Clever fighting - Tell me your best/worst moves and decisions.

[badgerman]

It is one thing to create powerful characters by choosing the right classes, feats and spells, but its another one to use this tools in an effective way.

For example: Having the improved sunder feat is nice but quite worthless if you use the wrong weapon and decide to break the wrong things :) A greatsword would be a solid choice and a spellpouch or quiver a clever target.

Whats your favorite way of fighting ?
How do you lure the npcs or pcs into traps ?
or
What was the worst decision you ever made or you could kill a party member for?
"You seriously want to cast that fireball ?" "Sure, why not" "Ooookay...." :)

[Feint's End]

Using the Timehop power to hop things which support structures of any form. Never gets old. (also makes "open locks" kind of pointless).

[Psyren]

As a Ninja, one of my favorite tactics is to stand inside smoke or fog that I can see through and pepper a target with shurikens or arrows. You get all the fun of rolling a bucket of d6, without the stress of being in melee. Greater Invisibility is great too, but tends to come online much later in the campaign.

[FocusWolf413]

Readying an action to cast grease or throw oil/marbles in the way of a charger never gets old.

[WeaselGuy]

I totally pulled a Roy on my Platinum Dragon Knight Champion of Corellon Larethian. Took a flying leap off of a tower and Vorpal'd the enemy Dragonrider's Dragon. Fortunately for me, I, as a good Flying mounted combatant, had a Ring of Feather Falling. The Dragonrider did not.

edit: Also, as far as worst decisions go, our Sorceress was dead set on casting Lightning Bolt to hit a couple of enemies. Would have been a solid choice, except her Dwarf Ranger ally was in the path of the Lightning Bolt. But that's fine for her though, because "he's short, he can just duck under the lightning bolt!"

[FocusWolf413]

I like using swift action 10' teleports or a fly speed to either dump several hundred pounds of some generic hard object from a bag of holding or drop trees/boats on people.

A high point was when one of my friends, who was playing a Pixie, activated a tree token inside of a T-Rex.

[Red Fel]

I totally pulled a Roy on my Platinum Dragon Knight Champion of Corellon Larethian. Took a flying leap off of a tower and Vorpal'd the enemy Dragonrider's Dragon. Fortunately for me, I, as a good Flying mounted combatant, had a Ring of Feather Falling. The Dragonrider did not.

I had a similar moment. My PC was attuned to a mythal, which - among other benefits - granted flight and perfect maneuverability within its radius. An enemy, not knowing this, imprisoned my PC in a Telekinetic Sphere, lifting it up into the air, with the intent of killing my PC from the fall. He dismissed the sphere; my PC remained floating in the air for a moment, and waved. Then my PC drew both swords. Then my PC dove.

Same campaign, different character, creative use of the Moonbeam spell. My PC was a lycanthrope, and admittedly a generally coarse individual. The PC in question was a Cleric of Selune, and didn't like to put up with his sass. Moonbeam is a spell that forces lycanthropes to assume animal form. The Cleric used it as an improvised Silence spell.

[Seclora]

So we were in a fortress made of basically Thiaun crystal, fighting an epic level Vasuthaunt, and were told that the souls of thousands, millions even, of unfortunates were stored in the floor for use as essentially a battery. Whole fortress was a maguffin. My Werebear saint had made the mistake of looking through one of the doors and actually seeing the howling vortex of souls earlier in the dungeon before we reached the boss fight.
Boss is on a resetting trap of Harm. He's got minions aplenty. One of our party members, an Erudite, is revealed to be possessed. Cleric and his Solar are bogged down with undead. Sorcerer is dealing with the Erudite. Rogues are wholly ineffective. So what does she do? She decides to spend two rounds power attacking the floor under the enemy to unleash the raw magical energies of the fortress into the baddies.

Worked. Don't know if it was a good idea or a bad one, but it worked.

