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I have a Reborn character, so I don’t need to breathe (thanks to the Deathless Nature trait).

Could I use the mold earth cantrip to bury myself if I need to to avoid attacks?

V2Blast
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Luther Knight
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    Related question: Why is burying yourself not such a great plan? (A lot of those answers assume the player needs to breathe, but not all of them.) – MJ713 May 04 '23 at 23:25
  • Fwiw, a much more useful version of this effect is meld with stone (which of course requires a 3rd level spell slot and a stone surface which are not easy to come by) – Cubic May 05 '23 at 21:28
  • it is worth mentioning 5ft of dirt is enough to crush a human being to death, so they have escaped combat bot have a whole new problem. they now are being crushed by around 9000lbs or material. – John May 07 '23 at 12:34

1 Answers1

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You can move earth to "excavate" a hole, and presumably a second casting can pull the dirt back into the hole, so this seems like a valid use of the spell, albeit one that requires two turns (or a way to cast the spell twice in a turn) to use.

You'll need to work with your DM to determine the details of this, though. For example, it's up to the DM to decide when the local earth is 'loose' enough to be excavated, and your DM may make an unfortunate ruling that makes getting out of your instant grave somewhat tricky. For example, whether you can use somatic components while buried in loose soil (which could be overcome by the Subtle Spell metamagic) and whether having a face full of soil, even with darkvision, can be construed as making the whole 5-foot cube "a portion of dirt that you can see". ("You can excavate two square inches of dirt around each eye" isn't useful for getting out of the ground!)

Given the time requirements, I'm not sure how often this would be useful in combat, though it might be a good way to hide, or just a really weird sleeping habit. A sorcerer with the Quickened Spell metamagic could probably use it more effectively (though 2 sorcery points seems like a high cost for it).

If this is something you really want to do, it might be better to work with your DM to come up with a custom low-level spell that does exactly what you want -- perhaps a 1st level spell that lets you sink into loose earth, creating an impromptu grave, and then pushes you back out when the spell ends.

Darth Pseudonym
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    A quickened metamagic sorcerer could do it! But not as a reaction. I may also be miffed if my buddy just went and stuck his head in the sand. – NotArch May 04 '23 at 21:11
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    @NautArch A head in the sand is worth two in the bush. – Thomas Markov May 04 '23 at 21:22
  • A wizard in my current group does precisely this, combined with air bubble. However, I am not sure whether our DM realizes that mold earth has a somatic opponent. – Kirt May 04 '23 at 23:04
  • @NautArch Yeah, sure, exactly -- but on the other hand if the sorcerer is sitting there with 2 HP it might be the best tactical choice for him to just strategically withdraw from the fight. (It's not that much different from Dimension Dooring back to the previous room or casting Invisibility and finding a nice quiet corner to cower in, just more thematically interesting.) – Darth Pseudonym May 06 '23 at 14:00
  • @Kirt air bubble wont help with 9000lbs of crushing force preventing you from expanding your lungs, – John May 07 '23 at 12:41
  • @John (1) I'm not the DM; it's not my call. (2) Suffocation rules in PHB are only about air, there is nothing RAW about needing to move your chest to breathe, air bubble spell says it "is all the creature needs to avoid suffocation", (3) I strongly doubt someone standing in a pile of loose earth has 9000lbs of lateral force pressing on their chest, but you are welcome to demonstrate with calculations. – Kirt May 07 '23 at 15:17
  • @Kirt you don't need lateral force to stop you from breathing, Watch the MythBusters episode on being buried alive a few feet of dirt is enough to cause a reinforced coffin to buckle and begin to crush. – John May 07 '23 at 18:22
  • @John Well, as a reminder, he's not exactly alive and doesn't need to breathe. Breathing isn't a problem here. – Darth Pseudonym May 07 '23 at 18:29
  • @DarthPseudonym good point I keep forgetting that part – John May 07 '23 at 18:33
  • @John Just skimming that episode by visual inspection shows that the coffin was laid flat. Again, I doubt there is nearly as much force on someone upright. – Kirt May 07 '23 at 19:48
  • @John Fair point - I suppose the movement itself can't cause damage but you could move enough earth for the weight itself to. I still wonder, with no earth over the chest, whether the lateral forces are enough to compress. – Kirt May 08 '23 at 01:22
  • @Kirt if it is loose earth it quickly fills in any open space, people buried up to their necks in trench collapse report that the biggest problem was they could not breath after a few breaths because soil packs and each exhale more falls into the cavity around the chest, only being able to breath again once their chest was dug out. if the earth is wet it does this almost instantly. the problem is the earth fills in around the chest and gets compacted by movement at which point you are not trying to move the dirt that fell in the hole but all the dirt in a cone going upward from your chest. – John May 08 '23 at 20:34