After playing with the vine ability for roughly half an hour, Merlin found a few more limitations with it. The main limitation was that it could extend for a maximum distance of about ten meters, roughly the radius affected by the light spell.
The next limitation was that a tentacle seemed to roughly output as much strength as a single arm. So if Merlin couldn't physically lift an object with his arms, it was very unlikely that the vines would be able to either.
Although there were a few cases where this wasn't the case, as the vine was longer than his arm, in some instances he could utilise leverage to apply more force against something, like whipping a goblin's body around from a distance rather than trying to throw it around with just his arms.