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The ritual Unseen servant says:

You conjure a Medium unseen servant of invisible force. It obeys your commands, moves at your speed, can lift up to 100 pounds, and performs basic functions and repetitive tasks, such as cleaning, making camp, and moving, holding, or carrying objects.

An unseen servant never tires. It cannot move more than 20 squares from your space. It does not occupy any space and cannot attack or be attacked. Each unseen servant you currently control doubles the component cost to create the next.

I would like my party to stand a few squares away from a door, crossbows aimed at the door and command an Unseen servant to open it. Can I do this (assuming the door is untrapped and unlocked)?

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I have to imagine that opening a door falls well within "basic functions and repetitive tasks" so there is absolutely no reason why not.

Even if the door is trapped (and in fact this is an excellent use case), the unseen servant would have no problem opening it. Unlocking it however requires a measure of skill your unseen servant does not have.

The last thing to remember here is that you can't ready actions outside of combat. You are still at the mercy of the initiative roll for this.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ In the actual scenario that happened, there's a corridor with two doors to two rooms. We opened one of the doors and killed all the enemies there. This caused the enemies in the other room to presumably get ready inside their room and point their crossbows at the door. We're not making a short rest in this scenario and we are in combat (I think). Will this prevent us from using the servant? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 4, 2014 at 15:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ @PetrHudeček only if it's not already present. It takes 10 minutes to perform the ritual. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 4, 2014 at 15:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm surprised by the statement "you can't ready actions outside of combat". We ready actions outside of combat all the time, and I don't see anything about this in the 'Ready an Action' section in either the Player's Handbook or the Rules Compendium. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 4, 2014 at 19:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ @DCShannon rpg.stackexchange.com/q/10133/1084 \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 4, 2014 at 19:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ @waxeagle Thanks for sharing that. I disagreed with the accepted answer, so I wrote my own: rpg.stackexchange.com/a/51718/12011 \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 5, 2014 at 1:56

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