Magic Initiate IRL - What spells would you choose?

[Segev]

This is my favorite part of your whole plan:

Once they have checkbooks out, I can order the wealthiest among them to "Donate!"

That is a beautiful use of command.

[smcmike]

The real question with guidance is how often you roll checks. My job is largely based upon output. If I can cast guidance as I sit down and get 12% more done every day, that would totally be worth it. That’s not quite the same as improving a baseball player’s at-bats, though, is it?

I'm going to go against the grain here, and pick Longstrider for my Level 1 spell and win every race I enter and become one of the fastest people alive.

How fast are you currently? If you’re an average schlub like me, Longstrider won’t even get you close to Olympic time.

I think it's too limiting to just think about what would help you in your current life

I thought that was the entire point of the exercise. I don’t want to become a stage magician or save lives in a trauma ward. I would very much like to be able to easily clean or fix things are my house. Running a bit faster or understanding people when I travel would be nice too.

[Coretex]

Prestidigitation and Goodberry together make a hell of a combo if we aren't following restrictions. I like to go camping, and not having to worry about food nor nutrition would be an incredible boon. Plus that 1hp in case someone has a fall and would otherwise be incapacitated.

Sticking to lists:
Prestidigitation (because all of the reasons)
Message: It's an untraceable short range walky talkie that can only be heard by the recipient. You can even just send constant bursts of nothing so you can hear from the other person. Fantastic for carrying on a secret conversation about anything (the boss's boring meeting perhaps).
Feather Fall: A group parachute for any situation. I would love to go Hang Gliding, this makes it perfectly safe! Day to day just jump off a building for fun to save time in the elevator.

[Avigor]

Goodberry is beyond awesome, would save me soooooo much money.
Mending would also be great for saving money.
My second cantrip would depend on how RAW it is; if I could unfreeze snow and ice with Shape Water, I'd take that (I HATE shoveling!), but otherwise I'd go with Druidcraft for accurate weather predictions and instantly lighting the grill.

[OvisCaedo]

I feel like a lot of them would turn out very awkward in real life. Mending is very restricted in what it works on, and something like Message is already... kind of laughable in-universe with how spell components work, and would be completely out of line in real life. Lets you whisper a message to someone! But requires you to also be constantly waving your hands around and loudly speaking the same incantation again every six seconds.

[Sigreid]

I've no interest in using my magic powers for wealth and power so I'd go for things that make my life easier. Unseen servant to clean my house. Prestidigitation for a lot of little uses. Druidcraft would be great for knowing the weather. Come to think of it, druid craft could let you make money without fame just by selling accurate weather forecasts to the t.v. guy.

[Quoxis]

Message: It's an untraceable short range walky talkie that can only be heard by the recipient. You can even just send constant bursts of nothing so you can hear from the other person. Fantastic for carrying on a secret conversation about anything (the boss's boring meeting perhaps).

Only if you assume your boss won’t mind you performing weird gestures and incantations while he’s talking - message has v s m components.

[Desteplo]

Minor illusion: way easier to speak using images and sounds for me.

Mage hand: minor telekinesis has been a long time favorite

Find familiar: an intelligent animal spirit you can use to play board games no one else ever wants to play? Yes please

These are usually my auto picks for any and all wizards anyway (usually go gnome)

[jaappleton]

Healing Word
I have 4 little boys. This needs no explanation.


Mending
See above


Guidance
I need help with Perception checks to find where the kids left the PS4 controller.

[nickl_2000]

Healing Word
I have 4 little boys. This needs no explanation.


Mending
See above


Guidance
I need help with Perception checks to find where the kids left the PS4 controller.

LOL, as a father of 5 boy (ages 9 - 1) you make some very, very solid points. However, I would suggest prestidigitation to avoid the "this food taste nasty" fight with veggies and the mess from playing in the dirt/sand/mud/grass/the rest of dinner.

[jaappleton]

LOL, as a father of 5 boy (ages 9 - 1) you make some very, very solid points. However, I would suggest prestidigitation to avoid the "this food taste nasty" fight with veggies and the mess from playing in the dirt/sand/mud/grass/the rest of dinner.

If I had the third cantrip option, that'd be it. Definitely.

Fourth would be Mold Earth because screw yardwork.

[Ebon]

How fast are you currently? If you’re an average schlub like me, Longstrider won’t even get you close to Olympic time.

10 more feet of walking distance, compared to everyone else at 30 feet, means I'm 33.3% faster than everyone else. I compared this to Expeditious Retreat, and while it gives you more speed as a bonus action, the shorter duration of 10 minutes is surpassed by Longstrider's 1 hour time frame. No concentration check for Longstrider either.

