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The spell Unseen Servant says "If you command the servant to perform a task that would move it more than 60 feet away from you, the spell ends." But what happens if I move away from it? For example,

  1. An Unseen Servant is just standing around not performing any task at the moment. I move more than 60 feet away, do something, and then later come back within the 60 ft. to give the Servant a task.
  2. An Unseen Servant is just standing around not performing any task. I move 70 feet away, and while there spend my bonus action to command it to come 15 feet closer to me. This is a task that involves some portion of moving beyond 60 feet from me, but the end goal is within 60 feet.
  3. An Unseen Servant is folding a basket full of clothes that will take quite some time to complete. While it's doing that, I leave the 60 ft. range and do other things. Can the Servant continue this task, even though it's performing a stationary task while more than 60 ft. away from me?

That is,

  1. Is the limit considered at the start of having it move, the end of having it move, or both?
  2. Is the limit at any time, or just when it moves?
  3. If it's in motion (folding clothes or whatnot), but not "moving" (like from one square to another, if playing on a grid), does it still need to be within the 60 ft.?
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3 Answers 3

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The 60 feet limit only applies to any given order you give the servant.

Consider the spell description:

If you command the servant to perform a task that would move it more than 60 feet away from you, the spell ends.

If you move more than 60 feet from the servant while is is idle then come back to it the spell will not have ended since you did not order it to do anything, let alone anything that would move it 60 feet away.

If you order it to come to you when you are over 60 feet away the spell still won't end since the objective of the given order is to move to within 60 feet of you.

If you leave it following orders which include movement and you then move over 60 feet away from it the spell still won't end since the orders you gave did not move it over 60 feet from you, rather your own actions did.

The simplest way to interpet the spell is that when you give orders to the servant you can only order it to perform actions that are within 60 feet of your current location. You can't order it to head over to the nearby village to fetch a keg of beer for you since that is (presumably) over 60 feet away. You can order it to clean your bedroom before heading out for a day of adventuring providing your bedroom is within 60 feet of where you give the order.

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I believe that any task that the servant performs while you are more than 60 ft. away from it would result in it moving (even if it is moving towards you) and thus, end the spell.

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    – Someone_Evil
    Commented Apr 20, 2019 at 18:06
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I think that all three scenarios are possible. To argue this I would base it on the similarity between the range limit in the text and the range limit of the spell. If you treat the giving a command like a cantrip, than all three scenarios are possible. When casting a spell you need to be within range for the cast but not for the full duration of the spell. Not even for concentration spells as by the sage advice answer:

You don’t need to be within line of sight or within range to maintain concentration on a spell, unless a spell’s description or other game feature says otherwise.

I am drawing this connection to the range of the spell is because I think the intent of the rule is to avoid you casting the spell in range and then affecting something that would not be within range for the initial cast. With 1 hour of duration and 15 feet movement the servent could move quite far away from you in an area that you might not be able to get close to for the initial cast. But in none of your three scenarios you are doing such thing. So from the intent of the rule (that I assume) this connection makes sense and your scenarios are fine.

Furthermore I see that all three scenarios are possible because the spell doesn't state otherwise with exact reading and spells never do more than they state.

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