D&D 4E Mage hand in 4e: what's the deal?

[lukelightning]

Mage Hand Wizard Cantrip
You gesture toward an object nearby, and a
spectral floating hand lifts the object into the air and
moves it where you wish.
At-Will ✦ Arcane, Conjuration, Force
Minor Action Ranged 5
Effect: You conjure a spectral, floating hand in an
unoccupied square within range. The hand picks
up, moves, or manipulates an adjacent object
weighing 20 pounds or less and carries it up to 5
squares. If you are holding the object when you use
this power, the hand can move the object into a
pack, a pouch, a sheath, or a similar container
and simultaneously move any one object carried or
worn anywhere on your body into your hand.
As a move action, you can move the hand up to 5
squares. As a free action, you can cause the hand
to drop an object it is holding, and as a minor
action, you can cause the hand to pick up or
manipulate a different object.
Sustain Minor: You can sustain the hand
indefinitely.
Special: You can create only one hand at a time.

The part about simultaneous movement confuses me. Is Mage Hand just a snazzy way to swap things in your hands? Seems kind of useless to me.

 

[keterys]

As written, mage hand is crazy useful. I've actually been surprised not to see complaints about it being overboard or rules loopholes people tried to do with it.

 

[TerraDave]

Right, it has a "fast draw" feature, allowing you to put away one item and get another as a single minor action. And it also lets you retrieve items from across the room for yourself or other charecters (good for thrown weapons, which seem to have made a come back in 4E), test things that might be trapped (though in 4E this might not be a good idea), and other telekenisis type stuff.

 

[Patlin]

Play testers have reported finding it usefull in a number of ways, including giving the paladin back a fumbled weapon. Cantrips are often a lot less usefull than this, too. I remember a Dragon Magazine article on especially useless cantrips. They had things like "Find Self" and "Transmute rock to stone."

 

[Dragonblade]

Yeah, I think Mage Hand is crazy useful.

In my playtest game, I used Mage Hand to carry one end of a rope across a cavern after a rope bridge collapsed. Then the party members on the other side were able to use it to tie around a stalagmite. We did this a couple more times and presto! New rope bridge!

And I didn't have to make checks to try to throw the rope across and hope the other party members could catch it and stuff.

 

[Lacyon]

The part about simultaneous movement confuses me. Is Mage Hand just a snazzy way to swap things in your hands? Seems kind of useless to me.

"If you are holding the object when you use this power, the hand can move the object into a
pack, a pouch, a sheath, or a similar container and simultaneously move any one object carried or worn anywhere on your body into your hand."

The power costs a minor action to use, and can swap what's currently in your hand for any object anywhere on your person. That's pretty similar to what a Handy Haversack does (though Mage Hand doesn't include the extra carrying capacity of the Haversack).

Then there's all the other things you can do with it, like retrieving your allies' thrown weapons, carrying a rope across the chasm and tying it around a rock on the other side, holding a sunrod well in front of the party so that the light source better illuminates the enemy, and other stuff like that.

 

[BASHMAN]

Mage Hand + 10' Pole = No traps! I ran a game where the wizard did just this and I thought it quite fun.

 

[Dragonblade]

Then there's all the other things you can do with it, like retrieving your allies' thrown weapons, carrying a rope across the chasm and tying it around a rock on the other side, holding a sunrod well in front of the party so that the light source better illuminates the enemy, and other stuff like that.

Yeah, I did the floating sun rod trick too. Very useful to send your floating sunrod to illuminate places you aren't willing or able to go yet.

 

[frankthedm]

The part about simultaneous movement confuses me. Is Mage Hand just a snazzy way to swap things in your hands? Seems kind of useless to me.

As a minor action, you could store a held item while drawing another. Considering a mage will want various Implements, that's a handy thing to have.

 

[lukelightning]

Ok, I am an idiot... I totally missed the part about "ranged 5" (even though it is right there for all to see!), and only saw the part about the hand picking up adjacent objects, which I interpreted as "adjacent to the caster" ('cuz I didn't see the ranged part); I thought this version of mage hand meant you could move things away from you but not to you.

I stand corrected, it is wicked awesome.