Hello, I just started running a weekly dnd game as a DM (never been a DM before this campaign). During the 2nd session, the players were running through a orc tribe hideout set in an old, abandoned underground dungeon. The warlock, however, cast a spell called unseen servant, which he used to safely scout ahead every single room in the dungeon and knock over objects to distract guards. This took away a lot of difficulty from the combat encounters and spoiled a lot of the traps, and I allowed it until he tried to scout ahead the orc boss fight, at which point I got fed up with it and said he couldn't use that spell anymore. At first, I thought I did the right thing, but then I talked to some other more experienced friends and they came up with suggestions like "just make some rooms unpassable by servants" or "create an anti-magic field in dungeons", so now I'm wondering if I messed up as a DM.
Can someone please help me figure out if I was in the right or wrong?
First of all, I think it was probably a bad idea to just say "you can't use the spell anymore." Yes, Unseen Servant can be a pain in the neck depending on how you set up certain dungeons, and yes, there are ways to block it such as anti-magic fields, but some of those ways may not be very in-theme for the dungeon (why would orcs have set up anti-magic fields in their tribal hideout?).
One question I have was, how long elapsed during the dungeon crawl? It sounds like this guy's servant was either out for the entire time, or was able to be cast at will. Unseen Servant is not a cantrip. It is a 1st level spell and every time it's cast it uses up a spell slot. You didn't say what level these guys are but as they are fighting orcs and it is the 2nd session, I'm assuming 1st to 3rd level. At 3rd level a Warlock has 2 spell slots, which means he can only cast one other spell besides Unseen Servant per short rest.
So, one question would be, why does the Warlock feel like he can blow a spell slot that could be used for much better spells, on Unseen Servant? Was the rest of the dungeon too easy? Were you letting them take a short rest any time they want, with no chance of being ambushed? One key thing D&D 5e assumes (and it is a terrible assumption because it almost never happens, but this is why people feel challenges are often not strong enough) is 6-8 encounters per long rest. Which means they should be doing several per short rest.
If your players are just short-resting constantly (one fight, rest, one fight, rest), then that needs to stop. You could limit the # of rests per day (1 long and 2 short per day -- any more than that you can do but no benefit). But IMO, better is let them do what they want but have an adventure with a "ticking clock." The orcs are dong a ritual to summon some powerful demon which they are going to command to slaughter the nearby town, and it happens at midnight. The PCs enter the dungeon at noon. You carefully track and mark off time. If they rest too much, whoops, demon gets summoned.
Also, why was he able to 'safely scout every room in the dungeon'? The Servant is not omnipotent and he does not have any skills. He can't get through locked doors. This simple expedient, which is easily available to orcs, would have utterly stopped him.
You say that he spoiled traps. I am not sure if you meant traps in the sense of "ambush" or traps in the sense of "pressure plates with poison darts." The servant, to my understanding, is physically material. This is implied by the fact that it can, per the spell description "fold clothes" and so forth. If that's true (and I would absolutely rule that it is), then the second "Hans the Servant" steps on that pressure plate, the darts go off. He gets to make a CON save with his presumably 3 CON (no other stats but STR are provided but I would rule that he is 3s across the board, since again, there is no reason he wouldn't be), i.e. -5, so he's going to fail. Beyond this, most saves result in half damage, and per the spell desc, if Hans takes a single point of damage, he's gone. So again, one simple poison dart trap would finish him. And how the Warlock will need to use the 2nd slot to summon him back, and now he is out of spells.
As to distracting the guards... orcs are not stupid. If they hear noises and don't see who is doing it, why didn't they alert the entire dungeon? Why didn't the whole mass of orcs in every room come swarming to the alert to see what's happening? Surely some of them coming from hither and yon would have found the party, said "I found 'em" and now it is a running battle against the whole horde.
This is a case where you, as a DM, need to think about what they are doing and what the real consequences would be. Hans the Servant is useful for minor things. Yes, he can trigger a trap for you, but then he's gone and your spell slot is wasted. Yes, he can distract the guards, but this also risks alerting the entire base to your existence, since he can't kill the guards, and as soon as they see that they can't discover the source of the noise, they're going to raise an alarm (again, orcs aren't stupid).
