Prestidigitation is an often taken but rarely understood cantrip in 5th edition dnd. Prestidigitation is actually one of the most powerful cantrips in the game when used to even half of its full potential , and no this is not “you can make a nuke with prestidigitation”. This is [hopefully] part 1 of a series of posts on the topic of prestidigitation. As a quick aside, don’t expect all of these to be allowed in every game, some of the later examples may be too much to handle, and as always try to play with your table.

First I should say that trinkets made with prestidigitation last one hour. Some argue it lasts for 2 turns, but that text only applies to the illusory image made by prestidigitation. Similarly, ‘fits in your hand’ is only applied to the illusory image. The only real limitation on our trinkets then besides the hour duration of the spell and the 3 non-instant effects, is that they must be nonmagical trinkets. What is and isn’t a magical trinket is a bit hard to pin down, since none are listed as ‘magical’ or not. I’m going to be listing some trinkets here that you may think are clearly magical, but no where in their text does it describe them as being magical.

So, With that, what can you do with prestidigitation?

1. Supply a party

You ever run out of food? no? me either, but it does sometime come up! Especially for lower level parties, and usually people think of food and think ‘we need goodberry’ but there’s no need to use a slot for food, we’re wizards after all (or bards, artificers, sorcerers or sometimes warlocks, but you get the idea).
Trinkets to get your party food and drink:
PHB, trinket 98 “A glass jar containing lard labeled ‘griffon grease’”
lard is food, and you’ll have it for an hour. Not the most appetizing option, but it is an option.
Another PHB trinket, trinket 99, is a 2 headed worm in a box. This is even less pleasant to eat, but will be very useful later.

Elemental Evil contains a drinking cup that refills that has a 50/50 chance of containing salt or fresh water [trinket 15]. simply sort between the two using some buckets and now we have water to drink and salt to cook with should we be so fancy.

Another Elemental Evil trinket contains a one-eyed fish, trinket 29. Still not great food, but it is food.

Curse of Strahd contains a wineskin that refills when interred with a dead person for a night [trinket 11] and a jar of pickled ghouls tongues [trinket 22] We can have indefinite amounts of wine by simply making the trinket, pouring the wine, and then making it again until we’re sick of wine. fantastic.

Lost Labrotory of Kwalish has some of the best trinkets in the game. For food, we have trinket 63-64, “One tub, containing one serving of nutritious but disgusting goop that refills itself slowly over one week”. So, we summon the trinket, remove the goop, and repeat. We can even flavor the goop to be not-disgusting, I recommend garlic bread flavoring.

Acquisitions Incorporated includes “a sprig of herbs from your family garden” [94] “A large bottle of red larch ale that can’t be opened” [91] “A portable beehive” [27] “a small Pidgeon in a cage” [37], a “A potted plant that grows different fruit on every branch” [40] and a recipe book for cooking with mushrooms [15]. Now we’ve got honey, ale (if you can break the bottle), herbs, squab meat, fruit of various kinds, and a cookbook for mushroom cooking.

‘The Wild Beyond the Witchlight” has “a pumpkin cupcake that magically regenerates itself in its paper each day at dawn”[33] and this is likely to be magic, since it mentions magic, but does net us infinite cupcakes if we can make it with prestidigitation. we also have “A rucksack in which one potato magically appears at dawn” [92] which, can net us potatoes, and “tiny bottle that has been filled with rainwater from the feywild” which can get us another easy way to get a drink of water. If all else fails, trinket 68 in this book is a pan flute that attracts harmless local fauna, which makes for easy hunting.

We even have access to plates. Eberon contains a trinket described as “a copper coin so large you could use it as a dinner plate”, so, we use it as a dinner plate.

2. Make Weapons

This section is thankfully shorter than the last one. Acquisitions incorporated gives us “a longsword that can be folded down in one minute and fit in your pocket” [32] and “a used (and thus nonmagical) noble knife” [55]. Useful for if your weapons get taken away.

The PHB also contains “a knife that belonged to a relative” encase you don’t use Acquisitions incorporated, but this might not count as a dagger.

3. Open doors, Close doors

Curse of Strahd trinket 28 is “a ring of keys for forgotten locks”. This should hopefully solve any lock-related troubles you may have.

Curse of Strahd also provides us with trinket 11, “a lock that opens when blood is dripped in its keyhole” , assuming no one figures out that trick in an hour, you can temporarily lock something. Arcane lock is better for this, but we might not have the money, the spells, or even the access to arcane lock, but we do have prestidigitation.

