[RPG] Can the Catapult spell interact with Melf’s Minute Meteors

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Basically, if I were to summon some meteors using Melf's Minute Meteors, could someone else use the Catapult spell to launch them at the big bad? It seems to me like a really inventive interaction between spells, but it begs a few more questions to be answered:

  1. Are the meteors physical objects?
  2. How heavy is each meteor? They're classified as "tiny", but nothing else is specified.
  3. If Catapult can interact with it, what other spells/objects could?

Best Answer

Generally speaking, spells only do what they say they do. The minute meteors only do two things: orbit you, and streak off to explode somewhere via the initial launch or a bonus action. There's no mention made of being able to physically manipulate the meteors the way there is for, say, Otiluke's freezing sphere, and certainly the spell doesn't imply they're physical objects by talking about opposing combatants swatting them out of their orbits or anything. From a strict standpoint, the spell doesn't say you can, so you can't use a minute meteor as ammo for a catapult spell.

A DM might decide to allow it, but they'd be responsible for answering all the detailed questions about how it works in that scenario. For one thing, the spell doesn't say the meteors explode except through the use of the 'streak to a location' effect, so there's no particular reason to think that a meteor launched by catapult would explode on impact. But it's not clear what would happen if it didn't explode (does it come back and continue to orbit?) so again, that'd be up to the DM to decide.

Personally, I think that's a clever combo and would probably allow it to work as you intend -- it's really not significantly different from catapulting a rock and using the usual meteor attack, just costs one less bonus action -- but that's because I like to reward clever thinking rather than because the rules say it should work that way.