Finally, knowing they have this spell, you don't, as a DM, try to negate it completely (that is not fair to the player -- he took a spell choice with it, and likes it, and wants to use it, so letting him do so is only fair), but rather, you try to make it so that using it can be mildly helpful some of the time, but not dungeon-breaking. Again, a simple locked door would defeat the thing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The traps he was spoiling were things like tripwire traps and pressure plates, but you bring up a good point about how the spell works. I really should have read it more carefully before allowing him to do that. My mistake.
Also, one unseen servant actually stays in play for a full hour when cast and doesn't require concentration, so no, the players were not short-resting at all.
Also I don’t get how the secant was scouting, it has no voice and the warlock can’t see through its eyes like with a familiar, it is by description a mindless force. Don’t think of it like a butler think of it like an invisible zombie with motor skills.
also carefully listen to the instruction’s he gives the servant, if he tells it to walk ahead of them, it will and it will continue walking forward until the warlock commands it to stop or it reaches 60 ft away which is 24 seconds of movement.
finally a key thing is that it is shapeless, it be called unseen servant but it is not humanoid it is an embodiment of force that will carry out actions for you. It has no weight or physical presence, it won’t set off trip wires or booby trapped tiles.
Yeah, I do think you’re giving a little too much credit to the spell. And you know, it worked well in this one particular instance. Just keep that in mind moving forward. You also don’t want to make the spell useless though as that will be very unsatisfying/discouraging from the players perspective.
but yeah, just kill it with one of those traps, lol.
Also I don’t get how the secant was scouting, it has no voice and the warlock can’t see through its eyes like with a familiar, it is by description a mindless force. Don’t think of it like a butler think of it like an invisible zombie with motor skills.
The spell specifically states “The servant can perform simple tasks that a human servant could do, such as fetching things, cleaning, mending, folding clothes, lighting fires, serving food, and pouring wine.”
I can give a human servant the command to “Go look in that room, come back, and if nobody is in there tap my shoulder once, and if somebody is in there, tap my shoulder twice.”
The spell is super useful, but it does have its limitations. As others have pointed out.
Sardonic - If it can take damage, fold clothes, then it can indeed does have a physical presence. But I agree with the rest of what you said.
What I meant was it doesn’t necessarily have a humanoid shaped body that would be able to be tripped by a trip wire or set off a pressure point.
“This spell creates an invisible, mindless, shapeless, Medium force that performs simple tasks at your command until the spell ends.”
compare this to other conjuration spells like find greater steed
”You summon a spirit that assumes the form of a loyal, majestic mount. Appearing in an unoccupied space within range, the spirit takes on a form you choose: ”
the latter goes out if it’s way to tell you it has a form and give your PC room to describe it, the former goes out if it’s way to say it has no form.
I think however the DM rules (that it is physically present or not) it is not as useful as the original post described. Either you rule that it has no physical presence, in which case it cannot trip a trap, and has no ability to really detect or disarm them. Or it is physical and trips the trap and dies.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Sardonic - If it can take damage, fold clothes, then it can indeed does have a physical presence. But I agree with the rest of what you said.
What I meant was it doesn’t necessarily have a humanoid shaped body that would be able to be tripped by a trip wire or set off a pressure point.
“This spell creates an invisible, mindless, shapeless, Medium force that performs simple tasks at your command until the spell ends.”
compare this to other conjuration spells like find greater steed
”You summon a spirit that assumes the form of a loyal, majestic mount. Appearing in an unoccupied space within range, the spirit takes on a form you choose: ”
the latter goes out if it’s way to tell you it has a form and give your PC room to describe it, the former goes out if it’s way to say it has no form.
I think you are misunderstanding the wording. They are just referring to what shape it takes. Find Greater Steed specifies that it can take a visible, recognizable form of an animal. The Unseen Servant is simply “formless” or shapeless. Like an Amoeba.
But that’s exactly what I am saying, it is formless and shapeless and lacks physical attributes such as legs to set of trip wires or feet with a body weight behind them to set of pressure points.