[Lerondiel]

Best/luckiest move story:
We were 5th level and took a VERY wrong turn to stumble upon a lich studying. My paladin failed to recognise the creature and ordered the attack. Our halfing rogue tumbled in behind it first to be a flanker but before the rest of us acted the lich threw up a prismatic wall.

The DM was in the middle of scolding us for losing the rogue, particularly while it's player was absent, when the guy babysitting it said quietly "i guess i better bullrush"

The table went silent but the DM just shrugged "you dont have the feat, so its a free paralysis touch attack" He needed 5+.

3

"okay, opposed strength. The rogue is -3 in the match up and the prismatic wall is 15 feet away. Go"

The babysitter breathes on the dice and rolls it at the DM

20

The DM rolls:

2

[Segev]

How many saves did the lich fail?

[Seclora]

How many saves did the lich fail?
Yes! This!
Did you roll to see what fresh new hell he got sent to?

[Brendanicus]

Since there has been no worst tactical decision post yet:

My players, on their second-ever session of DnD, stumble into a Kobold bunker and are promptly attacked. The Kobolds are attacking with slings, and are positioned atop two fortified walls, each flanking the door to the room.

While the walls are tall enough to keep the Kobolds out of melee reach, they are not very long. The players could easily just run around the walls, climb them using the existing ladders, and easily dispatch the Kobolds.

Or so I thought.


What actually happened was that the party just stood between the walls trading shots with the Kobolds for a solid hour OOG. I frequently reminded them that the wall was making it really hard for their characters to hit the level one, sling-wielding Kobolds. As in, after nearly anybody attacked.

They eventually wizened up and went around the walls, but it was a gruelingly boring fight. At least they learned a valuable lesson in tactics.

[Story]

I remember one tactical decision so bad that I still have no idea what the player was thinking.

We found an ooze in a dungeon and decided to lure it into a trap earlier in the dungeon that we had already found and avoided. The Barbarian was the one who was supposed to lure the ooze into the trap. It started out well, but for whatever reason he decided to stop halfway and stand in the trap himself while fighting the ooze, taking damage the whole time. Surprisingly, he won anyway.

[Raimun]

Here's a few.

1) Classic situation: monster hits and damages you and because monsters are cheating bastards have monster special rules, he knocks you prone.

So... you get -4 to hit and -4 to AC. You can't Five Foot Step away. If you stand up, you get hit again. Trip is bad.

What I like to do is to attack the enemy while I'm prone and hope to kill it. Sure, it's -4 to hit but if I got some way to Swiftly boost my to hit momentarily and/or get a lucky roll, I'll hit and hopefully kill it. Then, once the monster is down for good, I stand up like a boss.

Sure, it's not a sure fire tactic but it beats... getting beaten by an Attack of Opportunity. You can still stand up after the attack if you want to.

2) Hmm... what else...?

Okay, this is bit of a build specific thing (and only applies to Pathfinder) but you do need some assets to pull of tactics. I like to sometimes take Skills that are untypical for the class I'm playing.

Stealth is the usual suspect here. Many people who make Class guides for the game, usually recommend Stealth only if you have Sneak Attack or "you want take up the scouting duty". If I'm a warrior and don't wear medium or heavy armor, chances are I will take Stealth. Did you know, successful Stealth is a serious tactical advantage to a warrior? Surprise round? Hitting Flat Footed AC? Better positioning at the start of the battle, meaning more Full Attacks? Yes, please. You can even scout, if you really want to.

3) If I'm an arcane caster, I like to keep one Lightning Bolt ready. People diss blasting and Fireball. People diss Lightning Bolt even more and usually prefer Fireball. However, Lightning Bolt has a few advantages:
- Lightning is not resisted as often as fire
- It's more precise. Friendly fire isn't usually such an issue.
- It's also a template. A long, thin template.

Sure, it's situational and I don't use it all the time but that's also kind of part of its power. People eventually forget or don't know to begin with that you have a Lightning Bolt. Eventually, you will see about 10 enemies who are standing in a straight line or row. That's when the party starts.

