This is why in my worlds each town or city district has a "Washer Witch". Everyday people stop by her house with the days washing hang out and gossip while she works thru it. Due to this she's a valued community member because she's seen every ones dirty laundry both literal and figuratively.

Prestidigitation makes murder investigation a lot more difficult. A caster can easily erase blood stains or, depending on the DM, add them to someone's weapon

Also you have to consider that some spices were used to preserve food in hotter climates

I work in production. And i can say that 'soil' in an industrial sense could mean the same as applying a coating. You could soil printing plates with ink and leave them perfectly 'soild' so they apply perfectly with every press, to coat gears and chains with oil without disassembly, to oil weaponry to prevent rust, coat barrels with wax and/or other sealants, or to coat arrows with poison or disease durring warfare without risk of self contamination nor dilution. Soil is scary and useful when you pick what something is soiled with.

One of my most ingenious uses of prestidigitation is by conjuring a block of gallium and using the heating and cooling while inserting it into a door's keyhole to make a perfectly fitting key. May be difficult to justify it to a DM, but it only takes two sensory effects

You could make a magic item that casts prestidigtition and acts as a fridge, and making a magic item cast a cantrip is fairly cheap

Basically the concept of magewrights in the Eberron setting. They common workers that can cast cantrips as rituals. Lighting street lamps, repairs, probably plumbing services too. Love that setting

As a DM, my rule for cleaning with prestidigitation is to treat it like the chill/warm part, where you affect 1 cubic foot at a time. So you can clean large windows, but it would take multiple castings, each only cleaning a small area.

I love these magic worldbuilding videos! One other cantrips I believe would have wide application in a settling is Mold Earth. As someone who’s helped dig holes for fence posts, among other digging projects, I can say that having the ability to move 125 cubic feet of dirt every 6 second would’ve been a godsend. This use could also have utility is warfare, whether it’s digging trenches or burrowing under walls. The ability to create 5-foot squares of difficult terrain might be used to slow enemy combatants. Assuming you have advanced knowledge of their arrival (perhaps through a scout with the sending spell), you could have 8 people with this cantrip spend 30 minutes creating an area of difficult terrain bigger than a football field, which would last for another 30 minutes.

I remember showing my Players a basic idea of a city and them commenting about how clean it was for a medieval inspired world. My response? It may be a medieval world, but it’s still fantasy. It helped that I reviewed at the Spell List and found Prestidigitation was a cantrip. I now have a Prestidigitation Cleaning Team running around my city clean stuff on call. Definitely helps since one Player decided to make their character a drunkard. 😅

Enchanting plates with prestidigitation to emulate flavours could be a high class novelty for entertaining guests. A great crafting job for the experienced traveler who sells to kings and nobles; or adventurers desperate to pretty up their rations for the next month. Always a fan of enchanting spell effects; if the DMs world would allow. And many enchanted items use charges that refresh daily or by some interaction. The cheap ones only have a few set charges, the moderate ones recharge when given a spell slot, expesive ones have 2 daily charges.

Also, it being a CANTRIP would make learning it more important than many trades. It would be unlikely to find someone who does not know it or at least know someone who does. Also the created handheld item would result in a very fast development of anti-counterfeiting measures. Shopkeeps will test the weight and shape of every coin and often insist that goods are paid for using lesser currencies when a stranger walks in, being able to pay for something with a gold coin would be a sign of trust.

the flavour changing capabilities of prestidigitation could potentially change the flavour of food in order to make the taste of poison undetectable? I dont know how relevant traditional poison would really be in a world with magic, but hey! A potential use. Great video

The ilusiory part the best use I can think of is teaching and prototyping an item. Using image and trinkets to show a concept is absurdly useful. You can literally cut hours of teaching or brainstorming just by making a trinkets or a imagine. Not only you can show the concept in a really concise way you also can inspect the flaws of the prototype even before making the first iteration.

I used Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation on an illusion wizard I had who's background was basically special effects for a traveling show. Which might say more about minor illusion, but still

As someone who works in a hostel, this cantrip would cut down on about 75% of my job! If only... I'd love to hear your take on magic mouth, depending on the DM it can be really OP

I love prestidigitation and thaumaturgy, you can do so much, without needing a whole ton

The ability to clean rapidly could also have great effects on disease, once people had a basic understanding of it. Even if they didn't know about bacteria, if it was so easy to clean things they might do so as a preference and keep people healthier by accident.