The idea that it would set of all the traps in a room despite not having the physical presence needed to do so was what I was countering.
if the PC said “ go in that room and set off any trip wires in it” that’s different but just sending an unseen servant into a room should not set them off just by being in there due to its shapeless formless amoeba ness.
also you can only command it to “move up to 15ft and interact with an object” look at the examples it uses, fold laundry, serve food, light fires. “Walk into a room look around and then come back and tap me on the shoulder” is not that. It could literally move 7.5ft away at most and turn around.
it doesn’t even have to physically move 60ft away from you to end the spell, if you commanded it to walk 75ft it wouldn’t walk 60 and then vanish, the spell would end.
also for it to have followed a whole party out the dungeon and still be around means the warlock would of had to be commanding it the whole time using up his bonus actions to do so.
unseen servant is a utility spell designed to do a mundane task so you don’t have to, it is not a ghost familiar. It is getting to use magehand as a bonus action for an hour.
also, not sure how it can even knock over items as a distraction as its completely mindless and you have to tell it where to go and what to do. so if you don't know there's a box in the next room to kick and distract, it can't. it'd just go into the room. - treat it like a wish spell and think of how to warp the command to backfire. if the character tells it to go knock down a box...assuming the character even knows about the box - well, it was a crate, not a box and the stupid thing couldn't figure that out....or they're barrels...or the box was just too heavy for something with a strength of 2. ...or there was a little metal box sitting in the fireplace with an active fire and it decided to reach in.
IMO, they're way more limited than familiars because familiars can at least think and communicate. communication with a servant is completely 1-way.
for me at least, the hardest part of being a DM is really thinking about all the options on the other side because you're so distracted with everything else. sometimes you just have to pause, make the players wait, and think through a scenario for options. ..can't tell you how many times after a session i've thought "gah, if only i did such and such". my 2nd biggest problem is knowing all the spells and abilities - i've learned to just stop and read the spell/ability the character is using because 1/2 the time they've completely misread it or are intentionally trying to do things the spell just doesn't do. even if i think i know the spell/ability, i'll often still take a second to skim through. quick access to that stuff helps.
I think the overall point here isn't really the shape of the servant, or specifically if it's going to accidentally trip a tripwire trape.
The point here is the players were using the Unseen Servant as if it were a Familiar. It doesn't work that way. If the Warlock wants a familiar, have him take a level of Wizard and pick the Find Familiar spell. Otherwise, Hans the Servant can only follow very simple commands out to a very short distance.
Remember, Hans is mindless. As was said above, you can't give him long-range instructions like "go distract the orcs by making some noise in that room." Hans wouldn't be able to figure out what to do.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The unseen servant can NOT communicate in any way. Nothing in the spell lets it do that. No spying.
It SHOULD be able to trigger traps - but expect it to take 1 point of damage 95% of the time, ending the spell.
It's speed is only 15 ft and can not take a double move. Once you cast that spell, you are basically limited to moving at a rate of 15 ft a round.
It's range is fairly limited (60 ft) .
As for intelligence, I think it is less intelligent than a dog, but trained to do traditional butler stuff. It can be told to 'distract' only if you tell it to knock things over in that location, 60 ft away.
I agree with everything said so far, and to relate back to the title of the post I don't think you should ban overpowered player spells. There are many of them, but that's the fun of having a character in DnD and leveling them up, and figuring out creative ways to use your spells. It's remembering the DM is not 'against' the players, per se, but is telling the story with them.
My own mentality is I root for my players to outsmart what I have prepared, or to use their spells creatively as work arounds. Even if you settle the Unseen Servent there are plenty of other OP spells if used correctly (For Instance my Warlock is an experienced player and does some False Life Bullshit all the time to somehow have the highest health as a caster. That's fun, good on him! And it just challenges me to change things up).
As a DM and the narrative driver of the story just remember the players are the story, not the adventure. We get plenty of opportunities to womp our players and to put them on their heels, so if they figure out how to use their op stuff and ruin your day and womp you back sometimes enjoy those moments with them! You'll all have more fun with it that way.
If you ban overpowered spells you end up banning way too much. My rule is as follows:
I only ban a spell if BOTH of these following apply. If only one applied, I would think about weakening it in some way.
