
Corwin Icewolf |
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Wizard players across the world were rather upset that unseen servant can't be used for its intended purpose anymore. While improved from its 1 minute long playtest duration, it now has max duration of ten minutes, and it can't act on its own, defeating the purpose of using it for household chores.
Of course, many are quick to suggest just hiring a human butler.
To that suggestion I say, HOGWASH! Are we not mages? Do mages not have a long history of doing things like summoning foul demonsto send notes that honest footmen could've taken for a silver piece? Where is our sense of dignity?
So what is a proper mage to do to get their chores done? Well while it takes considerable expertise (because you need to crit success a DC 20 arcana check, so you need to roll a 30,) a broom can be animated to sweep floors, and similar constructs could be made, a mop to... well mop, a rag to wash dishes.
Of course, such rituals are not easily found, and require a considerable expense to cast. But the effort in finding them is well worth it. (Rituals are uncommon, and even a -1 construct is 15 gold, so unless your gm is reasonable enough to give you a discount for making a bunch of constructs that aren't going to be combat useful past level 2, you're spending quite a bit of gold on it.)
So yeah, basically I figured out a way to sort of get what you got from 1e unseen servant. you can pretty much animate objects for this a la sorcerer's apprentice, hopefully without the whole mucking it up part, but it seems prohibitively expensive, and you need a secondary caster, so it's not just you doing it which kind of sucks as well.
But if your gm is willing to work with you on tweaking it a little here and there it should do.

shroudb |
Wizard players across the world were rather upset that unseen servant can't be used for its intended purpose anymore. While improved from its 1 minute long playtest duration, it now has max duration of ten minutes, and it can't act on its own, defeating the purpose of using it for household chores.
Of course, many are quick to suggest just hiring a human butler.
To that suggestion I say, HOGWASH! Are we not mages? Do mages not have a long history of doing things like summoning foul demonsto send notes that honest footmen could've taken for a silver piece? Where is our sense of dignity?
So what is a proper mage to do to get their chores done? Well while it takes considerable expertise (because you need to crit success a DC 20 arcana check, so you need to roll a 30,) a broom can be animated to sweep floors, and similar constructs could be made, a mop to... well mop, a rag to wash dishes.
Of course, such rituals are not easily found, and require a considerable expense to cast. But the effort in finding them is well worth it. (Rituals are uncommon, and even a -1 construct is 15 gold, so unless your gm is reasonable enough to give you a discount for making a bunch of constructs that aren't going to be combat useful past level 2, you're spending quite a bit of gold on it.)
So yeah, basically I figured out a way to sort of get what you got from 1e unseen servant. you can pretty much animate objects for this a la sorcerer's apprentice, hopefully without the whole mucking it up part, but it seems prohibitively expensive, and you need a secondary caster, so it's not just you doing it which kind of sucks as well.
But if your gm is willing to work with you on tweaking it a little here and there it should do.
it's deliberate that said rituals cost so much and they are uncommon.
the master wizards across the continent were tired of having their houses/towers absolutely destroyed by lazy apprentices trying their hand on animating a bunch of tools to do their chores for them.
so they artificially inflated material prices for said rituals, as well as they actively hunt down and destroy knowledge of said rituals where they find it (uncommon rarity)
it's now a rite of passage for apprentices to learn and cast said rituals. when they manage it, they graduate from being an apprentice and are guided by their masters to the outside world to hone their craft (aka they get kicked out of the tower so that they don't mess it up)