Buy me a coffeeConjuration cantrip guide
Mage Hand Spell
A key beyond prison bars, a vial across a trapped floor or a latch on the far side of a gate can all be reached by a small act of remote magic. Mage Hand rewards exact thinking, but each rules edition gives that distant touch different limits.
Quick Rules Reference
D&D 5.5e / 2024
- Range: 30 feet
- Duration: 1 minute; no Concentration
- Load limit: 10 pounds
- Cast with an Action
- Control later with a Magic action
- Cannot attack or activate magic items
Pathfinder 1e
- Range: Close
- Target: one nonmagical unattended object
- Weight limit: 5 pounds
- Duration: Concentration
- Standard action to maintain
- Move action to propel up to 15 feet
D&D 3.5e
- Range: Close
- Target: one nonmagical unattended object
- Weight limit: 5 pounds
- Duration: Concentration
- Standard action to maintain
- Move action to propel up to 15 feet
Mechanics by Edition
D&D 5.5e / 2024 Mage Hand
A spectral floating hand appears at a point chosen within range and remains for the duration. It vanishes if it is ever more than 30 feet from the caster or if the caster uses Mage Hand again.
When the spell is cast, the hand can manipulate an object, open an unlocked door or container, place an item into or remove an item from an open container, or pour out a vial. On later turns, the caster takes a Magic action to control the hand again and may move it up to 30 feet as part of that action.
The hand cannot attack, activate a magic item or carry more than 10 pounds.
Rules basis: System Reference Document 5.2.1.
Pathfinder 1e Mage Hand
Spell lists: arcanist 0, bard 0, magus 0, medium 0, mesmerist 0, occultist 0, psychic 0, skald 0, sorcerer 0, spiritualist 0, summoner 0, summoner (unchained) 0 and wizard 0.
The caster points at one qualifying object and lifts or moves it from a distance. As a move action, the caster can propel the object up to 15 feet in any direction. The spell ends if the distance between caster and object exceeds the spell’s range.
After the casting round, maintaining this Concentration spell requires a standard action each round. Propelling the object requires the caster’s move action, so continued movement normally consumes both actions.
Rules basis: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and Archives of Nethys.
D&D 3.5e Mage Hand
The caster points at one qualifying object and lifts or moves it at range. A move action propels the object up to 15 feet in any direction. The spell ends if the distance between the caster and object ever exceeds the spell’s range.
Concentrating to maintain the spell is a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. On later rounds, maintaining concentration and propelling the object therefore normally use the caster’s standard and move actions.
Rules basis: D&D 3.5 System Reference Document.
What Mage Hand Does
Mage Hand moves a light object without requiring the caster to stand beside it. In D&D 5.5e / 2024, the spell creates a visible spectral hand that performs a defined group of object interactions. Pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5e instead describe directed magical force acting on one nonmagical, unattended object.
The spell is most valuable when distance matters more than strength: retrieving a key, drawing an object away from a suspicious surface, carrying a message through bars or bringing a delicate item within reach. It supplies neither combat telekinesis nor automatic skill with locks, traps or tools.
Edition Differences That Matter
| Rule | D&D 5.5e / 2024 | Pathfinder 1e | D&D 3.5e |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manifestation | A spectral floating hand. | Directed remote force; no visible hand is required by the spell text. | Directed remote force; no visible hand is required by the spell text. |
| Range | 30 feet. | Close: 25 feet + 5 feet per 2 caster levels. | Close: 25 feet + 5 feet per 2 caster levels. |
| Object limit | The hand carries no more than 10 pounds. | One nonmagical, unattended object weighing no more than 5 pounds. | One nonmagical, unattended object weighing no more than 5 pounds. |
| Duration | 1 minute without Concentration. | Concentration. | Concentration. |
| Later control | Magic action; move the hand up to 30 feet as part of the action. | Standard action to maintain, plus move action to propel the object up to 15 feet. | Standard action to maintain, plus move action to propel the object up to 15 feet. |
| Magic items | The spell does not forbid carrying one within the weight limit, but the hand cannot activate it. | A magic item is not a legal target. | A magic item is not a legal target. |
| Doors and containers | Explicitly opens unlocked doors or containers and handles items in open containers. | Not a listed general function; resolve only through the one-object movement rule. | Not a listed general function; resolve only through the one-object movement rule. |
| Combat use | The hand cannot attack. | No attack or combat-manoeuvre mode is supplied. | No attack or combat-manoeuvre mode is supplied. |
Interactions and Edge Cases
Held, Worn and Guarded Objects
Pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5e exclude them through the unattended-object target line. The 2024 text is less explicit but supplies no remote disarm, theft check or contest. Ordinary Mage Hand should not overcome another creature’s grasp or control unless a specific feature expands the spell.
