The Circumvention Circus

[RogueDM]

Step Right Up... and tell me about your favorite moment of players circumventing large portions of DM intended game play via being clever, over powered, or just incredibly lucky.

My modest contribution is a moderate level game (6-ish as I recall) in which the party was tasked with rescuing a princess from a heavily guarded tower within a walled complex. Said distressed damsel was being held by an evil king and we needed her liberated to gain leverage against said BBEG. The party consisted of myself, a Killoren Druid, an Elf Wizard, a Dwarven Knight, and a Half-Ogre Monk.

Originally I was thinking of ways to participate in a teamwork friendly manner, maybe using Shape Stone to allow the party to bypass the wall, or perhaps using Wildshape to make myself a small bird and reconnoiter the area. Then I had a realization, I could turn into fore mentioned small bird, fly to the princesses window, land upon the sill and enter. I then Shape Stone'd the tower wall open and summon a pair of Hippogriffs to carry myself and the princess to safety. I actually had to make up ways for the rest of the party to assist as not to make it The Druid Show. So the wizard cast Obscuring Fog or whatever to cover my exit, and the martial classes procured a mode of transit that wouldn't vanish before we made it out of the city.

Entire tower as well as most of the great escape completely avoided.

Your turn, how did you make your DM curse spending all of that time preparing encounters you dodged completely?

[ArcturusV]

Easiest one? I was playing a cleric and there was this rift in space sort of thing that was going to be a nexus of unlimited power channeled to some badass demon prince which would allow him to goomba stomp the material plane and use it as a stepping stone to invade the heavens, etc.

We were supposed to (I found out later) go on this long adventure where we found a reclusive Archangel who would give us an artifact that was powered by his own blood which was the MacGuffin needed to seal up the rift and save the day.

... but he spoiled it early by providing a clue that we needed "The blood of a celestial, freely given".

So as we were sitting at the rift, the cult dead, and supposed to realize "Oh ****, we need to go find a celestial!" in this race against time as the rift was on autopilot at this point... I cast Summon Monster IV, popped up a Lantern Archon, explained to it what was going on and said "Hey, can you go bleed into the rift?"

[RogueDM]

Ha, yeah, probably best not to make your McGuffin something that your party can summon off hand.

And to clarify, easiest, funniest, any challenge circumvention that you feel like makes a good story.

[navar100]

2E game.

The DM kept boasting about this dangerous forest we had to cross. He was so excited about the dangers and frustrations he was going to put us through. In and out of character we knew the forest was trouble. Finally in game we reached the edge of the forest, and he was so giddy.

My druid then casts Giant Insect. 3E calls it Giant Vermin and changed how it worked. In 2E casting the spell at my level, I was able to increase in size several bees big enough to allow the party to mount them and fly over the forest, avoiding all the dangers and frustrations the DM wanted to torture us. He was p***ed off!

Recent Pathfinder game.

The party came across a high cliff. We needed to get to the top, but we didn't want to use up too many resources. Climbing wasn't an option. A couple of us had celestial armor allowing us to fly and others had potions of flying. However, we were concerned we'd need them for the BBEG fight to come. I offered to cast Summon Monster, I'm an oracle, and have an Air Elemental bring us up. That was agreed.

However, I wanted to look up top first. I did not want us to go up there not knowing what to expect. However, we didn't have any scying options. I decided to send the Air Elemental up first, look around, then report back. That action saved the party. When the Air Elemental flew up along the cliff face it was attacked by several incorporeal undead coming from the cliff draining its strength. Now knowing we were about to face undead, I took out my handy wand of Death Ward and protected everyone, including other Air Elementals the wizard summoned to bring us up since mine was out of commission. Up we went unharmed by the incorporeal undead. Up top we entered chamber and were attacked by several undead. Since we were all protected by Death Ward their Dex draining was useless. The combat was a cakewalk. The DM was happy about our fortunate circumstance.

[SoraWolf7]

I have two tales.

So in a Tomb of Horrors One-Shot, it was my first time EVER playing D&D, and I chose to be the pre-made cleric. The only thing I did was cast Find the Path, which conveniently sent us into a room near the beginning we just left due to traps. So then through a mix of Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering, StoneShape, and Bear's Strength of a Dwarf, we drilled through the rock wall skipping half of the entire tomb. We also only lost half the party due to sure-kill stuff that I couldn't take care of.

The other was in a FullMetal Alchemist campaign where I played a Xingese rogue/Alkahestrist (another healing role with lightning flavor this time). When we came upon hunting down our homunculus BBEG, I used my ability to Sense Ki to track down the mass of souls that makes up an FMA Homunculus, and skipped all the warehouses packed with mooks. We still got EXP for them.

