@@DDWyss You've just given me my next character idea; A peasant from a village near a High-Wizards tower, but the whole village is made of permanent US's cast at 9th level, ordered to act as villagers, and provide regular food delivery up the mountain to him. Now the wizard is missing and it's up to Village Chief to find her lost creator and ask him where he wants them to put the statue they just finished.
`Depending on the ask, I would probably throw in an Arcana check. Like, if it's in the bounds of the spell, but you could think of it not being strong enough to enact (You want to carry 10lbs instead of 5lbs?!?), or increased distance or the like, then just an upcast makes sense. You want to do some slightly out of bounds, then the Arcana check, especially if it's on the fly. Love the idea though. More flexibility = More Fun.
It can’t attack, but it can definitely scatter ball bearings or caltrops. Setting fires, throwing switches, moving items from one party member to another, and more are definitely possible. One of those spells that gets better the more you think about it.
I do think it's silly when a spell says it can do a lot of things, but not other things that are not actually that different. Like it can't "attack," but can it "swing a sword in the direction that happens to be occupied by an enemy?" I see no reason why not that isn't purely arbitrary. Even if you argue that they are too slow to present a credible threat with a sword, they could at least pull the trigger on a crossbow, no doubt. They might not be able to aim in any way, so you would need to have them lined up on the target, but they should at least function.
@@timogul I get you with the crossbow, but I would not call it an attack any more then a crossbow trap could "attack". Instead I would suggest it would be possible to give an unseen servent a crossbow, order it to pull the trigger if something crosses in front of it, then it becomes an impromtu crossbow trap and the target makes a save.
I feel like even if they can do those things, you have to be exact about when or how to do them or they will happen randomly or chaotically during combat. I feel like having them be able to react to intruders/aggressors is overpowered and doesn't hold up to being "mindless".
@@timogul Eh, it's probably like that for balance reasons Familiars also can't attack - probably for balance reasons, but perhaps there could be some lore excuse. Temporary Summons can attack for some reason. Why do summons even follow commands in the first place?
Imagine the unseen servant is following the party, and the person says something like "I could use a snack" and suddenly food is pulled out of their pack and floats towards them
@@HenshinFanatic Already exists... Kinda. *Introducing SCP-662:* Once rung, a British gentleman appears from the nearest unoccupied room and will essentially be the greatest butler you could ever have.
What I love about Unseen Servant, from a narrative sense, is that it's a spell that wizards of all levels would use. A Double Supreme Grand Archmage is not going to make his own lunch or do his own laundry. Outside the context of adventuring or plot, it is I think the most realistic and probably most common spell among wizards.
My favorite use of unseen servant is the 'decoy wizard'. I have the servant follow me carrying a lightweight mannequin wearing long robes that drag the ground and sleeves pinned as though the hands are clasped in front, a heavy hood concealing the 'face'. Naturally whether or not a monster will fall for the decoy and waste a turn attacking it is entirely up to the game master as there aren't really any rules for fake wizards, but it can potentially absorb part of an ambush or be sent into a room first in place of a chicken to see if anything jumps out and tries to kill it... or even have a spell or two thrown in it's direction!
I think when the spell said “mindless” it doesn’t mean the force is stupid or incompetent but that it lacks any individual cognition. So it can’t create novel or original ideas. So say you asked it to get you a red box in the next room, it can do that because all of those things are clearly defined concepts. However if you asked it for something subjective like to get you a pretty dress or a delicious beverage it would either do something based on the caster’s subconscious preferences or simply fail to do anything because it has no concept of what it means for something to be subjectively appealing. I also guess by that logic it couldn’t act spontaneously or situationally. So if you told it to do something abstract you would have to be careful. Like if you wanted to to serve drinks at a party you would specify it would only fill empty glasses or when someone does something to request their glass to be filled because it doesn’t have the ability to understand or intuit that humanoids only want to be served drinks when they don’t already have one.
Mindless compliance, lol We have mindless creatures capable of following orders, even though they are limited. I agree it can't handle subjectivity, but I couldn't find a precise definition for "mindless" in the rules
This is the kind of thing a DM should allow as a kind of permanent enchantment. The Unseen Servant is bound to a location, and performs a rote task when not otherwise directed (sweeping floors, washing dishes, dusting, etc). The kind of thing a household of modest means might have installed in their home by way of a local wizard.
It's arguably one of the more useful things about the spell Mighty Fortress and making it permanent, that gaggle of location-bound Unseen Servants. I'd definitely be cool with taking a couple weeks or a month to make an Unseen Servant that does a specific task or sort of task in a articular place, though, or some variety of non-spell ritual to accomplish such.
@@MaxSMoke777 If you are going by the book, yes. But I would also point out that the cat would need to land a hit against an amorphic invisible target. Going off book you could say what ever you like. Provided it is still able to complete it's bound location is still reasonably in tact the servant will regenerate in 24hrs.
@drewhalcro6082 I've heard of a house rule that cats can see invisible creatures. Explains a lot of weird cat behavior... though it would make wildshape op.
One rule of thumb a DM might employ with the Unseen Servant is to assume that if the activity you wanted would require an ability check of some kind, it just can't do it. It automatically fails, because it has no listed ability scores (aside from Str 2). If a PC can do something without rolling, the Unseen Servant _might_ be able to do it. So, picking up an item from a shelf or from the pocket of an unconscious person is doable. Stealing something from a conscious, aware person is a no go.
Patients: This place is haunted! There's ghosts! Doctor: Excuse me, that's nurse Unseen, not a ghost. It would seem you're suffering from hysteria. Nurse, bring the bonesaw, it's time for lobotomy!
We defeated an ambitious monster who had its lair underwater. Its hoard was hidden beneath the sand & seaweed. Used Unseen Servant to short & fetch the treasure out since it doesn’t require breathing.
I think a ruling that makes sense in general for mindless servants, such as this one and undead, is that rather than understand the words of your command, they magically undestand its intent. So in the scouting scenario, I would probably ask the player to define what danger is; does the servant ring the bell if it sees a creature? Well there's a bat inside the cave, so ring the bell.
The party suddenly hears the bell ringing non stop. They realize the servant must be mistaken and check in on it. It has discovered a colony of ants, and is ringing for each new ant it sees.
@@numimio lmao yeah, I think for the unseen servant it would also be wise to rule that it can't do anything that would require a skill check; although the spell does specifically say it can "mend" implying that it can sow.
@@theposhdinosaur7276 i dont think basic mending and sewing should require a skill check, its a menial task that a commoner can accomplish with regularity.
@@Rockzilla1122 Yeah, I mostly brought it up because it seems more involved than the other tasks listed. Indeed "sowing tools" do not exist as artisan's tools, though "Weaver's tools" do. So I think it is correct that mending clothes requires no proficiency, but weaving clothes do.
I like to think of Unseen Servant as a simple computer program. It can compare conditions, but it can't interpret data. For example: It can't do research for you (because it's mindless), but it can flip through a book until it finds a word or phrase you designate, then show it to you. We know it can do this, because it can "fetch things", meaning it must have the ability to recognize parameters as well as intent (otherwise it would just pick up random stuff). We also know it can handle complex tasks, because it can mend, clean, light fires, and fold clothes (each multi-step processes, utilizing multiple different tools). Another thing to keep in mind is: Unseen Servants are *shapeless*; not humanoid in any way. Which means they aren't limited by the number of objects (only their weight), or by visual/reading speed (i.e. searching pages or scrolls), or by gravity (normal or abnormal), or physical positioning, etc.
I had an unseen Servant carry a lightly armored dummy around making the enemy think the dummy was a golem. I've also had one drag around a series of wooden planks with nails in them as a movable spike strip/caltroped square.
There is always the classic untie the chandelier/cargo net so it falls on the opponents. All the servant is doing is untying a knot, gravity creates the attack. I really should look up the older editions of this spell again to remind myself how it has changed over the years. There is probably a story behind each and every one of those limitations.
I used unseen servant to load or aim a cannon, since it requires 3 actions, 'load', 'aim' and 'fire' and only last one is something that unseen servant cannot do.
The 8th level spell mighty fortress gives you a castle staffed by 100 unseen servants. If you have a spare 26,000 gp worth of diamonds laying around and can afford to cast the spell in the same place for a year, the castle (and all those servants) become permanent.
i would argue you could finagle pouring a drink into someones open mouth, insomuch as just having it dump something out in a particular space, but maybe thats pushing it?
Yeah that's right up against the limit of what I think it can do though. 100% up to your DM. Like if you use your object interaction to move your head so the liquid pours into your mouth I'd be okay with that probably. Might ask for a check? If you're unconscious I think it's probably pushing it?
@@zeebashew If it can pour you a drink and serve it to you, it should be able to pour a potion down your throat. You'll have to open your mouth for it, though. Maybe a stat roll to not choke on it.
@@zeebashew A check or something on your end sounds fair if the whole reason you are doing it is because you are incapacitated- its one thing if it is just bringing you the potion for you to use, but if it is dumping it down your throat because you are incapable of handling that bit, or due to you having limited actions/time to use to potion then some sort of check feels fair to deal with the whole rushing/improvising something to desperately fix things right away. If it was your last order before you go unconscious I guess it would be a luck check to see if you manage to keep your mouth open and to drink it without drowning in your health potion... I like the concept of improvisation checks instead of just outright saying certain actions are impossible, it feels like a decent approach when you don't have explicit rules or find the action minor, fun, or epic enough to let things slide.
I could see an interpretation which would allow a Servant to pour a drink into the mouth of a _willing_ creature, but makes it impossible for it to _force_ a drink into the mouth of an unwilling creature. It could be ruled that although a Servant can interact with (lightweight) objects, it simply can't exert enough physical force to do anything to an unwilling or hostile subject - any action an Unseen Servant takes can be opposed "for free", with no checks or spent action.
I'd consider the Unseen Servant's capacity for cognition roughly equivalent to that of a simple robot. They recognize the world around them through hardcoded associations between specific shapes/colors/etc. and object definitions. The small, concave cylinder is defined as a cup, but it doesn't *know* anything about what a cup is. So, if you send it down a passage and say "ring the bell if there's danger", that's not gonna do shit because that's a values judgment an Unseen Servant is incapable of making. If you say "ring the bell if there's a beholder", on the other hand, should work, because the Unseen Servant can perceive the big floating eyeball with eye stalks. However, an Unseen Servant would be unable to distinguish a real Beholder from an illusion, or even a reasonably accurate model (it could probably distinguish a statue by its lack of color and stone composition). Conversely, if a given beholder differs significantly from the commonly understood definitions of a beholder, the servant may miss it (and it might also fail to alert you if instead of a beholder, it actually finds a Spectator, Elder Orb, or other Eye Tyrant subtype, though that can be fixed by being more careful in your request and asking it to look for a broader category). This does mean that the caster will need to list off *every* type of monster they think might be present in the dungeon if they want an effective scout, and there's a solid likelihood of false positives and negatives. Of course, they could also ask for "any creature" but then it'll ring even if it's just some harmless insect, but "any creature larger than (size)" could miss deadly swarms of very harmful insects. Basically, attempting to weasel your way out of learning actual dungeon-crawling strategies using Unseen Servant is just begging for your DM to throw you a curveball.
