Fabricate 5e: Make What You Will of This
Spell Level: 4
School: Transmutation
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: 120 feet
Duration: Instantaneous
Components: V, S
You convert raw materials into products of the same material. For example, you can fabricate a wooden bridge from a clump of trees, a rope from a patch of hemp, and clothes from flax or wool.
Choose raw materials that you can see within range. You can fabricate a Large or smaller object (contained within a 10-foot cube, or eight connected 5-foot cubes), given a sufficient quantity of raw material. If you are working with metal, stone, or another mineral substance, however, the fabricated object can be no larger than Medium (contained within a single 5-foot cube). The quality of objects made by the spell is commensurate with the quality of the raw materials.
Creatures or magic items can’t be created or transmuted by this spell. You also can’t use it to create items that ordinarily require a high degree of craftsmanship, such as jewelry, weapons, glass, or armor, unless you have proficiency with the type of artisan’s tools used to craft such objects.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Fabricate is another transmutation effect that I desperately want to be good, but falters to the same issues plaguing much of this school of magic. It sounds epic on paper; waving your hands around to rearrange the nearby driftwood into a boat is a fantastic moment of magic that many crave for their casters. The problem is this magic is competing against enchantment and conjuration effects. When are you actually going to want to use Fabricate over spells that just do what the mundane can’t?
This spell also highlights a pain point of the system: item crafting. There is a reason you can find hundreds of pages of homebrewed item crafting systems for 5e. In the base rules, you have to delve into the DMG and downtime to begin creating personal items or engaging in merchant trade. All of it ends up boiling down to “X gold of raw materials” and between a few minutes to over a week to produce a mundane item. Fabricate can help satisfy the crafter needs in you, but at the steep cost of a 4th level spell over ten minutes.
What is nice at least is the changes you make stay that way. A small bridge over a 10 ft. wide ravine will stay there for your return over it. You can realistically take up an artisan craft while adventuring over long distances with little bookkeeping required. Because there aren’t that many clearer ways, this can be one of the few people can find to fulfill their RP dreams of being an actual artisan with the tools they chose in their background. However, this comes as a double edged sword, because if you aren’t proficient in armorer's tools, you’re out of luck if you want to fabricate that raw metal into makeshift armor.
Fabricate at its best is neat, but at its worst it can be worthless for sessions on end. The DM has to work to create problems where the spell can function as part of a solution where other magic fails. It definitely has a home on some character sheets, but if it finds a home on yours, keep your expectations low.
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