I'd imagine chilling and warming would be good for warming/cooling blankets for the sick or weary, it would be invaluable to caregivers or nurses. Also for chefs it would be good for moving semisolid like syrups, butters, or sauces

In 3.5, when the Prestifigitation's creations lasted for the duration of the spell, not just the end of your next turn (in exchange, instead of any non-magical trinket, you could only make brittle, artificial looking things), I came up with the "0-calorie snack" use: You know what's brittle and looks artificial? Stackable chips (or really, potato chips of all kinds). One could also argue for popcorn. And I even convinced my GM that mouse au chocolat qualifies (everyone agrees Prestidigitation can make bubbles, foam is nothing but a mass of tiny bubbles, and chocolate mouse is a relatively stable foam of milky chocolate). The color, flavor and scent can be fixed with the same spell. The 3.5 version specifically states that the spell can not produce harmful effects, so you can't even get an upset stomach. And after an hour, it just disappears. I designed a Wondrous Item based on this: the Snack Bowl.

I've been in the work force since I was 10 doing mostly hard labor until my late 20s. I've often thought how IRL cantrips would completely change the world as we know it. Prestidigitation and druid craft are always the go to spells in thought experiments and conversations like these.

Personally I think the name _prestidigitation_ should refer to minor, fine-tuned _telekinetic_ effects, like Sleight of Hand but as magic. The cantrip as currently written basically covers all non-combat cantrip effects, which is why its old name of Cantrip was split up into other minor spells in the first place. Coupled with the tendency to run out of new cantrips to select after a few levels, it'd be more flavorful for wizards to need to learn these minor-but-free-to-cast effects separately from a broad list. Make Ignition, Extinguishment, Prestitigitation, Chill Food, Warm Food, Flavor Food, Magic Marker, Tiny Illusion, Soft Tunes, Emit Scent, and so on all their own separate Cantrips. They still have a great worldbuilding effect but now have more individual flavor for your caster based on what you choose. There should logically be more cantrips than spells of any other level. Instead, they just threw like 90% of things that aren't Make Torches Pointless, Spare the Dying, and I Make An Attack But It's Magic And Not A Weapon into a single spell and made it overly versatile.

Prestidigitation is my favorite spell because if you're creative you can do a lot with it. Any object ANY object that can fit in your hand you can make a copy of it. Keys, coins, badges, jewelry, artifacts, organs. The important thing to remember is that the flavor etc are temporary. You use it for a quick effect like my favorite con: fake health potion. The magic snakeoil salesman. Or hiding the smell of poison. Ye ol stone block that looks gold. The smell of a dragon lair or bear to scare animals. Can you tell I like to play the charlatan mage? Also I would love the cleaning when adventuring. Fix my robes all the time after a fight. But uh. Hell no I'm not cleaning every villagers clothes every day. But I have trolled a noble by soiling their linnens with it literally every night they looked away.

If it were me in a DM role I think cleaning by prestidigitation I would houserule slightly that it isn't limited by the object size, but rather limited by being able to clean at a limited rate of that square foot per 6 second round. So you could clean that 10 square foot window just fine, but it would take you a full minute instead of a single action cast.

There's a reason prestidigitation has the nickname of "lesser/least wish"

enchant a box with the cooling effect and you have refrigerators. enchant a spork to flavor your food several different ways according to a dial on the back, enchant undershirts to maintain a certain temperature to be comfortable in heat and cold. enchant a box to clean anything you put in it. xanathars puts common items creation cost at 50gp but common items include stuff equivalent to first or second level spells a cantrip would be even cheaper. so with just prestidigitation the noblemen and merchants of a dnd world would be living at a standard comparable to our modern lives.

that jab at adventuring parties at the end lol

Haven’t watched yet (1:03 at tine of writing) but I love these deep dives into how specific spells would affect worldbuilding. They are amazing exercises in creativity and lateral thinking and I love you Tom for publishing content like this ❤

In Rome, washing clothes was a public service, so we can imagine there could be a class of Prestidigitators who'd wash linens and light up the city as a service to the public, which could be race based or Class based.

play an arcane trickster rogue and cast prestidigitation: make the local taverns hot beef stew taste like vanilla ice cream and fuck around with the mind of all the patrons. Also make digestible poison taste better. (or bitter medicine)

Prestidigitation is so cartoonishly overpowered if you have someone creative using it. You can clean things, OR make them dirty. You can change the flavour of food to good, bad, or whatever. You can literally mess with someone, by making everything taste like different stuff, with every bite. Go nuts with it. "Oh no, they are looking for a thief all in dark clothes?" prestidigitation. Now you are wearing yellow. "Oh darn, my drink went cold." prestidigitation. "This food is bland and i'd rather be eating steak" prestidigitation, now it tastes like steak.

