroke as a 3rd level spell. Besides that it looks good.

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This fits at 4th level only because it's basically mass sunstroke. Otherwise it would be 2nd and 3rd. And you could even get away with mass sunstroke as a 3rd level spell. Besides that it looks good.

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Yeah, i think it would be better suited as a level 3 spell. The added utility of powdered water is really neat, but not enough to raise it a spell level.

Yeah, I kind of pictured it at 3rd actually. I went a level higher because I'm kind of expecting people to say I made my spells too powerful. I thought it would be the creation of the powdered water that bothered people though but it is a pretty inexpensive item anyway and you can make money better just by casting other useful spells of that level. This is more a convenience thing.

I will edit it down to 3rd.

this should deal actual damage to water elementals or those with the aquatic subtype.

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Originally Posted by LordErebus12

this should deal actual damage to water elementals or those with the aquatic subtype.

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Not really. Firstly, the powdered water immediately turns back into water on contact with water. An extra watery creature could arguably be less affected. You could argue for a water elemental in the case you were able to affect the entire volume of it but that's pretty unlikely for the volume it affects and the language to make it all-or-nothing would over complicate the spell IMHO and possibly make it be higher level.

Well the only water elemental you'd be able to entirely remove the water from is a single small water elemental (not even multiple), and that's not OP. Save-or-die a CR 1 foe could be an allowable option. Would be funny if he was small and yet had class levels, but that's what saves are for.

Or it could have varying effects based on size but now we're getting more and more complicated.

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Not really. Firstly, the powdered water immediately turns back into water on contact with water. An extra watery creature could arguably be less affected.

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I don't think that's true. If you imagine turning the top of a water elemental into powder then quite a lot of the powder would blow away, although a lot of it certainly would return to the elemental. But it's not a lot of damage we're talking about here. I certainly think that it would be logical (and fun) if water elementals took lethal damage from the spell. It also certainly wouldn't be overpowered.

The spell's fine as it is though if you don't like the idea.

I was just checking out Transmute Water to Acid, a 3rd level spell, for comparison. This is arguably far less useful and doesn't produce a substance as valuable as acid. But it just says you can't do it to water inside a creatures body. That's probably the simplest. Maybe this should just be a wizardly way of storing water.

Transmute Water to Powder
Transmutation [Water]
Level: Sorcerer 3, Wizard 3,
Components: V, S, M,
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Area: Up to 2 gallons/level
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

It seems like it's *incredibly* over-leveled as a method of creating powdered water. That stuff costs 5 sp per ounce (meaning per gallon of water turned into powdered water- even at CL 20, this spell produces 5 gp of powdered water), and the DC 10 craft check can be met by a 1st-level commoner with just one rank in Craft, who can produce two doses a day. Sure, this spell is convenient in that you don't need to go to a city to buy stuff or wait around while someone crafts it for you, but on the other hand you need to write it into your spellbook (which costs the same as a *lot* of powdered water) and then prepare the spell (or sorcerer... don't even want to think about it), and how often do people really need convenient access to powdered water?

It seems like this is really just a Sunstroke spell with an extremely minor and useless function tacked on. Make a spell that just creates powdered water, no effect on creatures (or maybe that creates powdered water from nothing rather than converting water, as if combined with create water), and make it 0th level or 1st level tops. (1st level sounds a bit better so it doesn't make crafting the item *totally* obsolete, IMO, but then you could allow it to be made obsolete and it wouldn't be all that bad.)

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Originally Posted by Dalebert

Maybe this should just be a wizardly way of storing water.

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In general, you don't want to mix utility spells with attack spells. You could have a first level spell 'cook meal' that can cook one meal a level, but to also say you can use that to attack that many creatures and 'cook/burn' them gets problematic. As cook food has no save, of course, but you need to add one to cook person and so on. In short you will have to versions of the spell in the description. And it is just better to have two spells.

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Originally Posted by jedipotter

In general, you don't want to mix utility spells with attack spells. You could have a first level spell 'cook meal' that can cook one meal a level, but to also say you can use that to attack that many creatures and 'cook/burn' them gets problematic. As cook food has no save, of course, but you need to add one to cook person and so on. In short you will have to versions of the spell in the description. And it is just better to have two spells.

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I did make it into just a utility spell and raised the volume but I didn't lower the level. It appears I forgot to update this thread and it was only updated on my site. I'll lower it to 1st.