Can I specifically bury myself with the Mold Earth spell?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.