Most creative solution you've found to a problem

[Britsky]

Sometimes during a campaign you'll come across a problem that needs solving or an obstacle that needs passing, maybe a very powerful monster is in your way, maybe you're trapped in a dangerous city, maybe you need to convince a local lord to give you his army for no good reason.
Some people are boring and just cast a spell, or make some skill check, or do some otherwise sensible action.
Some people prefer to have a little fun and think of the most creative/crazy albeit genius way to achieve victory.

So, do any of you here have any such stories? please share.
When I get around to it I'll tell some of my own.

[Gildedragon]

Sorcerer was failing saves against a sonic effect that would iirc kill him or the like (Turn him against the party, lure him into a dangerous place). My factotum hit him with Blindness/Deafness to render him immune to the effect

[Demidos]

We were fighting a custom vampire that had water bending through a devil fruit (crazy genre mixing! Avatar + One Piece). For those who don't know, devil fruits grant magic powers in exchange for an inability to swim or act while in water. This took place in a deep underground cavern.

The vampire was drawing water from two deep pools of water, and all attempts to bull-rush the vampire in failed....So I used Summon Nature's Ally to summon two giant whales to displace the water in the pool, thus flooding the cavern.

Bye bye Vampire!

[DrBloodbathMC]

Unfortunately it didn't pan out, but we used a harpoon gun to get to the top of the tower, our barbarian had the arcanist is his back and then we used a robe of many things that had a window to get into the building. There were two monsters going after them so we had to scrap that plan unfortunately.

[Silva Stormrage]

We were fighting a custom vampire that had water bending through a devil fruit (crazy genre mixing! Avatar + One Piece). For those who don't know, devil fruits grant magic powers in exchange for an inability to swim or act while in water. This took place in a deep underground cavern.

The vampire was drawing water from two deep pools of water, and all attempts to bull-rush the vampire in failed....So I used Summon Nature's Ally to summon two giant whales to displace the water in the pool, thus flooding the cavern.

Bye bye Vampire!

That one was pretty good (DM here). Hm this one is less creative as it was thourough. The DM had placed an invulnerable auto regenerating npc in my stronghold and I wanted him gone (super mocking and generated a depression aura). After disenetegrating him and scattering the ashes to different planes I ended up giving up on the direct killing approach (he was immune to soul binding) and instead threw him into a 3.0 harm platform (set hp to 1d4) and cast a long duration spell that dealt damage when someone entered the area (forgot the exact spell) anyway the dm ruled that since he regenerates where his corpse was he just got stuck dying and rezzing every like .5 seconds. Felt good getting rid of that guy

[Draconium]

There was one time when I was playing in a low-level campaign (we were level 2 or 3 at the time) as a Warforged Artificer. We ended up running afoul of a lycanthrope, and none of us had any silver weapons. So, I did the next best thing - grabbed a handful of silver coins and smashed them into the knuckles of the hand I used for slam attacks. Didn't get to keep my silver slam for very long, but it didn't matter - the lycan died a few rounds later, due to no longer being able to soak up damage from me.

[Brion]

We had to get to the bottom of a very, very long natural cavern that had no convenient way down and the only one with flight in the party was the sorcerer (overland flight). Solution? Enlarge Person + Ant Haul + Slow Fall + everyone climb on my back. We did find a Cloak of the Bat, so the return voyage was much the same: Enlarge Person + Ant Haul + fly one person back up at a time.

[Arael666]

There was one time when I was playing in a low-level campaign (we were level 2 or 3 at the time) as a Warforged Artificer. We ended up running afoul of a lycanthrope, and none of us had any silver weapons. So, I did the next best thing - grabbed a handful of silver coins and smashed them into the knuckles of the hand I used for slam attacks. Didn't get to keep my silver slam for very long, but it didn't matter - the lycan died a few rounds later, due to no longer being able to soak up damage from me.

Did you previously had that slam or the DM ruled that you aquired one simply by holding a few coins?

[LordOfCain]

Did you previously had that slam or the DM ruled that you aquired one simply by holding a few coins?

