Mold Earth uses

*Create an instant foxhole or breastwork

*Block a hallway

*Cover the floor with fine dirt to see an invisible creature’s footsteps

*Spook a horse

*Avoid or negate traps

*Muddy water for extra concealment during an amphibious assault

*Collapse the edge of a cliff

*Cause a landslide

*Create a channel to guide to guide falling boulders

*Create difficult terrain (remember, caltrops stack with difficult terrain)

GENERAL ADVENTURING

*Bury or dig up treasure

*Create handholds and footholds on a sheer stone surface

*Close a door, block a door, or hold a door open

*Make a mound of dirt to cushion a fall (poor man's featherfall)

*Dig a pitfall

*Conceal a pitfall with canvas and dirt

*Create a ramp or steps

*Elevate a vantage point

*Dig a posthole for a block and tackle anchor

*Extinguish a campfire

*Dig a pit to keep your animals from running away or being stolen

*Create an emergency landing for a ship

*Make a ship run aground

*Derail a train

*Soil a rivals clothing

*Clog a lock or machinery

*Restrain captured foes by burying them up to their neck.

*Dig or exhume a grave

*Tunnel out of prison, even if you've lost your spell components

*Disrupt magic circles and desecrate shrines

*Write a message in dirt or stone that will last an hour.

*Write a message with geoglyphs that will last millennia.

SNEAKY STUFF

*Cover your tracks and bury the evidence

*Create temporary false tracks

*Hide under a pile of dirt

*Camouflage or disguise yourself by covering yourself in dirt

*Dig a hole under something you want to steal and bury it. Dig it up at your convenience. (Also works to keep something
away from someone else. BBEG dropped the artifact? Bam! Buried under 5’ of dirt.)

*Rustle bushes or jostle furniture as a distraction

*Create the shape and color of a gold piece on the ground as a distraction

*Send a surreptitious messages with coded symbols or braille

SURVIVAL

*Dig an emergency shelter

*Build a windbreak

*Create a level campsite

*Dig for water

*Dig up edible grubs, roots, and tubers

*Make mud for a hut, oven, furnace, charcoal pit, or other primitive structure.

*Neutralize quicksand

*Avoid hookworm

*Bury yourself for insulation from a fire and dig a pocket of cool air to breath.

*Mark your path with mounds of earth

DOMESTIC

*Dig a well, root cellar, drainage ditch, pit oven, fish pond, or evaporation salt pool,

*Simultaneously level, till, plow, sow, and irrigate a small farm in a day.

*Help harvest root vegetables.

*Create an instant step so the gnome can reach the top shelf.

*Sweep a floor

*Process daub, cob, adobe, fired bricks, and other earthen construction materials.

*Free, or trap, a wagon in mud or a rut

CIVIL ENGINEERING

*Build a road, dam, causeway, levee, breakwater, or hill

*Dig or collapse a canal, tunnel, sewer, or big pit

*Create a harbor and jetty

*Protect a building or settlement from a flood

*Create a firebreak

*Reroute a river

*Reshape a shoreline

*Create or expand a small island (You can exploit natural patterns of sedimentation to reduce build time. Build a berm in
front of a river mouth or leeside and downcurrent of a land mass to catch sediment for you)

*Drain swamps

*Excavate anything

*Synergize with teamsters. (You can dig faster than modern heavy machinery, but on very large projects it will be faster
to haul dirt in a wagon than to scoot it with Mold Earth. Also, you can create instant ramps and loading docks for the
wagon)

MILITARY

*Undermine a wall or building.

*Collapse a well during a siege

*Block a road

*Prepare an ambush by burying your undead.

*Help fireproof wooden structures and siege engines (clay + water or vinegar if available)

*March an army up a giant ramp over a wall

*Construct massive crude defensive or offensive earthworks, such as trenches, ditches, moats, ramparts, and burms
(3000 linear feet of 5’ trench with a 5’ berm per hour!); and massively expedite the construction of sophisticated
earthworks, such as palisades, spike pits, bulwarks, and reinforced ditches and ramparts.

*Destroy enemy earthworks.

*More quickly install and effectively place area denial weapons, such as abatis (planted spiky sticks), caltrops, archer's
stakes (anti-cavalry stakes), trous de loup (small pit w/ spike, usually in groups), punji stakes, stimuli (stakes with a
barbed iron spike), and chevaux de frise (dire 10’ poles).

*Dig or seal a sally port during a siege.

*Create a decoy encampment to appear few when you are many, many when you are few, near when you are far, or far
when you are near.

*Open, restrict, or close a narrow pass.

*Salt the fields of your enemies

*Fill dirt as a counterweight for a portable trebuchet (remember to cast featherfall before you launch the halfling)

FUN

*Build the best sandcastle.

*Annoy a modron

*Make a dorodango (shiny dirt ball)

*Serve mud pies

*Play in the mud with children

*Level a surface for billiards, marbles, bowling, soccer, and other games.

*Cheat at billiards, marbles, bowling, soccer, and other games that require a level surface.

*Try to discover a Penicillium colony (i.e. Mold Earth for earth mold)

*Make a sexy mud wrestling pit

*Emerge out of the ground as an entrance for an interpretive dance.

*Make a pretty dirt drawing with a glance.

MISCELLANEOUS

*Dig your own dungeon or labyrinth

*Help build a dolmen or other megalithic structure.

*Restore coastal or riparian habitat.

