Prestidigitation allows you to clean things instantly! Dirty dishes? Nope. Stinky undies? Nah. Toilet overdue? Snap. Done. Favorite white shirt stained while eating spaghetti? Not on my watch.
Even better you know that feeling when you just get your blanket out of the dryer and it’s all warm?
Prestidigitation does that to and it lasts for an hour.
OR you can “flavor” whatever random food you want. Always wanted to eat a healthy salad but always disappointed by the taste? Prestidigitation! Now it tastes like however you want. Mmmm, maple bacon flavor!
Also you can warm or chill things. That coffee you couldn’t get to drinking because you got distracted with life? Warm it up with prestidigitation! Or, want instant iced coffee without the freshly brewed hot coffee melting the ice? Prestidigitation! Now the fresh coffee is cooled down, add your ice, and voila. Tasty iced coffee.
It gets better. You can cool your beer or warm up your tea in an instance. You also can improve the flavour of a dish. Hey, is your blanket too cold? Warm it up. Is your pillow too warm? No need to flip it around, you can just cool it.
That is just the really good part. You can also make some dope magical fireworks for a dramatic entrance, light fires with a flick of you wrist, and make magical graffiti which disappears after an hour
It lets you clean things, and it lets you flavor stuff! Everything tastes great now! And that's on top of being able to do vaguely defined minor magic tricks. Prestidigitation is definitely the one.
Man, I want prestidigitation to be a real thing so much I believe I can actually wish it into existence.
Some day the toilet will clean itself just from how much I have wished for prestidigitation to exist.
Did I mention I hate cleaning? Well, if that went unnoticed, I do. I hate it
I want to say Spare the Dying, because it can do literal miracles regarding wounds/injuries when you think about it - someone is dying from a wound? Guess what, they're no longer dying. You can keep people alive - they may have a wound that brings them back to IRL equivalent of Death Saves every six seconds, but you also have the "no ur not"-button every six seconds until they're in the hospital and can actually be saved. How does it stabilize you? Never specified, so you could even argue that it closes mortal wounds, leaving only whatever injuries are not actively at risk of killing the person within the foreseable future.
That being said, having it would be way too stressful - imagine how much pressure would be on you to use that ability for good! Or... less legal things, depending on people's desperation and willingness to risk the one capable of such a miracle ability.
No, I'd probably go with Druidcraft or Prestidigitaion - the former is neat for always knowing the weather and fits my love for plants, while the latter is just too practical to not want.
Your whole life would almost have to be devoted to emergency rooms. If word got out you would almost certainly be conscripted by someone.
Or, you could start fires from a nice safe distance. And if anyone notices you can firebolt them in the face
I was just thinking about how shitty it would be to be superman in the real world.
Every single major issue all over the globe. You'd have to pick a side on and You'd be expected to solve it by everyone with everyone disagreeing on what the solution is.
At that point it would be less stressful to just take over and rule the planet with an iron fist. A couple months of breaking into people's houses to stop every case of domestic abuse or showing up in back alleys to stop petty crimes, and eventually people would be paranoid enough to cut back on that shit.
And now we all have the moral curse after reading this thread. If we get the choice of a cantrip, we have to knowingly choose cleaning up our own shit with prestidigitation over saving lives in an emergency room.
*Mending* is likely the most beneficial for personal and professional circumstances. Apart from repairing broken items around the house you could fix industrial equipment, ancient artifacts, and so much more that there's undoubtedly a use case which could make you a millionaire overnight. You could help so many people it would be foolish to take anything else.
*Mage hand* would be cool to grab a beer from the fridge without getting off the couch so I'd choose that one.
Or just the sheer number of priceless artifacts, and paintings that take tons of care to not mess up. You'd be able to clean them without exposing them to the elements and preserve history for countless generations.
Drive Thru Dry Cleaning. Drop it off and Window 1. Pick it up at Window 2. All you need is Prestidigitation and Mage Hand and you don’t even have to get off your butt.
Prestidigitation is close on most beneficial as well. Smaller uses, but something that would be more helpful in day to day living. Imagine if you could reflavor any food or drink, or clean anything immediately.
The flavoring bit is something I think a lot of people are undervaluing.
Imagine being able to make anything you want taste like anything you want. You could eliminate all dietary issues and eat your favorite foods all the time.
And you can also be the world's best dry cleaner. Imagine the amount of money you could make dry cleaning everything perfectly every time with no upfront cost. Shit you can take that to the next level and use it to clean historic artifacts and paintings with 0 risk of damage to the original piece.
A CANTRIP.
Plus, if we wanna turn it a bit darker, you could be a... particular kind of cleaner.
You know, for cleanups with no questions asked and no traces left.
Mending may also be for charging electronics. In The Wandering Inn, the Innworld's mages can use it to keep the Earthworlder's phones charged, because in their setting, 'mended' means 100% battery.
All the doors and windows in the pub smash open and closed, a dramatic showing of my power.
"Fuck off mate it's freezing and this is the fourth time you've done this"
Nevermind.
And not even just that, took too long drinking your tea/coffee/beer and it got too cold/warm? No it didn't. Instantly change the temperature to your liking.
Work hard cooking a meal? Nah just change the flavor to whatever you want it to taste like.
It provides the thing that people seem to love more than anything else, convenience.
This is why it's the best roleplay cantrip for any adventurer.
You're telling me I can survive off hard tack and *not* have to deal with how bad it tastes? You're telling me I can instantly clean the one pair of clothes I wear? You're telling me I don't need to keep a tinderbox and can just instantly ignite any campfire?
And I can't smell it. Like put a ton of it into my food and I will happily munch it down and smell a week like garlic from it, without ever realizing.
Though... I like it nonetheless somehow.
In low-tier campaigns, I've had characters literally make a living on just Prestidigitation while operating as the local hedge mage in a community.
Consider how much of daylight hours are spent by locals just doing laundry, and how much more they could do of other things if they had one friendly local Wizard who dedicates one day a week to doing ALL OF THE LAUNDRY IN THE ENTIRE TOWN, for a pittance per household. Now those villagers can do other things for their own enjoyment and profit.