Cantrips would make any caster an invaluable commodity in any society. And prestidigitation is by far the most useful cantrip in this regard. Keep your Eldritch Blast, I’m going to earn a million gold pieces at level 1.

I remember the 3.0 Dnd Book, the Tome and the Blood having a whole sub chapter only on prestidigitation. Putting a lot of emphasis on its utilities and potentials. It seems in the later editions this cantrip didn't diminished in value and instead... in 3e cantrips were not free so you had to spend one of your limited spells slot to have one hour of those effects and it was already quite useful... now that you can spam it, it is almost broken as cantrip, it may replicate others cantrip with decent outcome so in the end deprecating those. In general I think prestidigitation is good of a single caster having a lot of versatility with little effort. For large groups and organization probably it's most efficient to use specific skills/spells to achieve those taks in the magnitude required. Like designing magic objects and such to achieve modern like effects. Having a caster (with their own value) expended full time to keep those effects in places 24/7 is probably a waste.

Glad you covered this! I think I suggested it back on the sending video, but even if you didn't see my comment I think it's a great topic. One thing I'd like to mention, as you stated with the Sending spell, so many people would want trained mages for that, I think it's only safe to assume that darn near EVERYONE wants training for cantrips. And I believe in 5e, there is no minimum stat required, so to me it seems like 1 out of 100 is way to small. How long it takes to earn that 1st level of spellcasting to get cantrips is a great question, because why wouldn't every village be teaching it as part of just the normal "things we need to know" education? Also, with the prevelance of cantrips, why wouldn't every Chef learn it? Any royal would want a bunch of low level casters around, which seems quite reasonable (depending on the rarity of magic in your own world obviously). Ballrooms that have pitch perfect notes faintly playing in the background, with perfectly seasoned appetizers that have the right temperature, would seem the norm. The only real obstacle to the "wizard is the most common class" world is how you've decided people go about learning magic in your setting. Anyway, great video, keep it up!

I'll never forget get the first time I saw prestidigitation used to soil something in game. A pompous Noble for about 15Mins went around questioning everyone about who shit his pants. Priceless.

I can imagine a wizard wandering through the snow casting prestidigitation on his coat or robe to make it warm for the next hour. Hax

In a good aspect the chilling effect is more useful than you know Certain foods being mostly warm with just one chilled component is very good depending on the food Try having English muffins and an egg both hot with a pice of Canadian bacon from the fridge

Just finished the flavor section and I got an idea for a wizard who dabbles in fine cooking who chooses to study all the culinary applications of prestidigitation as their dissertation project. It would be an interesting (additional) personality quirk to add to my existing goblin-gravedigger-turned-self-taught-spellcaster. Thanks for the inspiration, Tom 😃

It still takes 6 seconds to light each candle, though, not a whole castle's worth in one go. It would be outrageous to employ a wizard instead of a commoner just to light candles at such a slow rate

It says to heat, chill, or flavor 1 cubic foot of nonliving materials. It doesn't just mean food. Comfort to warm one's clothes in cold weather, or chill in hot weather. Temperature sensitive traps can be managed until disabled or escaped. I have also always ruled that the 1cubic foot is the volume the spell can cover. So a large item like plate armor, a wagon, or a house can be cleaned with the spell at a rate of 1 cubic foot at a time.

There was once a guard in front of a door I wanted to sneak into. I used this spell to soil his socks and when the discomfort became to much for him he walked away to clean his socks and in the mean time I walked right through

I think you are really underselling how AMAZING it would be to be able to warm or chill the clothes you and possibly a companion are wearing. I think that this would open up a lot more land in hotter or colder places. Especially things like having a heated jacket during the dead of winter or a chilled jacket in heatstroke weather would be incredible

Baldurs gate 3 has a note about using prestidigitation to clean floors, so that implies you can use it to clean a 1 foot area of space even if the entire object doesnt fit inside that space

For the chilling of food, maybe in addition to a container that holds temperature, like a double-walled box with some insulating material between the inner and outer walls, that might allow for prolonged storage of food without the need for continuous recooling?

voices and hallucinations could be used for psychological warfare. they could be used against the soldiers and generals of the enemy army, etc. or even some powerful wizard could infiltrate the vicinity of the ruler of the enemy country and with sounds and hallucinations make this ruler go crazy. Great Video!