Even without upcasting, it is better than a published spell of the same type of a higher slot. That is, Fireball is a 3rd level area attack Save for 1/2 8d6 spell. If there is a 4th level or higher area attack spell that does save for 1/2 damage that was worse than Fireball, that means Fireball is over-powered. Compare with other Vitrolic Sphere which does 10d4 immediate + 5d4 next round, save for 1/2 of the 10d4. Vitrolic Sphere is far better on a failed save buy but slightly worse (14 vs 12.5) on a made save. Therefore Fireball is a barely acceptable 3rd level spell.
No other spell of the same level makes you wonder 'should I take this instead?' If there are multiple spells of the same level that are hard choices, it is definitely NOT overpowered.
Examples of spells that are close to being over-powered, by level:
Shield, Faerie Fire
Misty Step, Heat Metal
Animate Dead, Fireball, Counter-spell, Hypnotic Pattern, Haste, Mass Healing Word
Death Ward, Polymorph, Banishment
Animate Object, Bigby's Hand, Anti-life Shell, Contagion (was overpowered before they errated it), Ennervation, Mislead (requires prep to make it work)
Contigency, Globe of Invunerability, Scatter, Magic Jar, Soul Cage
Hello,
I just started running a weekly dnd game as a DM (never been a DM before this campaign). During the 2nd session, the players were running through a orc tribe hideout set in an old, abandoned underground dungeon. The warlock, however, cast a spell called unseen servant, which he used to safely scout ahead every single room in the dungeon and knock over objects to distract guards. This took away a lot of difficulty from the combat encounters and spoiled a lot of the traps, and I allowed it until he tried to scout ahead the orc boss fight, at which point I got fed up with it and said he couldn't use that spell anymore.
At first, I thought I did the right thing, but then I talked to some other more experienced friends and they came up with suggestions like "just make some rooms unpassable by servants" or "create an anti-magic field in dungeons", so now I'm wondering if I messed up as a DM.
Can someone please help me figure out if I was in the right or wrong?
First of all, I think it was probably a bad idea to just say "you can't use the spell anymore." Yes, Unseen Servant can be a pain in the neck depending on how you set up certain dungeons, and yes, there are ways to block it such as anti-magic fields, but some of those ways may not be very in-theme for the dungeon (why would orcs have set up anti-magic fields in their tribal hideout?).
One question I have was, how long elapsed during the dungeon crawl? It sounds like this guy's servant was either out for the entire time, or was able to be cast at will. Unseen Servant is not a cantrip. It is a 1st level spell and every time it's cast it uses up a spell slot. You didn't say what level these guys are but as they are fighting orcs and it is the 2nd session, I'm assuming 1st to 3rd level. At 3rd level a Warlock has 2 spell slots, which means he can only cast one other spell besides Unseen Servant per short rest.
So, one question would be, why does the Warlock feel like he can blow a spell slot that could be used for much better spells, on Unseen Servant? Was the rest of the dungeon too easy? Were you letting them take a short rest any time they want, with no chance of being ambushed? One key thing D&D 5e assumes (and it is a terrible assumption because it almost never happens, but this is why people feel challenges are often not strong enough) is 6-8 encounters per long rest. Which means they should be doing several per short rest.
If your players are just short-resting constantly (one fight, rest, one fight, rest), then that needs to stop. You could limit the # of rests per day (1 long and 2 short per day -- any more than that you can do but no benefit). But IMO, better is let them do what they want but have an adventure with a "ticking clock." The orcs are dong a ritual to summon some powerful demon which they are going to command to slaughter the nearby town, and it happens at midnight. The PCs enter the dungeon at noon. You carefully track and mark off time. If they rest too much, whoops, demon gets summoned.
Also, why was he able to 'safely scout every room in the dungeon'? The Servant is not omnipotent and he does not have any skills. He can't get through locked doors. This simple expedient, which is easily available to orcs, would have utterly stopped him.
You say that he spoiled traps. I am not sure if you meant traps in the sense of "ambush" or traps in the sense of "pressure plates with poison darts." The servant, to my understanding, is physically material. This is implied by the fact that it can, per the spell description "fold clothes" and so forth. If that's true (and I would absolutely rule that it is), then the second "Hans the Servant" steps on that pressure plate, the darts go off. He gets to make a CON save with his presumably 3 CON (no other stats but STR are provided but I would rule that he is 3s across the board, since again, there is no reason he wouldn't be), i.e. -5, so he's going to fail. Beyond this, most saves result in half damage, and per the spell desc, if Hans takes a single point of damage, he's gone. So again, one simple poison dart trap would finish him. And how the Warlock will need to use the 2nd slot to summon him back, and now he is out of spells.