Sounds like real advice in universe too, like as if I was reading it from "A Wizards Handbook to Adventuring: Common Mis-Casts and How to Avoid Them." "Section 20: Unseen Servant"
I didn't look that closely at Unseen Servant for quite some time simply because I saw the name and regarded it as some sort of summoning spell with a kind of independent creature that's under your command, and that didn't appeal all that much to me. I later came to the realisation that Unseen Servant actually seems to function more like a more automated and less precise version of telekinesis. It's like the mundane tasks you do every day that require no conscious throught (and thus no concentration) but extended by magic.
My ruling on what the Unseen Servant can do in my games is that it operates from the caster's mind and knowledge, but can't interact with them, only draw on them. For instance, if the caster is a wizard who also has skills or a background that established them as a skilled chef/cook, then the unseen servant can go out of sight in the caster's own kitchen (or one the caster is familiar with) and prepare a complex meal, because the caster already knew where the pots, pans, stove, spices, etc were when the ritual was cast. If the caster can see an unfamiliar kitchen, it can open cabinets and use utensils and spices if the caster can see them. If the caster can't see the kitchen and doesn't know where anything is, the Unseen Servant is clueless. If you tell it to go reshelve books in your own arcane library, zip, off it goes, because *you* know where the books are supposed to go on the shelves. If you tell it go find another wizard's library in an abandoned-seeming arcane tower and fetch their spellbook, no go: you didn't know where the library was when you cast it, so neither does the Servant, nor do either of you know what Flavius the Flatulent's Tome of Deadly Silence looks (or smells) like.
I will always love unseen servant. I had a campaign where I was a bard and my unseen servant was named roadie. I always had it cast and he slowly gained sentience throughout the story. Also, I always picture him being the shape of bubble buddy from SpongeBob.
...Oh, this feels like coming home to find a family recipe your grandma lost behind a shelf or something. Just pure comfy. I missed this old style of Animated Spellbook.
Unseen Servant is best used for tricking people IMO. A high charisma character using performance or deception to convince someone a place is haunted while an Unseen Servant plays poltergeist. Or steal something while the PCs distract the guards. Its a perfect tool to help out a rogue with sneaky activities or support a deceptive or persuasive character's antics.
That is one reason why multiclassing rogue with echo knight is so amazing. You can manifest your echo and have them run down a hallway to distract the guards. You can summon one on the other side of a door and then switch places with them. It’s a super fun combo.
I appreciate the spellbook episodes for less... High octane spells. They make great resources for new players. I do a lot of teaching games, and these are SO helpful. Thank you Zee, enjoy your trip
an actual fun use of unseen servant (at least as far as my understanding of rules go) is get a conjuration wizard to level 6, then ritual cast servant in order to refresh benign transportation. it just says "cast a conjuration spell of level 1 or higher", doesn't require a spell slot to be expended. so, if you have 10 minutes after combat, you can basically pretend it's a pf2 focus spell lol
@@zeebashew If you ever come back to Mexico, Guadalajara, Guanajuato Capital and San Miguel de Allende are really pretty. Hit me up if ya need a guide or someone to talk dnd around, cuidate hermano!
The bouncer is the ritual caster. He sits silently. Colby watching the rooms as objects flitter and move about and when something goes down all the items come to a hault and stand motionless as he grabs a dude and meets him out the window. Then he slowly sets down and all resumes.
I'd wager that there was probably some R&D that went into the Unseen Servant spell, and the one that exists currently and is used by arcane spellcasters is the product of a long series of trial and error to refine a magical force into something resembling an invisible humanoid familiar that wouldn't just blindly and deafly follow a single order that the caster was just too lazy to carry out themselves. Would be a neat idea to delve into the history of this spell and others in a given setting and, going along with the idea of the player or an NPC furthering the research of these spells, you could come up with rules for upcasting it or alter one spell into something different, like turning the Unseen Servant into an Unseen Assailant that could attack an enemy or group of enemies at the caster's command, but it still has the stats of the Unseen Servant so it can't do much beyond like poking somebody in the eye or kicking them in the nuts to really do damage and exists as a distraction or way to force a concentration check.
You might also introduce variants of the spell that create ones that work imperfectly, or in ways beyond the original intent. Such as an Unseen Servant that persists indefinitely, but if allowed to do so will slowly gain a mind of its own. (Magical Industrial Revolution posited this kind of thing as one potential doomsday scenario. An illusory workforce unionizes and rebels against their masters). Of course, maybe having an Unseen Servant with intelligence is what you WANT. You might have a variant called the Unseen Seneschal. A personal assistant capable of completing complex administrative tasks, and even command Unseen Servants at the caster's command.
Maybe Magic Missile could emerge as the assailant version of Unseen Servant? I know they're different schools, but magic missile seems like the result of directing a first level magic force to attack something for you without giving it any elemental power or direction. Maybe things like Cloud of Daggers are also descended from the same kind of process
I don't remember where I heard it, but I did hear of an interesting use for Unseen Servant. In the story, the party spent the better part of a couple of days spreading a rumor of an invisible killer going around stabbing people. After the rumor took hold, when they needed to get into somewhere or scare off people, they had unseen servant carry a dagger around. Cast minor illusion to add the sounds of footsteps and people were pissing themselves.
Depends on which encumbrance system you're using. It could move something pretty heavy over a pressure plate, unless you're using variant encumbrance in which case it's uh, not as useful haha!
@@zeebashew The 3.5e version specifically states it can "lift up to 20 pounds, or push/drag up to 100 pounds." The 3.5e version is also objectively more powerful than the 5e version, with a longer duration and no way to deal damage besides AOE, but the 5e version can be Ritual-cast, which wasn't a thing in 3.5e.
@@ClokworkGremlin With a 30lb carrying capacity, then an Unseen Servant can pull 150lb in a wheeled cart. A wooden garden cart would be around 75lb as a SWAG, so the Unseen Servant could have 74lb of gear in the small cart.
Love that like an army of them are summoned for Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion. Been using this with Galdur's Tower to make camping in the woods of Barovia a little more bearable
At lv18, a wizard can choose Unseen Servant with their Spell Mastery, essentially giving them at-will servants every action. They still last an hour, but without the need of ritual casting OR slot expension, a wizard can have its own on-the-fly workforce to clean,work,etc. 10 servants a minute, or 100 servants in 10 minutes if your DM lets your pc cast it every 6 seconds, not too bad! Then again, you’re also a lv18 wizard lol
Hey, doesn't matter if they can't attack, if you can have that many unseen servants they can make a wizard tower on the go if given access to a Bag of Holding as well.
The neat thing about unseen servants in combat situations is that they're invisible. Very useful for setting up ambushes (pull this lever after the target passes, lock the door after the target arrives, etc.) and after the surprise is revealed, they can always, like you said, chuck flasks of oil and acid once the fun starts.
It's mindless, so if I were the DM, I would rule against being able to "program" the servant. No "if/when" commands, only "Go place, press button." If it can't reach place or there's no button, I would just have the command end. (the Unseen Servant keeps trying to do the thing, but can't.)
@@ClokworkGremlin I think programing the servant is actually the fun of it. Sure, it gives a little bit of versatility to the spell, but it would also be fun to see how it throws everything into chaos when poorly worded, or trying to be too specific. Examples: "If Ronan, the dwarf, walks through the door, close it behind him." goes on without a hitch, but "if any creature that I consider an enemy crosses the door, close it after it. makes it so the servant closes the door after any creature that passes through the door, because it can't understand what creatures you consider an enemy or ally. Same for "wait for all my friends to cross the door before you close it ." And suddenly your party is trapped with the bbeg and his crooks, because certainly you meant for it to wait for all creatures that were following you to be admitted before closing the door.
@@ClokworkGremlin But that contradicts the very examples in the spell description. "Fetching an object" requires it to 'percieve' a bunch of objects, and only bring an object to you if it meets your request; "Cleaning" is a bunch more conditions - only interact with things if they are dirty, use this too if it is dusty, this tool if it is dirty; etc. Heck, "go place, press button" is a conditional! Determining that it has reached 'place' is a conditional, determining that sufficient force has been applied to press the button is a conditional, even _sequencing_ the two actions is a conditional - 'when you have reached place, press button'!
My thing is, the spell directly lists that the unseen servant is a "medium force." Meaning, the servant has a size, which implies that the servant occupies it's space. This means that a medium creature cannot simply walk past the area the servant is occupying, and any attacks launched at a caster behind a servant will have half or even three-fourths cover. If you have a DM who plays Rules As Written, the attack doesn't redirect to the servant. This potentially makes a permanent source of cover until the enemy tries to attack the space itself or realises an unseen servant is standing there.
RAW attacks against the space a target occupies aren't redirected to the target occupying that space either, although that would also mean it's impossible to attack invisible creatures.
A way I like to think about the Unseen Servant is as a sort of subconscious telekinesis. Since it's not a creature and doesn't really have actions, I find it's a lot easier to explain why it can't do x or y when you look at it like signals being broadcast from the caster. So, it can do anything the character could do without focusing (or needing to roll, which keeps it useful at higher levels since I like the Taking 10 rule) and overly complex, time sensitive, or emotionally charged tasks sort of overload the 'signals' bandwidth and fail.
I had a bard that created a variant of the spell that would write down things that were happening so that he could properly chronicle the group's story
I, uh, once used Unseen Servant to pick up the decapitated head of an enemy to freak out their ally mid-battle, and used Minor Illusion to make it seem like it was saying "why did you let me die??" Our party had some Problems in that campaign.
I can see a group of Unseen Servants holding tarps/blankets or shields only providing cover until the inevitable fireball comes in to clear them all out.
Or a stronger, slightly more persistent alternative to mage hand. While mage hand would require constant casting or repeated casting (which is fine as a cantrip) for say moving several books between shelves, a servant could be instructed once and just wait for it to finish.
@@Wbfuhn Not directly stated, but strength of 2 so you could calculate its carrying capacity. I did say it was "stronger" intending to mean physical strength.
Unseen Servant can make poses under a sheet or blanket with eyeholes, with a string and a small harmonica attached, and fly around making wailing noises.
2:43 "...I don't think an Unseen Servant has weight." An Unseen Servant doesn't have _mass._ Weight is a force, and Unseen Servant is just a force (with limited autonomy). If you want an Unseen Servant to set off a pressure plate, just tell it to push down on the pressure plate very hard.
I can imagine a spellcasting noble who uses Unseen Servant to do things for him that he doesn't feel like doing, and doesn't have to pay. Also Mage Hand, and basically any other spell that keeps him from having to get up and do anything.
Dressing up the servant with clothing and having them walk around the city to make up a fake ghost, only to get hired to exorcise it later, has been my favorite use.