4. Hear no Evil, See no Evil

In lost laboratory of Kwalish, trinket 31-32 is “a bead that deafens you when inserted into your ear” This is useful for spells and other effects that require you to hear an enemy. Such as the “command” spell or the shriek of a vrock.

in “Beyond the Witchlight” there is “tinted glasses so dark they can’t be seen through” that can blind you. This is possibly useful for avoiding a naga or basilisk gaze, but means you’ll be blinded for the fight. risky but possibly worthwhile.

“Acquisitions Incorporated” has “A velvet Blindfold” [53]. This is harder to quickly take on and off than the glasses from before, but might come in handy for when you want someone else to be blind.

5. Brain Bleach Button

Have you even seen something and wanted to immediately forget? Maybe you saw something you were never meant to see, eldritch horrors begin to plague your mind. Maybe you just read plans that now make you a liability. Maybe you want to forget you read this article and return to the idea prestidigitation is a harmless, fun cantrip.

Lost labrotory of Kwalish introduces “A rod that makes you forget the last 5 minutes” [27-28]. This is my personal favorite trinket in the game. It’s not flashy, but it is useful. Force someone to forget being interrogated, or, if you’re later into the game, make a demiplane, put a clone inside along with a spare spellbook or at least a page for planeshift, leave, and forget you did it. This way even creatures with access to your memories can’t find your clones.

6. Make a Fucking Cannon

Trinket 45 in Acquisitions Incorporated is “A miniature cannon that actually fires”. The cannon is a defined object in 5e, and, using 3 actions, can be fired. The resulting ranged weapon attack does 8d10 bludgeoning damage. With a range of 600/2400, cannons would be amazing to set up beforehand and fire from a safe distance

The best technique with this is using either hirelings, which are very cheap at only 1 silver per day, using unseen servants (which can do anything a servant could do, which includes firing a cannon, but aren’t creatures, so, gray area), or tiny servants, or skeletons if you’re into necromancy. Skeletons are particularly useful because they say in their description they can use siege equipment. hirelings you can get at level 1 though, and we can have as many as we can afford. So we get 12 hirelings, make a cannon, fire it 4 times with 12 hireling actions, and sling 32d10 bludgeoning damage in the direction of the nearest problem. with a +6 to-hit, cannons are likely to hit whatever they’re aiming at.

Low on cash? find the nearest group of hobos and feed them for free using your infinite store of food as outlined earlier, make a hobo-army (a hobarmy, if you will) and have them fire siege equipment for you.

notice: don’t expect a DM to allow this, this is stupid.

7. Leveling up

This next trick requires us to be using XP rules. There are two trinkets that do this really well. PHB trinket 99 “a two headed worm in a box” and Acquisitions incorporated trinket 37, a small Pidgeon in a cage. These are CR0 creatures, presumably. There’s no statblock to go with them, but similar creatures have a CR of 0, and so slaying them likely grants 10xp. [It’s possible for a creature to have a null CR, or for creatures of CR0 to give 0 experience.] If we make a fire, and make the trinket, we can kill a worm every 6 seconds. This makes for a fantastic way to level up. In just an hour we can get 6000xp. This gets us from level 1 to level 4 in just an hour, and in another 12 minutes we can be level 5. If we go all the way, it takes just over 59 hours of prestidigitating to reach level 20. Skipping sleep, we can prestidigitate 16 hours a day and reach level 20 in under 4 total days of work.

But, with the possibility present that a CR0 or CRnull worm or pigeon grants 0xp, this tech starts to fall apart. Worry not, there’s a more sound but less efficient version of this tech as well.

Trinket 68 in “The Wild Beyond the Witchlight” includes a pan flute that attracts harmless local fauna. This could be used as another method to get some food, or even to attract some birds to charm as make-shift familiars, but it can also be used to generate creatures to hunt. Sadly there’s not as much math behind this one, but it is another cheeky method to gain XP by putting yourself in zero danger.

This might convince a DM to use milestones, or it could get you ejected from the game at high velocity.

Last word

There’s plenty more trinkets in the game, but I’ve listed here the ones that I thought could be particularly useful. I’ve always thought prestidigitation had this untapped potential, and we haven’t yet finished with my favorite cantrip. There are plenty more trinkets that could be of use, and you could find some yourself by just reading the trinket tables. That’s all for this article, go out there and show people the real power of prestidigitation.