As to distracting the guards... orcs are not stupid. If they hear noises and don't see who is doing it, why didn't they alert the entire dungeon? Why didn't the whole mass of orcs in every room come swarming to the alert to see what's happening? Surely some of them coming from hither and yon would have found the party, said "I found 'em" and now it is a running battle against the whole horde.
This is a case where you, as a DM, need to think about what they are doing and what the real consequences would be. Hans the Servant is useful for minor things. Yes, he can trigger a trap for you, but then he's gone and your spell slot is wasted. Yes, he can distract the guards, but this also risks alerting the entire base to your existence, since he can't kill the guards, and as soon as they see that they can't discover the source of the noise, they're going to raise an alarm (again, orcs aren't stupid).
Finally, knowing they have this spell, you don't, as a DM, try to negate it completely (that is not fair to the player -- he took a spell choice with it, and likes it, and wants to use it, so letting him do so is only fair), but rather, you try to make it so that using it can be mildly helpful some of the time, but not dungeon-breaking. Again, a simple locked door would defeat the thing.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Ok, that clarifies things a bit.
The traps he was spoiling were things like tripwire traps and pressure plates, but you bring up a good point about how the spell works. I really should have read it more carefully before allowing him to do that. My mistake.
Also, one unseen servant actually stays in play for a full hour when cast and doesn't require concentration, so no, the players were not short-resting at all.
Also I don’t get how the secant was scouting, it has no voice and the warlock can’t see through its eyes like with a familiar, it is by description a mindless force. Don’t think of it like a butler think of it like an invisible zombie with motor skills.
also carefully listen to the instruction’s he gives the servant, if he tells it to walk ahead of them, it will and it will continue walking forward until the warlock commands it to stop or it reaches 60 ft away which is 24 seconds of movement.
finally a key thing is that it is shapeless, it be called unseen servant but it is not humanoid it is an embodiment of force that will carry out actions for you. It has no weight or physical presence, it won’t set off trip wires or booby trapped tiles.
It also can't tell them there's a tripwire right? So wouldn't it just trip the wire, get hit, and die?
And yes it lasts an hour. Why didn't the dungeon take longer than an hour? Was it that tiny?
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Sardonic - If it can take damage, fold clothes, then it can indeed does have a physical presence. But I agree with the rest of what you said.
Yeah, I do think you’re giving a little too much credit to the spell. And you know, it worked well in this one particular instance. Just keep that in mind moving forward. You also don’t want to make the spell useless though as that will be very unsatisfying/discouraging from the players perspective.
but yeah, just kill it with one of those traps, lol.
This^^
The spell specifically states “The servant can perform simple tasks that a human servant could do, such as fetching things, cleaning, mending, folding clothes, lighting fires, serving food, and pouring wine.”
I can give a human servant the command to “Go look in that room, come back, and if nobody is in there tap my shoulder once, and if somebody is in there, tap my shoulder twice.”
The spell is super useful, but it does have its limitations. As others have pointed out.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
What I meant was it doesn’t necessarily have a humanoid shaped body that would be able to be tripped by a trip wire or set off a pressure point.
“This spell creates an invisible, mindless, shapeless, Medium force that performs simple tasks at your command until the spell ends.”
compare this to other conjuration spells like find greater steed
”You summon a spirit that assumes the form of a loyal, majestic mount. Appearing in an unoccupied space within range, the spirit takes on a form you choose: ”
the latter goes out if it’s way to tell you it has a form and give your PC room to describe it, the former goes out if it’s way to say it has no form.
I think however the DM rules (that it is physically present or not) it is not as useful as the original post described. Either you rule that it has no physical presence, in which case it cannot trip a trap, and has no ability to really detect or disarm them. Or it is physical and trips the trap and dies.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I think you are misunderstanding the wording. They are just referring to what shape it takes. Find Greater Steed specifies that it can take a visible, recognizable form of an animal. The Unseen Servant is simply “formless” or shapeless. Like an Amoeba.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
But that’s exactly what I am saying, it is formless and shapeless and lacks physical attributes such as legs to set of trip wires or feet with a body weight behind them to set of pressure points.