I have my Unseen Servant wear (Carry?) a blanket and a wooden stick, and walk 55 feet ahead of the party in a dungeon. The blanket makes it look like someone walking around with a blanket on their head, and obviously it taps anything and everything with the stick, trying to stir up hidden monsters and set off traps. Even if it uncovers half of the threats we would face, for a ritual it's essentially a disposable expendable drone that can potentially save a party member from danger. You would have to be a suicidal fool to not use it this way if you have access to it. Real people in your game setting with their lives on the line would send in Unseen Servants, Arcane Eyes, and Familiars all in advance when going into scary dungeon full of ancient BS. (If you are roleplaying a character who is reckless and foolish with their life, then disregard me.)
Best use I ever made of the spell was bypassing a boss fight altogether. It was a Strixhaven game where the DM had cooked up a magic VR level where the party had to cleat a bunch of Simulated non-fantasy levels to win. One was a space base taken over by an Aboleth, which had put its best minions in the control room with itself, and on the far wall from the door was a Big Red Button to purge the entire base. My wizard set up a Rope Trick for the party to hide in, cast an Unseen Servant with the orders to press the button, then used their familiar's eyes to guide the Servant while other party members launched distractions from outside. Once the Servant got to its spot, everyone got in the Trick, and we gassed the entire room without a single round of real combat. One of my best DnD moments.
About that bit at the end, about possibly using a higher level spell slot to use spells in clearly unintentional manners, I've always been the type of player that likes to use spells in creative and unintended ways, and a solution one of my DMs came up with was that any time I tried to do something like that, I would make an Arcana check with a DC of their choosing. It was a neat way for me to have my cool moments without it being so frequent that it just breaks the balance of things. Only issue is I was a CHA caster with INT as my dump stat, so succeeding these checks was quite difficult.
Personally I'd rule it'd be either Arcana, or for other classes, they can choose to instead, use a class unique one, falling on the default spellcasting modifier if there is none. Paladins/Clerics would be Religion Bards would be Instrument Proficiency or Performance Sorcerers and Wizards could use a Concentration check (But this comes at the cost of the spell simply fizzling out(or wild magic as a harsher ruling) if failed) (I feel like Sorcerers wouldn't be able to make such in depth modifications, hence the inability to use Charisma to modify spells. because they don't really *know* what the details of what they're doing, and they already have the ability to modify their spells with Sorcery Points(if you want to homebrew to use an amount of those instead). However, if they do, they could simply use their Arcana proficiency)
@@themanysirs1814 You can just use that ruling for using a different stat for skills. If a Barbarian is threatening to punch you, is their threat based on how hard they can punch or how well they said the words? STR based intimidation checks. Likewise, arcana is used for magic, and since a sorcerer commands their magic through CHA, they can make CHA based arcana checks for controlling and casting their spells, just as they use CHA for counterspell and dispel magic. That said, they can't use CHA for knowing and identifying arcane things or creatures. As the DM you have the option to ask for a different modifier based on how they describe their action. Likewise the barbarian can offer to help the negotiations with a STR based persuasion check, offering to plow the farmer's fields in exchange for staying the night. It's kinda situational and requires a bit of creativity, but it can allow some combat-focused classes a little more utility out of combat. And don't be afraid of consequences either, plowing the field with raw strength may give lesser-quality but usable rows, or picking the lock with strength may open it a bit louder and break the lock. It wasn't as quiet and unnoticeable as picking it with DEX, but it was still quieter and less noticeable than kicking the door down and let the fighter with a background in security shine while the rogue was tied up or something.
Generally I run Unseen Servant as being intelligent enough to do tasks that the caster could perform under normal circumstances that don't require a skill or involve interacting with a creature. I've used them to spread oil and use a flint and tinder to light it, search a kitchen for a knife (including opening unlocked drawers) and bring it to the caster, etc. Generally I let the servant act with the most basic understanding that the caster has, for instance an unseen servant cast by a noble could understand "Bring me a salad fork" but only because the caster knows what that means. So an alchemist working in their shop could tell their servant "Bring me the bottle of glistening death extract" and the servant would know what the caster was referring to, because the caster knows which one it is, but they couldn't send their servant into an unfamiliar lab and tell it to bring back any glistening death extract because that would require the skill to identify the poison.
The best thing about Unseen Servant is not being able to see the look of disgust and disdain on their faces when you order them to do something sketchy.
Unseen servant is basically reflavored telekinesis. It can fetch items for you because it's your mind deciding what is needed from where. It does specifically what you order it to do because that's what your brain wants.
3:36 Gabriella is just my spirit animal. Who wouldn't want to use magic to have an unseen servant bring you a cup of hot cocoa or the warm beverage of your choosing while being super comfy on your chair, wrapped up in a blanket ?
Beautiful episode. I love the attention given to the ambiguous parts of the spell; it gets people thinking about the kinds of conversations they might have with their players/DM, in a friendly way. The tequila at the end was a fun touch, too.
I had a character harvest the hands of a coven of Hags and a combination of skills/tool proficiency to do taxidermy. Then used item crafting to create the physical embodiment of a permanent Unseen Servant item in the form of a severed hand. Basically "Thing" from the Addams Family franchise. He called them "Helping Hands"
Unseen Servant is my go-to early level spell. In my latest campaign we had a low resource start which meant after a spellbook I was literally out of money. I scraped together my own component pouch for my specific spells and when we stopped at a tavern I asked if the proprietress needed (paid) help and so I used my Unseen Servant to make money while we talked plot with an important NPC xD
The extra funny part about the spell description is the fact that it doesn't specify the directional limitations to its movement, meaning that since it is just a force, it can in fact fly. It has no legs to walk with, likely no weight too, it's just a force, so why would it not be able to move up and down freely, or heck, even through objects?
As the DM for my group, I ruled that it could set off pressure plates. Since it's literally a "force", I didn't see why it couldn't exert force downward onto a pressure plate, since it uses force to lift books or items as it has no hands... That's just me though. (You're totally right about the glyphs though.)
The best use for this spell I have ever come up with so far. Our party knew it was in a woodland by a Gnoll camp. What we didn't know was, were the Gnolls were. But we were pretty sure they knew we were coming. My warlock/bard had Unseen Servant, so I summoned one, had it slowly make its way about 30 ft before us, then had it charge the next 30 ft making as much ruckus as possible, bursting though bushes and making weak branches snap, that sort of thing. Anything to just make it clear "some 'thing' is coming at ya". A whole lot'a Gnolls revealed their locations all at once ambushing the "thing". Several of which it turned out had flaming arrows. In a woodland area. That the party was, not, in the middle of but on the other side. After taking care of what Gnolls made it though the woodland to us we ended up taking a different, not currently on fire, route to get access to the rest of the camp and the DM never used flaming arrows in a woodland as a trap again.
Use the fact that you can set the creation point to ~60'. It's invisible, tell it to light a roof on fire. You have an instant distraction. Ask the unseen servant to DRAG something along the floor, that adds the weight for pressure plates. Kinda like how mine clearing vehicles are basically bulldozers with chains Infront.
I rule unseen servant as follows: AC 10, HP 1, passive perception equal to the caster, can not make perception rolls for dc requirements above passive perception. this way anything the caster can perceive in day to day tasks passively the servant will understand passively. this both opens up and limits what its sensory power is to what the caster can handle without needing a skill check. and creates a good narrative through line as to why a servant could or could not be used as a scout. as for throwing items to combo for combat effects, feeding you potions, and the likes. My ruling is: if the servant is holding the potion BEFORE combat starts, it can use its object interaction to use the potion on a creature. otherwise the potion must be placed off of the player's character for the servant to pick up with an object interaction, then would become eligible to use as previously stated. Additionally, anything they player tries that exceeds these rules i make an offer: if i let you do this, your enemies will know how to do this moving forward as well. allowing players to help create rulings around spells and shape the magical metagame of their game world by their actions in it.
Underrated spell, in my opinion, and I think that's because there's so many controls on it. People shut it down because it can't directly attack and gets destroyed by basically anything with an AOE effect. The spell description lists all these mundane things it can do, but none of them involve rolling dice at all so most players dismiss it as an RP thing. But as you say, I think that's due to a lack of creativity, because while there are a lot of controls to prevent it from being abused too much, it's worded vaguely enough to have some neat interpretive space. I actually like the idea of having the players need to protect an unseen servant as it accomplishes its given task (like if it's transporting something fragile or that would be dangerous for them to touch by hand). It would become like a "protect the payload" kind of game for a little bit!
In pathfinder, unseen servant is ruled to "weigh" 20lbs for traps, and the argument is the strength of 2 lets it apply 20lbs of force up (in pf rules), so why not down? In 5e its not specified, but I'd argue a servant could set off a 60lbs of force trap trigger. (Strength scorex30lbs for a lift)
For my "Don Quixote meets Mermaid Man" insane old fighter, I gave him some levels in warlock for...reasons. in any case, he's been talking to his "Squire" for sessions, who of course isn't present. But now that he's unlocked Unseen Servant, he's been accidentally summoning it and now there's an invisible man giving him massages and brushing his horse. I love d&d.
Valda's spire of secret's has a 2nd lvl version of the spell called Unseen Accountant, basically the same thing but it's smart enough to do your taxes.
EDIT: I misremembered Unseen Servant as summoning an Invisible Stalker. Ignore the following post, it is incorrect information. Unseen Servant USED to be a creature. Specifically, it was an air elemental. Only in recent editions has that changed. This is the reason for the ambiguity for Unseen Servant fetching things, but not being able to call out monsters. It used to be a creature, but now it's not, and some of the effects it was capable of as a creature got carried over.
I think you're thinking of Invisible Stalker (which summons an air elemental). Unseen Servant has been a "force" since 1st edition AD&D (the earliest version I can find).
@@abdulijubjub I apparently was. Sorry about that, I could have sworn it summoned an air elemental, but that must have been a similar, 3rd party spell that appeared in a Dragon Magazine somewhere. My bad entirely.
Came back to this because I was thinking about a strange potential application for this. A lot of comments hold that the unseen servant's mindlessness refers to being unable to identify or follow abstract concepts rather than an inability to draw conclusions objectively. Under this presumption, an unseen servant could follow a command such as press the red button, wash the dirty dishes, or poison the middle glass. A command it couldn't follow might be: fetch my favorite coat, since favorites are subjective, and that information isn't necessarily accessible. This all seems very standard and sensible, but what I'm wondering is when this falls into the realm of omnipotence. Let's say there is a number keypad for a door, and you don't know the code, could you command an unseen servant to input the last code entered, or even, input the correct code? This IS objective information, such as which button is red, and which glass is in the middle, but it'd be ridiculous to expect it to know the code. What can you expect the unseen servant to know then? A bit more realistically, what if the command was: pour wine into every glass marked with a prime number? Still objective, but it requires some mathematical knowledge, which feels unrealistic for a mindless servant to know, even if it is technically a simple task. So yeah, obviously, whatever the dm says your servant can do is the answer, but I guess this is all to say I think the servant should have an Intelligence score to help determine what it is and isn't capable of knowing. I believe the baseline for comprehending any language (a fundamental of following commands) is 3, so maybe a 4 would suit it best. Here are some more objective commands I think are interesting: Serve food to every third guest that enters. Fetch the oldest document in the filing cabinet. Serve poisoned food to any guest without a silver piece under their tongue (How much can this servant see???) Fetch the book with the highest word count Fetch every book with the word "dragon" in it
unseen servant is the reason why the world in dnd should have a lot of manufactures ... because building complex things in simple steps can easily be achived by a mage in a factory with it .
but would someone who dedicated their life to learning the arcane arts really 1. Add unseen servant to their spellbook 2. Think business enough to think of using it in a factory-like setting 3. Want to waste their years of arcane knowledge on something so boorish
Here's my pick for unseen servant usage: jailbreaks. Get yourself captured, but cast an unseen servant at the last moment and give it standing orders to follow you. You've got an hour in which it can untie ropes, steal keys, make distractions, et cetera, and "get caught on purpose" is a classic infiltration plan.
