Can an Unseen Servant "wear" clothes, such as a robe or cloak?

Question

Is it possible to put a robe or cloak over an Unseen Servant, potentially fooling others into thinking that the Unseen Servant is actually a person?

The spells say the servant is a "invisible, mindless, shapeless, medium force", but it is unclear to me how such "force" interact with clothing.

The servant can clean, mend, and fold clothes, so clearly it can manipulate clothes in some capacities. The servant can also perform simple tasks that a human servant could do, and presumably wearing clothes is such a task.

However, the Unseen Servant is shapeless, so I'm not sure if it would be possible to put a piece of clothing over it.

Answer 1

The aspect of "shapeless" rules out the possibility of unseen servant "wearing" clothes regardless of whether the clothes would lay on them as it would not be in any particular shape, it wouldn't be in the shape of a humanoid or any other medium creature like a dog.

But this doesn't mean that Unseen Servant couldn't achieve the same effect as Unseen Servant could hold up a frame that is in the shape of a head and shoulders of a humanoid and drape a hooded cloak over that frame. As long as the frame + clothes is 30lbs or less then Unseen Servant could be used to carry that frame and to any outside observers it would look like a hooded humanoid.

This bypasses the "shapeless" problem and gives a shape then the only thing needed is a force to hold up the frame against gravity which it's absolutely clear Unseen Servant can do.

Answer 2

This spell creates an Invisible, mindless, shapeless force

The "shapeless" part pretty much means the Unseen Servant force can not wear clothes the same way a human would. "Wearing" means letting the clothes take shape around the body.

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.

At least the mending and folding means, the servant can manipulate maybe two or even 3 things simultaneously, but more than that would quickly get out of both "simple task" and "a human servant can do" area.

Also, simple task pretty much rules out a task like "Serve food while making a cloak appear as if a human was wearing it". It'd be quite a stretch to call something like that simple.

Once you give the Command, the servant performs the task to the best of its ability until it completes the task, then waits for your next Command.

While it is not 100% clear if you can even abort a command, the "completes, then waits for next" implies it can not perform several simple tasks in parallel. If you give it a command to hold a cloak like a human, and then a command to serve food, it would drop the cloak (or possibly ignore the 2nd command as the 1st one is not completed).

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A ruling based on above:

An unseen servant can hold one piece of complex clothing, such a hooded cloak, in a way that would resemble a human wearing them. Imagine something like a human servant crouching and holding up a cloak using their hands. So, especially from behind it could pass as a human - a decoy or a distraction, certainly.

It can just hold two or even three pieces, but then they'll just hang there. This would seem human only from far away or in poor visibility.

If there's a rack/mannequin for the clothes, an unseen servant can certainly carry that, if it's not too heavy, as suggested by another answer. But then you can't make the legs move etc, so... Hard to pass this as a human, too.

But then there's the problem: while performing this clothes holding task, unseen servant is unable to perform other tasks. That would not be simple task any more. So making it appear as a real servant doing servant things would not be possible without more magic. It's not clear from your question if this is what you need, or not.

Silent Image or Major Image might be more helpful than the Unseen servant holding clothes, though I see issues with synchronising the illusion to what the servant does....

Answer 3

Unseen Servants can perform simple tasks

The rules for Unseen Servant state (emphasis added):

Once on each of your turns as a bonus action, you can mentally command the servant to move up to 15 feet and interact with an object. The servant can perform simple tasks that a human servant could do, such as...

Wearing an article of clothing qualifies as interacting with an object, it is a simple task, and it is something a servant could do. The spell provides broad leeway in its capabilities (within the stated restriction) so even though "wearing" clothing isn't explicitly named as an example it is still allowed by the spell.

It is true that the servant is shapeless but it doesn't need a shape, it just needs to clothes to be arranged to create the appearance of a shape.

A human servant could accomplish this by wearing the clothes whereas an Unseen Servant would manipulate the clothes so they appeared to be worn. Since manipulating the clothes in such a way is within the capabilities of a servant it is also within the capabilities of an Unseen Servant.

Answer 4

DM's choice, but I see no problem with it

Putting on clothes is a simple task that a human servant could do so it should be possible. The problem is the unseen servant has no real body so actually making it seem like a real person is inside those clothes could be difficult.