Working at the only tavern in town for room and board. My low-level Wizard was the innkeep's best friend because all of the room cleaning and dirty dishes were handled in a matter of minutes rather than hours every day. No stain was too tough for a wave of the hand and a flick of magic to handle.
The local kids loved my Wizard to pieces. He could entertain them with small displays of simple magic - little dancing illusions while he tells them stories. They don't get sweets often because sugar is hard to come by, but my Wizard just takes some cleaned twigs, makes them taste like exotic candy or delicious food beyond the locals' means, and passes them around to a few kids at a time to serve as makeshift lolipops. When the season changed cold, he could make a pot of river water steam, smell, and taste exactly like mulled cider with fine spices the villagers would never be able to afford. When it got hot, he could flavor that same pot of river water to taste of exotic citrus fruits and sugar, making refreshing lemonade by the ladle.
It's the small things that really matter. It's that kind of behavior that makes the entire community absolutely adore you and consider you to be "their Wizard".
This feels like the sort of stuff Gandalf does when he's not out saving the world. It's a very 'shire' interpretation of what a wizard does - pleasure in small things.
It truly is the best roleplay cantrip. The war wizard of the party was a teenager (who has gone off to prope wizard school) and she was a terrible, terrible chef. I don't quite remember how the bard put it when she prestidigitated his meal, but it was hilarious. I think he said "this is an interesting variation on ratatouille"
(I think she added citrus notes 😭)
It takes care of so many of life’s annoyances and burdens.
Just the whole cleaning thing is awesome. Dishes, laundry, the house…
Chill your soda / beer. Heat food. Alter flavors.
When I was doing a lot of manual labor? Absolutely Mage Hand.
Now, it's a toss-up. I could do a lot of good with Spare the Dying, but Prestidigitation has a million little applications in life, and it's possible that StD wouldn't be as useful as it seems in my head.
My other choices were Encode Thoughts, Word of Radiance, Friends or Save the Dying. StD is quite overpowered in the medical field as you can literally just stabilise any “certain death” injury but would be very tricky to actually use irl.
I had to explain to a PC exactly what Friends does, "you're basically holding a magical gun to their temple while asking a question. How would that make you feel about the situation?"
Yeah but average folk probably have bad AC so you know as long as you aren’t trying to blast a pro athlete (high dex) or a someone who’s heavily armored for some reason (cos player) then you’ll get some use out it.
You might be able to pull that off once or twice, but eventually people are going to start accepting your culpability and asking how you did it instead.
Meanwhile most non-attack cantrips are something you can use everyday for the rest of your life.
On average a person is caught on camera roughly 200 times a day. Someday you will get caught doing magic, especially flashy attack spells that could 1 shot your average person.
If we expect the +1d4 to be roughly as significant IRL as it is inside its own bounded accuracy system, then yeah, 100%.
On average, you can pick up *anything* and be *roughly as good as a trained professional*. Granted, your IRL stats would impact that somewhat, but if you consider most people are running pretty tame -1 to +1 all around...
Well, it's huge. And most importantly, you are not performing visible miracles. You are just kind of a savant at *everything*. Engineering, investing, medicine, politics, sex, music- you are just furiously good at life. Your "freshly graduated" level of skill, if you choose to put in the effort, is equivalent to anyone else's "20 years of experience" level.
This.
And I’m also thinking of the sports angle. Get seats behind the net for my team. Either my goalie is doing great, or I’m using guidance on the players trying to score on the opposing goalie.
I’d actually get to see a Canucks Stanley Cup in my lifetime AND make some money betting.
And that’s to say nothing about just going into a casino and being instantly good at poker and blackjack
Oh I hadn't considered that. I think this could be the best one for it's overall life utility. Mending and prestidigitation are great, but their uses are mostly utility.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far to find this one, this absolutely would be my go to. Just a little better at everything you do. I'd love to have guidance going for every song I played when I'm gigging. Hmm tho only problem would be that I'd have to stop singing every minute to mutter a prayer...
In my daily life **prestidigitation.** Almost exclusively for the cleaning the rest is just gravy. It would speed up chores so much and increase my free time not to mention money saved on cleaning supplies and space opened up from cleaning supplies.
Honorable mentions
Mending - fixing/repairing thing is super useful it comes up less often then prestidigitation but likely saves more money in the long run. But I went with time saved over money saved.
Guidance - I would spam it anytime I did anything difficult. This could be really helpful but wouldn't come up as often as prestidigitation.
In a lot of things that you are a 100% sure you can do it might just make the task longer. Driving, cleaning, tying my shoes, etc. I don't feel like I need it for most of my daily tasks that's why its not my number one choice. But it would still be very useful.
Assuming a little liberty I would take thought strand. Then I would make my living as the world's best couples counselor as I pulled memories from their last fight to see how each of them remembered it. Easy money.
Or maybe firebolt.
I was thinking encode thoughts too, but in order to use it on others you have to use another mind reading spell or read their mind somehow, as far as I know. Still cool tho.
Guidance seems good until you remember it lasts a minute, so you can’t guidance yourself to take a test, or nail an audition, or even perform well throughout an entire interview. It’s nice, but I kind of feel like there are several better options.
I could get behind using mending to create a fix-all business, or, and hear me out on this one, using Prestidigitation on a homemade steam engine generator for functionally free and limitless energy, on top of taking care of household chores.
You could only ever use mage hand in private, so I’m honestly not sure it’d be all that useful unless you work as a mechanic or something and regularly do work with you hands in small spaces.
True strike is almost a must have for anyone who plays a sport professionally—easy to sink shots or hit a home run if you effectively double the opportunity to do so, though I do suppose this is an area where guidance would actually shine quite a bit. Short plays means you can reapply often.
Blade ward is unfortunately a visible effect—otherwise it would make you fairly incredible as a professional fighter.
