Mage Hand

You can use your action to control the hand. You can use the hand to manipulate an object, open an unlocked door or container, stow or retrieve an item from an open container, or pour the contents out of a vial. You can move the hand up to 30 feet each time you use it.

Does that mean you have to use an action to move it 30 feet or that when you use an action to control it you can also move it 30 feet

It says: You can move the hand up to 30 feet each time you use it., so I believe is included in the action.

That's what I thought, but it's just unclear enough that I wanted to be sure before going to my DM with it.

That also makes the Arcane Trickster much better than I thought.

So, just to be 100% clear. Assuming I have mage hand active I could, as an arcane trickster, retrieve a healing potion from my backpack with the hand, move it up to 30 feet, then, as a bonus action, move it up to another 30 feet and then administer the potion to a downed (or conscious even) ally?

Because I really want to do that next game :)

You mean the bonus action from the Mage Hand Legerdemain feature? I believe you can take the potion and give it to the ally, but to use the potion the ally requires to spent his/her action.

As Filcat said, you can use your Mage Hand with your bonus action, but what you can do with it is still constrained by what the spell allows you to do. It mentions "manipulate an object", which I take to mean the list of examples in page 190 of the player's handbook (also here). In that list, there's "hand an item to another character", but not administering a potion.

Administering a potion is in page 153 of the Player's Handbook, hidden in the description of the Healing Potion: "Drinking or administering a potion takes an action." It's a miscellaneous action, not a "Use an Item" action, apparently, so you can't even use Fast Hands to do it as a bonus action. (I think. Is there evidence to the contrary?)

Yes Onyx, that was my thinking as well.

Quote from Onyx >>

As Filcat said, you can use your Mage Hand with your bonus action, but what you can do with it is still constrained by what the spell allows you to do. It mentions "manipulate an object", which I take to mean the list of examples in page 190 of the player's handbook (also here). In that list, there's "hand an item to another character", but not administering a potion.

Administering a potion is in page 153 of the Player's Handbook, hidden in the description of the Healing Potion: "Drinking or administering a potion takes an action." It's a miscellaneous action, not a "Use an Item" action, apparently, so you can't even use Fast Hands to do it as a bonus action. (I think. Is there evidence to the contrary?)

When an object requires your action for its use, you take the Use an Object action.

If an item requires an action to activate, that action isn't a function of the Use an Object action, so a feature such as the rogue's Fast Hands can't be used to activate the item.

Ooh, quite astute, thanks. That clears the potion bit pretty straightforward-ly.

It makes me wonder of non-magical drinks, however. Like a herb-made antidote or similar. Or tea, I suppose. The examples include stuffing your own face with food, drinking ale (yourself), and handing an item to someone else, but still not helping someone else drink something.

Nevermind, I'm tired and missed the part of not being able to activate magical items.

But the whole point is that, among the things you can do with Mage Hand (including the ones of the Arcane TRickster feature), drinking/administering a potion is not one of them.

Drinking a potion and pouring a liquid out a vial are different things.

Yah, I posted this just before going to sleep last night and came back this morning so I'm missing all sorts of things. Heck, the hand disappears as well after going more than 30 ft. from the caster. I'm going to go have large amounts of caffeine :(

uote from Onyx >>

Ooh, quite astute, thanks. That clears the potion bit pretty straightforward-ly.

It makes me wonder of non-magical drinks, however. Like a herb-made antidote or similar. Or tea, I suppose. The examples include stuffing your own face with food, drinking ale (yourself), and handing an item to someone else, but still not helping someone else drink something.

"Other than balance reasons, I can't imagine why drinking a potion would take more time than a flagon of ale."

"It's absolutely a game rule. It's not meant to simulate rates of liquid consumption."

"That said, do you think allowing this increased ease of potion use would cause any balance problems?"

"Potions are effectively bottled spells. Do you want spells cast as non-actions in your game?"