Levitate / Mage Hand / Unseen Servant

[sir_argo]

If my wizard casts Levitate, can he then cast Mage Hand and have the hand push him forward slowly?

Is Unseen Servant earthbound?

If not, could it push my wizard along slowly?

[JNAProductions]

I believe the Unseen Servant is Earthbound.

Mage Hand is 5 10 lb telekinesis. So it probably CAN push you... But very, very slowly.

[Mellack]

I would say yes the Mage Hand can move you, although with just 10 pounds of force it will be very slow.
I think Unseen Servant is limited to the ground as it is listed with a speed of 15. Creatures that can fly have a fly speed.

[JNAProductions]

44.48 Newtons. That's how much force you get.


Divide the force, in newtons, by the object's mass, in kilograms, to find its acceleration. If a force of 1,000 newtons, for instance, moves a mass of 100 kilograms, then its acceleration is 1,000 / 100 = 10 meters per second squared.

Okay, so assuming you weigh 110 lbs, with gear (so you're light) that's 50 kg. So, that'd net you .8896 m/s2. Frcition is pretty negligible, since you're only experiencing air, so it'd take about 10 seconds or so to reach 30' per second. That's actually not bad at all! Although I, as a DM, am not going to let you go further than 30' per ROUND, which can be achieved pretty dang quickly.

So... This actually should work pretty well, says science.

[nickl_2000]

I would say yes the Mage Hand can move you, although with just 10 pounds of force it will be very slow.
I think Unseen Servant is limited to the ground as it is listed with a speed of 15. Creatures that can fly have a fly speed.

No reason you couldn't attach a rope to yourself and have the unseen servant pull the rope from the ground though.

[Vogie]

No reason you couldn't attach a rope to yourself and have the unseen servant pull the rope from the ground though.

I like it. Let's go fly a kite!

[Tanarii]

Mage hand isn't 10 lbs of force. That's all it can carry. If you weight more than 10lbs, it can't 'carry' you at all. So no dice.

[JNAProductions]

Mage hand isn't 10 lbs of force. That's all it can carry. If you weight more than 10lbs, it can't 'carry' you at all. So no dice.

So, let's say there's a stone lever. It's heavy-it weighs 25 lbs. But, it's well greased, so it takes only a few pounds of force to move it down.

Would you let Mage Hand push the lever down?

[Mellack]

Mage hand isn't 10 lbs of force. That's all it can carry. If you weight more than 10lbs, it can't 'carry' you at all. So no dice.

The Mage Hand is not carrying anyone. That is what the levitate is for. The hand is just used for horizontal force. Since that is the max it can carry, that seems a reasonable amount to give it as its push.

[robbie374]

The Mage Hand is not carrying anyone. That is what the levitate is for. The hand is just used for horizontal force. Since that is the max it can carry, that seems a reasonable amount to give it as its push.

Given minimal friction due to air resistance, it really shouldn't be hard at all for Mage Hand to push you.

[Easy_Lee]

A couple other things to consider:
- does mage hand have an anchor, or does it produce force with no equal and opposite reaction upon anything but itself?
- mage hand may be limited in its ability to push you by its own speed; it has to move faster than you to push you

[Lombra]

The hand can't push you, just because you levitate your mass doesn't change, and the limit on mage hand is on mass (lb, kg), not on weight (Newton). If this were legal then pushing off from the ground would slowly bring you miles above the ground, and at the same time, pushing off of a wall of a building would allow you to travel for miles. Not that I wouldn't like it, but to me it's not even slightly RAI and too exploity for my tastes to allow it ROC.

That's my opinion and depending on your group it may actually be better to allow this because it will enhance the fun of everything. Plus my opinion is based on the fact that your world has a weigh/mass difference, because fantasy can wreck any scientific deduction, even the simpler ones.

[Easy_Lee]

The hand can't push you, just because you levitate your mass doesn't change, and the limit on mage hand is on mass (lb, kg), not on weight (Newton). If this were legal then pushing off from the ground would slowly bring you miles above the ground, and at the same time, pushing off of a wall of a building would allow you to travel for miles. Not that I wouldn't like it, but to me it's not even slightly RAI and too exploity for my tastes to allow it ROC.

That was covered. The hand can't lift more than ten pounds, but the spell says nothing about pushing.

[Zorku]

PHB p176: your carry capacity is your str score *15, you can push/drag/lift up to twice this but your move speed will drop to 5ft, and all of these values are cut in half for tiny creatures.

Compared to other stuff, a mage hand is tiny. It has a movespeed of 30 and is expressly exempt from carrying more than 10lbs. This would mean that the hand had a str of 1.33, or .66 if you think that we're supposed to just know to limit the speed it can move when it carries more than 5lbs, but both of these values are silly, so I'm going to go ahead and say that the 10lbs clause is less about how much force the hand can exert and more of a magical quirk. I'm tempted to say that the hand can push/drag an arbitrarily large weight, but there's no way you'll take me seriously if I pull that kind of rules lawyering.