Locked Doors and Containers
The 2024 hand opens only an unlocked door or container. It does not defeat a lock or suppress Arcane Lock. Older editions do not inherit the 2024 opening permission; the GM must decide whether moving a distinct light latch or handle fits their one-object rule.
Tools, Traps and Lockpicking
The spell grants no proficiency, knowledge, senses or substitute for a skill check. Standard 2024 Mage Hand does not expressly use thieves’ tools at range, while the older versions describe lifting and moving rather than dexterous tool operation. Specialist features should remain meaningful.
Attacks and Direct Harm
The 2024 hand cannot attack. Pathfinder and 3.5e provide no attack roll or damage procedure. Mage Hand may create ordinary environmental consequences by moving a legal object, but it should not become a free ranged weapon, shove, disarm or unlisted delivery attack.
Pouring and Dropping
The 2024 version expressly pours the contents of a vial, but that permission does not override the ban on attacking. Pouring into a bowl, drain, brazier or empty space is straightforward. Pouring onto an unwilling creature must use the normal rules for the substance and cannot bypass any required attack or save.
Magic Items
In 2024, the hand can carry a magic item within its load limit but cannot activate it. Pathfinder and 3.5e Mage Hand targets only a nonmagical object, so moving or manipulating a magic item falls outside those versions.
Visibility and Hidden Work
The 2024 hand is spectral and perceptible. Pathfinder and 3.5e do not state that a hand appears, but the caster still points and must concentrate. None of the versions grants sight through walls, into a closed container or around an unseen mechanism.
Range and Obstructions
Keep the hand or chosen object within the active edition’s range. Mage Hand does not pass objects through solid barriers merely because the caster knows something lies beyond them. Bars, grilles and open gaps are useful only when the moved object can physically pass through.
Dispel Magic
An ongoing Mage Hand is a spell effect and may be answered by the same edition’s Dispel Magic procedure. Apply that edition’s target, check and success rules rather than importing the method from another system.
Antimagic
An antimagic effect suppresses Mage Hand where the two overlap. Suppression is not dispelling: the spell’s duration continues to pass, and any remaining effect resumes only where the active edition’s antimagic rules permit it.
Best Uses in Play
Safe Retrieval
Draw a key, document, vial, tool or small treasure away from a suspicious floor, altar, shelf or corpse before anyone approaches.
Bars and Grilles
Reach through a gap that admits the spell’s effect and the object but not the caster’s arm, armour or body.
Light Placement
In 2024 play, carry a light object into a dark recess while remaining within the hand’s range and 10-pound limit.
Clue Handling
Turn over a loose page, separate small objects or bring evidence closer without trampling the scene around it.
Hazard Testing
Move a permitted loose object across a surface to learn how a mechanism responds, accepting that this may trigger rather than disarm the danger.
Quiet Assistance
Pass a small object, close an unlocked container in 2024 or retrieve something dropped beyond ordinary reach.
Mage Hand in the World
These existing illustrations show three distinct uses of the spell beyond the prison-key scene: controlled handling in a dangerous workshop, remote retrieval in an archive and suspicious intervention at a noble feast.