Plus shooting lightning is way cool.

[justiceforall]

We are playing Sunless Citadel with a 25 point buy, super-traditional party (little optimisation) although the guy playing our sorcerer/wizzie hasn't shown up yet.

We unwittingly spring the mephit whilst we are still level 1. The GM glumly announces that we are screwed (he's probably right - we have virtually no way to hurt it and it can fly out of reach and spam breath weapons endlessly until we die).

The party druid asks "how big is this mephit?" It's small? I grapple it".

The 1st level druid then manages to keep the mephit grappled and/or pinned long enough for my cleric to cast magic weapon on the fighters sword at which point he slowly and clumsily beats the mephit to death over several agonising rounds.

[General Sajaru]

I once had my party get trapped in an elevator. The rogue says, "I'm going to use my blast disk to open the door..."

[Captain Kablam]

Squaring off against a black dragon sitting in a pool as artificer. I'm invisible, and a smear on the sidewalk if I reveal myself. Have a shocking grasp wand, and electricity always flows to the lowest point of resistance, and discharging on the water wasn't an attack. Toaster in a bathtub.

[justiceforall]

Out of interest, how big was said dragon, and how close were you?

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

The first time I saw a Druid use Control Winds to tornado an army to ribbons I thought it was the cleverest thing ever. It probably was at the time, but now it's par for the course.

[oball]

We were exploring caverns carved out of the thick ice that permanently covered a lake, on the trail of some kidnappers who had absconded with the heir to a wealthy elven merchant family. We tracked them to a point where there was only one tunnel left leading down, they had been alerted to our presence, and had known magic users and archers with them. We were all level 2.

As we searched for another way down, we came across some ice mephits and befriended them instead of attacking. They were kind of pissed at there being yet more interlopers, but with the promise that we would remove the first set and then leave ourselves, and a few good diplomacy rolls, they opened a hole in the ice that led to the next level. We abseiled down and took stock. As the rogue, I was on point. One thing I discovered (which our DM later admitted she had only put in because she was a stickler for believable living spaces in dungeons) was a small room with a hole bored in the ice. A search check revealed frozen yellow splashes around the hole.

So I hid in the corner of the room, and when an enemy ranger wandered in, I waited until he was mid-stream and then bullrushed him into the toilet, where he drowned.

We got three of them that way.

[Captain Kablam]

Out of interest, how big was said dragon, and how close were you?

Huge, and I was out of the water. It was an enclosed space (so part of it was dumb luck/dm design flaw that he couldn't fly off). But it was cool throwing something to make noise and get him to waste his breath weapon.

[Lerondiel]

Yes! This!
Did you roll to see what fresh new hell he got sent to?

As an 18th level Wizard he had no problems with the Will saves, was immune to just about everything but the acid and fire damage so he actually made it through.

The previous round the rest of the party had readied actions to slash/shoot, assuming the rogue was dying quickly to a Fort save and then the caster would buff & dimension door among us (we should have been long gone but a certain dumb paladin pleaded 'no man left behind') .....so when it popped through we argued the sudden appearance as no different to the stipulated conditions and enough attacks connected to pull it down.

We did the math afterward...halfling's 20% chance of avoiding paralysis x 0.5% chance of winning opposed bullrush check by 15+ = 1/1000 shot.

We almost felt sorry for the DM looking for ways to scale the CR down....there's nothing in the DMG for pulling off desperate miracle manuevres.

But then we had to tell the player what his character had done while he had the night off....priceless!

[justiceforall]

Huge, and I was out of the water. It was an enclosed space (so part of it was dumb luck/dm design flaw that he couldn't fly off). But it was cool throwing something to make noise and get him to waste his breath weapon.

Was asking because Dragons have blindsense and can have high enough spot skills to see invisible characters. But if your GM built the Dragon into an enclosed room that it couldn't leave, I guess that explains what I was asking after anyway! :)



Got another one - this one inexplicably enraged our GM into TPKing us in the next encounter.