Looks like he acquired it.

[Theobod]

Warforged have a slam, given the circumstances declaring implanting coins into an appendage seems a sensible useage of the Improvised Weapon rules, complete with -4 attack and breaking the modification on a nat1. If these rules were not abided by however, possibly due to DM fatigue or lack of foresight, that explains why it wasn't allowed after the fact.

[Arael666]

Warforged have a slam, given the circumstances declaring implanting coins into an appendage seems a sensible useage of the Improvised Weapon rules, complete with -4 attack and breaking the modification on a nat1. If these rules were not abided by however, possibly due to DM fatigue or lack of foresight, that explains why it wasn't allowed after the fact.

I get that, and also think it's clever and would rule away the -4 just to reward the good and cool idea. But I would never just grant a slam attack to a player just because he is holding a few silver coins.

Also, I totally missed the fact that warforged have a slam attack.

[Draconium]

Warforged have a slam, given the circumstances declaring implanting coins into an appendage seems a sensible useage of the Improvised Weapon rules, complete with -4 attack and breaking the modification on a nat1. If these rules were not abided by however, possibly due to DM fatigue or lack of foresight, that explains why it wasn't allowed after the fact.

Yep, it was essentially an Improvised Weapon. The reason I couldn't use it again, though, was because the coins ended up smashed to a pulp afterwards.

[Theobod]

Well, that's easy to remedy, go break a plat ;)

[mastermisha1]

A few years ago we were playing a high level game and ran across a team at wanna be followed by some Yuan-Ti abomination of some sort with a massive amount of loot. We were talking about more loot than we could carry. The dragon died quickly and we set up figuring out how to maximize our loot. Eventually it was determined that the best ratio of GP to weight involved using the adamntium doors of the chamber as sleds upon which we hauled all our loot. Exiting the dungeon we were blocked by the aforementioned abomination. Well, being fairly optimized PCso, we murdered it quick. The problem was we could not overcome it's regeneration (something like 30 overcome by good and admsntium) because we just didn't have the adamntium (plot reasons). The DM had hopped to make us have to either abandon the loot or face harsh challenges for attempting to haul away so much treasure. While the rest of the party were arguing about how to deal with the choice, I approached our barbarian and asked her to kindly lift the door for a few moments. The look on the DM's face when I said that I cast align weapon on the now improvised door club was pricelss.

Long story short, even at high levels low levels spells are not to be underestimated.

[GreyBlack]

A number of years ago I had the pleasure of running in a game with a rather large group. Most of the group was HIGHLY Lawful and Good aligned, and I loved nothing more than to spread some chaos.

Enter Barak Velas; a man who was forced to kill his father, flee the cult that forced him to do this evil act, and swear vengeance on the same cult. (He was not as noble as he sounds.) But he did have some special talent -- Barak was a Duskblade and had the ability to channel spells through his weapon. He also fought with not one, but two high-crit rate weapons, allowing him to channel his spells twice as often.

Our zeppelin had been attacked by a group of intelligent undead who’d been hunting us for months. Try as we might, we couldn't prevent them from successfully boarding our zeppelin. One of the undead grabbed hold of one of the PCs.

ME: "I charge the undead, and I'm going to use my Arcane Channeling to channel Dimension Hop." (Dimension Hop is a spell that can teleport any object 25+CL feet in any direction, and it had become my spell of choice through the game.)

DM: "Okay, roll to see if you hit"

I did not roll a 20, but I did roll well enough to critically hit. The DM was forced to make a Will save or be teleported in any direction I chose.

My opponent did not make the save.

DM: :Okay, so where are you teleporting him to?”

ME: *pointing on the map* “Right here.”

Now, mind, we were cruising at around 3000 feet above sea level.

The DM asked the fateful question: "Did you just throw this guy off a zeppelin?!"

All my undead foe could yell was, "Oh, dammit!" as he fell to the earth below. He made a rather nice crater.

This was literally my story. That, and the time that we ascended a tower to kill a goddess and I wound up seducing her to our side with that character. Good times....