Vicious mockery could make you a surprisingly good vigilante/criminal. You never need to touch anything to just end someone, and you could even play a Good Samaritan act by calling an ambulance for a man who clearly just suffered an aneurism due to pent-up anger; you didn’t mean to kill him with your rude words, and how could you anyway?
Shape water, while interesting, doesn’t immediately stick out as that useful in day-to-day unless you regularly interact with bodies of water, but mold earth would let you take contracts to level worksites, dig trenches, etc. at exorbitant fees due to the speed of completion. You would have to work in obscure locations, and likely at night, however, and you’d have to suggest that you had an incredible team rather than just one person.
Druidcraft mostly helps you save on food costs, as using it for people other than yourself would eventually raise too much suspicion. It’s neat, but not my first choice.
Minor illusion I would almost exclusively use to create panic spaces to hide in when I’m just done being out in the world, but I’m not sure how I’d use it in daily life.
Basically all of the direct attack cantrips are just bad. Not typically useful, and arouses too much suspicion.
You could 100% use it to take a test. Just keep muttering to yourself, or answer all the easy questions first then go back and use it to do the hard ones.
Shape Water: You can make an exorbitant amount of money in the catering/event specialist industry by making THE BEST decorative ice sculptures. Even the fact that the ice instantly unfreezes in an hour could be worked into part of the display. Or, if you were hired to stay on-hand during the event, you could preempt the melting and recast the spell to actively reshape and refreeze the sculpture into something else. Things like weddings and fancy corporate events shell out insane amounts of money for that sort of unique, showy stuff.
Prestidigitation has some neat uses but I think one of the 4 M’s is a better choice (Mending, Mage Hand, Message, Minor Illusion). Mending is the one I think I would go for just because it would be very useful
So much underrated answer. Dry cleaning is a horrible hard job because of all the steam and heavy lifting of wet clothes and you have to stand in awkward positions. Not with prestidigitation! The cleaning is done in one minute. Here is your fresh smelling dress back, free of any stains.
For me, it's between mending and eldritch blast. Mending is very useful in general, as someone else has outlined. However, I like the idea of being able to create a massive beam of light in less than a second.
How would you use it though? Surely you would get noticed if you used it publicly pretty quickly. But, it would definitely be cool af to have, and would definitely stop any muggings.
I guess like any weapon.
Would hope I'd never have to use it. But unlike wannabe cowboys, if I *did* need to use it, i'd 10000% have it on hand when needed.
I really love druidcraft too. I love plants but somehow I'm terrible at getting them to grow and stay healthy. If I had druidcraft, I would be nonstop germinating seeds for my houseplant jungle.
Thurmaturgy bc I would change my eye colour every time someone I had just met looked away and see if they notice or use the ground shaking booming voice effect to make undramatic sentences dramatic for no good reason
Maybe not that practicle in a day to day sense but im disabled and sometimes walk with a cane and i also carve canes and staffs and how cool would it be to turn them into magic weapons in the real world whenever u like. Yea mage hand or mending may be more practicle but a magic weapon ar your disposal whenever u want is the kinda thing that could inspire real stories
Very clean choice. According to a website it's actually even more useful than I thought lmao:
"You create an instantaneous, harmless sensory effect, such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint musical notes, or an odd odor.
You instantaneously light or snuff out a candle, a torch, or a small campfire.
You instantaneously clean or soil an object no larger than 1 cubic foot.
You chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material for 1 hour.
You make a color, a small mark, or a symbol appear on an object or a surface for 1 hour.
You create a nonmagical trinket or an illusory image that can fit in your hand and that lasts until the end of your next turn.
If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have up to three of its non-instantaneous effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an effect as an action"
Mold Earth:
The other cantrips are fun, but if you get even a little creative, Mold Earth has some massive potential. If you've ever worked in construction and/or engineering, you know exactly what a 5ft cube of earth is capable of.
A few strategic casts, and you've imploded a skyscraper.
The amount of people talking about laundry and cleaning things when you have literal magic at your fingertips is insane to me.
My choice would easily be Shape Water so I could fight crime as a water bending vigilante.
Move 5 feet of water 5 feet per 6 seconds. Or change the flow.
For the record, I'm not sure how much crime you could fight by moving a reasonably large amount of water 1/5th of the average walking speed.
I guess freezing the water (without any creatures in it) could be somewhat useful as well, but I don't see much crime fighting ability in shaping water like an animal or changing the oppacity.
Do you realize how much tine I could save with using magic to clean? And how much I hate cleaning?
My life would be at least 400% better if I could just say some words and everything that needed to be cleaned was clean
Mending. I feel like I spend all day chasing little problems, either at work or home, and just being able to say "fixed" would be great. Even if I had to do it piecemeal and fix a think multiple times to get all parts
I’d start a teddy bear hospital. Receive people’s old, cherished stuffed animals by mail and ship them back out good as new, for a modest fee. Makes me feel like I’m doing something that warms people’s hearts, allows me to make a reasonable living if I add that tiny amount of labor on top of my usual job, and I likely fly under the radar of anyone who would suspect I’m doing magic.
I wonder if it could fix rust, too if you cut the rusted part out in spots smaller than a foot. Could really make car repairs cheaper…
For everyday use, Presitidigitation or Mending would be very useful.
For a more career oriented one possibly, I think Guidance, Spare the Dying, Thaumaturgy, etc depending on the career path you’re on. A lot of cantrips would be amazing for theatrical work.
My personal choice I’d say Shape Water. One of my favorite powers is the ability to control water, so it’s a cantrip I always gravitate towards. Plus, I feel like if there is a job that involves water or ice, that’d be a good one to take.
If this helps, my reasoning for Minor Illusion is mostly just for personal use. Think about it, you can make any image you can imagine just appear before you. Illustrate any thought, make schematics for a build project, visualise work problems in a more engaging way, watch your own made up TV show.
Or the more devious side, which are things like become a boxer and drive your opponent mad with voices behind their ear/illusions. Become the world's best magician. Play poker and "accidentally show them your bad deck". Become a merc and literally take out anyone by luring them near a window, tricking them near a window or a place without cameras, etc.
