Cantrips

[Celebrim]

Celebrim - question for you. I used mage hand to hold a torch aloft (20 lbs carrying capacity right?) above an area of the map soaked with lamp oil and when the monster walked over it, I used a minor action to drop the torch, lighting the area on fire and damaging the monster (1d4 damage from the fire). It did cause damage, but what are your thoughts on it? Would you not allow that to happen in your game? Also, the monster was mindless, hence the obliviousness to the oil.

Yes, I'd allow that. It's indirect damage, situational, and has a cost (oil). It's not even close to the sort of thinking I'd consider abusive.

However, it does show the risk of this line of thought. I can easily see players in some of my former groups commissioning a 20lb. spiked steel ball from the local blacksmith, which they would then drop on a monster (from height) at the beginning of every relevant combat. At higher levels where cost is less of a problem, I can imagine this evolving to 20 lb hollow glass balls field with acid, undead vermin swarms, or green slime or else enchanted with fire trap to act as an improvised explosive device. I could also imagine players using Mage Hand to carry around a large steel shield as permanent portable cover.

Exactly what I'd do about that I'm not sure, as I'm not particularly well versed in 4e mechanics. The point is that 'free' (or nearly so) is a price that is very easily abused by the creative player. As I said earlier, I backed off from my initial assessment of 1e cantrips as being of such minor utility that I could allow them as a free effect once I found that in play, the mere fact that they were free encouraged my players to try to abuse them. Players are usually very good about being thrifty when there is a cost, but removing the cost tends to make even the best player a power mongering fiend. Even the 1st edition mechanics, which were so weak as to be generally useless (the entire bundle of them wrapped together was weaker than 3e Prestidigitation), I ended up deciding weren't served well by the notion of free and unlimited uses. Expanding therefore the free and unlimited uses available to the Wizard is likely to be a problimatic affair.

 

[RangerWickett]

I think that's kinda genius, actually. I've totally got to have a fight against a villain who has set up heavy objects on ledges around the room so he can Mage Hand to drop them on the PCs. Of course, the attack roll should be hard.