The illusion portion would be very useful in teaching language vocabulary, particularly between languages, as a sort of flashcards system. It eould also be quite useful in modeling things that are difficult to relate, like a dwarven urgosh, a waterclock, an umber hulk, or a coat of arms or sigil -- great for returning with a scouting report.

Two further uses of the flavouring part of prestidigitation: For one you can make medicines that need it more palatable or even potentially more effective for something like nausea if you flavour with ginger. A second use is protecting food from pests by flavouring with intense spiciness or other repelling flavours, since when the spell ends the food will go back to its normal flavour.

I used prestidigitation to create a copy of a key for the manacles that I was trapped in as a sorcerer. Subtle spell allowed me to use it while restrained. It was great, and allowed since locks like that had super simple keys and I pointed that out to my dm.

There is also world building uses for the 2 last points, making a mark or a symbol on a object could be used to also convey messages ou secrets, for exemple i can imagine a line of outposts shooting arrows with symbols to each other during one hour. Second, it doesn't specify neither the size of the symbol or the surface, so it could be used on a canvas or a wall to help making paintings , and also on the surface of the ground for exemple to plan a construction/escavation or making a sculpture. And last, the Illusory image that can fit in your hand could be useful if for example in a portrait if you are searching for someone that is missing or a criminal, or for identification as one diplomat/embassador or some cultist would show a especific secret image that identify yourself the some authority/king

07:20 My guideline for temperature: . Chill: The point of maximum density of water: ~ 4°C . Warm: The temperature of a hot blood humanoid: ~40°C | . I also use this for a lesser version (common magical wondrous item) of the Decanter of Water ["Fountain" mode only], that gives either cool salt water ("Abyss") or warm fresh water ("HotSpring")

In regards to heating and chilling, I've run into murmurs online that in previous editions it was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit in either direction, up to a max of 140 F or a minimum of 40 F. So enough to keep food above the 135°F threshold for hot holding, but only if it was already warm to begin with. Whereas it's enough to keep food below 41°F as long as it's temperate.

Speaking agriculture, animate dead may free everyone from back breaking rural labor

In so far as why not to annoy the local hedge wizard I have an excellent example. A poor hedge wizard travels to his lords court (know for being both raucous and decadent) to beseech aid for the village; only to have his people’s needs laughed away and he himself derided. Fart smells, rancid eye watering fart smells (think what happens when you eat Taco Bell). All it takes is a generally out of sight part of the room.

most DMs I know apply the 1ft³ limitation to one casting. So if it's bigger it just means it takes longer to cover 1ft³ at a time

There is one important use which was not discussed in the soil/clean section which I think would be world-changing: forensics. The ability to muck around with a crime scene in an unlimited capacity (either by cleaning evidence or making false ones) is absolutely huge and would completely change the way a crime scene is evaluated and analyzed, as any potential item of interest could be altered to cover the perp’s tracks or purposefully made to falsely incriminate the innocent. A detective would probably have to have detect magic as a standard part of their toolkit and probably other higher level spells as well solely to take into account the use of prestidigitation

Ive been working on a character to be the "ultimate planeswalker." Someone who can travel to and at least survive for a time in many if not all of the various elemental, celestial, energy, etc. planes that lie within the standard D&D cosmologies. My request is how do you think such travel would affect the worlds our characters live? Different classes access such abilities at wildly different levels, not to mention the many "natural" access points that may or may not exist within a given world. I hope its not too broad a topic and i certainly wont mind if you only do a specific aspect but id be glad to hear any thoughts you have on the matter.

A character I played previously was a chef; i maxed them out on cooking abilities, gave them a backstory of being a top student of a culinery school (or the equivalent for that world), and then gave them prestidigitation because they were also somewhat lazy amd didn't want to do everything flawlessly every time, and would cover any mistakes with flavour changing once the food was edible. I have also played a chef properly, back in 3.5e for a game starting at level 16, i had max skill ranks in profession: chef and several in craft: food (skill synergy bonus, yo), I had a set of cooking equipment with a +2 bonus, and i spent literally 10,000gp on a type 4 bag of holding and ingredients. Or just on ingredients, i may actually have gone that hard. Definitely had a dedicated bag of holding for cookery though. The Arms and Equipment guide had price lists for foods and spices. Salt is 1cp per ounce, saffron is 65gp per ounce, for example. I had every spice in at least some capacity. My total skill and item bonuses to any cooking roll would have enabled me to make food that could literally make gods weep (check result of 50+). The prestidigitation method is far easier.

