[RPG] Can you use the Prestidigitation cantrip to replace bathing and washing your clothes while wearing them

dnd-5espells

Can you use the Prestidigitation cantrip to replace bathing and washing your clothes while wearing them?

I'm so sorry, but this was brought up and we had a 30-minute discussion in game; inquiring minds want to know.

Best Answer

Going by the rules it could replace washing clothes (but not bathing), but these aren't features supported by rules in the first place.

Before I delve into what Prestidigitation can and can't do I should point out that, like Cubic said, there are no hard requirements in D&D 5e to wash yourself or your clothes. This is purely a thematic and narrative action that isn't supposed by the ruleset.

That said, let's look at what Prestidigitation does:

This spell is a minor magical trick that novice spellcasters use for practice. You create one of the following magical effects within range:

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.

Whether you can clean your clothes or not depends on whether they're a cubic foot or less, which would ultimately be at your GM's discretion, as would whether you can clean them all at once or have to use the effect on each article of clothing individually.

However, it can't replace bathing, because player characters aren't objects; they're classed as creatures. No effect of the spell cleans a creature.

In short, the bathing going by RAW is a hard no because the spell can't do it, and the clothes question would be up to your GM's discretion.