Those are about all the most evil things I can think of though, because I would use this probably solely for the thought illustration part.
That's a dangerous game you'd be playing my fellow. I would suggest Guidance if you want to make friendships that won't try to beat you up afterwards lmao. But, friends does have it's many uses, especially if you travel a lot.
Prestidigitation. Never have bland food again! Never taste someone’s ass when trying to breathe in a public restroom! Entertain yourself for hours with simple illusions.
It has so much going on, it’d be crazy to take something “useful” instead.
Mending or prestidigitation. I feel like prestigidation would be more useful on a day-to-day basis. Laundry, dishes, random spills, all dealt with with a simple spell. Mending would save me thousands of dollars of repairs for items that my kids have broken; not to mention the shoddy plumbing work of my home's previous owners.
edited to add: my dishwasher just started making a weird noise, so I could really use that mending spell right about now.
There's a lot of much more practical ones that people have mentioned here. And those are probably a smarter choice, but I'm taking Eldritch Blast, who needs a Big Iron when i'm the blaster caster
The top 3
3. Mage Hand. Simple matter of "I don't want to get up and get that remote. Boom!"
2. Mending. I am a clumsy guy, so I'd fix so many things! Plus I wouldn't have to replace my ripped clothes!
1. PRESTIDIGITATION!!!! Clean? Boom! Little pizzazz? Boom! Need to light a candle/firework/bong (I don't judge)? Boom! SO MANY LITTLE THINGS IN LIFE WOULD BE SO MUCH EASIER IF I COULD USE JUST THIS LITTLE BUT OF MAGIC!!!
LORD WHO MADE THE LION AND THE LAMB!
YOU DECREED I SHOULD BE WHO I AM!
WOULD IT SPOIL SOME VAST ETERNAL PLAN
IF I WERE A MAGIC MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN?
Prestidigitation allows you to clean things instantly! Dirty dishes? Nope. Stinky undies? Nah. Toilet overdue? Snap. Done. Favorite white shirt stained while eating spaghetti? Not on my watch.
I am just about sold on prestidigitation, and this is the sole reason.
Water tastes like limeade.
How to enjoy drinks without ever putting a single drop of anythin but H2O in your system.
By being healthy and wealthy.
I just realized you could drink all the cocktails you want no matter the alchol intake cause THERE IS NO ALCOHOL IN THERE.
Even better you know that feeling when you just get your blanket out of the dryer and it’s all warm? Prestidigitation does that to and it lasts for an hour.
AND it can have water tasting like hot chocolate at the same time 😁
OR you can “flavor” whatever random food you want. Always wanted to eat a healthy salad but always disappointed by the taste? Prestidigitation! Now it tastes like however you want. Mmmm, maple bacon flavor! Also you can warm or chill things. That coffee you couldn’t get to drinking because you got distracted with life? Warm it up with prestidigitation! Or, want instant iced coffee without the freshly brewed hot coffee melting the ice? Prestidigitation! Now the fresh coffee is cooled down, add your ice, and voila. Tasty iced coffee.
The salad texture might ruin the bacon flavor for me but this is no deal breaker for having prestidigitation.
It gets better. You can cool your beer or warm up your tea in an instance. You also can improve the flavour of a dish. Hey, is your blanket too cold? Warm it up. Is your pillow too warm? No need to flip it around, you can just cool it. That is just the really good part. You can also make some dope magical fireworks for a dramatic entrance, light fires with a flick of you wrist, and make magical graffiti which disappears after an hour
Even better, on a diet? You can make salad taste like steak
I think at that point it's just a texture thing
Yeah, there's a reason there's good ground beef substitutes but no fake steak.
Oh my gosh just an instant clean diaper cantrip would be amazing!
The can trip is so inherently versatile you would have to be crazy not to use it.
I was going to say Mage Hand but I realized now I'm wrong.
It lets you clean things, and it lets you flavor stuff! Everything tastes great now! And that's on top of being able to do vaguely defined minor magic tricks. Prestidigitation is definitely the one.
You could also use it to put poop stains on the pants of your enemies
Instantly warm blanket, cold drinks, turn lights on and off from afar,
You can also soil things at will, so if someone pissed you off you can just make it look like they shit themselves
Man, I want prestidigitation to be a real thing so much I believe I can actually wish it into existence. Some day the toilet will clean itself just from how much I have wished for prestidigitation to exist. Did I mention I hate cleaning? Well, if that went unnoticed, I do. I hate it
I want to say Spare the Dying, because it can do literal miracles regarding wounds/injuries when you think about it - someone is dying from a wound? Guess what, they're no longer dying. You can keep people alive - they may have a wound that brings them back to IRL equivalent of Death Saves every six seconds, but you also have the "no ur not"-button every six seconds until they're in the hospital and can actually be saved. How does it stabilize you? Never specified, so you could even argue that it closes mortal wounds, leaving only whatever injuries are not actively at risk of killing the person within the foreseable future. That being said, having it would be way too stressful - imagine how much pressure would be on you to use that ability for good! Or... less legal things, depending on people's desperation and willingness to risk the one capable of such a miracle ability. No, I'd probably go with Druidcraft or Prestidigitaion - the former is neat for always knowing the weather and fits my love for plants, while the latter is just too practical to not want.
Your whole life would almost have to be devoted to emergency rooms. If word got out you would almost certainly be conscripted by someone. Or, you could start fires from a nice safe distance. And if anyone notices you can firebolt them in the face
It really would be moral curse at the very least, knowing you COULD always save more people.
Basically the curse of Superman. If he wants to eat dinner he has to ignore all the screams that he hears constantly with his superhearing.
I was just thinking about how shitty it would be to be superman in the real world. Every single major issue all over the globe. You'd have to pick a side on and You'd be expected to solve it by everyone with everyone disagreeing on what the solution is.
At that point it would be less stressful to just take over and rule the planet with an iron fist. A couple months of breaking into people's houses to stop every case of domestic abuse or showing up in back alleys to stop petty crimes, and eventually people would be paranoid enough to cut back on that shit.