Ancient persia (which was a dessert society) invented a structure called a yakhchāl which sort of means "ice pit" and because of complex thermodynamics they could basically create ice in them. Once they had a base amount of ice in there they only needed to put water in for it to freeze. I wonder if something similar could be done with prestedigitation. Of course not freeze the water, but if they could create a structure and then have mages cool it down and find a way to keep the inside cool, employing mages to maybe drop by every now and then to lower the temperature wouldn't be that unrealistic.

well at the beginning of this video, I imagine it would summon in a large liquid filled hollow round bar with a circular prism encapsulated within the posterior of the cylinder while a force pushes it down onto the phylanges of the enemy, causing press de-digitation

My wizard in an Icewind Dale campaign would warm up rocks with this spell and keep them in his coat to keep warm. It would help with exploration into more extreme environments

I can see how flavoring wouldn't have that big of an impact on the world. However, I could see there being chefs that use prestidigitation to create flavors that spices are not able to make. Perhaps specialty restaurants using specially made bland base food with good texture as the foundation of a prestidigitation chef's work. I'm realizing that I'm kind of describing an ice cream shop. Honestly, yeah, I'm gonna add a magic ice cream parlor to my campaign now.

One of my favorite characters made was a snobby know it all elf magus that used magic for absolutely everything. Took a pound of rough meat and magically turned it into incredibly tender perfectly cooked steak within a minute. He was annoying to the rest of the party but was the striker and knowledge guy of the group, sometimes face. He looked down on almost everyone who couldn't use magic and having to do stuff without magic.

This is a very well-thought-out video! I’ve seen others that get into creative uses of prestidigitation, but I didn’t think about smoke signals or beekeeping!

Mold earth would have the same effect for agriculture as the industrial revolution did. Mold Earth is ~0,5m³ earth moved per second. A typical plow cuts 30cm deep. Lets say it cuts a surface of 10*30cm = 300cm² That would mean you could draw a line with ~16,7meters per second. That's 60km/h (37 miles per hour) So you would put your plowing caster on the back of a cart and have them cast 2 or 3 lines at once. You now have a tractor.

The flavoring part would make a lot of sense for traveler or marching army. Look at the history of armies supply’s there always the soul food kind of ration. That is especially picked for keeping the moral as high as possible. This Cantrip reduce the stress in the logistics of the army to provide sweets for example. Also you can create sensory effects. Adding spiceness or crunchyness. wouldn’t be that absurd. Other thing for a gourmet wizard is the control this cantrip give in cooking. Since cooking in open flames is a lot harder then doing on a stove. You can not only tune the heat of the food you are cooking but also cooking faster since you don’t need to wait to warm it up. For a cauldron this would be amazing. Even today.

The worldbuilding thing that this kinda ties to and actually rather confuses/intrigues me is the idea of verbal or somatic components and what the average person thinks of them. I can't imagine having to chant magic words or flail my arms every time I .... turn on my phone or something. Do most fantasy people know about verbal and somatic components exist and what they are? Can the layman pick up on how a spell is cast?

very good video on a very good cantrip... and even thou prestidigitation is one of my alltime favorits to have, you helped me to find a few new options to use it for. thank you for that :D

For the conjured tricks bit, I conjured images of animals dancing around above my hand to distract and make the last surviving kid from an orphanage laugh after a gelatinous cube took everything and everyone from her.

A world with just D&D Cantrips would be completely different than our own

My friend killed an immortal vampire using the 'cleaning' aspect of 'prestidigitation'

I think there are possibly many more applications when it comes to "soiling" objects, as long as the DM allows for for some degree of control over what the object is soiled with. For example, if we assume that the object becomes soiled by attracting nearby loose material more or less at random, this could be used to both clean more spaces more effectively (putting a smooth stone inside a bucket and "soiling" it over and over as you move around an area) but also to achieve low grade telekinesis. Think of a service where you give them your armor, they clean it completely, and afterwards they put it in a sealed container with only a plate of protective oils and cast the spell through glass, causing the oils to cover the armor instantaneously. Tape and similar materials could be placed in areas you don't want to cover with whatever you're applying. This is only a small example, of course. Once you start really trying to find ways to use spells, trying to "break" physics in ways humans are historically so very intensely prone to, I think we can get much more done than it might first appear ;)

I thought of an item while listening to this while working: a Butler Box. set it in a room, press the button, and it lightly dusts everything.