What does matter here, is that we've been given a very specific list of things that the hand can do. "Manipulate an object, open an unlocked door or container, stow or retrieve an item from an open container, or pour out the contents of a vial." The last 2 heavily imply that the hand is carrying something during the process, but opening a door is really worth taking a look at.

A real quick google search shows me that a door made out of oak that is 1 3/4" thick and 8' by 3.2' weighs 177.31 lbs. Although people were shorter in the middle ages you've also got elves n such in this game, so modern door dimensions seem accurate enough to what you should expect in the game. Oak is quite heavy according to the chart I'm looking at, but to minimize weight you can make the door 1/8" thinner and make it out of white pine or fir, at which point you're looking at 75.99lbs. Some modern doors are about 30% lighter than this, but they're the hollow core ones you probably have in your home and that's just not era appropriate. So, with these numbers establishing the ballpark for how much a door is going to weigh, there just is not any sensible way to convince yourself or anyone else, that a door is going to weight 10lbs or less.

Hence, mage hand can absolutely move more than 10lbs of crap horizontally, if something else is supporting the weight. In the case of moving a levitating person I'd probably go with the proposed "let's fly a kite" option, so that the hand is "manipulating an object" which is that length of rope that every adventurer has in their kit.

[Lombra]

That was covered. The hand can't lift more than ten pounds, but the spell says nothing about pushing.

Let it push a building until it crumbles down then, it doesn't sound as a reasonable argument to me.

[JNAProductions]

Let it push a building until it crumbles down then, it doesn't sound as a reasonable argument to me.

I think it's pretty reasonable to say a Mage Hand can push a person (who offers no resistance to it and doesn't even have friction on the ground) without being able to push a building down.

Equating the two is arguing in pretty bad faith there.

[Tanarii]

Let it push a building until it crumbles down then, it doesn't sound as a reasonable argument to me.Exactly. This thread is the kind of nonsense you end up with when people try to extrapolate or infer from the exact wording of spells into something it's not supposed to do. Especially using napkin math. (See also using illusions to create parabolic mirror ray guns.)

[Rynjin]

I think it's pretty reasonable to say a Mage Hand can push a person (who offers no resistance to it and doesn't even have friction on the ground) without being able to push a building down.

Equating the two is arguing in pretty bad faith there.

They both allow extra functionality to a spell than what was written or intended, I don't see a distinction other than scale.

People trying to niggle little extra benefits out of spells is how spellcasters get truly out of hand in ANY edition, and granting them because of napkin science combined with a disregard of the rules when it's convenient (but not when it's inconvenient) is how you get ludicrous stuff like the peasant railgun.

"The rules don't specify, therefore I get to fill in the blanks with whatever suits my current purposes" is even worse, and exacerbates the problem of even tiny imbalances in a game to extremes. 90% of rules arguments would puff into the ether if people would just STOP DOING THAT.

[JNAProductions]

So you're saying Mage Hand cannot push anything weighing more than 10 lbs?

Again, refer to my example of the well-greased lever. It's made of solid stone, or iron, or whatever, and weighs around 25 lbs. But, because it's well-greased, it can be pushed down by exerting only a few pounds of force. Can Mage Hand push this lever down?

[Kane0]

Heh, I can't help but imagine a lazy wizard taking the time to get up to speed over a couple rounds, then having to turn or stop and crashing into a tree or falling off the disk because his hand cant alter course fast enough.

[nickl_2000]

Heh, I can't help but imagine a lazy wizard taking the time to get up to speed over a couple rounds, then having to turn or stop and crashing into a tree or falling off the disk because his hand cant alter course fast enough.

Except he would be in an arm chair before he levitated, it would look like the people from Wally

[Mellack]

It does not seem to be extra funtionality for what mage hand does. The spell says it can be used to manipulate things, and if it can open doors it must be able to apply a force. It is a clever use, but seems to be well within the powers of the spell as written.

[Easy_Lee]

Let me see if I can head off this argument.

Ask your DM. His decision is what's important.

Arguments for:
- mage hand can open doors, and a historical medieval door might weigh close to two hundred pounds.
- the hand doesn't have to carry you.

Arguments against:
- ten pound carry limit.
- not an intended use of the spell.

Did I miss anything?

[Zorku]

I'd say that tugging on some rope qualifies as an intended use of the spell.

Moreover, silk rope only weighs 5lbs. If you just have the mage hand carry one end of the rope away from you then you can still move around horizontally (at your climb speed, as per the text of levitate,) without the hand ever having to carry anything but the rope. Having the hand push you directly just cuts out tedious steps.

Worth a note: because levitate says that you effectively have to climb objects in order to move in directions other than up/down, instead of saying anything remotely like "you can jump off of nearby items to go x feet," it appears that you've actually got something other than air resistance to stop you from easily moving in these directions.