24 Things to Do with Mending!

Cantrips get ignored a lot of the time because they’re not that useful compared to higher-circle spells. However, you can cast them as much as you want, all day long. And quantity has its own sort of quality. There’s a lure of something-for-nothing that comes in every cantrip.

And then there’s mending.

This cantrip is one that you read and think, “That would be super useful in the world, especially if you were adventuring.” However, 5E rules don’t have much meaningful application of broken or torn items. A broken chain link or a leaking wineskin has no effect on how the game actually plays, and only broad mechanical notes for how it might even happen.

Objects do have AC and hit points, and someone who’s trying to break an object can get it done. But the game is skewed heavily toward the characters mattering, not stuff mattering. How many pieces a thing breaks into or how many feet long those breaks are doesn’t come up.

That means it’s down to roleplaying and good judgment to determine whether and how mending gets used. Just the place for imagination.

Check out 24 things to do with other cantrips too!

The Rundown on Mending

This is a pretty straightforward cantrip. You can fix broken things as long as the break is no larger than 1 foot.

The casting time of 1 action is a significant change from the 5th edition SRD version of this cantrip, which takes 1 minute to cast. The 3rd edition D&D version was also only 1 action, so the D&D designers made this change on purpose, probably to keep players from spamming the spell for ill effect. Kobold Press hasn’t seen any abuse of the cantrip in ToV with a 1 action casting time, but maybe now that we’re talking about it, you can think of a few!

Another clarification from 3rd edition that didn’t make it to 5th edition is that mending can make broken pottery whole with one casting. A picky GM might lean into the “single break or tear in an object” and make a PC spend a while collecting all the bits and fixing a shattered ceramic idol. The 1 action casting time of ToV makes this less of an issue.

Frankly, for all you GMs out there, it’s safe to let one casting of the spell fix all breaks under 1 foot long. However, if you want to introduce some time pressure, it would be legit to require a caster 1 minute to cast this spell ten times to fix an item that had multiple breaks. Any longer, and you should probably just say it’s too broken for mending to fix.

You do have to touch whatever you’re mending, so ranged shenanigans are hard with this cantrip. Remember though, that Arcane casters can use familiars to deliver touch spells within 100 feet. It probably won’t come up often, but once is enough to tell a good story! Divine casters? Well, you need to be hands on for a lot of your spells, so you’re probably used to it.

This spell collects the whole set on components: verbal, somatic, and material. So when you cast it, you’re going to be obvious. The material component is two lodestones. Even without mending, just having a magnetic rock around can be useful for the curious adventurer. If you want to mess with some fine ferrous contraption the GM has described, you’re armed. When the GM asks where your PC got a magnet, you can offhandedly mention that you have two of them in your spell component pouch. (As a side note, you’ll also need a lodestone to cast disintegrate and reverse gravity, so get used to carrying them around.)

The restrictions placed on mending within the spell description need a little scrutiny. First, it says that the spell repairs a “single break or tear” no larger than 1 foot in any dimension. Here’s that roleplaying and judgment call business we talked about. What constitutes a single break? If you’ve ever broken glass, you know that it almost never breaks just once. How long does it take to reassemble that hand mirror your barbarian smashed? That’s up to your table. Best advice: do what seems fun over “realistic.”

You can also use this spell to repair a nonmagical object that has lost hit points, one at a time. That’s not going to be super useful to protect fortifications during a siege, unless you have three dozen spellcasters working at the same time. However . . . if you’re protecting a wizard school or a temple compound, you might just have the bodies for this trick. Your main gate could last for days against a battering ram!

Need more ideas? Here’s 24 of them!

A big trick to thinking outside the proverbial box with mending is to think about what you could break on purpose and fix later. Fifth edition rules such as D&D and the Tales of the Valiant RPG don’t have rules for a clean break. You can smash an object by removing all its hit points. Is that one break? That’s a GM call. Better to use controlled cuts to avoid having to convince your GM of anything.

Speaking of GM calls, as always, a GM might be within rights to ask for an ability check or allow a creature a save to accomplish whatever unorthodox thing you’re trying to accomplish with mending.

1. Rip up a contract to show “good faith.” It doesn’t have to stay ripped up!
2. Need to get a 10-foot pole into the dungeon? Break it down into five 2-foot poles and reassemble it on the other side.
3. Fix a sword after it goes a couple of rounds with a rust monster.
4. Retrieve more spent ammunition after a fight.
5. Repair the wax seal you broke to read a sealed letter.
6. Worried about your wagon getting stolen? Break a wheel when you leave it. Mend it when you get back.
7. Fix a sinking boat damaged in naval combat.
8. Break a padlock and fix it afterward so it looks like you were never there.
9. This trick works for window panes too.
10. Treasure can be too big to get out of the little hole you crawled through to find it. That’s not a hindrance for mending.
11. The precarious rope bridge gets a lots more stable once you’re done with it. Maybe no one has to make a DEX check to cross it any more. Or at least, the check gets easier.
12. Paper burned in fire might be at least partially restored. You might be able to reconstruct a burned message, too. It’s a little outside the spell’s description, but bring cookies to the game and ask nicely.
13. There’s no statute of limitations on what you can mend. Is some treasure moldering or water damaged from decades in a wet cave? No problem!
14. Make a dramatic point by breaking something valuable in front of NPCs.
15. Once the inevitable bar brawl concludes, you might get free drinks for helping fix up the place.
16. Some of these ideas are about getting large things through small openings. Instead, you might widen the opening and repair that after the fact.
17. See if you can get yourself a bonus to crafting results in downtime rules because it’s simple to fix cutting mistakes.
18. Hide your contraband by cutting a hole in a sealed container, stash your goods inside, then mend it up.
19. Get an edge in a duel by sabotaging your opponent and fixing the sabotage before anyone official notices.
20. Gaslighting goes fantasy. The object your target thought was broken is . . . completely whole! Of course it is! Why would they have ever thought otherwise? What are they, CRAZY? (Repeat.)
21. You know that trick where a magician cuts a rope and then it’s somehow a complete rope when they’re done? A mending spell means no slight of hand required. Crowds love it.
22. You escaped from captivity by breaking your bonds. Mend them so no one discovers how you did it.
23. The trigger for some traps involves breakage. Reset the trap with a little judcious mend.
24. Finally, when you arrive at a new place, set up a fix-it clinic for quick cash or easy goodwill. Think about how many slightly broken things you have around your living space. Would you pay a couple of bucks to have them magically fixed? Would you be grateful if somebody showed up and fixed them for free?

What else can you surprise your GM with?