This is meant to be a rundown of all the really interesting ways we can use prestidigitation that aren’t using the trinket list to make cannons or infinite food. So, what else can our favorite cantrip do?

1. Sensory Effects

• You create an Instantaneous, harmless sensory Effect, such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint musical notes, or an odd odor.

This effect does not have a size category, so long as the instantaneous, harmless sensory effect is, well, instantaneous and harmless, we seem like we can make whatever we want. Up to and including turning the entire sky red.

Changing the color of the sky could be used to generate a color-coded method of long-range communication, as simple as using the sky as a flag to say “danger” up to making an alphabet out of it.

There’s also nothing implying this is an illusion, and the spell itself is transmutation school, and smoke or other visually occluding effects are harmless so long as they’re not entering your eyes or lungs. Also note the effect is made harmless by the spell and not of something harmless, as a shower of sparks would burn something unless specified as harmless. This is where the next tech comes into play:

The harmless sensory effect of smoke fills the room. This gives us a free, one action instantaneous way of making smoke, and it fits to the size we need it to. This smoke also doesn’t get dispersed by wind. It is magic smoke, so it could be dispelled, but so could fog cloud, and this isn’t concentration. We can do simmilar things with other effects like enough sparks to cloud the area, an actual cloud, red mist, ect. Make sure to infuse flavor into your mechanics, we’re not just out to break prestidigitation, we should have style while doing it.

We should also keep in mind that invisibility is a sensory effect, and that we can, RAW, make ourselves and others invisible using prestidigitation.

Other effects:
Bright light so we don’t need to carry a torch
Gusts of wind to get rid of an enemy fog cloud from any distance
Smells to draw out certain beasts, possibly
Make any music we desire
Use the voice of other people
Make all your items feel sticky and weird so they’re less likely to be stolen

The sky isn’t even the limit with this effect, so long as it remains a harmless sensory effect, then we can make it.

2. Lighting Fires

• You instantaneously light or snuff out a Candle, a torch, or a small campfire.

The RAW on this one is actually pretty straight forward. We can light candles, torches, and campfires. To light other things on fire, we can light torches or campfires to transfer fire. This lets us ditch our fire starting equipment at the start of the game at least.

This is mostly a part of the wider ‘making camp’ idea, so if someone needs to make a campfire, we can handle that pretty well.

3. Clean and Soil

• You instantaneously clean or soil an object no larger than 1 cubic foot.

The best part of this is the ‘cubic foot’ line, so things that can easily be folded or otherwise are smaller in total than 1x1x1 foot can also be soiled. This includes bedsheets, weapons, and more. My personal favorite application of this feature is ‘soiling’ someone else’s pants to make it appear that they’ve crapped their pants. Great tool when someone is annoying you but you don’t want to be violent about it. Should any of our belongings be covered in toxic substances we can clean them off so long as they’re not bigger than a cubic foot

4. Chill, Warm, Flavor

• You chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material for 1 hour.

This use of prestidigitation is an interesting one. We can flavor things, but that’s usually not a mechanical benefit. Chilling and Warming could be used in hot and cold environments to lessen the effects of them on us, but, chance is if the DM is putting in a cold environment and not giving you cold weather clothes they’re also not letting you avoid it with “just a cantrip”.

There’s no temperature range in the spell, so it could be infinitely hot or infinitely cold, but RAW that still does 0 damage.

This effect largely lets us convince squeamish party members to eat or drink weird stuff that gives them benefits.

5. Colors, Marks, Symbols

• You make a color, a small mark, or a Symbol appear on an object or a surface for 1 hour.

Simmilar to the first one, there’s no size indicator for “Symbol”, so we can put symbols into the sky. Only three at a time max though, but we can still spell something out. This could let us write “SOS”, or working with another party member, write larger words into the sky.

“My skin” is a surface as well, so we can change the color of our skin for an hour if we chose. This could easily help in a disguise effort. You, as a human wizard stole something valuable and guards now on the lookout for a human? Well, my skin is green and i have a swirly symbol on my forehead, obviously presenting as a gith or something. Make this more convincing by swapping some clothes, changing the look of your spellbook, ect.

Budget disguise is better than no disguise, and we can do this with party members too.

Speaking of our party, designate a party symbol as a ‘password’. Any time we have any suspicion if someone is real or not, ask for the password. if they knew prestidigitation, they should be able to make it immediately. If not, they can draw it.

6. Hand-held illusions

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.

We have a whole post just about all the amazing uses of making trinkets, but what about the other half of this point? “an illusory image that can fit in your hand and that lasts until the end of your next turn”

This is mostly for showing someone an example of an object or creature. Unlike ‘minor illusion’ this illusion can be of a creature. Other than that, this effect doesn’t really have any uses minor illusion doesn’t have, but, it is an option when you say “was it a jabberwocky?” and the NPC you’re speaking with has no clue what you’re talking about.

7. Summary and Conclusion

Prestidigitation’s non-trinket uses can be: making the sky change color or putting symbols in it for long-range communication, filling rooms or select areas with smoke or other heavy obscurement, making light, wind, music, smells, make your items unpleasant to steal, light candles/torches/campires or unlight then, makeshift disguises, party symbol passwords, and explaining objects or creatures to people who don’t know them.

The biggest take away here is likely the ability to produce an instant heavy obscurement of any size as a cantrip. Disguises, tastes, warming/cooling things, campfires, ect, all should have nonmagical means of doing them, and aren’t often critical to our survival. But staying unseen to an enemy can be a huge bump to our survivability, making it much harder for enemies to target us with something like feeblemind or other save-or-suck spell. This even gets around true sight, as the smoke or other obscurement is real, but harmless. If i had to pick favorites, this is number 1. Brightly lighting any room or even an entire dungeon is 2nd, in my book, and bootleg disguise self / disguise other is 3rd.

This is the cantrip that keeps on giving, it has so much utility going for it that anyone with it on their list should take it. I’m sure I’ve missed some more obscure uses of prestidigitation along the way, which might mean revisions or even a part 3, but for now, accept the holy order of prestidigitech within you.