Considering many races are decided by a fraction of a second, 33.3% faster is going to upset most race margins. I could also cast it on another person. 1 hour of superhuman speed on anyone in the World Cup could probably decide the match.

[JackPhoenix]

Find familiar: an intelligent animal spirit you can use to play board games no one else ever wants to play? Yes please

Except the "intelligent" part. Familiar uses all the statistics of a normal animal of its kind, including intelligence.

10 more feet of walking distance, compared to everyone else at 30 feet, means I'm 33.3% faster than everyone else. I compared this to Expeditious Retreat, and while it gives you more speed as a bonus action, the shorter duration of 10 minutes is surpassed by Longstrider's 1 hour time frame. No concentration check for Longstrider either.

Considering many races are decided by a fraction of a second, 33.3% faster is going to upset most race margins. I could also cast it on another person. 1 hour of superhuman speed on anyone in the World Cup could probably decide the match.

It's not 33,3% faster unless you walk exactly at that speed (most people don't). It's 1,66'/sec faster, which isn't that great. And it's far from superhuman. It'll make a difference, but only if you're top-tier athlete already.

Expeditious Retreat actually improves your running speed by 50%.

[Segev]

Expeditious Retreat actually improves your running speed by 50%.

I'm not 100% sure on dash/running rules, so please explain the correct calculation if I'm wrong here, but doesn't expeditious retreat double your running speed if you're flat-out running?

As your normal move/action, you Dash, and then expeditious retreat lets you Dash again as a bonus action. Normal running is therefore your Dash speed, and so if all you're doing is running, you can now Dash twice in the time you usually Dash once. (Rogues can do this without the spell, incidentally.)

Am I misunderstanding how running works in 5e?

[sightlessrealit]

I'm not 100% sure on dash/running rules, so please explain the correct calculation if I'm wrong here, but doesn't expeditious retreat double your running speed if you're flat-out running?

As your normal move/action, you Dash, and then expeditious retreat lets you Dash again as a bonus action. Normal running is therefore your Dash speed, and so if all you're doing is running, you can now Dash twice in the time you usually Dash once. (Rogues can do this without the spell, incidentally.)

Am I misunderstanding how running works in 5e?

Normal movement, than dash as an action, than dash again with bonus action you go from 60 feet max on a turn to 90.

[Ebon]

I'm in good shape, but that doesn't matter to an internet discussion.

To find out for myself if Expeditious Retreat or Longstrider would get me further over the course of an hour, I calculated the following:

Human Walking speed according to D&D = 30 feet per 6 seconds.

“When you take the Dash action, you gain extra movement for the current turn. The increase equals your speed, after applying any modifiers. With a speed of 30 feet, for example, you can move up to 60 feet on your turn if you dash. Any increase or decrease to your speed changes this additional movement by the same amount. If your speed of 30 feet is reduced to 15 feet, for instance, you can move up to 30 feet this turn if you dash.”

Human Dash speed = 60 feet per 6 seconds. Or 10 feet per second. 3600 seconds in an hour. 36,000 feet covered over the course of an hour. 36,000 / 5,280 = 6.82 miles per hour. This is considerably less than human maximum potential or even an average runner at 10-15 mph. But this is the math D&D gives us to work with in the combat rules.

Normal movement, than dash as an action, than dash again with bonus action you go from 60 feet max on a turn to 90.

Expeditious Retreat gives a Bonus Action Dash of an extra 30 feet per turn. Or 15 feet per second for 10 minutes. Topping out at 10.23 mph, reverts to normal human speed for the remaining 50 minutes.

15 ft/sec x 600 seconds (10 minutes) + 10 ft/sec x 3000 seconds (50 min) = 39,000 feet covered. Averages out to a speed of 7.39 mph

Longstrider adds 10 feet to base walking speed (now 40 ft per second), and gets doubled by Dash = 80 feet per 6 seconds = 13.333 feet per second. 3,600 seconds in an hour. 48,000 feet covered over the course of an hour. 48,000 / 5,280 = 9.1 miles per hour.

So although Expeditious Retreat is faster in the short term, over the full course of the spell, Longstrider will actually get me further faster.

[sightlessrealit]

I'm in good shape, but that doesn't matter to an internet discussion.

To find out for myself if Expeditious Retreat or Longstrider would get me further over the course of an hour, I calculated the following:

Human Walking speed according to D&D = 30 feet per 6 seconds.

“When you take the Dash action, you gain extra movement for the current turn. The increase equals your speed, after applying any modifiers. With a speed of 30 feet, for example, you can move up to 60 feet on your turn if you dash. Any increase or decrease to your speed changes this additional movement by the same amount. If your speed of 30 feet is reduced to 15 feet, for instance, you can move up to 30 feet this turn if you dash.”