I think you missed a bit here. Considering you don't need to have a wizard hanging around to do all you laundry. What a clever wizard would do would be to enchant a basket with Prestidigitation Type: Clean. And then hire some urchin to run the local laundry shop. The cost of making a cantrip scroll is 25 gold and takes 1 day. For a item enchanting it seems to be roughly double cost and work. That still makes it so that for 2 days and 50 gold, the wizard apprentice can have a 2 basked laundry shop. Either way, it would be quite easy to make any effect of Prestidigitation into a small, cheap magical item. As for the sparks and illusions? Toys for the kids! I mean, why not have a toy lizard that spews out illusion fire and roars whenever the kid give the toy a squeeze. As for the army, there is even better use. I would argue that a box that has been enchanted with Frostbite is capable of freezing food within. If not, just use Ice Knife or something similar. The result should be a freezer box tho. And now you can have Corporal McCannonfodder take his gruel, hard biscuit and "fresh" veggies to another, large, plate that has been filled with different flavors by Prestidigitation. Does he want chicken broth with some sugar bread? Or maybe a beef stew with a steak to the side. Sure, the consistency in what he eats doesn't match the taste, but if he just closes his eyes and dream a bit, the food is pretty good. And for moral, that matters a lot! But there are 3 questions I would really, really love for you to answer in a video. 1. What is the highest spell level the average army would have access to? 2. How would a city defend against such an army? 3. And how does a city defend against a dragon? The last question might not be too relevant for a setting with few dragons, but if they are regular enough, any kingdom ought to have more then a few tricks for when a dragon comes around.

Amazing video. Regarding refrigerating food, 10:12 , there are simpler solutions than two casters working shifts. Any material which undergoes a phase change near 5 Celsius (or just had a lot of thermal inertia like a brick) could "store the cold" from a prestidigitated fridge. Given that people would historically go to great lengths to transport ice for food preservation, this is somewhat justifiable in terms of effort

Ooooooh. Next world I build will have a Karen/Ken caster in every town who wields their social importance as a cudgel. Or maybe the importance of the local caster has lead to magic being a “nobles only” thing since sorcery is bloodline and wizards/witches are educationally based.

+1 for every time Tom has to slow down to say "prestidigiation"!

To light a small campfire, you need to transfer energy to material and heat it up. And to put the fire out you either need to deprive it of oxigen or to rapidly cool it down by a very significant degree. Since nothing in the spell description indicates that the mage can destroy mundane matter, i would assume he doesn't make oxigen disappear (which would actually make the spell even more broken than it already is). So the fourth effect of "chilling and warming" in my mind is essentially the same as the second, you transfer energy to or from the object. Considering that, say, to instantly light even a small campfire in the middle of winter you would have to heat it from, let's say -20 degrees all the way to (i think) around +300 degrees... That's a lot of energy to work with. So i would say that a prestidigitation caster can DEFINITELY freeze water or bring it up to a boil. And even if he can't do it with one cast (since 1 cubic foot is more material than a small campfire, i presume), it's unlikely that the matter is going to cool faster than he can cast again and again. So yeah, not warm to the touch. Piping hot, popping like popcorn. I said it before, and i'll say it again, ALL D&D spells are completely ridiculous. D&D is allergic to serious worldbuilding because of it, none of the writers bothered to think how any of this would realistically work together and no DM is capable of accounting for it either. Edit: ah, yes, **soiling and cleaning**.. So it actually CAN create and destroy mundane matter. My bad. Well, i'm not going into wider implications of that as well. I still would assume that it puts out fire by cooling it.

I have a Tabaxi Arcane Trickster who looks like a tiger. Fun facts: 1. Human hearing range spans from 20 Hz to 20k Hz. 2. Tigers can hear both below and well above the human hearing range. Those below human hearing sounds are called infrasound. 3. Though not consciously percievable, some infrasounds can trigger a low level 'fight or flight' reaction (not just in humans). It gives one that 'spooky' feeling. My rogue can use Presiditation to create a) a horrible smell such as rotting meat, and then b) an infrasound (which he can hear but others cannot) that gives those nearby a bad feeling. Combine that with something like Minor Illusion that makes him look like a ghoul and, well... instant disadvantage rolling against the Fear spell about to be cast at them. Takes a little setup but gives great verisimilutude.

so in my created world Peasents (as farmers) have to carfully think if they should send one of thair children to wizard school since it can be a great boon and several families in a village might have someone who can cast Prestidigitation in perticular, the two most sought after spells are Prestidigitation and mending, the reason why not all of them have learned it is because magic is hard to learn and can be harder to teach with maybe even a year or two needed to learn just the basics

something that i would really like to see a video about food creating spells, like goodberry or Create Food and Water, famine would be pretty much extincted? do nobles instead of having dozens of cookers would have just a cleric that uses heroes feast in fine feasts and create food and water on a daily basis? would those nobles even stop having worries with poison because the spell can be created in his front?

