Players Surprising You

[NeoSeraphi]

It never ceases to amaze me how creativity comes out at the table, even in situations where it seems (to you, as the DM) to have a very obvious and simple solution that players just kind of ignore and make up their own ways of solving problems.

For example, in one of the campaigns I ran, my group was in an arena as it was assaulted by drow, including a cleric. In order to mess with the group, I had the cleric use her Spider Domain summon swarm spell, and had the swarm go after the group's cleric.

Now, I didn't think the group had any way of dealing with the swarm. There was a single sorcerer, but the group was level 5 at this point and so she didn't have any powerful AOEs yet (she mostly relied on scorching ray). The solution that seemed pretty obvious to me at the time was "Hit the cleric, make her lose Concentration". I even had the cleric stand in plain sight and didn't move her at all while her barbarian comrades kept the party busy.

But then the cleric's player opened up his spell list and asked, "So what will happen to the swarm if I cast create water?"

I stared at him. He continued. "I'm a 5th level caster, so that's just 10 gallons of water that's going to appear out of nowhere and just fall onto the ground."

Mouth open, I just kind of shrugged uselessly and said "Yeah, that seems like it would wash the swarm away. Sure."

I was dumbfounded. One of the coolest tactics I ever used to harass the caster, and he beat it with an orison. The swarm had to spend a few rounds to collect back together, so the drow cleric just stopped concentrating and walked into the fray, where she was of course soundly defeated.

What kinds of surprises have your players dumped on you?

[Khedrac]

I think the biggest surprise I had from a player was in the other direction - playing 2nd Ed at University (or was it 1st?) a lowish level group found a black archway covered in glowing black runes with a completely featureless black space inside it. They correctly worked out that it was some form of portal and the rogue rolled so badly on her listen that she though she heard someone playing a piano through it. So she stepped through..! (It was a portal to the Abyss and I actually let her live - she was sent back with some very interesting scars and a hefty penalty to Charisma, I think the quote was "elves can't have a charisma that low!") I really did not expect anyone to risk that.

As for your Create Water v. Spider Swarm problem, it's amazing how no one ever reads the spell description:

Water can be created in an area as small as will actually contain the liquid, or in an area three times as large—possibly creating a downpour or filling many small receptacles.My memory is that the PHB is even more specific, but simply put you cannot create the water without something to hold it. It's a lot less useful for fire-fighting that it appears - still good but not awesome.

[Lonely Tylenol]

The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout...

:smallamused:

Right now, there is one member of the party that is surprising me moreso than the others. Originally, his character's concept could be summarized almost entirely with "lol stabby stabby", and his roleplaying and table manner could be described as "interrupting every party member and NPC mid-sentence to outwardly express his apathy toward everything". At the start of game, he was my "problem child".

Now, he's actually gone to lengths to flesh his character out that I couldn't have possibly foreseen... And he's hiding all of it from the rest of the party. The actions that he's taken to develop his character and the world range from passing notes whenever he wants to perform a concealed action (such as making silent proclamations to Nerull before killing a foe; stuff that is fairly typical of most players) to drafting a map of the region that they have been exploring, based on my descriptions of events and environments that they have traveled through (which usually involve relatively archaic descriptions of the timeline, such as the position of the sun in the sky, or about X minutes/hours of travel through [describe the terrain]), to scheming with (and behind) the party (by the way, I still need help with his most recent scheme (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=236752), if anyone is interested, /shameless plug).

But it was his most recent revelation that really threw me... He's decided (as a consequence of his character's path, which we've talked over but I will keep disclosed in case any of my party starts following my posts) that his character was going to need to travel around a lot and be very mobile, and was also going to be a venture capitalist of sorts (this was actually decided first, before the travel focus), with a sort of "front business" which he uses to finance his other, less savory, endeavors (see above).

So what does he do?

Instead of picking a Craft or Profession skill and hiring a bunch of people to make daily checks, he invents a new method of mundane containerization and distribution of goods that not only makes sense in the world they're in (E6 with commensurate restrictions on item creation, so Bags of Holding and Handy Haversacks, which require a 5th-level spell to make, are nonexistent, as is long-range teleportation, and technology has advanced primarily on the strain of da Vincian schemata), but is also more efficient in concept than the existing trade and distribution method than I was using prior (but this is what I get, I suppose, for competing with an engineering major :smallamused:). He says that he intends to have it patented (in-game) and arrange a meeting with the Minister of Commerce, who they are currently escorting from a town where a labor dispute had occurred, to discuss the matter with him as soon as they are safely within city walls. I can only wager a guess, but I'd say he probably wants seed money to invest in his business to come from this.