Tactical and Exploration Guidance
Measure the Whole Route
The object must travel through spaces it can physically fit, and the hand or object must stay inside the spell’s range. A key may pass through bars while a box cannot.
Know the Action Cost
The 2024 spell needs no Concentration, but controlling it on a later turn consumes a Magic action. Pathfinder and 3.5e normally require a standard action to maintain the spell and a move action to propel the object.
Choose the Object Precisely
Older editions affect one object, so identify exactly what is being moved. A loose key is clear. A key tied to a heavy ring, chained to a guard or built into a larger mechanism may fail the target or weight limits.
Expect Witnesses
A spectral hand is obvious in 2024, while pointing and sustained concentration can expose an older-edition caster. The spell provides distance, not automatic secrecy.
Guidance for the GM
Core ruling: reward a clever use when the chosen object, route, weight, range and action cost all fit the active edition. Require another rule when the proposed use becomes an attack, theft contest, tool check, forced movement or stronger telekinesis.
- Ask the player to name the exact object and describe its route.
- Count the moved load honestly, including anything firmly attached to it.
- Do not make every useful object mysteriously too heavy; the cantrip exists to solve small spatial problems.
- Do not grant perfect information about mechanisms the caster cannot see or understand.
- Use visible consequences. A key scrapes stone, a chain tightens, a vial tilts and a spectral hand may reveal the caster’s method.
- Reserve remote pickpocketing, lockpicking and combat manoeuvres for rules that actually provide them.
Examples of Play
The Gaoler’s Key
A key hangs on a peg 20 feet beyond the cell bars. The wizard casts Mage Hand, creating the spectral hand beside the key and taking it from the peg. On the next turn, the wizard uses a Magic action to move the hand and key back through the bars. The key weighs less than 10 pounds and the hand never leaves the 30-foot limit.
The Idol on the Plate
A four-pound stone idol rests on a pressure plate across a trapped chamber. The sorcerer casts Mage Hand and uses the remaining move action to propel the unattended nonmagical idol 15 feet. On the next round, maintaining the spell uses a standard action and moving the idol again uses a move action. Removing it may trigger the plate; the spell moves the object but does not disarm the trap.
The Fallen Scroll Case
A two-pound wooden scroll case lies at the bottom of a narrow shaft. The bard targets the unattended nonmagical case, lifts it and moves it upward in 15-foot stages. Each later round requires a standard action to maintain concentration and a move action to propel the case. The spell ends if the case passes beyond Close range.
Spellcasting Culture and Worldbuilding
A common cantrip changes the design of small secure spaces. Gaolers keep keys in closed boxes rather than on open hooks. Archivists weight loose documents and use cabinets whose latches cannot be reached through viewing grilles. Apothecaries separate dangerous vials from open counters, and magistrates treat a visible spectral hand near evidence as interference.
The spell also creates legitimate professions. Apprentices retrieve fragile tools from hot furnaces, flooded channels and contaminated rooms. Scribes move loose sheets without crossing wet ink. Healers bring light objects through isolation screens. Stage performers turn the visible 2024 hand into theatre, while older-edition casters may present the movement itself as an unseen wonder.
Security remains practical rather than absolute. Distance, closed containers, attached objects, weight, solid barriers and vigilant witnesses all matter. Mage Hand makes careless arrangements unreliable; it does not make every lock, vault or guarded possession meaningless.
Historical and Occult Development
Mage Hand is a modern fantasy-game abstraction, but it belongs to an older fascination with action at a distance. Modern psychology and parapsychology use psychokinesis for the claimed influence of matter through mental activity rather than ordinary physical contact.
Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century spiritualism made moving tables, airborne objects, mysterious knocks and apparently self-playing instruments part of the public séance. Wellcome Collection’s Smoke and Mirrors material places such performances beside stage magic, psychology, investigation and exposure.
Fantasy roleplaying removes that uncertainty and turns remote movement into a repeatable working with a measured range, weight limit and action cost. The result is not unrestricted telekinesis but a deliberately modest form of magical reach.