That is a good idea. As a Scribe Wizard, they can cast the Unseen Servant ritual in 1 round and use the bonus action in that round to command the Unseen Servant. Only problem is the Unseen Servant moves at 15ft per round, so you have to drag your feet as you are carted of to jail.
My thought to how the finding things work is that the spell uses the castors knowledge of the item to determine the correct item. It couldn't, however, find something that the castor doesn't know about because then it would have no specific "target". Therefore you couldn't scout an area for danger because you would have to already know what the danger is. This is my two cents anyways.
Actually because the 1hr time limit for the first servant only starts AFTER you finish the first 10 mins casting you could actually have 6 servants after 1 hour and still have 10 mins left on the first one ... For whatever that's worth
Not gonna lie, I think the most broken (or at least unimpeded) character that could use unseen servant would be an order of the scribes wizard. They get to casts ritual spells for their normal casting time without adding the 10 minutes. So getting ten unseen servants up in a minute and having basically the rest of an hour to do whatever you want with them would be incredible. Hell, get those ten working and while they’re going spend another minute summoning ten more 😂 Depending on how complicated of a task each one can do you could build a house with a functionally limitless supply of board layers, nail holders, and hammerers
You can put "depending on the DM" in front of literally any D&D thing. That's how DMs work. Doesn't even matter if the book explicitly says something works a certain way, bc the DM gets final say
@@noahblack914 some more so than others. This is one of the spells deliberately worded to be interpreted towards the useless end of the spectrum. Something like eldritch blast is less so.
@@lemonZzzzs No, it's deliberately worded to make it clear it isn't a combatant. It's clearly worded to be useful within pretty obvious and reasonable constraints, because it's a 1st level spell. I avoid evaluating D&D mechanics based on what the power gamers think. They're trying to solve a non-existent puzzle where I'm trying to play a game.
@@noahblack914 i agree that it is worded to be clear that this 1st level spell can only be used in very few, non-combat cases. It limits creativity out of fear of it being abused. Makes 5e closer in spirit to a video game than a TTRPG. A lot of its spells are like that. Don't get me wrong though, it's still playable, but this kind of attitude also encourages further restriction of creativity. I've yet to meet a 5e DM that would allow illusion spells to be anything more interesting than you can get in a video game. Thanks to restrictive wording of the spells. Likewise, I've yet to successfully use a suggestion or mass suggestion spell in a 5e game.
I wish they'd revisit spells like Unseen Servant and Tenser's Floating Disk. They've been hedged and hemmed and lawyered so much over the years that they're just argument fodder the moment anyone tries to do anything interesting with them. I think a more coherent system where each damage type has a progression of combat/noncombat effects that you unlock with different spell levels and focused study, would end up being more understandable than picking the tattered remains of bits and bobs of the handful of spells that survived years of being adjudicated to hell and back.
Its also medium sized with a strength score of 2 which sounds like it would be really weak, but its carrying capacity would actually be 30 pounds according to the PHB
I just had it to be a basic servant and took prestidigitation and mending in addition. Perfect flavour for a noble. "Yes, I am an adventurer on the road. No, I will not have my cloth uncleaned, torn or imperfectly folded cloth/sheets (there are limits to how low I will fall as a noble).
For an US being mindless but not needing to see, I think the caster has to have a mental image of what it wants the servant to do (Get the tea pot, fill the cup, bring the cup), so it can't warn of traps or monsters because the caster doesn't know if there are any.
My favorite spell!! I have an Awakened rabbit wizard that I'm running, and she and her spellbook can be carried by her Servant (whose name is Bertrand) as if she's riding it like a magic carpet 😊😁
"Unseen servant is mindless" That reads to me as "it has no processing power" you can command it to do X; but you can't command it to do "X or Y" or alternatively you can't command it to do "if X then do Y else do Z". In other words Unseen servant can follow instructions but those instructions have to be void of decisions, do logical operations and math.
I made a Kobold wizard once named Scalabax. His whole thing was using spells in whole new ways like creating an unseen servant that was tasked with wearing a full body robe that a human would wear, he would hide under it and tasked it to mimic his movements using their telepathic connection, essentially making him a "three kobolds in a trench coat" minus two kobolds. I eventually made two more that were dressed up like warriors of sorts, one of which I called "Sir Bu'Ket Head". At first it was meant to essentially be like a chess piece/meatshield that would take one instance of big damage that could have killed me or gone to a fellow party member, but then I was technically able to use the "warriors" I created to give the nearest party members the help action to give them a better chance in a fight. The insanity that is the last thing one of our foes saw was the sight of one of my servants dressed up in furs and a helmet with two axes like a barbarian while it rode a goat into battle, with said goat doing the real work, will always live rent free in my head.
I love this spell I played a bard and called my unseen servant Roadie Would use Minor illusion to occasionally show him as a red headed/bearded Dwarf in a denim Jacket During performances I’d have him play the drums
My Celestial Warlock is a doctor and uses Unseen Servant as Nurse staff. Adding mage hand gives him effectively 5 "hands" to use simultaneously when doing surgery (medicine checks) and we worked out that using US to monitor patients would allow my PC to short rest. Obviously he also took the Invocation to not need sleep as the true fantasy dream of amy Dr.
I love the spell, saved the party many times, if you have the spell handy get them to open all the doors and chests for you, 9 times out of 10 they will set the trap off, I DM I played with got annoyed with me using the spell to get around his traps and started to use stone doors and chests that are too heavy for the unseen servant to move, which unfortunately made the party paranoid and now we use high lvl spells like rock to mud on a door because "why the fuck is there a large stone door in a tree house?"
I had it give me the area effect to help so pouring water, grease, technically it can open doors or windows so I also have it flip any levers, push any buttons or open door while my group hides around the corner to see if it's trapped or if monsters are on the other side if their is we move back cast a wind spell and make them think it was the wind opening the door
Unseen Servant is a necromancer's second-best friend (after their zombies). They can dig up graves, strip corpses to make skeletons, refill graves to cover your tracks, basically all the overhead costs of being a necromancer can be handled by an Unseen Servant.
‘Ask for a high level slot’ is actually a great solution, simple, allows for creativity but needs a cost
Yeah Jim is really brilliant!
Just imagine what a 9th level unseen servant could do!
I usually go with arcana checks. Or in the case of wizards, tell them it may be something they can make a new spell for.
@@DDWyss You've just given me my next character idea; A peasant from a village near a High-Wizards tower, but the whole village is made of permanent US's cast at 9th level, ordered to act as villagers, and provide regular food delivery up the mountain to him. Now the wizard is missing and it's up to Village Chief to find her lost creator and ask him where he wants them to put the statue they just finished.
`Depending on the ask, I would probably throw in an Arcana check. Like, if it's in the bounds of the spell, but you could think of it not being strong enough to enact (You want to carry 10lbs instead of 5lbs?!?), or increased distance or the like, then just an upcast makes sense. You want to do some slightly out of bounds, then the Arcana check, especially if it's on the fly. Love the idea though. More flexibility = More Fun.
It can’t attack, but it can definitely scatter ball bearings or caltrops. Setting fires, throwing switches, moving items from one party member to another, and more are definitely possible. One of those spells that gets better the more you think about it.
I do think it's silly when a spell says it can do a lot of things, but not other things that are not actually that different. Like it can't "attack," but can it "swing a sword in the direction that happens to be occupied by an enemy?" I see no reason why not that isn't purely arbitrary. Even if you argue that they are too slow to present a credible threat with a sword, they could at least pull the trigger on a crossbow, no doubt. They might not be able to aim in any way, so you would need to have them lined up on the target, but they should at least function.
@@timogul Maybe we can say that it can attack, and for the purposes of attacking it's a creature with 2 strength and 2 dexterity? :p
@@timogul I get you with the crossbow, but I would not call it an attack any more then a crossbow trap could "attack". Instead I would suggest it would be possible to give an unseen servent a crossbow, order it to pull the trigger if something crosses in front of it, then it becomes an impromtu crossbow trap and the target makes a save.
I feel like even if they can do those things, you have to be exact about when or how to do them or they will happen randomly or chaotically during combat. I feel like having them be able to react to intruders/aggressors is overpowered and doesn't hold up to being "mindless".
@@timogul Eh, it's probably like that for balance reasons
Familiars also can't attack - probably for balance reasons, but perhaps there could be some lore excuse.
Temporary Summons can attack for some reason.
Why do summons even follow commands in the first place?
"The servants bell" small brass bell that casts Unseen Servant once per long rest when rung.
"hmm, might be able to use it as a trap later, put the bell into the bag for later"
Imagine the unseen servant is following the party, and the person says something like "I could use a snack" and suddenly food is pulled out of their pack and floats towards them
@@icetide9411 Turn to your friend, "You mind starting this fire for me?"
Whoosh!
"..."
"...ghost?"
"Ghost."
You've just created an SCP.
@@HenshinFanatic
Already exists... Kinda.
*Introducing SCP-662:* Once rung, a British gentleman appears from the nearest unoccupied room and will essentially be the greatest butler you could ever have.
What I love about Unseen Servant, from a narrative sense, is that it's a spell that wizards of all levels would use. A Double Supreme Grand Archmage is not going to make his own lunch or do his own laundry. Outside the context of adventuring or plot, it is I think the most realistic and probably most common spell among wizards.
Double Supreme Grand Archmage: Don't call her Unseen Servant! That's my wife!
Unseen Servant and Prestidigitation: An unbeatable combo!
18th level Wizards can also take it as an at will cast and have a whole bunch of them for every task they might need it for.
Focuses 10 minutes on a ritual spell to get the unseen servant to wash the dishes which was a 5 minute task.
@@Treblaine ADHD Wizards.
My favorite use of unseen servant is the 'decoy wizard'.
I have the servant follow me carrying a lightweight mannequin wearing long robes that drag the ground and sleeves pinned as though the hands are clasped in front, a heavy hood concealing the 'face'.
Naturally whether or not a monster will fall for the decoy and waste a turn attacking it is entirely up to the game master as there aren't really any rules for fake wizards, but it can potentially absorb part of an ambush or be sent into a room first in place of a chicken to see if anything jumps out and tries to kill it... or even have a spell or two thrown in it's direction!
I would probably run that almost like Mirror Image, but only at AC 10 and with just one guy.