The idea that it would set of all the traps in a room despite not having the physical presence needed to do so was what I was countering.
if the PC said “ go in that room and set off any trip wires in it” that’s different but just sending an unseen servant into a room should not set them off just by being in there due to its shapeless formless amoeba ness.
also you can only command it to “move up to 15ft and interact with an object” look at the examples it uses, fold laundry, serve food, light fires. “Walk into a room look around and then come back and tap me on the shoulder” is not that. It could literally move 7.5ft away at most and turn around.
it doesn’t even have to physically move 60ft away from you to end the spell, if you commanded it to walk 75ft it wouldn’t walk 60 and then vanish, the spell would end.
also for it to have followed a whole party out the dungeon and still be around means the warlock would of had to be commanding it the whole time using up his bonus actions to do so.
unseen servant is a utility spell designed to do a mundane task so you don’t have to, it is not a ghost familiar. It is getting to use magehand as a bonus action for an hour.
also, not sure how it can even knock over items as a distraction as its completely mindless and you have to tell it where to go and what to do. so if you don't know there's a box in the next room to kick and distract, it can't. it'd just go into the room. - treat it like a wish spell and think of how to warp the command to backfire. if the character tells it to go knock down a box...assuming the character even knows about the box - well, it was a crate, not a box and the stupid thing couldn't figure that out....or they're barrels...or the box was just too heavy for something with a strength of 2. ...or there was a little metal box sitting in the fireplace with an active fire and it decided to reach in.
IMO, they're way more limited than familiars because familiars can at least think and communicate. communication with a servant is completely 1-way.
for me at least, the hardest part of being a DM is really thinking about all the options on the other side because you're so distracted with everything else. sometimes you just have to pause, make the players wait, and think through a scenario for options. ..can't tell you how many times after a session i've thought "gah, if only i did such and such". my 2nd biggest problem is knowing all the spells and abilities - i've learned to just stop and read the spell/ability the character is using because 1/2 the time they've completely misread it or are intentionally trying to do things the spell just doesn't do. even if i think i know the spell/ability, i'll often still take a second to skim through. quick access to that stuff helps.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
If a blob presses against a tripwire it's still going to trigger.
assuming it has legs or is otherwise resting on the ground and isn't floating in the air of course.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
As they don't state it hovers or has a flying speed I'd call that a reasonable assumption.
I think the overall point here isn't really the shape of the servant, or specifically if it's going to accidentally trip a tripwire trape.
The point here is the players were using the Unseen Servant as if it were a Familiar. It doesn't work that way. If the Warlock wants a familiar, have him take a level of Wizard and pick the Find Familiar spell. Otherwise, Hans the Servant can only follow very simple commands out to a very short distance.
Remember, Hans is mindless. As was said above, you can't give him long-range instructions like "go distract the orcs by making some noise in that room." Hans wouldn't be able to figure out what to do.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I would rule:
I agree with everything said so far, and to relate back to the title of the post I don't think you should ban overpowered player spells. There are many of them, but that's the fun of having a character in DnD and leveling them up, and figuring out creative ways to use your spells. It's remembering the DM is not 'against' the players, per se, but is telling the story with them.
My own mentality is I root for my players to outsmart what I have prepared, or to use their spells creatively as work arounds. Even if you settle the Unseen Servent there are plenty of other OP spells if used correctly (For Instance my Warlock is an experienced player and does some False Life Bullshit all the time to somehow have the highest health as a caster. That's fun, good on him! And it just challenges me to change things up).
As a DM and the narrative driver of the story just remember the players are the story, not the adventure. We get plenty of opportunities to womp our players and to put them on their heels, so if they figure out how to use their op stuff and ruin your day and womp you back sometimes enjoy those moments with them! You'll all have more fun with it that way.
That's my opinion at least.
If you ban overpowered spells you end up banning way too much. My rule is as follows:
I only ban a spell if BOTH of these following apply. If only one applied, I would think about weakening it in some way.
Examples of spells that are close to being over-powered, by level:
Honestly, I am not so sure about the 9th level spells, because there is no 10th level spell to compare them with.