Mythological Parallels
Mudra and Commanding Gesture
In Buddhist art, formal hand gestures communicate protection, teaching and spiritual states. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Hand of a Buddha shows how a precise pose can carry authority and meaning. Mage Hand turns directed gesture into literal object movement.
Many Hands, Far-Reaching Power
Multi-armed sacred figures make supernatural reach visible. The Met’s Thousand-Armed Chenresi uses a vast fan of hands to express wisdom radiating in every direction. Mage Hand reduces that cosmic image to one practical extension of the caster’s will.
The Hand of Glory
European folklore imagined a severed hand prepared as a magical aid for thieves. The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic preserves a hand-shaped candle associated with that tradition. Its purpose differs from Mage Hand, but both make the detached hand an instrument of illicit reach.
The Gesture of Command
Folklore and ceremonial art repeatedly use pointing, beckoning, blessing and raised palms to show intention passing into the world. Mage Hand gives that symbolic language a narrow mechanical form: the caster indicates, directs and moves something that remains beyond bodily reach.
Adventure Hooks
The Key in the Saintless Chapel
A bronze key hangs behind an iron grille. Touching the floor beyond the bars wakes the plague dead beneath the flagstones, but moving the key may alert the unseen custodian that counts every relic.
The Cup That Moved First
At a ducal feast, a poisoned cup slides away from its intended victim. One witness calls it a rescue, another an attempted murder and a third swears the spectral hand belonged to someone who never cast a spell.
The Bell-Pull in the Empty Room
A sealed tower room rings its bell each midnight. The cord is light enough to move, but no living caster stands within range. The dead apprentice’s final cantrip may be repeating—or something may be hiding inside the wall.
The Five-Pound Testament
A murdered wizard left evidence inside a locked archive. The only accessible object is a stone tablet weighing exactly five pounds, and three rival experts disagree about whether the iron frame fixed around it counts as part of the target.
Related Spells
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mage Hand visible?
In D&D 5.5e / 2024, yes: it is a spectral floating hand. Pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5e do not state that a visible hand appears.
Does Mage Hand require Concentration?
The 2024 spell does not. Pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5e do, and maintaining the spell uses a standard action each round.
Can Mage Hand pick a lock?
Ordinary Mage Hand does not automatically use thieves’ tools or replace a lockpicking check. A feature that specifically expands the spell may change that answer.
Can Mage Hand steal a carried item?
Pathfinder and 3.5e forbid targeting attended objects. The 2024 spell supplies no pickpocket or contested-theft procedure, so standard Mage Hand should not be treated as an automatic remote theft ability.
Can Mage Hand activate a magic item?
No in 2024. Pathfinder and 3.5e cannot target a magic item with this spell because their target must be nonmagical.
Can Mage Hand trigger a trap?
It can move a legal object in a way that causes an ordinary mechanism to respond. That may trigger the trap; it does not automatically detect, understand or disarm it.
Can Mage Hand deal damage?
The 2024 hand cannot attack, and the older versions provide no attack mode. Environmental consequences should use the normal rules for the object or hazard rather than invented cantrip damage.
How many Mage Hands can one caster maintain?
In 2024, casting the spell again makes the previous hand vanish. Pathfinder and 3.5e require concentration, and a caster cannot normally cast another spell while concentrating on the first.
Sources and Licensing
D&D 5.5e / 2024
This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 (“SRD 5.2.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Pathfinder 1e
Pathfinder rules are based on Open Game Content from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and the Archives of Nethys Mage Hand reference. Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook. Copyright 2009, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Author Jason Bulmahn, based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook and Skip Williams.
D&D 3.5e
D&D 3.5e rules are based on the D20 System Reference Document and are used under the Open Game License v1.0a. System Reference Document. Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook and Skip Williams.
Rules commentary, setting consequences, examples, adventure hooks and presentation are original SpiralWorlds material.