D&D 5E How does [i]animate objects[/i] work?

[MonkeezOnFire]

Is the plan to use the basic poison from the PHB? That kind of poison only lasts 1 minute once applied and is an action to apply. So by the time poison has been applied to the last dagger the poison on the first dagger has expired. You can of course get others to help you apply poison. But because of the time limit it requires knowing that a fight will occur within the next minute. It's not something you can always have ready in your back pocket.

 

[Nebulous]

Is the plan to use the basic poison from the PHB? That kind of poison only lasts 1 minute once applied and is an action to apply. So by the time poison has been applied to the last dagger the poison on the first dagger has expired. You can of course get others to help you apply poison. But because of the time limit it requires knowing that a fight will occur within the next minute. It's not something you can always have ready in your back pocket.

No, he was wanting to use the serpent's poison as listed in the DMG for 3d6 damage.

 

[Umbran]

Sigh. My powergamer wizard, who can't even cast this spell yet (he's planning 4 levels ahead), wants to keep 10 poisoned daggers on him in a bag

Unsheathed? So... you want 10 poison daggers slowly poking their way out of the bag and poisoning you as you carry them?

 

[jasper]

Nebulous if you don't like just tell the gamer no. A flat "no". But as a rotten evil dm, some of other posters have poisoned his cool idea. Or do on to him the same.

 

[Umbran]

Nebulous if you don't like just tell the gamer no. A flat "no". But as a rotten evil dm, some of other posters have poisoned his cool idea. Or do on to him the same.

He's a wizard. He has a decent intelligence. He should be able to figure out that any dagger sharp enough to do damage is sharp enough to be a hazard to him if not sheathed. And poison would wipe off on the interior of the bag....

So, he can make it 5 poisoned daggers in sheaths - half the spell animates the sheaths, so they can come off the daggers.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I'd allow it. Of course, since it takes an action to coat a single magical Dagger of Venom, I'd use that as the baseline for getting the poison onto the 10 blades. Hope he has a good front line to protect him while his craft project is going on in the back...

Also, to address the OP: the first two options that @jgsugden said - I wouldn't take valuable table time to give each object its own initiative

 

[Oofta]

All very good points. The counter price-point makes it so not worth it, but a player like him would go above and beyond to find/steal/manipulate poison into his possession for a one-shot powerplan. If I told you about his attack and trap plans for the cantrip move earth you would probably cry. I about did

I had a similar player. Wanted to use the cantrip as "immobilize enemy" spell by trapping their feet in stone. I'm sure he would have come up with worse had I not shut it down.

I want to reward creativity, but there has to be a line.

 

[Nebulous]

I like to reward creativity too. In of itself I don't feel the poisoning of the daggers is terribly outlandish or something I would outright ban. I don't think it would EASY to set up, and would need some time, but I think he had the idea of an assassination thing where you know your target and have a trap waiting. (He's not an assassin, just an immoral psychotic)

But the move earth thing, he was reaching so hard to abuse that spell it was painful to listen to.

 

[Frozenstep]

Fill a bucket with poison, put a lid on. Uncap it with your item interaction when combat starts. Animate objects. Command them to give themselves a bath in the poison (probably takes all their actions for a turn), then attack x enemy.

Cry when literally everything is immune to poison because WOTC hates poison users

 

[Oofta]

For the OP, I run animated objects similar to monsters (which may not be RAW). In most cases they go on the same initiative per type of monster. If there are too many or I think that it would give team monster too much of an advantage I'll split them up. Typically I do that when there are more than 5 monsters of any one type.