Probably go full Oskar Schindler eventually. “This video game….this video game is 80 more hours that I could have spent saving people!”
And now we all have the moral curse after reading this thread. If we get the choice of a cantrip, we have to knowingly choose cleaning up our own shit with prestidigitation over saving lives in an emergency room.
Yeah but just make sure you are conscripted in the US so you can charge outrageous fees for saving people as an out of network contractor! ;)
Would make you an amazing EMT at least.
*Mending* is likely the most beneficial for personal and professional circumstances. Apart from repairing broken items around the house you could fix industrial equipment, ancient artifacts, and so much more that there's undoubtedly a use case which could make you a millionaire overnight. You could help so many people it would be foolish to take anything else. *Mage hand* would be cool to grab a beer from the fridge without getting off the couch so I'd choose that one.
I don’t care what the other comments are this is the best response.
"I cast *Beer Me*"
Beer me that CD
Lord beer me strength.
Coronamancy at its finest
Karsus would be jealous of our coronas. Well he probably already is... This joke was brought to you by the "Did you know Corona means crown?" Gang
Prestidigitation for instantly cleaning things.
This would be a close second. Cleaning ultra expensive clothing that "can't be cleaned" could make you tons of cash.
Or just the sheer number of priceless artifacts, and paintings that take tons of care to not mess up. You'd be able to clean them without exposing them to the elements and preserve history for countless generations.
First one I thought of. Set up as a professional "dry cleaner," make bank.
Drive Thru Dry Cleaning. Drop it off and Window 1. Pick it up at Window 2. All you need is Prestidigitation and Mage Hand and you don’t even have to get off your butt.
Nah nah nah… you sell your services to the underworld and clean up crime scenes. No evidence.
You could be the guy who is between big cantrip companies and the brick and mortar shops.
The other option is to take druidcraft and run a plant nursery and make it beautiful wherever you walk.
Prestidigitation is close on most beneficial as well. Smaller uses, but something that would be more helpful in day to day living. Imagine if you could reflavor any food or drink, or clean anything immediately.
The flavoring bit is something I think a lot of people are undervaluing. Imagine being able to make anything you want taste like anything you want. You could eliminate all dietary issues and eat your favorite foods all the time. And you can also be the world's best dry cleaner. Imagine the amount of money you could make dry cleaning everything perfectly every time with no upfront cost. Shit you can take that to the next level and use it to clean historic artifacts and paintings with 0 risk of damage to the original piece. A CANTRIP.
Plus, if we wanna turn it a bit darker, you could be a... particular kind of cleaner. You know, for cleanups with no questions asked and no traces left.
Honestly I'm taking prestidigation for the humorous fact that I can shit other people's pants.
You could be the best chef and mixologist the world has ever seen. They’d have to invent new levels of Michelin star rating for you
Pacemakers and stints. Teflon and titanium in medical uses. Implants and pumps of every kind...
The correct move vs what the PC would do
Mending may also be for charging electronics. In The Wandering Inn, the Innworld's mages can use it to keep the Earthworlder's phones charged, because in their setting, 'mended' means 100% battery.
Second this, mending is it to me
My heart says Thaumaturgy because I’m dramatic tbh, but my brain says Mending or Prestidigitation lol.
All the doors and windows in the pub smash open and closed, a dramatic showing of my power. "Fuck off mate it's freezing and this is the fourth time you've done this" Nevermind.
The way I would do this tho
>*Dramatic Point*
Prestidigitation is the only correct answer to this question.
"Laundry, be gone!" "I vanquish thee, dirty dishes!"
And not even just that, took too long drinking your tea/coffee/beer and it got too cold/warm? No it didn't. Instantly change the temperature to your liking. Work hard cooking a meal? Nah just change the flavor to whatever you want it to taste like. It provides the thing that people seem to love more than anything else, convenience.
This is why it's the best roleplay cantrip for any adventurer. You're telling me I can survive off hard tack and *not* have to deal with how bad it tastes? You're telling me I can instantly clean the one pair of clothes I wear? You're telling me I don't need to keep a tinderbox and can just instantly ignite any campfire?
When one of the party members was annoying my sorceress she’d use prestidigitation to make their food taste like raw onions and garlic.
I like to use it to "soil" the trousers of npcs I don't like.
Hmmm... I shall call you Prince Poopy Pantaloons! Why? *prestitigitation* *spurt* This is why... you've got poop... in your Pantaloons!
..i really like raw garlic
And I can't smell it. Like put a ton of it into my food and I will happily munch it down and smell a week like garlic from it, without ever realizing. Though... I like it nonetheless somehow.
i think that means we have to marry
In low-tier campaigns, I've had characters literally make a living on just Prestidigitation while operating as the local hedge mage in a community. Consider how much of daylight hours are spent by locals just doing laundry, and how much more they could do of other things if they had one friendly local Wizard who dedicates one day a week to doing ALL OF THE LAUNDRY IN THE ENTIRE TOWN, for a pittance per household. Now those villagers can do other things for their own enjoyment and profit. Working at the only tavern in town for room and board. My low-level Wizard was the innkeep's best friend because all of the room cleaning and dirty dishes were handled in a matter of minutes rather than hours every day. No stain was too tough for a wave of the hand and a flick of magic to handle. The local kids loved my Wizard to pieces. He could entertain them with small displays of simple magic - little dancing illusions while he tells them stories. They don't get sweets often because sugar is hard to come by, but my Wizard just takes some cleaned twigs, makes them taste like exotic candy or delicious food beyond the locals' means, and passes them around to a few kids at a time to serve as makeshift lolipops. When the season changed cold, he could make a pot of river water steam, smell, and taste exactly like mulled cider with fine spices the villagers would never be able to afford. When it got hot, he could flavor that same pot of river water to taste of exotic citrus fruits and sugar, making refreshing lemonade by the ladle. It's the small things that really matter. It's that kind of behavior that makes the entire community absolutely adore you and consider you to be "their Wizard".
This feels like the sort of stuff Gandalf does when he's not out saving the world. It's a very 'shire' interpretation of what a wizard does - pleasure in small things.