[SethoMarkus]

Our party was captured while sleeping and locked in the brig of the flagship of the BBEG's naval armada. I attempted to use Orb of Acid, Lesser to stealthily corrode the iron bars. Our Druid was not so subtle- she used Wood Shape to warp the hull* of the ship enough for us to climb throughand escape with the help of summoned aquatic creatures. Needless to say, the ship did not survive the rest of the journey with a 10ft hole in its side... Mostly because I decided stealth was lost at that point so I Fireballed the cargo hold full of Dwarven whiskey...

*We were aware this is not strictly legal, but the DM was a fan of cinematic drama and allowed the Druid to shape the wood that would normally fit within the parameters of thr spell, even if it was part of a larger piece of wood.

[Zancloufer]

As I usually DM I don't get many chances to actually play, but my players sometimes come up with some, interesting, ideas. Though they usually do NOT work out.


Party was fighting something that was giving them trouble. So they decide to just destroy the floor the enemy is standing on instead to get him out of the way.

"I cast Make Hole".

*Smack*

"Okay, so now the floor is fixed."

"No, I cast MAKE HOLE".

"It's Make Whole. With a W. It fixes things."

"Oh ****."


Different story: Wizard came up with a high level spell that let the person it was cast on essentially become a one person army (Insane buffs to AC/Hit and maximizes damage). Unfortunately the spell lasts something like 3-9 rounds (rolled behind the screen) and makes them exhausted after the fact.

So they where fighting a crazy (undead) monk and they throw him in a force cage. Then (for some reason) use the UBER BUFF on him so he becomes super tired in like 30 seconds. Then the Monk teleports out. Because high level monks can use Dimension Door occasionally. Also the spell doubles movement speed. And I buffed monks a bit so they could do things like move and flurry. Cleric survived and was pissed about the diamond store she had to buy out. . .

Best part? Wizard countered with the "At least I put them in a Force Cage FIRST this time".

[Atypical_Necro]

As part of his eeeeevil plot the BBEG's lieutenants were trying to collect these four magical tribal stones so he could cut the continent off from the rest of the world. They managed to get three of the stones while our party got hold of the last one. We had inferred (correctly) that he needed all 4 to enact his plan but as 7th level characters we didn't have the strength to oppose him directly. He was a high-level cleric with power enough to destroy us and enough divination to find any hiding place we had access to.
Then we remembered, in character, that at least detection divination had some weaknesses and it would be harder to divine the stone's location if we didn't know where it was...
My crusader of Tymora was a skilled painter with some Marvellous Pigments. He painted a thick lead jewelry box with wood paneling. The druid used an extended SNA to summon an earth elemental.
Her command? "Take this box and go down into the earth as swiftly as possible while also moving laterally in a random direction. Do this until until the count of (2 seconds before summoning ends) then let go of the box before you return to your plane."
The lieutenAnts were a little miffed when we told them we honestly had no clue where the stone was and we were pretty sure they wouldn't be able to find it.
The DM probably could have thought of a clever way for the BBEG to find it but he was so impressed by our idea that he gave e us the victory on that one.

[Britsky]

