[RPG] Can a Tiny Servant be used as a messenger

animated-objectsdnd-5espells

The local wizard lives in his wizard tower, which is located just outside the city walls. He sends the low-level adventuring party into the city to uncover some crucial information. He himself is not welcome in the city, due to some misunderstandings. Said wizard wants to be informed about the party’s success as soon as possible, but none of the party members is able to cast message (or other spells that could be used to send some kind of message).

Would the following plan work: The wizard casts tiny servant on his favourite spoon and commands it to return to the wizard’s tower as quickly as possible. The party puts the spoony messenger into a bag of holding and goes on to investigate. After the mysteries are uncovered, the party releases the spoon with a message tied to it, all within the spell’s duration.

Would the spoon return to the wizard’s tower?

The command was issued by the wizard while being within 120 feet of the spoon. And the spoon should continue to follow its orders until its task is complete.

Best Answer

This could work but it's probably up to DM fiat

Spellwise I'd agree with your interpretation, it could be possible to make this work, provided that the tiny servant is created, dispatched and capable of returning within an eight hour period. The command could also arguably be expressed pretty simply - 'As soon as a message has been securely attached to you, return to me, in my tower'.

However, there are a number of things you might want to think about, about which there's no real RAW guidance:

  1. Does the tiny servant actually know the way back? There's nothing RAW to suggest that it does. Some landmarks might be obvious, others not so much.
  2. When someone spots a tiny spoon running unattended through the centre of town, what's the likelihood that they'll try to grab it?
  3. If the spoon is in any way prevented from returning to its master, will it resort to violence to try and free itself and fulfil its mission? The average commoner could easily be killed by a single hit from a tiny servant (1d4 + 3 bludgeoning damage).

These could all be fun questions to consider as part of your narrative. Has the wizard had a limited success rate doing this in the past? Unbeknownst to the wizard, is the town on high alert, searching for the mysterious 'cutlery killer', recently implicated in a number of deaths?

Note: Thanks for the interesting idea hohenheim. I'm very tempted to incorporate something like the following into my own campaign:

A wizard hires the party to perform an apparently simple task and presents them with a 'message spoon'. A little later, while trying to complete the mission, the party find themselves trapped. Their first indicator that something is terribly wrong is finding another spoon on the floor - wrapped around it is a half-crazed note hastily scrawled. It seems to have been written by the last party to be hired by the wizard, shortly before they met their untimely demise. The spoon, like the party, clearly never made it back.

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