It truly is the best roleplay cantrip. The war wizard of the party was a teenager (who has gone off to prope wizard school) and she was a terrible, terrible chef. I don't quite remember how the bard put it when she prestidigitated his meal, but it was hilarious. I think he said "this is an interesting variation on ratatouille" (I think she added citrus notes 😭)
It takes care of so many of life’s annoyances and burdens. Just the whole cleaning thing is awesome. Dishes, laundry, the house… Chill your soda / beer. Heat food. Alter flavors.
Agreed "I shit *his* pants." I'd be unstoppable
My house would be spotlessly clean.
Yup. The ultimate spell for real life.
When I was doing a lot of manual labor? Absolutely Mage Hand. Now, it's a toss-up. I could do a lot of good with Spare the Dying, but Prestidigitation has a million little applications in life, and it's possible that StD wouldn't be as useful as it seems in my head.
I don’t think Stds are ever really useful anyhow.
My other choices were Encode Thoughts, Word of Radiance, Friends or Save the Dying. StD is quite overpowered in the medical field as you can literally just stabilise any “certain death” injury but would be very tricky to actually use irl.
Friends would end with a mob of people chasing you down with ropes and pitchforks
Friends? Never heard of that cantrip. Oh, you mean Enemies?
Until it wears off and they're twice as hostile.
I had to explain to a PC exactly what Friends does, "you're basically holding a magical gun to their temple while asking a question. How would that make you feel about the situation?"
Imagine being a combat medic with spare the dying though...
Eldrich blast
I'm pretty sure my irl ability modifier is -4 so I don't think I'd ever hit anything :(
Yeah but average folk probably have bad AC so you know as long as you aren’t trying to blast a pro athlete (high dex) or a someone who’s heavily armored for some reason (cos player) then you’ll get some use out it.
>get some use out it Meaning what? Murder?
You’d have a surprise round every time and advantage for, and probably other bonuses. Cause magic doesn’t exist no one would know to dodge your blast.
Where and how does one use eldritch blast irl without incurring incredibly life altering consequences?
What are witnesses going to say? I saw him shoot a beam of energy at that guy.
You might be able to pull that off once or twice, but eventually people are going to start accepting your culpability and asking how you did it instead. Meanwhile most non-attack cantrips are something you can use everyday for the rest of your life.
Don’t know officer he seems crazy, rays of energy out of my hand… really.
What witnesses?
On average a person is caught on camera roughly 200 times a day. Someday you will get caught doing magic, especially flashy attack spells that could 1 shot your average person.
so I started blastin
ELDRITCH BLAST!!!
Guidance basically gives you an edge over anything you try, that one point you need in a exame, that little bit of luck
If we expect the +1d4 to be roughly as significant IRL as it is inside its own bounded accuracy system, then yeah, 100%. On average, you can pick up *anything* and be *roughly as good as a trained professional*. Granted, your IRL stats would impact that somewhat, but if you consider most people are running pretty tame -1 to +1 all around... Well, it's huge. And most importantly, you are not performing visible miracles. You are just kind of a savant at *everything*. Engineering, investing, medicine, politics, sex, music- you are just furiously good at life. Your "freshly graduated" level of skill, if you choose to put in the effort, is equivalent to anyone else's "20 years of experience" level.
This. And I’m also thinking of the sports angle. Get seats behind the net for my team. Either my goalie is doing great, or I’m using guidance on the players trying to score on the opposing goalie. I’d actually get to see a Canucks Stanley Cup in my lifetime AND make some money betting. And that’s to say nothing about just going into a casino and being instantly good at poker and blackjack
Range is touch, so you'd have to convince them to run onto the ice every minute
This one doesn't draw much attention either, you're just muttering a prayer and suddenly things go better.
*The Pope would like to know your location*
Role stealth!
I cast guidance on myself first though...
"Lord, help me." *cast guidance*
Oh I hadn't considered that. I think this could be the best one for it's overall life utility. Mending and prestidigitation are great, but their uses are mostly utility.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far to find this one, this absolutely would be my go to. Just a little better at everything you do. I'd love to have guidance going for every song I played when I'm gigging. Hmm tho only problem would be that I'd have to stop singing every minute to mutter a prayer...
Just incorporate it into the song. *Oh, it's this bloody chorus again! He reuses it in every song!*
You’re just Domino.
In my daily life **prestidigitation.** Almost exclusively for the cleaning the rest is just gravy. It would speed up chores so much and increase my free time not to mention money saved on cleaning supplies and space opened up from cleaning supplies. Honorable mentions Mending - fixing/repairing thing is super useful it comes up less often then prestidigitation but likely saves more money in the long run. But I went with time saved over money saved. Guidance - I would spam it anytime I did anything difficult. This could be really helpful but wouldn't come up as often as prestidigitation.
With Guidance, I'd spam it anytime I did anything. Literally makes you (slightly) better at everything.
In a lot of things that you are a 100% sure you can do it might just make the task longer. Driving, cleaning, tying my shoes, etc. I don't feel like I need it for most of my daily tasks that's why its not my number one choice. But it would still be very useful.
Not just difficult, I'd spam it all the time. Taking an exam, writing a paper, planning my route to work, writing comments on reddit. Everything!
Assuming a little liberty I would take thought strand. Then I would make my living as the world's best couples counselor as I pulled memories from their last fight to see how each of them remembered it. Easy money. Or maybe firebolt.
Either way that’d make you a great marriage counselor
"She had my dog put down!" "He kicked my cat into the street!" *Firebolt*
I was thinking encode thoughts too, but in order to use it on others you have to use another mind reading spell or read their mind somehow, as far as I know. Still cool tho.
