@JeremyECrawford When mage hand is cast, does it use the travel speed of the caster? e.g. when cast inside a moving vehicle, it maintains the speed of the vehicle & moves an additional 30ft/turn?
Example: falling character using mage hand to fall 30ft/turn faster than fall speed
— Kyle Wegner (@kwegner) January 15, 2019
The spectral hand that you create with the mage hand spell doesn't move with you.
If the effect of a spell moves with you, the spell's description says so. #DnD https://t.co/9GQdw4D8x4
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) January 15, 2019
Thank you – so just to clarify, if Mage Hand is cast in a moving vehicle, it stops dead relative to the ground underneath unless the caster uses its movement, and even then can only max out at 30ft/turn?
— Kyle Wegner (@kwegner) January 15, 2019
Unless you move the hand created by mage hand, it floats in place. It's basically a little ghost.
A DM might decide that a moving vehicle (perhaps in a train car) is the ground that the hand hovers over, or the DM might decide that the hand slams into the car's back wall. #DnD https://t.co/lvlPE0hcvX
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) January 15, 2019
This is just the old unresolved Immoveable Rod problem.
What determines the frame of reference? If you’re on a sailing ship when you use it, does it fix itself in relation to the deck of the ship, and move with the ship? Or does it fix itself in relation to the waves below the ship, in which case it will rise and fall along with the waves? Or does it fix itself in relation to the sea floor, in which case it still might rise or fall if there’s some earthquare or other seismic movements? Or what?
Clearly it doesn’t fix itself in space in reference to the center of the galaxy, or even the solar system, because the physics involved would create a catastrophe, as the planet is moving incredibly fast in relation to such points of reference, and it would immediately slam into the immobile rod with such force and speed that it would literally shred atoms apart and cause a massive nuclear fireball.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why they don’t just change the rules to say, “You may choose an object or point in space that you can see to serve as the point of reference for this effect.” It’s literally magic anyway, so why not?
The same should apply to mage hand as well. You should be able to choose which point of reference it is “anchored” to, since it being limited to the caster is pretty arbitrary to begin with.
If I want to drop a mage hand, then leave it behind by teleporting to the other side of the planet, and then command the mage hand to move 30 feet from it’s prior position to flip a switch, why shouldn’t I be able to?
And likewise, if an item gets dropped off a cliff, and I’m diving after it to catch it (and will Feather Fall once I have it), but I can’t fall faster than it, yet it’s only 20 feet away from me as we both fall the same speed, surely I should be able to Mage Hand to grab it, without the Mage Hand fixing itself in space and just poofing out of existence as the object and I both fall out of range?