Human Dash speed = 60 feet per 6 seconds. Or 10 feet per second. 3600 seconds in an hour. 36,000 feet covered over the course of an hour. 36,000 / 5,280 = 6.82 miles per hour. This is considerably less than human maximum potential or even an average runner at 10-15 mph. But this is the math D&D gives us to work with in the combat rules.




Expeditious Retreat gives a Bonus Action Dash of an extra 30 feet per turn. Or 15 feet per second for 10 minutes. Topping out at 10.23 mph, reverts to normal human speed for the remaining 50 minutes.

15 ft/sec x 600 seconds (10 minutes) + 10 ft/sec x 3000 seconds (50 min) = 39,000 feet covered. Averages out to a speed of 7.39 mph

Longstrider adds 10 feet to base walking speed (now 40 ft per second), and gets doubled by Dash = 80 feet per 6 seconds = 13.333 feet per second. 3,600 seconds in an hour. 48,000 feet covered over the course of an hour. 48,000 / 5,280 = 9.1 miles per hour.

So although Expeditious Retreat is faster in the short term, over the full course of the spell, Longstrider will actually get me further faster.

I was simply giving an answer to someone who wasn't sure on how dashing works. I have no interest in this discussion on which is better in the long run

[JackPhoenix]

I'm not 100% sure on dash/running rules, so please explain the correct calculation if I'm wrong here, but doesn't expeditious retreat double your running speed if you're flat-out running?

As your normal move/action, you Dash, and then expeditious retreat lets you Dash again as a bonus action. Normal running is therefore your Dash speed, and so if all you're doing is running, you can now Dash twice in the time you usually Dash once. (Rogues can do this without the spell, incidentally.)

Am I misunderstanding how running works in 5e?

Normal movement for a human is 30'/turn. With Dash, it's doubled to 60' turn. Bonus Action Dash from Expeditious Retreat adds another 30' (Dash adds your speed, which is 30', it doesn't actually double your total movement... the result is the same if you Dash only once per turn, though, which may be the cause of your confusion), for 90'/turn. 90 is 50% increase over 60.

TL;DR: your movement allowance for a turn is a different thing from your speed.

Snip

Only matters in D&D, not when translated to real life. People aren't limited to moving 30/60 feet in 6 seconds intervals without external influences in real life. Your running (or "dashing", whatever that means) speed isn't just double your normal walking speed either.

Longstrider increases your walking speed by 1,67 feet per second, no matter how fast or slow it originally was. To calculate its effect on your running ("dashing"), you'd need to find out what's your normal walking speed, then figure how much faster you are when you're running, and multiply that 1,67' figure by your "run speed multiplier"
Expeditious Retreat improves your running speed by 50%, no matter what it was before, thought it does nothing for your walking speed, though at that point we'd need to define what counts as walking compared to "dashing".
Sure, the first is better in long-term, because it last 6 times as long, but people can't run at full speed for a whole hour. Or even 10 minutes.

[Willie the Duck]

Human Dash speed = 60 feet per 6 seconds. Or 10 feet per second. 3600 seconds in an hour. 36,000 feet covered over the course of an hour. 36,000 / 5,280 = 6.82 miles per hour. This is considerably less than human maximum potential or even an average runner at 10-15 mph. But this is the math D&D gives us to work with in the combat rules.

Given that a semi-experienced (2nd level) roguish character can get a 50% increase on this speed (by picking up a bonus-action dash action), but an expert in athletics does not, I think we can say that some things are modeled for combat benefit and not realism.

[furby076]

Mending only works on a "single break or tear". Most ways of destroying a hard drive involve a lot more damage than that. Also, arguably the spell can't recover magnetic charges, so depending on the type of damage, the data may be unrecoverable even if the spell can make the drive operational again.

If you rule that mending can work on an object with multiple breaks or tears, there's still the problem that it only affects one break or tear per casting. Restoring any complex piece of hardware or anything that shattered could take years of effort. Fixing anything with an integrated circuit could take lifetimes (and a powerful microscope).

where do dyou get mending cannot recover magnetic charges? it doesn't cover that topic either way. Magnetic charge is a physical thing, just like matter (e = mc2), so really, as far as magic is concerned, it doesn't care if something is energy or not..it's all energy, it's all physical.
Each casting of mending works on a single break or tear....cast it multiple times and you are good. In the time i used it with different DMs, never had one say "you can't mend the broken glass" or "shattered sword".

[furby076]

To anyone saying goodberry:
That’s rice. Costs basically nothing for kilograms of food that’s bland but nourishing. You can also buy gallons worth of chicken stock etc. for equally nothing per serving, so each and everyone of you saying „i‘d live off of goodberries flavored with prestidigitation to save hunderds of dollars“ is a hypocrite.