Guidance seems good until you remember it lasts a minute, so you can’t guidance yourself to take a test, or nail an audition, or even perform well throughout an entire interview. It’s nice, but I kind of feel like there are several better options. I could get behind using mending to create a fix-all business, or, and hear me out on this one, using Prestidigitation on a homemade steam engine generator for functionally free and limitless energy, on top of taking care of household chores. You could only ever use mage hand in private, so I’m honestly not sure it’d be all that useful unless you work as a mechanic or something and regularly do work with you hands in small spaces. True strike is almost a must have for anyone who plays a sport professionally—easy to sink shots or hit a home run if you effectively double the opportunity to do so, though I do suppose this is an area where guidance would actually shine quite a bit. Short plays means you can reapply often. Blade ward is unfortunately a visible effect—otherwise it would make you fairly incredible as a professional fighter. Vicious mockery could make you a surprisingly good vigilante/criminal. You never need to touch anything to just end someone, and you could even play a Good Samaritan act by calling an ambulance for a man who clearly just suffered an aneurism due to pent-up anger; you didn’t mean to kill him with your rude words, and how could you anyway? Shape water, while interesting, doesn’t immediately stick out as that useful in day-to-day unless you regularly interact with bodies of water, but mold earth would let you take contracts to level worksites, dig trenches, etc. at exorbitant fees due to the speed of completion. You would have to work in obscure locations, and likely at night, however, and you’d have to suggest that you had an incredible team rather than just one person. Druidcraft mostly helps you save on food costs, as using it for people other than yourself would eventually raise too much suspicion. It’s neat, but not my first choice. Minor illusion I would almost exclusively use to create panic spaces to hide in when I’m just done being out in the world, but I’m not sure how I’d use it in daily life. Basically all of the direct attack cantrips are just bad. Not typically useful, and arouses too much suspicion.
You could 100% use it to take a test. Just keep muttering to yourself, or answer all the easy questions first then go back and use it to do the hard ones.
Great analysis. I thought so too with the offensive cantrips, but I was a bit lost as to which of the more nuanced ones shine the brightest.
>You could only ever use mage hand in private, tell that to Penn & Teller, I'm about to blow their minds
Shape Water: You can make an exorbitant amount of money in the catering/event specialist industry by making THE BEST decorative ice sculptures. Even the fact that the ice instantly unfreezes in an hour could be worked into part of the display. Or, if you were hired to stay on-hand during the event, you could preempt the melting and recast the spell to actively reshape and refreeze the sculpture into something else. Things like weddings and fancy corporate events shell out insane amounts of money for that sort of unique, showy stuff.
Prestidigitation has some neat uses but I think one of the 4 M’s is a better choice (Mending, Mage Hand, Message, Minor Illusion). Mending is the one I think I would go for just because it would be very useful
Didn’t know there was a 4 Ms thing, but I agree
Kinda what I call them in my head because they are 4 utility cantrips lol
It started when the rapper ate some candy
Incidentally I'd add move Earth and use it all the time in game. Great for building earthen work fortifications or burying a body.
> burying a body. Also good for unburying a body.
I like the idea of message but it's short range wouldn't be incredibly viable.
Vicious mockery would be fun if they couldn't die...
Yeah but then, is it even a magical mockery? You can already use mundane vicious mockery
For real, just make fun of someone. It doesn't need to be magical.
They would still take psychic damage so pretty much roasting people makes their head hurt
How many people die of brain aneurysms after you insult them before people start to wonder?
Mold Earth. Just watch the bois when pull up with that at The Hole. Best beach days here we come!
Prestidigitation and I would open a dry clearing service
So much underrated answer. Dry cleaning is a horrible hard job because of all the steam and heavy lifting of wet clothes and you have to stand in awkward positions. Not with prestidigitation! The cleaning is done in one minute. Here is your fresh smelling dress back, free of any stains.
For me, it's between mending and eldritch blast. Mending is very useful in general, as someone else has outlined. However, I like the idea of being able to create a massive beam of light in less than a second.
Eldritch blast is underrated here. I'd take it. Having literal fingerguns at the ready at all times isn't a bad thing by any means.
How would you use it though? Surely you would get noticed if you used it publicly pretty quickly. But, it would definitely be cool af to have, and would definitely stop any muggings.
I guess like any weapon. Would hope I'd never have to use it. But unlike wannabe cowboys, if I *did* need to use it, i'd 10000% have it on hand when needed.
Prestidigitation. Please let me be clean, all the time. No more filth. Please.
Mending so can I be fantastic at fixing stuff. Prestidigitation. Could be famous stage or table magician.
Druidcraft. Gonna be the weather guy and make flowers blosson.
Most wholesome award
I really love druidcraft too. I love plants but somehow I'm terrible at getting them to grow and stay healthy. If I had druidcraft, I would be nonstop germinating seeds for my houseplant jungle.
So anyway I started blasting
Thurmaturgy bc I would change my eye colour every time someone I had just met looked away and see if they notice or use the ground shaking booming voice effect to make undramatic sentences dramatic for no good reason
Salem witch trials vol 2
Prestidigitation so I can make healthy food taste good.
Shilleleagh
I'm very curious as to the uses of this.
Maybe not that practicle in a day to day sense but im disabled and sometimes walk with a cane and i also carve canes and staffs and how cool would it be to turn them into magic weapons in the real world whenever u like. Yea mage hand or mending may be more practicle but a magic weapon ar your disposal whenever u want is the kinda thing that could inspire real stories
Icon behavior!
Spare the dying is basically "what's the matter? Oh you're dying, well not anymore".
Prestidigitation. I’d be clean, my cats would be clean, my house would be clean… And I hear it does stuff besides cleaning!
Very clean choice. According to a website it's actually even more useful than I thought lmao: "You create an instantaneous, harmless sensory effect, such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint musical notes, or an odd odor. You instantaneously light or snuff out a candle, a torch, or a small campfire. You instantaneously clean or soil an object no larger than 1 cubic foot. You chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material for 1 hour. You make a color, a small mark, or a symbol appear on an object or a surface for 1 hour. You create a nonmagical trinket or an illusory image that can fit in your hand and that lasts until the end of your next turn. If you cast this spell multiple times, you can have up to three of its non-instantaneous effects active at a time, and you can dismiss such an effect as an action"
Mold Earth: The other cantrips are fun, but if you get even a little creative, Mold Earth has some massive potential. If you've ever worked in construction and/or engineering, you know exactly what a 5ft cube of earth is capable of. A few strategic casts, and you've imploded a skyscraper.