*Make a mud wallow for a boar companion or elephant mount

*Combine with Transmute Rock and/or Stone Shape to build a fortress or any other structure.

*Combine with Plant Growth to build defensive hedgewalls and/or a super farm.

*Sleep safe in a coffin underground and exhume yourself in the morning.

*Exploit accretion and avulsion property law

level 2
Comment deleted by user
1 year ago
More than 1 child

level 2
Trystt27
The High Wanderer
7 points
·
1 year ago
We've used multiple castings of it to make dummies of people along the lines of your campfire idea. Throw some
clothes on, maybe manually place some dirt on it if you've already got multiple castings active, and you'll at least buy a
moment's time. Or use the mold for the purposes of casting a shadow around a corner to make intruders think there are
people nearby.

We've also used them to dig our way through a dungeon room to an adjacent dungeon room 10 feet away by basically
pushing the dirt towards our end after blasting the wall loose.

Ultimately the spell is pretty fluid with what you can do like Minor Illusion or Prestidigitation, but there's still that
underlying DM fiat as to the sketchy things. Like some might question "loose earth" at certain points, or might even
argue " You cause shapes and colors to appear" might mean you can't actually mold the earth into an object--only draw
into the dirt. Which kinda sucks but hey, that depends on the DM.

Continue this thread

level 1
lurkingowl
0 points
·
1 year ago
·
edited 1 year ago
You missed a couple I've used:.

Set up a mesh and sift Earth into sand/ soil/ pebbles/ rocks.

Create a printing press by causing raised shapes in a flat stone, then slap on some ink.

Create a metalworking mold for coins, buckles, armor, etc.

level 2
Classtoise
1 point
·
1 year ago
I hadn't considered the last two, honestly, but those are really clever actually!
level 1
sorturi3k
1 point
·
1 year ago
·
edited 1 year ago
I use the square pungi trap they used in Vietnam. Mold earth 3 feet down and disperse it around the surface. Insert
pungi flip boards with spikes.

It’s basically a weight based bear trap. Nasty too when the spikes get stuck in the leg and the 2 sides are stuck in the leg
via your own weight.

So far this is the most handy 6-12 second trap I’ve found.

When the trap isn’t flipped I just put the sand back on-top to conceal it.

A lot if the uses for the spell I think work best when in tandem with mundane items.

I have an idea to kill massive amounts of goblins using a 10 foot pit at the entrance to a cave.

You dig out a 10 foot deep pit and fill it with melted down rebar spikes from junk you find in dungeons etc.

You then create a dirt wall between the entrance and the pit with a 2 foot gap to the ceiling or less. Maybe a foot

On the entrance side you dig another 10 foot pit or so and start having everyone roll green logs into it. I would suggest
stacking them opposite each layer for maximum effect.

Next step is starting to fill in the cave entrance but also keeping a decent sized metal tube going down into the log pit
for oxygen.

You then dump a lot of oil or other flammable substance into the wood.

You fill in the rest of the entrance with dirt. Might need more from outside.

If the tunnel doesn’t have a dirt ground you could easily construct the same structure using more or less the same idea.

At this point you have a sealed off pit of logs, 2 feet gap between the ceiling and blockade. 5 -10 feet of that, Then a 10
foot drop into metal spikes.

When you light the green logs and seal the tunnel the green logs produce an insane amount of thick choking black
smoke. If the gobs try to run up to see wtf is happening they fall into the pit. The entire cave is now filling with smoke
and suffocating the inhabitants.

Next is getting high up to see where smoke may be coming out other ends and sealing those off ASAP and killing anyone
who exits.

Mold earth makes this doable in 12-18 minutes.

That’s the blitzkrieg

Oh and throw in bear traps in the 2ft section Incase they manage to get across the pit(Bridge?) then try to crawl to the
fire and stop it.

Although they would suffocate long before they reached it. Their only hope would be blocking the tunnel before the
trap to stop the smoke, and or to push dirt down and choke out the fire. Although I see this as pretty meta level gaming
considering they have no idea why there is thick smoke bellowing through their tunnels and they would normally erupt
into a mass panic.

level 1
Teulisch
Way of Shadow
-2 points
·
1 year ago
the three most powerful cantrips are prestidigitation, minor illusion, and mold earth.

mold earth is the instant foxhole/cover, but its also a castle builder. just add some logs, and your done. and yeah, you
could probably do 101 uses. but really it has four basic uses: instant pit+cover, difficult terrain, pictures in dirt, and
quickly digging a motte and bailey.

now having said this, there is NOTHING more deadly than a kobold tribe who has a shaman with the mold earth cantrip.
they will hve miles of tunnel like the viet kong, and the rest of the tribe will add the traps since they dont have to waste
time digging. they build their own dungeon, and they use other mining techniques when they hit bedrock where their
clan lives... but the dirt? oh, this spell can rapidly seal a tunnel, or cause it to collapse. or flood it.

when you add the transmute rock spell to the equation, it gets even better. rock to mud, mold earth into position (with
wood planks for a mold if needed), then dispell so it turns back into rock. sure its complicated, but it works for a 40'
cube of rock. slower than wall of stone, but a MUCH larger volume, and a wider potential range of material.

wall of stone is 10'x10'x6". that 40' cube is 80 wall sections deep, 4 wide, and 4 high. thats 80x16, or 1280 wall sections.
ergo trasmute rock with mold earth and dispel magic is 128 times as effective as wall of stone. when you get to 9th level
and have only one 5th level spell a day... this is how you build a castle in one day.