D&D 5E How often can an object be manipulated?

[ProphetSword]

First session of Out of the Abyss, and the party escaped the drow slavers of Velkynvelve with relative ease in part because of some game mechanics silliness.

They got their hands on a shackle key, and each party member (and the NPCs they were locked up with) in turn used the key to unlock their shackles. All in the same round -- each one moved, manipulated an object to pick up the key, and used an action to unlock their shackles before dropping the key as a free action.

This is... a bit silly. There were seven PCs and about the same number of NPCs. Fourteen people should probably need more than a round to use the same set of keys to get all of their shackles unlocked and off.

In retrospect, I could have ruled that the key could only be manipulated once per round.

Would that have been unreasonable?

That's definitely silly. By my math, that's around 2.33 shackles unlocked per second. I just stood in front of a clock and tried to mimic the motions as fast as I could. Assuming that everything went smoothly and the key fit directly into the lock with minimal effort, the most I was able to pull off was around 9 (your experimentation may work out differently).

Had you known in advance this was going to happen, you could have called for each person to make a Dexterity or Slight of Hand check (no idea what DC). Failure means that they don't get the shackles open during that action due to fumbling around the lock or whatever. I mean, you would have to be pretty precise when rushing like that.

Each player then could have decided to pass the key along while still being shackled or hold onto it until their next turn, essentially stopping the chain.

But, I guess hindsight is 20/20.

 

[Plaguescarred]

each party member (and the NPCs they were locked up with) in turn used the key to unlock their shackles. All in the same round -- each one moved, manipulated an object to pick up the key, and used an action to unlock their shackles before dropping the key as a free action.

In retrospect, I could have ruled that the key could only be manipulated once per round.

Would that have been unreasonable?

You could have ruled that dropping a key under this time limit chain of actions becomes an object interactions, afterall there's not so much times can the same object be repeatedly dropped and picked-up within 6 seconds...

While Jeremy Crawford once said the intent was that letting go of something required no appreciable effort compared to picking it up, it would have been reasonable for the DM to impose a limit when repeatedly done during the same round IMHO.


Yan
D&D Playtester

 

[Werebat]

Or just make it a simple rule that objects themselves can only be manipulated once per round. So a door cannot be opened and closed seven times in a round. No "High init guy unlocks and opens the door, everyone attacks, low init guy closes the door and locks it -- every round" nonsense.