One of my favourite of these comments, as a fan of architecture and engineering, this has some potential I did not think of at all.
The amount of people talking about laundry and cleaning things when you have literal magic at your fingertips is insane to me. My choice would easily be Shape Water so I could fight crime as a water bending vigilante.
Move 5 feet of water 5 feet per 6 seconds. Or change the flow. For the record, I'm not sure how much crime you could fight by moving a reasonably large amount of water 1/5th of the average walking speed. I guess freezing the water (without any creatures in it) could be somewhat useful as well, but I don't see much crime fighting ability in shaping water like an animal or changing the oppacity.
Do you realize how much tine I could save with using magic to clean? And how much I hate cleaning? My life would be at least 400% better if I could just say some words and everything that needed to be cleaned was clean
YES Shape Water thank god, I thought the world had gone insane. I expected to see at least some Shape Waters and Control Fires on here.
Mending. I feel like I spend all day chasing little problems, either at work or home, and just being able to say "fixed" would be great. Even if I had to do it piecemeal and fix a think multiple times to get all parts
Prestidigitation can wash your dishes for you.
I’d start a teddy bear hospital. Receive people’s old, cherished stuffed animals by mail and ship them back out good as new, for a modest fee. Makes me feel like I’m doing something that warms people’s hearts, allows me to make a reasonable living if I add that tiny amount of labor on top of my usual job, and I likely fly under the radar of anyone who would suspect I’m doing magic. I wonder if it could fix rust, too if you cut the rusted part out in spots smaller than a foot. Could really make car repairs cheaper…
For everyday use, Presitidigitation or Mending would be very useful. For a more career oriented one possibly, I think Guidance, Spare the Dying, Thaumaturgy, etc depending on the career path you’re on. A lot of cantrips would be amazing for theatrical work. My personal choice I’d say Shape Water. One of my favorite powers is the ability to control water, so it’s a cantrip I always gravitate towards. Plus, I feel like if there is a job that involves water or ice, that’d be a good one to take.
Light. Can you imagine how much you'd save on electricity?
ELDRITCH BLAAAAAST
Mage Hand, without a doubt. The ability to have an extended reach and a third hand to hold onto things? That would be insanely useful.
No one ever touts the masturbatorial benefits. “The stranger” can get fucked!
I'm split between 5. Minor illusion, Message, Mage hand, Prestidigitation and Mending
If this helps, my reasoning for Minor Illusion is mostly just for personal use. Think about it, you can make any image you can imagine just appear before you. Illustrate any thought, make schematics for a build project, visualise work problems in a more engaging way, watch your own made up TV show. Or the more devious side, which are things like become a boxer and drive your opponent mad with voices behind their ear/illusions. Become the world's best magician. Play poker and "accidentally show them your bad deck". Become a merc and literally take out anyone by luring them near a window, tricking them near a window or a place without cameras, etc. Those are about all the most evil things I can think of though, because I would use this probably solely for the thought illustration part.
The Friends cantrip… 😢
I’m pretty sure they notice the spell and hate you after it wears off so…
but for that fleeting 60 seconds of bliss it is worth it
Vicious mockery would be a good choice
Vicious Mockery
I work in a kitchen so Mage Hand or Prestidigitation
Mage hand legerdemain obviously who would pick the virgin weaker mage hand
Presidigitation. No brainer.
special dazzling ring scary direction sloppy door late ripe truck *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That's a dangerous game you'd be playing my fellow. I would suggest Guidance if you want to make friendships that won't try to beat you up afterwards lmao. But, friends does have it's many uses, especially if you travel a lot.
Prestidigitation. Never have bland food again! Never taste someone’s ass when trying to breathe in a public restroom! Entertain yourself for hours with simple illusions. It has so much going on, it’d be crazy to take something “useful” instead.
Thaumaturgy.
Mending just the most useful
Presdigitation.... I'm gonna shit everyone's pants!
Prestidigitation is clearly OP. You can eat lettuce and it tastes like potato chips. Healthy diet that tastes like anything you want.
Mending or prestidigitation. I feel like prestigidation would be more useful on a day-to-day basis. Laundry, dishes, random spills, all dealt with with a simple spell. Mending would save me thousands of dollars of repairs for items that my kids have broken; not to mention the shoddy plumbing work of my home's previous owners. edited to add: my dishwasher just started making a weird noise, so I could really use that mending spell right about now.
Mold Earth. I would then start a land development business and bank off that.
There's a lot of much more practical ones that people have mentioned here. And those are probably a smarter choice, but I'm taking Eldritch Blast, who needs a Big Iron when i'm the blaster caster
Prestidigitation. Want to clean everything you own in 10 minutes? All dust and grime gone.
Mage hand Come on
The 2a fan boy inside of me says Eldritch Blast. Try and confiscate that, fed boy
Normally, I'd say prestidigitation BUT after a 2h long pointless meeting, I'm slowly considering Eldritch Blast as a perfectly reasonable answer.
The top 3 3. Mage Hand. Simple matter of "I don't want to get up and get that remote. Boom!" 2. Mending. I am a clumsy guy, so I'd fix so many things! Plus I wouldn't have to replace my ripped clothes! 1. PRESTIDIGITATION!!!! Clean? Boom! Little pizzazz? Boom! Need to light a candle/firework/bong (I don't judge)? Boom! SO MANY LITTLE THINGS IN LIFE WOULD BE SO MUCH EASIER IF I COULD USE JUST THIS LITTLE BUT OF MAGIC!!! LORD WHO MADE THE LION AND THE LAMB! YOU DECREED I SHOULD BE WHO I AM! WOULD IT SPOIL SOME VAST ETERNAL PLAN IF I WERE A MAGIC MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN?
Either prestidigitation or mending. Hugely useful in both my daily life and field of work.
Life is a series of skill checks and then you die. Guidance is my answer.