I mean, this is a level of detail into mundane, everyday aspects of the world that I hadn't invested into it. Needless to say, I'm impressed.

[supermonkeyjoe]

I was most recently stunned by my players recent lack of creativity, four level 19 characters were held up for a considerable time by a mundane masonry wall.

[MattE]

As for your Create Water v. Spider Swarm problem, it's amazing how no one ever reads the spell description:
My memory is that the PHB is even more specific, but simply put you cannot create the water without something to hold it. It's a lot less useful for fire-fighting that it appears - still good but not awesome.

States in the description that it can create a downpour...

[NeoSeraphi]

I was most recently stunned by my players recent lack of creativity, four level 19 characters were held up for a considerable time by a mundane masonry wall.

What? This I've gotta hear. Why didn't they just climb over it? Was there no door or gate? Did they not have access to flight or teleportation?

[Morbis Meh]

I have used create water in an equally amusing and unexpected way. My party was level 5one and we were entering a town which we had to be peace bound (well everyone except my cleric of pelor since this is where church headquarters were). Anyway, the party accepts the terms of entry without quarrel but a an behind us begins to flip put and rage at the suggestion (he was a barb). So my character yltries to use diplomacy but it of course doesn't work, so in a last ditch effort to prevent heads from rilling I cast create water. So a 10 gallon deluge falls upon the barb and my DM is stunned. He then says the barb falls on his rear and begins laughing... so problem solved!

Another interesting story of a unique way to deal with combat was when my hf ran a game for my friends and I. She created a frost giant for us to fight but we noticed it before it noticed us. So our bard walks up the mountain towards the peak using fascinate on the poor guy. Needless to say, it failed so the bard proceeded to use suggestion ob it, which it failed again. So the bard tells the giant that it should slide down the hill on its stomach so it can get behind the party and to stay on the ground so it wouldn't be noticed. So it does as its told and is now laying prone behind us. The bard moves toward the giant and then places a portable hole beneath its head causing it to fall head first into a 10 ft hole. My cleric walks towards it thus causing it to break the fascination due to a bad perform check by the bard, so to remedy the situation my clerks (different one from the last) casts Clutch of Orcus and luckily the giant fails his fort save and becomes paralyzed. So the rest of the party proceeds to beat the poor giant to death as it lays in its newly formed grave... my gf was rather perturbed how we cruelty dealt with her giant (who she intended as a challenge).

[mc.jesus]

I can't even count the times I made my last DM scratch his head and stare at me with a baffled look. I was abusing a druid in ways he didn't think possible.

Then in another campaign with the same DM I rolled a ninja swashbuckler silverbrow that one hitted everything, even some boss fights. For example, we were looking for some people in a cellar, when my character hears some footsteps outside so I rush out, sneaking. Apparently I was the only one that heard it, and none of my party members saw me leave. The cellar door was slammed shut behind me by two goons. Outside is a bandit leader who starts talking to me and threatening me... So rather then say, oh this is a big bad boss who I should probably run away from, I make the opposite choice. CHARGE! One hit kill... Apparently there was a whole subplot worked out for that character.

[Necroticplague]

Once, in an epic campaign I was in, we ended up getting jailed (high-op tipsyverse setting). My character was the one whom would have the least problems with this, but the issue was to let the other PCs free. My solution? Go into the cells, swallowing my teamates, then eating a guard for his key, and hiding myself in a backpack of a puppet I made to look like the downed guard. I then simply proceeded to have the puppet continue the dead guards shift, and our escape was finished when the night shift he had was over and he "went home".The DM was confounded, he expected a drawn-out combat scene.