[Chronos]

Funny how many of these involve druids.

A friend of mine told me of one when he was DMing. He was mostly using a pre-made module, but the dungeon had a back door that he decided he didn't want the party using. So he stuck a vampire tree there. The tree itself is immobile, but its leaves can fly off to some distance, attach to creatures, suck some blood, and then fly back to the tree. And he modified the tree such that the range of its leaves was longer than any of the party's weapons or spells. So, it wasn't any real threat to them (they could always just stay away), but they couldn't get past it, right?

Wrong. The party's druid cast Protection from fire on himself, doused himself in oil, lit himself, and went and hugged the tree.

[Stille_Nacht]

we were in a beholder cave, and the wizard figured out that just casting mud on the "gigantic stalactites" that hunk from the ceiling would kill basically anything in our path

[Endarire]

I made a tower filled with illusionary walls. I gave the party 10 minutes to find something. Someone cast detect magic and got through it in 15 rounds.

[unseenmage]

Use Rope is the best skill evar.

Party of mine once circumvented an entire Goblin army by piton-and-rope-kit-ing their way across the ceilings of Underdark caverns to collect the McGuffin and bring it back to town.

As a player I once climbed onto the roof of a castle circumventing every encounter therin and skipping straight to the boss fight. In my defense I was playing an undead burglar so I had a RP reason to not go in the front door and a eternity to figure a way around the layers of Wind Wall that were supposed to stop me.

[Story]

... but he spoiled it early by providing a clue that we needed "The blood of a celestial, freely given".

So as we were sitting at the rift, the cult dead, and supposed to realize "Oh ****, we need to go find a celestial!" in this race against time as the rift was on autopilot at this point... I cast Summon Monster IV, popped up a Lantern Archon, explained to it what was going on and said "Hey, can you go bleed into the rift?"

We tried to do something similar except with "blood of a demon" but the DM told us that it conveniently required a more powerful demon then anything we could summon or pay someone to summon.

[Ravens_cry]

We tried to do something similar except with "blood of a demon" but the DM told us that it conveniently required a more powerful demon then anything we could summon or pay someone to summon.
Smacks of ex post facto improvisation, no?:smallyuk:

[ArcturusV]

Yeah, but would have been the smart thing to do. Especially since he had a plot in my example involving an Archangel could have just claimed that it had to be a Celestial of a certain level of power. Similarly could have demanded that he got the blood from a Demon Lord or the like. An adventure into the Abyss to go bleed out Lolth or something could have been fun.

[Zubrowka74]

In some Star Wars game, I played a ninja-droïd. The other player was a jedi I think, combat oriented. We decide not to follow the DM's lead and found ourselves a nice imperial spacecraft, perhaps medium sized I can't recall. Anyhow, there was a crew of a hundred something. We just sneaked on the bridge and killed all who were there. Went back down to the cargo bay, trapping the elevators with explosive. After a smal skirmish the brunt of the militaries were drawn to our location. We just hid and plopped grenades in the crowded bay. An imperial spaceship for us! Hoorray!

I guess the DM was inexperienced. Good times.

[Sith_Happens]

So as we were sitting at the rift, the cult dead, and supposed to realize "Oh ****, we need to go find a celestial!" in this race against time as the rift was on autopilot at this point... I cast Summon Monster IV, popped up a Lantern Archon, explained to it what was going on and said "Hey, can you go bleed into the rift?"

Oh, this one's easy: "Because the Lantern Archon is summoned and therefore under your absolute command, the blood is not freely given and does not work."

Planar Ally would probably still work, though, and Halaster's Fetch IV (City of Splendors: Waterdeep) definitely would.

[kreenlover]

So, this was a game being run by my friend at school during lunchs.
It was her first time DMing.
She was going to run a pre-made game where we had to go, stop a riot, find the clues, break the hero out of jail, go into the forest, save the others; etc. etc.

The party consisted of a bunch of first timers, the drow sorcerer, and me, the succubus racial class from Savage Species. We were first level and I had a 24 charisma.

The drow and I decided to start a riot for fun, inciting it a minute before the DM could. During the chaos we organized a prison break, with myself seducing the guards and the drow using prestidigitation to make the dogs think the soldiers smelled and tasted like BBQ steak.

After that we broke into the castle (now with my character as a vampire warlock; still first level) and melted the doors of the treasury. We stole everything and took stuffed some of the staff members into the bags of holding.

We then found the slavers in the forest and freed the were-wolf king from his slavery.

In a week.

It was supposed to last us two months.

After that she let us level up to ninth and become pirates. The game ended soon after :smallamused: