[RPG] Can the Fabricate spell create a living bridge

dnd-5espells

The spell Fabricate says:

You convert raw material into products of the same material. For example, you can fabricate a wooden bridge from a clump of trees…

It also says:

Creatures or magic items can't be created or transmuted by this spell.

I've seen it suggested that trees are creatures, yet one of the spell description's examples is fabricating a bridge out of a clump of trees. This suggests to me that trees are not actually creatures in D&D (and indeed I haven't seen anything referring to a tree or any other non-autonomous plant as being a creature in any of the manuals I've read).

So, if plants are not considered as creatures, then would it be feasible to use fabricate to make, for example, a living bridge or a living house, assuming that it stays rooted and remains able to get whatever resources it normally would need?

Note that answers need not limit themselves specifically to trees if other plantlife would work.

Edit: I am a DM looking to see if this ruling would be reasonable, not a player trying to abuse it.

Best Answer

Like many rules issues in 5e, there's no actual answer to this in the rules: we're not told whether trees count as creatures, and we're not told whether they can survive being rearranged by a fabricate spell. You're welcome to rule that this is possible if you want -- it doesn't seem to open up any avenues for abuse, and having living bridges or living houses seems like a fun bit of roleplaying.


But there's a deeper issue here: it sounds like you're asking about the capabilities of your NPCs.

Your NPCs are not actually bound by the rules in the Player's Handbook. You can give them whatever abilities you want. You could decide that an NPC has a custom spell, or that they have an unusual class feature, or that they took a custom feat.

One example of this in action is the 5e monster "Knight", which is CR3. It has 8d8+16 hit points, has the multiattack feature, has a proficiency bonus +2, and has a special ability called "Leadership". This is not something you could build using the PHB rules.

You can give your NPCs whatever capabilities you think would be fun and interesting. (You might prefer to use custom spells for this, though, rather than adding additional functionality to spells the player characters might have access to.)