One thought on “How do you handle definitions of “food and drink” for the purpose of Purify Food and Drink?”

1. Prepared foods? What counts as prepared?

   If you come across a puddle of rainwater, presumably that doesn’t count as a “prepared” drink, yeah? Because no one prepared it – it just happened.

   How about if you intentionally put out a rainbarrel to collect that exact same rainwater, and then ladle up a mug of it to drink? Does that suddenly count as “prepared”, because human intervention was involved?

   What if you accidentally leave a mug outside, and it fills with rainwater? Is that “prepared”, because the mug containing the water only exists due to human intervention? Or is it NOT prepared, because no one intended for the rain to fill that mug, and it is in effect a natural and accidental drink, no different than a puddle forming in the hollow of a rock?

   —

   Plants specifically cultivated for comsumption? That doesn’t make much sense.

   If you walk out into an apple orchard and pick an apple off a tree, it’s a pretty safe bet that the apple counts as “cultivated”, right?

   But what if you come across an apple tree growing in the wild? If it’s a naturally occuring breed of apple, does it no longer count as cultivated?

   Or suppose instead it’s a cultivated breed of apple, but it came from a lone apple seed that fell off a trader’s wagon long ago and took root and grew wild? Does it count as uncultivated because it wasn’t purposefully planted and tended to? Or does the breed alone allow it to qualify as cultivated?

   What about plants that are wholly wild in the first place? If I pick some weird berries from a wild bush which has never been influenced by humanity in any way, presumably then he spell won’t work on them, right?

   But what if I take that wild bush, dig it up, replant it in a garden, and then pick those exact same berries? Have they suddenly transformed into “cultivated” plants, just because I moved the bush into my garden?

   What about things like mushrooms? Are fungi not included as part of “prepared foods and cultivated plants”, because they aren’t plants? Why are plants even given separate and specific mention outside of “prepared foods”, unless there is some reason to emphasize them as different?

   —

   Anything with nutritional value is food. Dirt can be food, if necessary.

   Any food can be “prepared” for consumption, to make it more palateable, or render it safer to eat, or make it easier to digest, et cetera.

   Any food can also be cultivated. Animals, plants, fungi, even edible bacteria and protists can be, and routinely are, purposefully raised for consumption.

   The limitations proposed for this spell are therefor incredibly ill-defined, and almost fundamentally absurd.

   Reply

   January 13, 2018 at 12:42

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.