Can Shape Water drown people in D&D 5E?
No, it can not. However, Shape Water can cause major damage to a person with its icy cold shape. The more water that shapes into ice, the colder the temperature becomes and it will eventually lead to hypothermia if any of the character’s hit points fall below zero at which point they will start dying from emotional or physical trauma depending on their constitution score.
Shape water could be used in D&D 5E for a number of ways either as an actual spell from practitioner wizard stating “I cast shape water onto this buckets and pan” or in which case it is very likely that during combat someone would make use of this skill where they describe how they are using their action effectively shaping water to do whaatt they want it to do.