I think when the spell said “mindless” it doesn’t mean the force is stupid or incompetent but that it lacks any individual cognition. So it can’t create novel or original ideas.
So say you asked it to get you a red box in the next room, it can do that because all of those things are clearly defined concepts. However if you asked it for something subjective like to get you a pretty dress or a delicious beverage it would either do something based on the caster’s subconscious preferences or simply fail to do anything because it has no concept of what it means for something to be subjectively appealing.
I also guess by that logic it couldn’t act spontaneously or situationally. So if you told it to do something abstract you would have to be careful. Like if you wanted to to serve drinks at a party you would specify it would only fill empty glasses or when someone does something to request their glass to be filled because it doesn’t have the ability to understand or intuit that humanoids only want to be served drinks when they don’t already have one.
Mindless compliance, lol
We have mindless creatures capable of following orders, even though they are limited. I agree it can't handle subjectivity, but I couldn't find a precise definition for "mindless" in the rules
That scene of Sword in the stone where the set of tea keeps pouring sugar and tea (while also fighting) XD
You probably can't give it calculus equations to solve.
@@TheSolitaryEyei feel like an unseen servant could do math
I think you'd have to describe the algorithm for doing it to it @adt4864
I had a character that had unseen servants bound to the house. Each one had a specific function and would operate on little "guide rails".
This is the kind of thing a DM should allow as a kind of permanent enchantment. The Unseen Servant is bound to a location, and performs a rote task when not otherwise directed (sweeping floors, washing dishes, dusting, etc). The kind of thing a household of modest means might have installed in their home by way of a local wizard.
It's arguably one of the more useful things about the spell Mighty Fortress and making it permanent, that gaggle of location-bound Unseen Servants. I'd definitely be cool with taking a couple weeks or a month to make an Unseen Servant that does a specific task or sort of task in a articular place, though, or some variety of non-spell ritual to accomplish such.
@@Bluecho4 WIth HP that low, wouldn't a cat swatting at the flying object be enough to dispel it?
@@MaxSMoke777 If you are going by the book, yes. But I would also point out that the cat would need to land a hit against an amorphic invisible target.
Going off book you could say what ever you like. Provided it is still able to complete it's bound location is still reasonably in tact the servant will regenerate in 24hrs.
@drewhalcro6082 I've heard of a house rule that cats can see invisible creatures. Explains a lot of weird cat behavior... though it would make wildshape op.
One rule of thumb a DM might employ with the Unseen Servant is to assume that if the activity you wanted would require an ability check of some kind, it just can't do it. It automatically fails, because it has no listed ability scores (aside from Str 2). If a PC can do something without rolling, the Unseen Servant _might_ be able to do it. So, picking up an item from a shelf or from the pocket of an unconscious person is doable. Stealing something from a conscious, aware person is a no go.
Maybe not picking pockets, but moving stuff behind their distracted backs sounds reasonable enough
Arcane Trickster specifically gets the ability for its Mage Hand to pick pockets so definitely a no go on Unseen Servant doing that.
That's actually a really simple way to run it. Still gives it a lot of varied usability but stops it from stepping on other spells or abilities.
I would allow it to steal from someone, I would not allow it to 'hide' what it was doing. So the victim would notice.
Its a semi intelligent non hostile autonomous telekinesis.
A SINHAT, for short? 🎩
@@benjaminoechsli1941 I’m stealing this name for a magic item. I hope you understand
I love the idea of using Unseen Servant in a hospital or medical quarantine situation! Gonna try to use that in the future.
That is a great thought.
@@Brasswatchman*commands unseen servant to traverse an area with a plague doctors mask at head height*
Patients: This place is haunted! There's ghosts!
Doctor: Excuse me, that's nurse Unseen, not a ghost. It would seem you're suffering from hysteria. Nurse, bring the bonesaw, it's time for lobotomy!
Had a doctor wizard who used magnificent mansion and it's 50 unseen servants as an instant hospital
Why not just use Mage Hand?
We defeated an ambitious monster who had its lair underwater. Its hoard was hidden beneath the sand & seaweed. Used Unseen Servant to short & fetch the treasure out since it doesn’t require breathing.
i mean i supose as long as it's within 60 ft
I think you mean "lair" and "hoard" respectively and respectfully.
@@Jianju69 corrected. Thank you
now i'm just picturing a high level wizard who took Unseen Servant as the level 1 spell mastery just casting it for every little thing.
OH MY GOG THAT IS SO F-ING FANTASTIC!!
Legit, I may steal this idea.
I think a ruling that makes sense in general for mindless servants, such as this one and undead, is that rather than understand the words of your command, they magically undestand its intent. So in the scouting scenario, I would probably ask the player to define what danger is; does the servant ring the bell if it sees a creature? Well there's a bat inside the cave, so ring the bell.
ai bros saying "okay draw a hand" and it makes an eldritch creature as a result that kind of looks like a hand.
The party suddenly hears the bell ringing non stop. They realize the servant must be mistaken and check in on it. It has discovered a colony of ants, and is ringing for each new ant it sees.
@@numimio lmao yeah, I think for the unseen servant it would also be wise to rule that it can't do anything that would require a skill check; although the spell does specifically say it can "mend" implying that it can sow.
@@theposhdinosaur7276 i dont think basic mending and sewing should require a skill check, its a menial task that a commoner can accomplish with regularity.
@@Rockzilla1122 Yeah, I mostly brought it up because it seems more involved than the other tasks listed. Indeed "sowing tools" do not exist as artisan's tools, though "Weaver's tools" do. So I think it is correct that mending clothes requires no proficiency, but weaving clothes do.
I like to think of Unseen Servant as a simple computer program. It can compare conditions, but it can't interpret data. For example: It can't do research for you (because it's mindless), but it can flip through a book until it finds a word or phrase you designate, then show it to you. We know it can do this, because it can "fetch things", meaning it must have the ability to recognize parameters as well as intent (otherwise it would just pick up random stuff). We also know it can handle complex tasks, because it can mend, clean, light fires, and fold clothes (each multi-step processes, utilizing multiple different tools).
Another thing to keep in mind is: Unseen Servants are *shapeless*; not humanoid in any way. Which means they aren't limited by the number of objects (only their weight), or by visual/reading speed (i.e. searching pages or scrolls), or by gravity (normal or abnormal), or physical positioning, etc.
"unseen servant, compare all these drawings and average their creativity so that you can make a statistical average of their work."
Unseen Servant matrix supercomputing? This is a dangerous prospect.
Furthermore, this is an excellent description.
I had an unseen Servant carry a lightly armored dummy around making the enemy think the dummy was a golem. I've also had one drag around a series of wooden planks with nails in them as a movable spike strip/caltroped square.
There is always the classic untie the chandelier/cargo net so it falls on the opponents. All the servant is doing is untying a knot, gravity creates the attack.
I really should look up the older editions of this spell again to remind myself how it has changed over the years. There is probably a story behind each and every one of those limitations.
or tie some shoelaces together or pants an enemy to distract them
I used unseen servant to load or aim a cannon, since it requires 3 actions, 'load', 'aim' and 'fire' and only last one is something that unseen servant cannot do.
The 8th level spell mighty fortress gives you a castle staffed by 100 unseen servants. If you have a spare 26,000 gp worth of diamonds laying around and can afford to cast the spell in the same place for a year, the castle (and all those servants) become permanent.
So if the DM were to give an NPC such a castle, not only would it be an incredibly-useful advantage, but also convey a ridiculous amount of wealth. 📝
i would argue you could finagle pouring a drink into someones open mouth, insomuch as just having it dump something out in a particular space, but maybe thats pushing it?
Yeah that's right up against the limit of what I think it can do though. 100% up to your DM. Like if you use your object interaction to move your head so the liquid pours into your mouth I'd be okay with that probably. Might ask for a check? If you're unconscious I think it's probably pushing it?
@@zeebashew If it can pour you a drink and serve it to you, it should be able to pour a potion down your throat. You'll have to open your mouth for it, though. Maybe a stat roll to not choke on it.
@blarghchan I agree that if it can pour a drink, then it should be able to pour a potion in someone's mouth, if they are not moving.
@@zeebashew A check or something on your end sounds fair if the whole reason you are doing it is because you are incapacitated- its one thing if it is just bringing you the potion for you to use, but if it is dumping it down your throat because you are incapable of handling that bit, or due to you having limited actions/time to use to potion then some sort of check feels fair to deal with the whole rushing/improvising something to desperately fix things right away. If it was your last order before you go unconscious I guess it would be a luck check to see if you manage to keep your mouth open and to drink it without drowning in your health potion... I like the concept of improvisation checks instead of just outright saying certain actions are impossible, it feels like a decent approach when you don't have explicit rules or find the action minor, fun, or epic enough to let things slide.
I could see an interpretation which would allow a Servant to pour a drink into the mouth of a _willing_ creature, but makes it impossible for it to _force_ a drink into the mouth of an unwilling creature. It could be ruled that although a Servant can interact with (lightweight) objects, it simply can't exert enough physical force to do anything to an unwilling or hostile subject - any action an Unseen Servant takes can be opposed "for free", with no checks or spent action.
I'd consider the Unseen Servant's capacity for cognition roughly equivalent to that of a simple robot. They recognize the world around them through hardcoded associations between specific shapes/colors/etc. and object definitions. The small, concave cylinder is defined as a cup, but it doesn't *know* anything about what a cup is. So, if you send it down a passage and say "ring the bell if there's danger", that's not gonna do shit because that's a values judgment an Unseen Servant is incapable of making. If you say "ring the bell if there's a beholder", on the other hand, should work, because the Unseen Servant can perceive the big floating eyeball with eye stalks. However, an Unseen Servant would be unable to distinguish a real Beholder from an illusion, or even a reasonably accurate model (it could probably distinguish a statue by its lack of color and stone composition). Conversely, if a given beholder differs significantly from the commonly understood definitions of a beholder, the servant may miss it (and it might also fail to alert you if instead of a beholder, it actually finds a Spectator, Elder Orb, or other Eye Tyrant subtype, though that can be fixed by being more careful in your request and asking it to look for a broader category). This does mean that the caster will need to list off *every* type of monster they think might be present in the dungeon if they want an effective scout, and there's a solid likelihood of false positives and negatives. Of course, they could also ask for "any creature" but then it'll ring even if it's just some harmless insect, but "any creature larger than (size)" could miss deadly swarms of very harmful insects. Basically, attempting to weasel your way out of learning actual dungeon-crawling strategies using Unseen Servant is just begging for your DM to throw you a curveball.
Sounds like real advice in universe too, like as if I was reading it from "A Wizards Handbook to Adventuring: Common Mis-Casts and How to Avoid Them." "Section 20: Unseen Servant"
I didn't look that closely at Unseen Servant for quite some time simply because I saw the name and regarded it as some sort of summoning spell with a kind of independent creature that's under your command, and that didn't appeal all that much to me. I later came to the realisation that Unseen Servant actually seems to function more like a more automated and less precise version of telekinesis. It's like the mundane tasks you do every day that require no conscious throught (and thus no concentration) but extended by magic.