The only thing I would note is that it lasts one hour, limited to 3 per person. So having a prestidigitation fridge would work you would need someone on hand 24/7 to keep it working constantly. There could be some gel material you cool to get most of the way there at that point you have a mideviel icebox.

I would wonder if Prestidigitation could also be lore expanded as having been... NOT as useful and only sort of recently (last 100 years maybe?) gotten to this degree of utility. Like, 10,000 years ago it ONLY did the shower of sparks stuff. The purely demonstrative magic. It's literally just magic that proves magic is magic. And its only been through millennia of research and development as well as shared conclusions that new features got added on as they figured them out. So right after sparkles, the fire starter stuff was developed because it would be the most obvious and useful. But it was a SEPARATE development about how to put those fires back out again. And different regions might have had different priorities. So over the often silly-long histories of fantasy worlds, you could mark rough centuries when each new function of the spell came into popular usage.

You missed an obvious use for soiling. Dyed cloth is just stained cloth. The spell lets you color something for an hour transformatively, sure, but soil something in Rock Snail innards and leave it there for a few hours, then wash it by hand instead of with the spell (which would presumably clean away all stains it was capable of producing) and you have Tyrian Purple.

Prestidigtition is one of my favorite spells, and has been since 3E!

0:00 Intro 1:33 Fire and Smoke 7:10 Temperature Control and Flavoring 15:10 Conjuring Tricks and Sensory Effects 16:11 Cleaning 22:18 Outro

One useful cast of this cantrip would be casting the smell of skunk spray in the path of a pursing group or beast. Could be enough to turn them around.

You missed a MAJOR use of those 'parlor tricks'. Police Work Cop: Ma'am, can you describe the guy who took your purse? Hedgewomen: "Of course. His face looks like this" Presents an image "He was wearing these clothes" Presents and image. "Here's some copies." Makes 3 detailed figurines of the criminal for the cops to take and split up. One of which is brought to a magic cop so they learn the shape and reproduce it. The pure ability to transfer information that exceeds the limitations of language can not be ignored. Can you imagine being able to tell the cops exactly what a criminal smells like? Or to have a SWAT team with different colored sparks to silently communicate with their whole team? I've been inspired, Magic cops is now the focus of my next dnd campaign.

On the fire topic, i wouldn't allow the presditigitation cantrip to be used alone, only as a starter to make a regular campfire. This makes the create bonfare more useful

I think that you're overestimating the time it takes to invent, learn and spread the use of a spell such as prestidigitation as a way to start and extinguish fires in early human development. I think it would look somewhat like it does in our world, though you are absolutely right that this would be the main use of the cantrip. It also made me think about how the classes of caster would appear in the world - Wizards would be a late edition, probably learning of spells cast by the other classes and magical creatures and figuring out how to cast them themselves. Wizards would probably only appear around the same time as farming. I think that the first ever spellcasting classes to exist would be, in rough order: - Sorcerers (who come into contact with magical beings and are changed as a result), - Druids/Rangers (using their knowledge of plants and animals to reproduce minor magical effects with them, hunting and gathering in a magical world would result in magical means to do so), - Bards (story telling and socialisation is the most important part of why early humans were so succesful, imagine someone telling a story around a campfire where the flames almost seem to dance into the shapes of the story, a mother who can send anyone to sleep with her lullabies) - Paladins (oath of feeding my family, imagine a hunter that smites the boar that charges at him, or a warrior who's allies seem bolstered by their presence, a healer whos very touch seems to clear wounds away) - Clerics (these were hard to place as I don't know much about how and when religion develops, but I assume that they would follow the establishment of religion, or cantact with humans to gods/soon to be gods - DnD gods seem to be powered by belief so it stands to reason that some were born as a result of the stories told instead of the other way around. Gods are annoying when thinking about this, like an infinite wrench generator) - Warlocks (also difficult to place for the same reason as Clerics as they *require* powerful beings with which a pact can be made, they may precede Clerics, follow them, emerge simultaneously, come after Wizards or act as a precursor to them) - Wizards (as explained above, probably a similar development of spells to tools, would act as a way forewards into spellcasting most of the time developing and testing new techniques. There would be a certain level of feedback between all caster classes, as one class develops a spell others try to recreate it, to varying success. A wizard was probably responsible for the classification of spell types, magic schools and classes: arcane, divine, primal; evocation, divination, etc; Bard, Druid, Cleric - I forsee Druids and Rangers being the same catagory for a while but splitting pretty early on, and Paladins being quite difficult to define/distinguish and there being differences across cultures as to whether they are called Clerics or Rangers at first) In my mind this splits into three distinct eras of magic: - Innate magic: Sorcerors, Druids, Rangers, Bards. These are things that would appear to be natural consequences of living in a magical world. - Intermediary magic: Paladins, protoWizards and protoClerics. Magic that requires communication, casting styles that I believe would come early in social development and family/tribal structures but would need the establishment of the other classes in order to arise. ProtoWizards refer to anyone who could successfully recreate another’s spell, such as a single aspect of prestidigitation. ProtoClerics are anyone whos belief in stories allows them to recreate the fantastical elements of them - Developmental magic: Clerics, Warlocks and Wizards. These require a pretty stable and widespread societal structure. All this speculation obviously ignores any direct interference caused by gods or powerful beings on the development of humans, and their creation as a civilisation-having species or any knowledge bestowed upon them. We are assuming that humans arrived in this world through natural (evolutionary) means. Note than any reference to "humans" could be replaced with your race of choice.