During my first ever D&D campaign I played as a Half Orc Rogue who believed he was an Elf.
After a series of events our party ended up in a city that had descended into chaos, through absolutely no fault of our own.... with a somewhat defaced king in our captivity. But now we had to escape the dangerous, locked down city.
We had been granted refuge in the local wizard's tower and were thinking of ways to get out.
I came up with the idea of flying out, on an air ship, that we would build. Problem was we didn't have the materials, i figured we could find wood for the hull and for the balloon, my character(who had now been well established as Evil) decided the best option would be to collect a mass of cloth and sew it together.
For this i'd need help, the ranger(not evil, but gullible) went out in search for one of the two gangs that had practically taken control of what was left of the city. So we began wandering around making ourselves look like easy targets until we were set up on by a group of criminals then running and leading them into a trap that blew half of them away whilst the ranger shot at them from a rooftop, kept one alive, some friendly torture revieled the location of one gang. Went to see them, bluffed our way in, offered to remove the competition.
We did this by finding the main hideout of the other gang, blocking all the windows and doors and filling the place with a poisonous gas, thanks to our wizard/artificer.
in return for this the gang offered to help us, they would collect some of the materials, wood, rope etc, but still there was the balloon, I figured the best place to find the materials i'd need would be on the backs of the citizens of the city, so i had the gang spread word that there would be an execution held for the king( who the people believed was responsible for the chaos)
I had our wizard make a load of poison bombs, then conceal them in small firewood logs(He didn't ask too many questions) and craft some kind of gas mask.
I arranged the execution to take place in this large stadium like thing, and had small fires placed throughout the area, you know to keep everyone warm.
Crowds began to gather, large crowds, hundreds of people, including the hundred or so gang members acting as security.
The leader of the gang and I stood on a stage, our ranger just below us, the king was knelt down over a chopping block, I gave some speech about this being the man who destroyed this city and led them to ruin, then using a greataxe lopped off his head. As the crowd cheered the wood surrounding the poison bombs had burned away just enough for the bombs to go off, thick noxious gas swept through the crowd, civilians and gang members alike coughing and spurting, our ranger passed out. I put on the gas mask before the gas reached the stage, the leader of the gang obviously figured out what i'd done, but before he could do anything i used my flintlock pistol to put a bullet in his head.
I jumped down and put another mask on the ranger so he wouldn't die, then just waited. Hundreds of people dead.
When the ranger woke i claimed we'd been attacked, some kind of retaliation for our earlier actions, but whilst we were here we may as well make use of all this material(I figured skinning them and making leather may have been a step too far)
So with all our necessary materials we built an air ship(somehow) and flew out of the city. It soon crashed.


EDIT: Apologies for my poor writing skills, and i am aware that that's probably not how airships work :P

[Âmesang]

Unfortunately my last group tended to be pure kick-in-the-door types so a lot of the more "unusual" ideas were often shot down:

1: We had to take on some badguys who had taken over an inn outside of town, so I suggested chucking in some smoke bombs through any broken windows and other openings before shouting "FIRE!" (either naturally or via ghost sound or a similar spell), with the idea of flushing them out and allowing us to pick them off…

…instead the frail rogue snuck in from the other side and was almost overrun by the enemy leader as he charged through in anger, while the party's bruisers charged through the front, soaking up many a crossbow bolt.

2: This one's a fair bit sillier, as later on the party was fighting a fairly young but still deadly dragon and with little-to-no-access to flying magic I suggested the druid's bear companion toss our barbarian up into the air; said barbarian was caught by the dragon (I think by misunderstanding attacks of opportunity with regards to moving into/through an enemy space), but I figured it was worth a shot.

[Soranar]

I made a trapkiller barbarian once who managed to find a particularly tough trap (DC 30 to disable)

Even with high strength and BAB I only have +10 to hit so I turned to our mailman sorcerer

-cast true strike on me


My dungeon crasher also got rather creative against a flying warlock by bull rushing it against the ceiling with an incredibly high jump check

[Elkad]

The first horse-bomb was probably creative. I'm sure I just annoyed the DM by the third one.

Wizard and/or Imp familiar using Benign Transposition to drop a horse (summoned with Mount usually, but some were horses someone else in the party had paid for) on badguys, in wells, and several other things.
The first time my Imp was in danger of dying to a faster flyer, and she needed a way out. Swapping with any of the players wouldn't have improved things much. But the horses were right there, close-but-out-of-danger.

And yes, I know about the "surface capable of supporting the creature" line now, but we didn't then.

[Soranar]

The first horse-bomb was probably creative. I'm sure I just annoyed the DM by the third one.

Wizard and/or Imp familiar using Benign Transposition to drop a horse (summoned with Mount usually, but some were horses someone else in the party had paid for) on badguys, in wells, and several other things.
The first time my Imp was in danger of dying to a faster flyer, and she needed a way out. Swapping with any of the players wouldn't have improved things much. But the horses were right there, close-but-out-of-danger.