It's pretty much exactly the spell for when someone goes into a wizard's house and sees a broom sweeping the floors automatically
My ruling on what the Unseen Servant can do in my games is that it operates from the caster's mind and knowledge, but can't interact with them, only draw on them.
For instance, if the caster is a wizard who also has skills or a background that established them as a skilled chef/cook, then the unseen servant can go out of sight in the caster's own kitchen (or one the caster is familiar with) and prepare a complex meal, because the caster already knew where the pots, pans, stove, spices, etc were when the ritual was cast. If the caster can see an unfamiliar kitchen, it can open cabinets and use utensils and spices if the caster can see them. If the caster can't see the kitchen and doesn't know where anything is, the Unseen Servant is clueless.
If you tell it to go reshelve books in your own arcane library, zip, off it goes, because *you* know where the books are supposed to go on the shelves. If you tell it go find another wizard's library in an abandoned-seeming arcane tower and fetch their spellbook, no go: you didn't know where the library was when you cast it, so neither does the Servant, nor do either of you know what Flavius the Flatulent's Tome of Deadly Silence looks (or smells) like.
I will always love unseen servant. I had a campaign where I was a bard and my unseen servant was named roadie. I always had it cast and he slowly gained sentience throughout the story.
Also, I always picture him being the shape of bubble buddy from SpongeBob.
...Oh, this feels like coming home to find a family recipe your grandma lost behind a shelf or something. Just pure comfy. I missed this old style of Animated Spellbook.
Unseen Servant is best used for tricking people IMO. A high charisma character using performance or deception to convince someone a place is haunted while an Unseen Servant plays poltergeist. Or steal something while the PCs distract the guards. Its a perfect tool to help out a rogue with sneaky activities or support a deceptive or persuasive character's antics.
That would be a fun character,
Gain a reputation for being an 'exorcist' when in reality you just wear a priest's robe and scam people.
That is one reason why multiclassing rogue with echo knight is so amazing. You can manifest your echo and have them run down a hallway to distract the guards. You can summon one on the other side of a door and then switch places with them. It’s a super fun combo.
This might encourage your DM to throw a group of Level 0~1 adventurers at you called "Those Meddling Kids".
@@Oddmanoutre don't forget their stupid dog.
@@Greendawn-di3dl Their *Awakened* stupid dog. "Rog? where?"
You know its a good day when a fresh animated spellbook comes out just in time for lunch.
But it’s so late for lunch. It’s almost 4 o’-…oh, timezones. Never mind! Eastcoaster here!
@@mintymanta2821 I went through the same realization lmao
I missed this. Don't get me wrong, I like DM zee, but wizard is the face of the animated spell book.
I appreciate the spellbook episodes for less... High octane spells. They make great resources for new players. I do a lot of teaching games, and these are SO helpful. Thank you Zee, enjoy your trip
an actual fun use of unseen servant (at least as far as my understanding of rules go) is get a conjuration wizard to level 6, then ritual cast servant in order to refresh benign transportation. it just says "cast a conjuration spell of level 1 or higher", doesn't require a spell slot to be expended. so, if you have 10 minutes after combat, you can basically pretend it's a pf2 focus spell lol
Big fan of you! Enjoy your stay in our country! Hope you find good players in Oaxaca, chiquito bb
Thanks! I'm having a good time so far, Oaxaca is really nice!
@@zeebashew If you ever come back to Mexico, Guadalajara, Guanajuato Capital and San Miguel de Allende are really pretty. Hit me up if ya need a guide or someone to talk dnd around, cuidate hermano!
Bunch of wizards running and inn using nothing but unseen servants. Maybe get a bouncer that can actually do its job on top of it all.
I could see the bouncer being another conjurer casting something like Dust Devil to physically push people out of the inn if they have to.
Keep a Shield Guardian as a bouncer, obviously.
A maid café but the maids are all unseen servants.
@@katsala918 well that kinda ruins the point doesn't it. 😅 [I get the joke]
The bouncer is the ritual caster. He sits silently. Colby watching the rooms as objects flitter and move about and when something goes down all the items come to a hault and stand motionless as he grabs a dude and meets him out the window. Then he slowly sets down and all resumes.
I'd wager that there was probably some R&D that went into the Unseen Servant spell, and the one that exists currently and is used by arcane spellcasters is the product of a long series of trial and error to refine a magical force into something resembling an invisible humanoid familiar that wouldn't just blindly and deafly follow a single order that the caster was just too lazy to carry out themselves.
Would be a neat idea to delve into the history of this spell and others in a given setting and, going along with the idea of the player or an NPC furthering the research of these spells, you could come up with rules for upcasting it or alter one spell into something different, like turning the Unseen Servant into an Unseen Assailant that could attack an enemy or group of enemies at the caster's command, but it still has the stats of the Unseen Servant so it can't do much beyond like poking somebody in the eye or kicking them in the nuts to really do damage and exists as a distraction or way to force a concentration check.
You might also introduce variants of the spell that create ones that work imperfectly, or in ways beyond the original intent. Such as an Unseen Servant that persists indefinitely, but if allowed to do so will slowly gain a mind of its own. (Magical Industrial Revolution posited this kind of thing as one potential doomsday scenario. An illusory workforce unionizes and rebels against their masters).
Of course, maybe having an Unseen Servant with intelligence is what you WANT. You might have a variant called the Unseen Seneschal. A personal assistant capable of completing complex administrative tasks, and even command Unseen Servants at the caster's command.
Maybe Magic Missile could emerge as the assailant version of Unseen Servant? I know they're different schools, but magic missile seems like the result of directing a first level magic force to attack something for you without giving it any elemental power or direction.
Maybe things like Cloud of Daggers are also descended from the same kind of process
I don't remember where I heard it, but I did hear of an interesting use for Unseen Servant. In the story, the party spent the better part of a couple of days spreading a rumor of an invisible killer going around stabbing people. After the rumor took hold, when they needed to get into somewhere or scare off people, they had unseen servant carry a dagger around. Cast minor illusion to add the sounds of footsteps and people were pissing themselves.
The issue with having it fetch things or drop heavy things is that it's strength is 2.
Depends on which encumbrance system you're using. It could move something pretty heavy over a pressure plate, unless you're using variant encumbrance in which case it's uh, not as useful haha!
@@zeebashew The 3.5e version specifically states it can "lift up to 20 pounds, or push/drag up to 100 pounds."
The 3.5e version is also objectively more powerful than the 5e version, with a longer duration and no way to deal damage besides AOE, but the 5e version can be Ritual-cast, which wasn't a thing in 3.5e.
@@ClokworkGremlin With a 30lb carrying capacity, then an Unseen Servant can pull 150lb in a wheeled cart. A wooden garden cart would be around 75lb as a SWAG, so the Unseen Servant could have 74lb of gear in the small cart.
I always figured, just move several smaller things onto a spot if weight in that one spot is important.
2 strength gives it exactly enough carry capacity for 2 bags of holding
Love that like an army of them are summoned for Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion.
Been using this with Galdur's Tower to make camping in the woods of Barovia a little more bearable
Cannot overstate how many uses this spell has. No combat potential, but the utility and roleplay capabilites are off the charts! Love your vids, Zee
At lv18, a wizard can choose Unseen Servant with their Spell Mastery, essentially giving them at-will servants every action. They still last an hour, but without the need of ritual casting OR slot expension, a wizard can have its own on-the-fly workforce to clean,work,etc. 10 servants a minute, or 100 servants in 10 minutes if your DM lets your pc cast it every 6 seconds, not too bad! Then again, you’re also a lv18 wizard lol
Hey, doesn't matter if they can't attack, if you can have that many unseen servants they can make a wizard tower on the go if given access to a Bag of Holding as well.
@@themanysirs1814that's some Roman inspired siege tactics
The neat thing about unseen servants in combat situations is that they're invisible. Very useful for setting up ambushes (pull this lever after the target passes, lock the door after the target arrives, etc.) and after the surprise is revealed, they can always, like you said, chuck flasks of oil and acid once the fun starts.
It's mindless, so if I were the DM, I would rule against being able to "program" the servant. No "if/when" commands, only "Go place, press button." If it can't reach place or there's no button, I would just have the command end. (the Unseen Servant keeps trying to do the thing, but can't.)
@@ClokworkGremlin So the caster would have to handle any "if/when" conditions, then? like they could time when they give the command
@@ClokworkGremlin I think programing the servant is actually the fun of it. Sure, it gives a little bit of versatility to the spell, but it would also be fun to see how it throws everything into chaos when poorly worded, or trying to be too specific. Examples: "If Ronan, the dwarf, walks through the door, close it behind him." goes on without a hitch, but "if any creature that I consider an enemy crosses the door, close it after it. makes it so the servant closes the door after any creature that passes through the door, because it can't understand what creatures you consider an enemy or ally. Same for "wait for all my friends to cross the door before you close it ." And suddenly your party is trapped with the bbeg and his crooks, because certainly you meant for it to wait for all creatures that were following you to be admitted before closing the door.
@@ClokworkGremlin But that contradicts the very examples in the spell description. "Fetching an object" requires it to 'percieve' a bunch of objects, and only bring an object to you if it meets your request; "Cleaning" is a bunch more conditions - only interact with things if they are dirty, use this too if it is dusty, this tool if it is dirty; etc.
Heck, "go place, press button" is a conditional! Determining that it has reached 'place' is a conditional, determining that sufficient force has been applied to press the button is a conditional, even _sequencing_ the two actions is a conditional - 'when you have reached place, press button'!
My thing is, the spell directly lists that the unseen servant is a "medium force." Meaning, the servant has a size, which implies that the servant occupies it's space. This means that a medium creature cannot simply walk past the area the servant is occupying, and any attacks launched at a caster behind a servant will have half or even three-fourths cover. If you have a DM who plays Rules As Written, the attack doesn't redirect to the servant. This potentially makes a permanent source of cover until the enemy tries to attack the space itself or realises an unseen servant is standing there.
RAW attacks against the space a target occupies aren't redirected to the target occupying that space either, although that would also mean it's impossible to attack invisible creatures.
A way I like to think about the Unseen Servant is as a sort of subconscious telekinesis. Since it's not a creature and doesn't really have actions, I find it's a lot easier to explain why it can't do x or y when you look at it like signals being broadcast from the caster. So, it can do anything the character could do without focusing (or needing to roll, which keeps it useful at higher levels since I like the Taking 10 rule) and overly complex, time sensitive, or emotionally charged tasks sort of overload the 'signals' bandwidth and fail.
I had a bard that created a variant of the spell that would write down things that were happening so that he could properly chronicle the group's story
I, uh, once used Unseen Servant to pick up the decapitated head of an enemy to freak out their ally mid-battle, and used Minor Illusion to make it seem like it was saying "why did you let me die??" Our party had some Problems in that campaign.
I can see a group of Unseen Servants holding tarps/blankets or shields only providing cover until the inevitable fireball comes in to clear them all out.
Basically it's a passive telekinesis spell.
