D&D 5E Creative ways to use spells

[JackOfAllTirades]

Periodic tables do the same.

I'm trying to couch this carefully, but perhaps we should shelf these furniture puns. Is that on the table?

Why stop now? Sofa, so good!

 

[Inglorin]

One of my players loves to slam doors shut with Thaumaturgy. Especially when someone is standing in the doorway. Either giving advantage due to a help action from a distance or even letting them fall prone if they don't make their save against the shove.

 

[Ath-kethin]

I have no clue what can I do creatively with Minor illusion or Mage Hand for example. Unseen Servant ? Its kinda useless to me. Or any other kind of spells like them ... I can imagine creative ways to use them :S

I don't believe you for a second. You can't think of anything 'creative' to do with an invisible servant? With a spell that allows you to pick up and manipulate objects from across the room? With a spell that allows you to make people see things that aren't here? These are all spells that require the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that seems to be your thing.

 

[jaelis]

Well if you really just want some ideas for these... some will be DM dependent.

Minor Illusion:
- Make an illusion of a closed door on top of a real closed door. Open the door and (from one side at least) it still looks closed.
- Make an illusion of an opaque box around a light source. You know it's an illusion and can still see the light, others are in the dark.
- Make an illusion of a crate and hide in it. You can see out.
- Create an illusion of sound coming from the BBEG telling his minions to fall back. Especially good when followed by a silence spell
- If you're stuck in melee and have been hit, fall down and create an illusion of a corpse on top of you


Mage Hand
- After the fighter disarms an opponent, take his weapon
- Set off traps from a safe distance
- Open doors from a safe distance
- Hold a torch while your hands are occupied
- Distract an opponent by holding something in front of their face
- Drop something deadly on an opponent (works even if you're invisible or under a sanctuary spell).
(This isn't getting into all the mischief an arcane trickster can get up to with his improved mage hand.)

Unseen servant can do a lot of the same stuff as mage hand. Using it as a domestic servant is pretty sweet though... nothing like kicking back and relaxing during a rest while your servant prepares a nice snack and washes the monster blood out of your clothes.

I think most people would let an unseen servant tie (or untie) knots, but probably not a mage hand. So it can do things like tie shoelaces together (for creatures with laced shoes, anyway) or loosen pack straps or the like.

If you have unseen servant going, you can direct it as a bonus action while controlling your mage hand as an action. That lets you do more complicated things, like have the servant distract a guard while the hand steals the keys.

 

[psychophipps]

I use Mage Hand to hold a bullseye lantern 20ft in front of my character. You can move and rotate it as a bonus action to keep pace. I will also occasionally use minor illusion to sound like semi-sneaky footsteps right under the lantern now and again.

 

[jaelis]

I use Mage Hand to hold a bullseye lantern 20ft in front of my character. You can move and rotate it as a bonus action to keep pace. I will also occasionally use minor illusion to sound like semi-sneaky footsteps right under the lantern now and again.

Unfortunately, it takes your action to move the hand (unless you're an arcane trickster, of course).

 

[psychophipps]

Bingo!

 

[Pauper]

I had those ideas based on our world physics but ...

Let's not go too far down that road -- to paraphrase someone else's observation, a combination of wanting to use 'real world' physics and having no idea how 'real world' physics works leads to stuff like the 3.5 era "peasant railgun", where a line of 1st level commoners readying actions accelerates an object to hypersonic or even relativistic velocity, depending on how one parses how long a readied action takes to execute during a 6 second round.

Some examples of bad physics already in this thread:

- Make an illusion of an opaque box around a light source. You know it's an illusion and can still see the light, others are in the dark.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470917-Creative-ways-to-use-spells/page2#ixzz3pE5YQ6ZD

This doesn't work -- while you can create the illusion of a box that can conceal objects inside the illusory box, the illusion can't stop light from escaping. ("You create the image of an object..." (PH, pp.258 (Major Image), 260 (Minor Illusion), 276 (Silent Image), etc., not an actual object.**) At best, you'd get a glowing box that emits light as the light source contained within it. An intelligent creature might rationalize the vision as a box with a Light cantrip cast upon it, but a relatively unintelligent creature would likely get Advantage on its check, since it 'knows' that boxes don't glow.

** - The exceptions to this:

a) If using a spell like Phantasmal Forces, you create an illusion in the mind of the target rather than an image that is perceivable by all creatures in the area -- this illusion can behave like an object, if that is the way the target would perceive the illusion, but note the spell only affects a single creature.

b) The caster has the 14th level School of Illusion ability Illusory Reality, which allows the caster to make one inanimate, non-magical object created as part of an illusion spell of 1st level or higher into a real object, albeit one that can't deal damage or cause direct harm.

--
Pauper

 

[Bleys Icefalcon]

Periodic tables do the same.

I'm trying to couch this carefully, but perhaps we should shelf these furniture puns. Is that on the table?

A..a.a...ack

 

[jaelis]

This doesn't work -- while you can create the illusion of a box that can conceal objects inside the illusory box, the illusion can't stop light from escaping.

As I noted, some of these are DM dependent. I think you'd find that some DMs will allow this kind of thing and others won't.