Also: You can eat rice and not starve doing so, but it’s not exactly healthy. Game limitations only make it reasonable not to include rules for cases of adventurers eating nothing but goodberries for months, but would that work the same irl?

For me, it’d be prestidigitation (i hate cleaning), gust (i hate heat and in a bind, pushing people around is useful) and find familiar (a small pet you can banish to another dimension whenever it’s convenient and through the eyes of which you can see).

hypocrite ? That's a bit of strong, and incorrect language. What you meant to say "is wrong".

Actually, they aren't. Rice only provides you with a single type of nutrient. Eat rice and only rice and yea, you will eventually die of malnourishment. On the other hand, goodberry is part of a well balanced diet. Bland yes, but it's got all you need to survive. It's more akin to a meal replacement.

[Kane0]

Goodberry juice
Goodberry sorbet
Goodberry pie
Etc

And even then plenty of folk seems to be able to deal with meal replacements.

[Quoxis]

Actually, they aren't. Rice only provides you with a single type of nutrient. Eat rice and only rice and yea, you will eventually die of malnourishment. On the other hand, goodberry is part of a well balanced diet. Bland yes, but it's got all you need to survive. It's more akin to a meal replacement.

Did... did you read the post or only the first few sentences (because that’s pretty much all you’re referring to)?

[Knaight]

Human Dash speed = 60 feet per 6 seconds. Or 10 feet per second. 3600 seconds in an hour. 36,000 feet covered over the course of an hour. 36,000 / 5,280 = 6.82 miles per hour. This is considerably less than human maximum potential or even an average runner at 10-15 mph. But this is the math D&D gives us to work with in the combat rules.

The context for that number is people carrying equipment moving over questionable ground during a fight, trying to keep their defenses up. It's not a great analog for running in more normal conditions, and is a pretty good indication that longstrider should probably give more than ⁵/₃ ft/s in the context of that more normal running. Scaling that up with the 6.82 and considering an average runner gets pretty close to 3 feet per second, which has the benefit of being a nice round number.

[Kane0]

I operate in metric anyways, so Longstrider would be pretty useless to me.

[oxybe]

Level 1 -
goodberries
Nourishes and sustains me for a day and cuts my food bill by a good chunk. As food is my third biggest expense for the month, next to rent & utilities, this is great.

Level 0 -
Guidance
General competency upgrade is nice.

Mending
Gods I would love to be able to just snap my fingers qnd fix a set of good headphones that's not working or a power cable that's not charging, or whatever. Even being able to dumpster dive or pickup broken coffee tables or shelves and fix them, for my own use or resell as some extra spending money, would be nice.

Ideally it would be goodberries, mending & prestidigitation but no spell list has that mix unfortunately

[Willie the Duck]

Did... did you read the post or only the first few sentences (because that’s pretty much all you’re referring to)?

I'm guessing they did. Yes, you mentioned that nothing but rice is not exactly healthy, but you didn't actually provide an argument that goodberry (which states that it provides a day's nourishment) somehow isn't nutritious, while rice and chicken broth clearly isn't. Combined with a rather... interesting understanding of what the word hypocrite means, and yeah, I can see why they aren't buying what you are selling.

[8wGremlin]

So in the first instance:

Druid Magic Initiate (Guidance, Mending, and Goodberry)
Wizard Initiate (Prestidigitation, Mending, Find Familiar)

If I'm allowed to pick from all the spell lists then ( Prestidigitation, Guidance, Find Familiar) these are all things that I can not do easily at the moment.

Find familiar is I feel and interesting spell, I'd like to know some "the Rules Of Real Life" RORL -
* when a familiar is carrying something, and is dispelled to the demi-plane, can they take what they carry with them?
* when commanded to bring back the object from the demi-plane the next time they are summoned could they?
* if this item was a working and recording video camera, what would they see?
* could a living creature survive in the demi-plane, and for how long?

with these answers you can become the best smuggler/safe transporter of goods
Also familiars that can fly, allow you to do drone like deliveries, as well as act as surveillance
A crow/raven familiar can talk and deliver messages


----

2nd part - we get to pick a race and have the magic initiate for free, sign me up!

again we need to know RORL

The changeling race - can it transform in to an avarial elf, or a aarakocra and get flight speed, or Triton and get Amphibious
if so then this is very potent!

if not then Variant Human with the free feat and the Druid Initiate package would be a strong choice.

if RORL allows "Quicksmithing feat" from Plane Shift Kaladesh.

if not then Ritual Caster (wizard)

* rituals would include "find familiar" and "unseen servant"

Both feats allow the learning and sharing of rituals amongst those that have the feats, so this would increase the versatility and usefulness the more you shared.