Or a stronger, slightly more persistent alternative to mage hand. While mage hand would require constant casting or repeated casting (which is fine as a cantrip) for say moving several books between shelves, a servant could be instructed once and just wait for it to finish.
@@TheFinagle Mage Hand has a weight limit. Does this have a stated weight limit?
@@WbfuhnIt's something like 8 pounds. But I do not remember precisely.
@@Wbfuhn Not directly stated, but strength of 2 so you could calculate its carrying capacity. I did say it was "stronger" intending to mean physical strength.
@@Wbfuhn I've heard Unseen Servant specifically has a carry limit of 20 and a push/drag limit of 100
Unseen Servant can make poses under a sheet or blanket with eyeholes, with a string and a small harmonica attached, and fly around making wailing noises.
Brilliant. Make a "haunted house" attraction.
2:43 "...I don't think an Unseen Servant has weight." An Unseen Servant doesn't have _mass._ Weight is a force, and Unseen Servant is just a force (with limited autonomy). If you want an Unseen Servant to set off a pressure plate, just tell it to push down on the pressure plate very hard.
I can imagine a spellcasting noble who uses Unseen Servant to do things for him that he doesn't feel like doing, and doesn't have to pay. Also Mage Hand, and basically any other spell that keeps him from having to get up and do anything.
Dressing up the servant with clothing and having them walk around the city to make up a fake ghost, only to get hired to exorcise it later, has been my favorite use.
The only thing more exciting than seeing there is a new Zee video is seeing that it's an Animated Spellbook. I love these.
I have my Unseen Servant wear (Carry?) a blanket and a wooden stick, and walk 55 feet ahead of the party in a dungeon. The blanket makes it look like someone walking around with a blanket on their head, and obviously it taps anything and everything with the stick, trying to stir up hidden monsters and set off traps.
Even if it uncovers half of the threats we would face, for a ritual it's essentially a disposable expendable drone that can potentially save a party member from danger.
You would have to be a suicidal fool to not use it this way if you have access to it. Real people in your game setting with their lives on the line would send in Unseen Servants, Arcane Eyes, and Familiars all in advance when going into scary dungeon full of ancient BS. (If you are roleplaying a character who is reckless and foolish with their life, then disregard me.)
Best use I ever made of the spell was bypassing a boss fight altogether. It was a Strixhaven game where the DM had cooked up a magic VR level where the party had to cleat a bunch of Simulated non-fantasy levels to win. One was a space base taken over by an Aboleth, which had put its best minions in the control room with itself, and on the far wall from the door was a Big Red Button to purge the entire base. My wizard set up a Rope Trick for the party to hide in, cast an Unseen Servant with the orders to press the button, then used their familiar's eyes to guide the Servant while other party members launched distractions from outside. Once the Servant got to its spot, everyone got in the Trick, and we gassed the entire room without a single round of real combat. One of my best DnD moments.
About that bit at the end, about possibly using a higher level spell slot to use spells in clearly unintentional manners, I've always been the type of player that likes to use spells in creative and unintended ways, and a solution one of my DMs came up with was that any time I tried to do something like that, I would make an Arcana check with a DC of their choosing. It was a neat way for me to have my cool moments without it being so frequent that it just breaks the balance of things. Only issue is I was a CHA caster with INT as my dump stat, so succeeding these checks was quite difficult.
Personally I'd rule it'd be either Arcana, or for other classes, they can choose to instead, use a class unique one, falling on the default spellcasting modifier if there is none.
Paladins/Clerics would be Religion
Bards would be Instrument Proficiency or Performance
Sorcerers and Wizards could use a Concentration check (But this comes at the cost of the spell simply fizzling out(or wild magic as a harsher ruling) if failed)
(I feel like Sorcerers wouldn't be able to make such in depth modifications, hence the inability to use Charisma to modify spells. because they don't really *know* what the details of what they're doing, and they already have the ability to modify their spells with Sorcery Points(if you want to homebrew to use an amount of those instead). However, if they do, they could simply use their Arcana proficiency)
@@themanysirs1814 You can just use that ruling for using a different stat for skills. If a Barbarian is threatening to punch you, is their threat based on how hard they can punch or how well they said the words? STR based intimidation checks. Likewise, arcana is used for magic, and since a sorcerer commands their magic through CHA, they can make CHA based arcana checks for controlling and casting their spells, just as they use CHA for counterspell and dispel magic. That said, they can't use CHA for knowing and identifying arcane things or creatures. As the DM you have the option to ask for a different modifier based on how they describe their action. Likewise the barbarian can offer to help the negotiations with a STR based persuasion check, offering to plow the farmer's fields in exchange for staying the night. It's kinda situational and requires a bit of creativity, but it can allow some combat-focused classes a little more utility out of combat. And don't be afraid of consequences either, plowing the field with raw strength may give lesser-quality but usable rows, or picking the lock with strength may open it a bit louder and break the lock. It wasn't as quiet and unnoticeable as picking it with DEX, but it was still quieter and less noticeable than kicking the door down and let the fighter with a background in security shine while the rogue was tied up or something.
Generally I run Unseen Servant as being intelligent enough to do tasks that the caster could perform under normal circumstances that don't require a skill or involve interacting with a creature. I've used them to spread oil and use a flint and tinder to light it, search a kitchen for a knife (including opening unlocked drawers) and bring it to the caster, etc. Generally I let the servant act with the most basic understanding that the caster has, for instance an unseen servant cast by a noble could understand "Bring me a salad fork" but only because the caster knows what that means. So an alchemist working in their shop could tell their servant "Bring me the bottle of glistening death extract" and the servant would know what the caster was referring to, because the caster knows which one it is, but they couldn't send their servant into an unfamiliar lab and tell it to bring back any glistening death extract because that would require the skill to identify the poison.
The best thing about Unseen Servant is not being able to see the look of disgust and disdain on their faces when you order them to do something sketchy.
Unseen servant is basically reflavored telekinesis. It can fetch items for you because it's your mind deciding what is needed from where. It does specifically what you order it to do because that's what your brain wants.
3:36 Gabriella is just my spirit animal. Who wouldn't want to use magic to have an unseen servant bring you a cup of hot cocoa or the warm beverage of your choosing while being super comfy on your chair, wrapped up in a blanket ?
Beautiful episode. I love the attention given to the ambiguous parts of the spell; it gets people thinking about the kinds of conversations they might have with their players/DM, in a friendly way. The tequila at the end was a fun touch, too.
I had a character harvest the hands of a coven of Hags and a combination of skills/tool proficiency to do taxidermy. Then used item crafting to create the physical embodiment of a permanent Unseen Servant item in the form of a severed hand. Basically "Thing" from the Addams Family franchise. He called them "Helping Hands"
servant can 100% pour shit into your mouth, its just pouring shit onto the ground, its not its fault that your mouth was in the way.
Only works on halflings and smaller lol.
i would say no, consider with how little effort it takes to throw wine on the floor compared to having some one drink it from your hand
I'd just reduce the potency, to imply it was pouring shit on the ground or your body before you could move your mouth under the stream
If it can pour you a drink and serve it to you, it can pour a potion down your throat. You'll have to open your mouth for it, though.
@@micmule3395 yea, but the floor is a mouth.
There you are 👍
I'm back!
Burnsbits with the aggro line.
Unseen Servant is my go-to early level spell. In my latest campaign we had a low resource start which meant after a spellbook I was literally out of money. I scraped together my own component pouch for my specific spells and when we stopped at a tavern I asked if the proprietress needed (paid) help and so I used my Unseen Servant to make money while we talked plot with an important NPC xD
The extra funny part about the spell description is the fact that it doesn't specify the directional limitations to its movement, meaning that since it is just a force, it can in fact fly. It has no legs to walk with, likely no weight too, it's just a force, so why would it not be able to move up and down freely, or heck, even through objects?
useful for fetching books from tall shelves!
A force moving through objects, coherently, instead of pushing them does feel a bit weird. But d&d is no physics engine so idk
@@hugofontes5708 it might still push them, but if it cannot move it, it can go through and apply pushing strength from the inside
@@themanysirs1814 yes but that's more like physics engine and d&d can crumble very easily from trying to emulate physics
As the DM for my group, I ruled that it could set off pressure plates. Since it's literally a "force", I didn't see why it couldn't exert force downward onto a pressure plate, since it uses force to lift books or items as it has no hands... That's just me though. (You're totally right about the glyphs though.)
That's a good point about pushing downwards.
The best use for this spell I have ever come up with so far. Our party knew it was in a woodland by a Gnoll camp. What we didn't know was, were the Gnolls were. But we were pretty sure they knew we were coming.
My warlock/bard had Unseen Servant, so I summoned one, had it slowly make its way about 30 ft before us, then had it charge the next 30 ft making as much ruckus as possible, bursting though bushes and making weak branches snap, that sort of thing. Anything to just make it clear "some 'thing' is coming at ya".
A whole lot'a Gnolls revealed their locations all at once ambushing the "thing". Several of which it turned out had flaming arrows. In a woodland area. That the party was, not, in the middle of but on the other side.
After taking care of what Gnolls made it though the woodland to us we ended up taking a different, not currently on fire, route to get access to the rest of the camp and the DM never used flaming arrows in a woodland as a trap again.
Use the fact that you can set the creation point to ~60'. It's invisible, tell it to light a roof on fire. You have an instant distraction.
Ask the unseen servant to DRAG something along the floor, that adds the weight for pressure plates. Kinda like how mine clearing vehicles are basically bulldozers with chains Infront.
I rule unseen servant as follows: AC 10, HP 1, passive perception equal to the caster, can not make perception rolls for dc requirements above passive perception. this way anything the caster can perceive in day to day tasks passively the servant will understand passively. this both opens up and limits what its sensory power is to what the caster can handle without needing a skill check. and creates a good narrative through line as to why a servant could or could not be used as a scout. as for throwing items to combo for combat effects, feeding you potions, and the likes. My ruling is: if the servant is holding the potion BEFORE combat starts, it can use its object interaction to use the potion on a creature. otherwise the potion must be placed off of the player's character for the servant to pick up with an object interaction, then would become eligible to use as previously stated. Additionally, anything they player tries that exceeds these rules i make an offer: if i let you do this, your enemies will know how to do this moving forward as well. allowing players to help create rulings around spells and shape the magical metagame of their game world by their actions in it.
Underrated spell, in my opinion, and I think that's because there's so many controls on it. People shut it down because it can't directly attack and gets destroyed by basically anything with an AOE effect. The spell description lists all these mundane things it can do, but none of them involve rolling dice at all so most players dismiss it as an RP thing. But as you say, I think that's due to a lack of creativity, because while there are a lot of controls to prevent it from being abused too much, it's worded vaguely enough to have some neat interpretive space.
I actually like the idea of having the players need to protect an unseen servant as it accomplishes its given task (like if it's transporting something fragile or that would be dangerous for them to touch by hand). It would become like a "protect the payload" kind of game for a little bit!
In pathfinder, unseen servant is ruled to "weigh" 20lbs for traps, and the argument is the strength of 2 lets it apply 20lbs of force up (in pf rules), so why not down? In 5e its not specified, but I'd argue a servant could set off a 60lbs of force trap trigger. (Strength scorex30lbs for a lift)
so like a bit of pushing down sorta thing.