[dsmiles]

IMO, if my players aren't surprising me, something's wrong. After all, it's all of their minds vs mine. Since we all have the same job, with the same requirements, we're all on equal footing in the intelligence department. I may be a bit more creative than some of them, but they're 4 people, and I can't plan for every contingency. :smallsmile:

[prufock]

Instead of picking a Craft or Profession skill and hiring a bunch of people to make daily checks, he invents a new method of mundane containerization and distribution of goods that not only makes sense in the world they're in (E6 with commensurate restrictions on item creation, so Bags of Holding and Handy Haversacks, which require a 5th-level spell to make, are nonexistent, as is long-range teleportation, and technology has advanced primarily on the strain of da Vincian schemata), but is also more efficient in concept than the existing trade and distribution method than I was using prior (but this is what I get, I suppose, for competing with an engineering major :smallamused:).

Don't leave us hanging! What is it?

[godryk]

This isn't an epic tale of power, but just something that happened the other day. As I am an unexperienced DM, I have few stories to tell.

My players were in chamber deep into my last creation where some slightly modified Mefits were standing. They were totally neutral to the players and meant no harm to them. Besides, due to their low Int stats, they were unable to mantain a normal conversation or ellaborate complex answers to the player's inquiries. Did I mention that I love to play out NPCs? So I was there, playing these obsessive mentally-challenged creatures, telling stories of former parties that perished in the dungeon and making funny voices. One of my players, the greedy neutral guy, was trying to come up with some scenario to force combat and loot the place. Unfortunately, he was surrouned by good guys that won't harm these creatures. He managed to create some kind of game the mefits would join, as a distraction for everyone, and tried to get himself caught stealing so the creatures would attack him, then threatening his life and forcing the rest of the party to defend him.

The combat that followed was so much fun, with all these critters summoning more little flying friends, casting several stinking clouds and flying to higher points in the chamber to use their acid breath weapon. Then the same guy that forced the situation, after passing several Fortitude checks, climbed to a higher point, got some rope and hooks that he had just picked from a balcony a couple of rooms before (he's the kind of player that cleans up the room) and asked me if he could try to aim at the things with it. It was so awesome that I let them do all sort of cool things with several ranged touch attacks, use rope skill checks, jump checks, some fall damage, opposed strength checks and more stuff. It was a complete chaos with the Mefits dragging people through the cloud (moar checks!), players cooperating to bring the critters down, players tying the ropes to statues, creatures freeing themselves from the hooks, etc. There was even some water in the perimeter (a feet or so), and another player decided to crawl with his head into the water to avoid the cloud (the cloud split the room in two halves).

I love it when my players come up with these kind of strategies, so even when they are difficult to rule out following the books (or slightly impossible) I tend to improvise some creative ruling and make sure that they have to keep rolling dice all the time to keep the action movie going.

[the_david]

It never ceases to amaze me how creativity comes out at the table, even in situations where it seems (to you, as the DM) to have a very obvious and simple solution that players just kind of ignore and make up their own ways of solving problems.

For example, in one of the campaigns I ran, my group was in an arena as it was assaulted by drow, including a cleric. In order to mess with the group, I had the cleric use her Spider Domain summon swarm spell, and had the swarm go after the group's cleric.

Now, I didn't think the group had any way of dealing with the swarm. There was a single sorcerer, but the group was level 5 at this point and so she didn't have any powerful AOEs yet (she mostly relied on scorching ray). The solution that seemed pretty obvious to me at the time was "Hit the cleric, make her lose Concentration". I even had the cleric stand in plain sight and didn't move her at all while her barbarian comrades kept the party busy.

But then the cleric's player opened up his spell list and asked, "So what will happen to the swarm if I cast create water?"

I stared at him. He continued. "I'm a 5th level caster, so that's just 10 gallons of water that's going to appear out of nowhere and just fall onto the ground."

Mouth open, I just kind of shrugged uselessly and said "Yeah, that seems like it would wash the swarm away. Sure."

I was dumbfounded. One of the coolest tactics I ever used to harass the caster, and he beat it with an orison. The swarm had to spend a few rounds to collect back together, so the drow cleric just stopped concentrating and walked into the fray, where she was of course soundly defeated.

What kinds of surprises have your players dumped on you?

I'd never let a player get away with that. Just so you know, we're talking about some 1500 tarantulas. It is a creative solution, however, and should be rewarded. At that point you should make up some effect that would be roughly equivalent to an orison, or maybe a first level spell.