Animate Objects vs Bigby's Hand....differences?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Earlier it was brought to my attention these spells have some overlap.

I think this is going to come down to Animate Objects having a much greater damage potential and Bigby's having the ability to grab something and shove in a superior manner.

They're both Level 5

Both 120ft

Both concentration

They can both be shields of sorts, Bigby's probably does it better with it being explicitly stated that it can interpose.

Bigby's works in a sterile room so plus for it there. Animate Objects needs objects to animate, you'll probably always have something tiny or small, but good luck creating a large object if none are available.

What other advantages and disadvantages do each have?

https://thebombzen.com/grimoire/spells/bigbys-hand

https://thebombzen.com/grimoire/spells/animate-objects

[Blood of Gaea]

Bigby's hand is more versatile, easily switching between cover, grappling, and attacking.

Animate Objects as more potent damage wise obviously, but when you use it for that it's not going to be any good for a shield. If you choose a huge object, chances are you could get at least 3/4ths cover, and probably full cover, but a huge object doesn't have great damage. The objects also won't be grappling at all.

[Kenny Snoggins]

Animated objects have blindsight and can be given general commands like "kill anything in that murky pond" which can be quite useful against invisible enemies or targets hiding somewhere that would invite an ambush to visually inspect with a PC.

Their blindsight can be used to set up advantage base on darkness. Although they do not normally cause magical damage you can just use silver coins as your tiny objects to get around most of the drawbacks of that. In any sort of dim light or reduced visibility 10 tiny flying ball bearings will be nearly invisible , which is another advantage of the objects over the hand.

[Zuras]

Animate object is also available on the Bard list without using magical secrets and doesn’t require further bonus actions to do damage.

Animate object will likely do more damage to most enemies, but Bigbys hits harder on resistant enemies and has more control options available.

Personally I like Animate Objects better because I enjoy the visual of a Bard animating a bandolier of daggers and sending them against their enemies.