For my "Don Quixote meets Mermaid Man" insane old fighter, I gave him some levels in warlock for...reasons. in any case, he's been talking to his "Squire" for sessions, who of course isn't present. But now that he's unlocked Unseen Servant, he's been accidentally summoning it and now there's an invisible man giving him massages and brushing his horse.
I love d&d.
Hope you are doin ok in mexico. Dont drink the tap water.
Hahaha I wont! Most places have good delivered water and ice.
Yea.. careful with the frozen margaritas.. @@zeebashew
Valda's spire of secret's has a 2nd lvl version of the spell called Unseen Accountant, basically the same thing but it's smart enough to do your taxes.
EDIT: I misremembered Unseen Servant as summoning an Invisible Stalker. Ignore the following post, it is incorrect information.
Unseen Servant USED to be a creature. Specifically, it was an air elemental. Only in recent editions has that changed. This is the reason for the ambiguity for Unseen Servant fetching things, but not being able to call out monsters. It used to be a creature, but now it's not, and some of the effects it was capable of as a creature got carried over.
I think you're thinking of Invisible Stalker (which summons an air elemental). Unseen Servant has been a "force" since 1st edition AD&D (the earliest version I can find).
@@abdulijubjubprobably Dust Devil, a second level spell.
Its still a creature
This isn't correct and it's sad that nearly 200 people agreed with it.
@@abdulijubjub I apparently was. Sorry about that, I could have sworn it summoned an air elemental, but that must have been a similar, 3rd party spell that appeared in a Dragon Magazine somewhere. My bad entirely.
Came back to this because I was thinking about a strange potential application for this. A lot of comments hold that the unseen servant's mindlessness refers to being unable to identify or follow abstract concepts rather than an inability to draw conclusions objectively. Under this presumption, an unseen servant could follow a command such as press the red button, wash the dirty dishes, or poison the middle glass. A command it couldn't follow might be: fetch my favorite coat, since favorites are subjective, and that information isn't necessarily accessible. This all seems very standard and sensible, but what I'm wondering is when this falls into the realm of omnipotence. Let's say there is a number keypad for a door, and you don't know the code, could you command an unseen servant to input the last code entered, or even, input the correct code? This IS objective information, such as which button is red, and which glass is in the middle, but it'd be ridiculous to expect it to know the code. What can you expect the unseen servant to know then? A bit more realistically, what if the command was: pour wine into every glass marked with a prime number? Still objective, but it requires some mathematical knowledge, which feels unrealistic for a mindless servant to know, even if it is technically a simple task. So yeah, obviously, whatever the dm says your servant can do is the answer, but I guess this is all to say I think the servant should have an Intelligence score to help determine what it is and isn't capable of knowing. I believe the baseline for comprehending any language (a fundamental of following commands) is 3, so maybe a 4 would suit it best.
Here are some more objective commands I think are interesting:
Serve food to every third guest that enters.
Fetch the oldest document in the filing cabinet.
Serve poisoned food to any guest without a silver piece under their tongue (How much can this servant see???)
Fetch the book with the highest word count
Fetch every book with the word "dragon" in it
Question is, can it put on and/or remove funny hats from people
Me DMing?
If the target is cooperating, yes, if not I want a spell slot.
A Flying guillotine is just another form of funny hat, right?
unseen servant is the reason why the world in dnd should have a lot of manufactures ... because building complex things in simple steps can easily be achived by a mage in a factory with it .
but would someone who dedicated their life to learning the arcane arts really
1. Add unseen servant to their spellbook
2. Think business enough to think of using it in a factory-like setting
3. Want to waste their years of arcane knowledge on something so boorish
@@themanysirs1814
Well they'd definitely still apply for step 1, No Archmage worth his salt is washing the dishes.
how my dad explains as to how the tv remote appears in his hands from the table (he wont acknowledge me)
I miss the animated spell books, these are amazing!
Yeah, some of the best videos IMO.
Here's my pick for unseen servant usage: jailbreaks. Get yourself captured, but cast an unseen servant at the last moment and give it standing orders to follow you. You've got an hour in which it can untie ropes, steal keys, make distractions, et cetera, and "get caught on purpose" is a classic infiltration plan.
That is a good idea. As a Scribe Wizard, they can cast the Unseen Servant ritual in 1 round and use the bonus action in that round to command the Unseen Servant. Only problem is the Unseen Servant moves at 15ft per round, so you have to drag your feet as you are carted of to jail.
My thought to how the finding things work is that the spell uses the castors knowledge of the item to determine the correct item. It couldn't, however, find something that the castor doesn't know about because then it would have no specific "target". Therefore you couldn't scout an area for danger because you would have to already know what the danger is. This is my two cents anyways.
if the action doesn't require an attack roll then it isn't an attack.
Actually because the 1hr time limit for the first servant only starts AFTER you finish the first 10 mins casting you could actually have 6 servants after 1 hour and still have 10 mins left on the first one
... For whatever that's worth
What is my purpose?
You pass the liquer.
Well played sir.
Not gonna lie, I think the most broken (or at least unimpeded) character that could use unseen servant would be an order of the scribes wizard. They get to casts ritual spells for their normal casting time without adding the 10 minutes. So getting ten unseen servants up in a minute and having basically the rest of an hour to do whatever you want with them would be incredible. Hell, get those ten working and while they’re going spend another minute summoning ten more 😂
Depending on how complicated of a task each one can do you could build a house with a functionally limitless supply of board layers, nail holders, and hammerers
Depending on the DM, either another useless waste of a spellslot, or a one-wizaed industrial revolution.
You can put "depending on the DM" in front of literally any D&D thing. That's how DMs work. Doesn't even matter if the book explicitly says something works a certain way, bc the DM gets final say
@@noahblack914 Yep, the best and worst part of any tabletop game.
@@noahblack914 some more so than others. This is one of the spells deliberately worded to be interpreted towards the useless end of the spectrum. Something like eldritch blast is less so.
@@lemonZzzzs No, it's deliberately worded to make it clear it isn't a combatant. It's clearly worded to be useful within pretty obvious and reasonable constraints, because it's a 1st level spell.
I avoid evaluating D&D mechanics based on what the power gamers think. They're trying to solve a non-existent puzzle where I'm trying to play a game.
@@noahblack914 i agree that it is worded to be clear that this 1st level spell can only be used in very few, non-combat cases. It limits creativity out of fear of it being abused. Makes 5e closer in spirit to a video game than a TTRPG. A lot of its spells are like that.
Don't get me wrong though, it's still playable, but this kind of attitude also encourages further restriction of creativity.
I've yet to meet a 5e DM that would allow illusion spells to be anything more interesting than you can get in a video game. Thanks to restrictive wording of the spells.
Likewise, I've yet to successfully use a suggestion or mass suggestion spell in a 5e game.
I wish they'd revisit spells like Unseen Servant and Tenser's Floating Disk. They've been hedged and hemmed and lawyered so much over the years that they're just argument fodder the moment anyone tries to do anything interesting with them. I think a more coherent system where each damage type has a progression of combat/noncombat effects that you unlock with different spell levels and focused study, would end up being more understandable than picking the tattered remains of bits and bobs of the handful of spells that survived years of being adjudicated to hell and back.
First
Hello there, you are, in fact, second! (looks like wolf got here first, but you missed it by a single second!)
I see you 👀
@@alexmehner8224 I see you!
it need not observe and react, it can carry a dead man's switch item and if attacked the item would simply release and ring, or explode.
Since it can set fires, I’ve seen it used on an actual play show to commit insurance fraud
I was just looking at this spell the other day and thinking how useful it could be if you get creative with it, very much like Prestidigitation.
Its also medium sized with a strength score of 2 which sounds like it would be really weak, but its carrying capacity would actually be 30 pounds according to the PHB
I just had it to be a basic servant and took prestidigitation and mending in addition. Perfect flavour for a noble. "Yes, I am an adventurer on the road. No, I will not have my cloth uncleaned, torn or imperfectly folded cloth/sheets (there are limits to how low I will fall as a noble).
Love the 'higher spell slot' idea, as you're basically taking a spell and making a new, more powerful one using it as a base.
For an US being mindless but not needing to see, I think the caster has to have a mental image of what it wants the servant to do (Get the tea pot, fill the cup, bring the cup), so it can't warn of traps or monsters because the caster doesn't know if there are any.
My favorite spell!! I have an Awakened rabbit wizard that I'm running, and she and her spellbook can be carried by her Servant (whose name is Bertrand) as if she's riding it like a magic carpet 😊😁
"Unseen servant is mindless" That reads to me as "it has no processing power" you can command it to do X; but you can't command it to do "X or Y" or alternatively you can't command it to do "if X then do Y else do Z". In other words Unseen servant can follow instructions but those instructions have to be void of decisions, do logical operations and math.
I made a Kobold wizard once named Scalabax. His whole thing was using spells in whole new ways like creating an unseen servant that was tasked with wearing a full body robe that a human would wear, he would hide under it and tasked it to mimic his movements using their telepathic connection, essentially making him a "three kobolds in a trench coat" minus two kobolds. I eventually made two more that were dressed up like warriors of sorts, one of which I called "Sir Bu'Ket Head". At first it was meant to essentially be like a chess piece/meatshield that would take one instance of big damage that could have killed me or gone to a fellow party member, but then I was technically able to use the "warriors" I created to give the nearest party members the help action to give them a better chance in a fight. The insanity that is the last thing one of our foes saw was the sight of one of my servants dressed up in furs and a helmet with two axes like a barbarian while it rode a goat into battle, with said goat doing the real work, will always live rent free in my head.
I love this spell
I played a bard and called my unseen servant Roadie
Would use Minor illusion to occasionally show him as a red headed/bearded Dwarf in a denim Jacket
During performances I’d have him play the drums
My Celestial Warlock is a doctor and uses Unseen Servant as Nurse staff. Adding mage hand gives him effectively 5 "hands" to use simultaneously when doing surgery (medicine checks) and we worked out that using US to monitor patients would allow my PC to short rest. Obviously he also took the Invocation to not need sleep as the true fantasy dream of amy Dr.
I love the spell, saved the party many times, if you have the spell handy get them to open all the doors and chests for you, 9 times out of 10 they will set the trap off, I DM I played with got annoyed with me using the spell to get around his traps and started to use stone doors and chests that are too heavy for the unseen servant to move, which unfortunately made the party paranoid and now we use high lvl spells like rock to mud on a door because "why the fuck is there a large stone door in a tree house?"
I had it give me the area effect to help so pouring water, grease, technically it can open doors or windows so I also have it flip any levers, push any buttons or open door while my group hides around the corner to see if it's trapped or if monsters are on the other side if their is we move back cast a wind spell and make them think it was the wind opening the door
Unseen Servant is a necromancer's second-best friend (after their zombies). They can dig up graves, strip corpses to make skeletons, refill graves to cover your tracks, basically all the overhead costs of being a necromancer can be handled by an Unseen Servant.