I used it to make a thunder noise which confused the tremor sense monster we were fighting enough to allow us to win.

You forget the tactical and combat uses of that spell. You can set up three symbols ahead of time and cancel them at will. You could use this as a preset alert to your comrades. i.e. If the red mark disappears attack from the flank, if the color on your armband disappears then somebody is coming and my absolute favorite "HELP".

For the soiling of undergarments you must remember subtle spell. We also get 3 effects, not just one. For the price of one sorcery point a fairly low level sorcerer can soil your drawers, cause a foul smell, or make the sound of... well, you know. Yes, that's right, for the low, low cost of a three sorcery points you can shit someone else's pants. That's the kind of power men shouldn't wield.

It might not effect the spice trade but it could effect the sugar trade. Sweetness should be easy enough for the spell to replace sugar.

9:52 Keith Baker's Eberron has cities on multiple continents with the capacity of spellcasting required to sustain "refrigeration" for the Uber-wealthy and Dragons.

Prestidigitation is one of the most powerful social and infiltration spell. that minor illusion effect is as powerful as your imagination and there's dozens of viable means of distraction and manipulation.

One thing you didn't bring up: Just because prestidigitation is a cantrip NOW, doesn't mean it always was. Elves who get it for free might have always had this innate ability, but it might have only been cracked and distilled into something that can be learned a few hundred years ago. Which might be used to explain why an elven civilization is so much older than everyone else: They effectively skipped an entire age of civilization. Another way to look at it is to look at the definition of a cantrip in 5E. It says that cantrips are effortless, no cost spells because the user has practiced and honed the spell so much that it effectively became a part of their mind and magic. Which implies that people who DON'T know the spell have to use a spell slot for it. And that, when people were still learning how to use magic at all, these basic, disconnected abilities might have each been the equivalent of a second level spell. It was only by studying, simplifying, and mastering the spell as a culture that techniques to learn and teach these abilities became so effective that, for anyone dedicated enough, they are as simple as snapping your fingers.

You missed an interesting interaction with flavour and medicine. A diabetic can "sweeten" their tea. You can make a tonic less bitter. Sure, a cleric or paladin could simply magic that problem away but that may not always be an option. Plus there is a whole market for all sweet no sugar drinks.

staining things to change the color is a use for this spell, no need for extensive glass training, just stain the parts you want red for example & leave it there

The rules state a caster can "flavor up" a dish. I've always interpreted that as making its base flavor more intense, not adding whatever seasonings the caster wants. That's just me, though

flavoring- your bartender has been serving you tumblers of flavored water after your first glass or two of rum, you don't really notice the difference, and pay rum prices for water... or making another persons meal taste unbelievably bitter or spoiled to cause a scene at a banquet. color mark or symbol- mark a random book to appear as a holy or magical tome for trade or for swapping for the real one long enough to get away... leaving 'hobo glyphs' around town for cooperative heists. leave marks on trees or cave walls like a trail of breadcrumbs to keep track of your path and if you've been in an area before.