Different GM from my previous story running us the Forge of Fury in what was probably our 10th session of 3.0 overall. We are going down the stairs and my dwarven rogue gets jumped by four stirges, loses initiative somehow, and has all four of them successfully attach to my poor dwarf. GM starts gloating about how I am dead (yes, its that kind of game!). I ask the party wizard to cast burning hands. Party wizard objects to burning my character just to get the stirges, but I insist.

He casts burning hands, I successfully pass my save - evasion says no damage for me. All the stirges burn to a crisp and fall off. Man was the GM pissed off.

[Raimun]

We are playing Sunless Citadel with a 25 point buy, super-traditional party (little optimisation) although the guy playing our sorcerer/wizzie hasn't shown up yet.

We unwittingly spring the mephit whilst we are still level 1. The GM glumly announces that we are screwed (he's probably right - we have virtually no way to hurt it and it can fly out of reach and spam breath weapons endlessly until we die).

The party druid asks "how big is this mephit?" It's small? I grapple it".

The 1st level druid then manages to keep the mephit grappled and/or pinned long enough for my cleric to cast magic weapon on the fighters sword at which point he slowly and clumsily beats the mephit to death over several agonising rounds.

Hehheh... oh yeah. The usual "Plan C".

Whenever there's something no one in the party is equiped to deal with, I usually end up personally grappling or suggesting to the best grappler (some warrior etc.): "Why don't you grapple it."

Funny thing is, it always works. "Plan C" has never failed when we have been forced to implement it.

Either someone else beats it slowly to death or we manage to tie it down with ropes.

Remember, people. When all else fails, try grappling!

[badgerman]

We (ranger, fighter and factotum) had to deal with some brawlers who wanted us to pay toll for using their side of the street. It was a starter campaign in the early with level 2 characters.
Our first bad decision was entering the street unprepared.
The second bad decision was to attack them with weapons (only the half-orc ranger did this) rather than just grapple with them (so did the dwarven fighter :)) or simply pay the toll while being totally outnumbered.
The third bad decision that turned into a good one was trying to bluff the brawlers ("I am a mighty wizard and you don't want to deal with me and my dwarven and half-orcish servants") "bad" because the factotum only had a single bluff-rank and a charisma score of 10.
But the really god decision was teamwork! So the dwarf and the half-orc decided to play along and use aid another. They were lucky and managed to reach the DC 10 even with their bad charisma scores.

And thanks to that +4 bonus, a +2 cunning knowledge bonus, a circumstance bonus because casting prestidigitation, a merciful dm and a lucky roll we got out of the situation.
To me it is not crucial whether the +4 bonus or the mercy of our dm made the difference. Since that simple situation I don't underestimate the importance of teamwork and the power of aid another.

[WeaselGuy]

Remember, people. When all else fails, try grappling!

Unless it's an Ooze. Don't grapple an ooze.

[bendking]

Best/funniest combat moment of my D&D career:
Was with my puny Sorcerer near the edge of a cliff in this valey sort of enviroment, and was a tad isolated from my party in the midst of combat with a direwolf next to me.
Not wanting to cast my spell from zero range and basically having -1 BAB with my lame staff at level 3, I resorted to trying to kick him off the cliff.
Got good rolls, and the wolf said bye-bye.
Hilarious moment.

[j_spencer93]

Think its in the underdark book, idr where, but there is a part about natural gas underground.
My players were fighting a cadaver golem (or something idr name) and literally, one decided that if he used fire it will blow up the room killing the golem....
They were all standing in the same room, needless to say, an explosion + cave in will kill your party.

Also had game where a player thought the best way to remove a skin kite was by smacking it with his greataxe.

[TheCrowing1432]

We went into a mine with natural gas deposits.

Unfortunately none of us made the knowledge checks to know about this.

I was a red dragonborn with a fire breath weapon.


