Giving an Unseen Servant a Tower Shield or using them to Fy.

[The Ronyon]

It occurred to me that rather than using mage hand/unseen servant to fetch items or disarm traps, you could use it to wield items.

I think either can wield a shield.
Both are weak, so that limits the usefulness.
A mage hand requires you to sustain it but has no actions of its own, so raising a sheild with it would take extra actions with no gain.

What about Unseen Servant?
From what I can tell, it would move at 15' due to the being encumbered and the shields built in penalty.
The question then is, can you take cover behind a tower shield wielded by someone else?

This leads me to wonder if the servant can be cover all by themselves.
It's a medium creature, rather squishy, but it has resistances to most things, and you could armor it up,probably with disappointimg results.
If you were small, it would make for better cover.

Then again, if you were small, you could ride it!
Even if you are medium sized,it could just barely carry you.
Your equipment is another matter, which could make for some interesting choices.

Much of this would apply to summoned creatures as well, though you will probably have better things for them to do in combat.

[Laran]

The rules would support either using it as meatshield or as a tower shield wielder. This interpretation is based upon the following:

1) Would a floating Tower shield provide lesser cover?
Probably yes since it is a "... massive shield that can be used to
provide cover to nearly the entire body " (p477 CRB). Thus it could be 5-6' tall and 2' wide or so.
An obstacle that could block weapons provides cover "...When you’re behind an obstacle that could block weapons ... you’re behind cover"(p477 CRB)

2) The rules explicitly allow a PC to use another character's raised tower shield for the "take cover" action behind the raised tower shield IF they already have lesser cover
"...other creatures can Take Cover as normal using the cover from your shield ..." (p277 CRB).

3) The unseen servant itself would appear to provide cover
It is classified as a creature, it has an actual physical body, it can be attacked with physical weapons, and it can take damage - 4hp (p380 CRB)
A creature would provide lesser coverage if " ... a line from the center of your space to the center of the target’s space ... passes through a creature ..." (p477 CRB)

On the flip side, it would only provide +1AC at base for 1 action and thus, a shield spell would be better (except in those circumstances where you need standard cover to hide or want the bigger take cover bonus)

This may be considered extremely cheesy to many DM's and they may disallow it since it is NOT explicitly allowed

[The Ronyon]

Thank you for your reply.
I see it could be considered cheesy, but it's not something for nothing.
It costs a 1st level spell and two actions(sustain and take cover), moves slowly, and gives you what?
Free hands.

[Laran]

The cheesy part of it would be either hiding and then sneaking in the middle of combat (which this would allow) and/or getting the +4 bonus to AC for the take cover action.