I'll let you figure out the rest.

[RolkFlameraven]

Last game, the Tiefling Magus has been grappled and bit by a Vampire, just happened to be a Nosferatu so it does WIS and CON damage with that bite. The CON was meh, the WIS was err two more of those and I'm down! So the Magus decides to drop a fireball right on top of himself.

Now he is a tiefling, and has an item that ups his fire resistance to 10 so this isn't AS crazy as it sounds, however I'm standing 15' away, in full plate mind you, and the Vampire had snuck attacked our tactician just the round before :smallconfused: So boom goes the fireball, Vampire saves, no damage, Magus saves, 5 damage. Luckily I'm a Warder so I've got a metric ton of HP but still...

Then after beating on it, it turns to run, stops after a single move and dominates the Magus. I use a counter and give him a new save and he makes it and then its my turn, charge, strike poofed Vamp! Now what? Things still their just gas. Well then the Tactician runs over and uses our brand new Bag of holding as a net :smallbiggrin: A few hours later we dump his dead body out and loot it.

[thematgreen]

Worst: In my wifes game we were investigating a series of kidnappings and stumbled across the main stronghold of the thieves guild. Instead of being civil or just walking away we decided to attack. It went very badly.

Best: Same encounter. My investigator had massive disguise bonuses and was actually in disguise as an old woman when combat started. I used my first action to sprint away out of sight, used my conjuration speciality to teleport 5 ft into a shop that was closed for the day, yanked off the costume, and strolled away. I was quickly approached by two higher ranking members of the thieves guild...and PAID to point out the direction the "old woman" was running.

A 5 ft teleport and a quick clothing change allowed me to survive unharmed while the elf barbarian and wizard almost died.

[Mr Adventurer]

In 5e, a tough encounter with a Cambion almost had the party in shreds. Only some lucky attack rolls with a rope followed by jumping off the roof - using the Cambion's weight on the railings above as an anchor - and swinging in through the window of the floor below allowed us to beat on it without reprisal long enough for us to win.

[j_spencer93]

Last game, the Tiefling Magus has been grappled and bit by a Vampire, just happened to be a Nosferatu so it does WIS and CON damage with that bite. The CON was meh, the WIS was err two more of those and I'm down! So the Magus decides to drop a fireball right on top of himself.

Now he is a tiefling, and has an item that ups his fire resistance to 10 so this isn't AS crazy as it sounds, however I'm standing 15' away, in full plate mind you, and the Vampire had snuck attacked our tactician just the round before :smallconfused: So boom goes the fireball, Vampire saves, no damage, Magus saves, 5 damage. Luckily I'm a Warder so I've got a metric ton of HP but still...

Then after beating on it, it turns to run, stops after a single move and dominates the Magus. I use a counter and give him a new save and he makes it and then its my turn, charge, strike poofed Vamp! Now what? Things still their just gas. Well then the Tactician runs over and uses our brand new Bag of holding as a net :smallbiggrin: A few hours later we dump his dead body out and loot it.

that is freaking amazing

[justiceforall]

Dizzying highs, terrifying lows:

Playing a monk in 3.0, a maximum strength bruiser monk (with corresponding brain-size).

Dizzying highs: Climbed up a stone pillar to get a key off the top. Upon grabbing the key, was set upon by a dire bat. My monk had terrible AC at the best of times, even more so when climbing, so the bat ripped him a new one in the surprise round. Monk wins initiative - can't think of anything else to do so leapt off the pillar and attempted to grapple the bat. The bat somehow misses its AoO, grapple is a success, pin the bat. Bat can't fly whilst pinned... I believe it was described that my monk pile-drivered the bat from 50 ft in the air. I then almost got books thrown at me by trying to argue "well, the pillar counts as a wall right? so I don't take any falling damage since I'm within 5ft..."

Terrifying lows: Same monk meets a very big gray ooze. Have no weapons... proceed to punch gray ooze (and by extension, almost my character as well) to death.