And yes, I know about the "surface capable of supporting the creature" line now, but we didn't then.

I've never seen a horse bomb but I have seen a levitating bard using the summon instrument cantrip to drop Tubas on unsuspecting enemies, sure it wasn't particularly precise (improved weapon rule) but it got the job done

[Segev]

Not D&D, but in an Exalted game, I was playing a particularly arrogant Twilight who had a Hand of the Great Maker powered by a Protoshinmaic Vortex.

For those who don't know what that does, it essentially let him use a power to create nearly anything out of thin air anywhere, when normally said power only works in places that are very like D&D's Limbo.

When we needed an alchemical substance identified, he conjured an alchemist into existence. Since he didn't need any other traits specifically, he decided she may as well also be attractive.

When we needed places to stay on a trip through a desert, he created small cities (complete with populations) with functioning inns wherever they happened to want to "make camp."

Maybe not "creative," but certainly ridiculous overkill.

[CharonsHelper]

I can come up with solution to any RPG problem that has nothing to do with character abilities.

*slip the GM a $20 bill*

[Segev]

Another one, this time Mekton Zeta (sorry, I don't have any "creative solution" stories for D&D that I can think of right now!):

I deliberately built my mech to be huge and to use a harpoon to grab smaller robots, pull them in, and dismember them with his massive arm-strength. He was also ludicrously slow.

We wound up in an encounter with an alien...ship, we think...that was buried beneath the ground and erupting enormous mechanical tentacles that are smashing and grappling at our giant robots. We really can't hurt them fast enough to make a dent in their numbers, and so the party is trying to flee.

Unfortunately, my robot is too big to carry, and too slow to make it out of the area. And my primary schtick won't work for a few reasons, not the least being that the tentacles are bigger than my mech, so it would be pulled to them rather than pulling them to it. ...of course, my range was also significantly greater than the distance I could move in a round.

Thus, my giant robot Spider-Man'd his way through a field of tentacles, using both actions to attack rather than move and thus drawing himself to one at the far extent of his reach each time!


The GM told me never to do that again, as he didn't want me exploiting that for faster movement...but that he'd let me do it that time because he hadn't intended it to be a fatal encounter.

[Malimar]

There was a big hole in a dam. I plugged it with a cottage (secure shelter) until we could get masons to repair it for real.

There was a powerful bad guy who was insane. I used heal on him to make him sane, and recruited him to our side.

[manyslayer]

I had a sorcerer that wound up in charge of a group of militia during an insurrection by an evil cult. We were holding a street when a force of bad guys charged at us. I cast force ladder (make a transparent immobile ladder of force) across the mouth of the street just at the end of the militia's longspear reach. The bad guys ran into my waist high poor-man's wall of force and got stabbed repeatedly.

[BWR]

In a game where we had started as prisoners and escaped, we had just hit 3rd level, stuck in the snowy mountains with raw meat, no firewood and a knife and two breastplates we had looted from some fallen enemies.
So we cut the meat in thin strips, cast Heat Metal on the breastplates and quickly seared the meat.

In 2e we used two Burning Hands to set off an avalanche that buried the group of ogres that would otherwise have killed us.

Last session in PF the group, despite being 6th level, had no area effects to take out the mosquito swarm that was attacking them. One quick-witted player used a smokestick to create a makeshift cloud of repellent. Though no rules said anything of the sort would work, I thought it sounded clever and let it pass. The mosquitoes went after their panicked mule, whose anguished bleats quickly faded with distance and blood loss. Sated, the mosquitoes did not bother the PCs again.

[Faily]

I have once used a Wall of Ice to temporarily cover a hole in a ship after it was attacked by a Kraken.

One time we were stuck in a deep pit that was magically aging us every round. So I used a Feather Token (Tree) to catapult us out of it.

Broke down a door to gain entry into an enemy tower, then used Robe of Useful Items to throw up a new and better door behind us to stop the enemy from following us inside.

As a Fighter in Full Plate with a Tower Shield, I was unable to pass my Balance checks to cross over a walkway that was covered in slick ice. So I sat down on my Tower Shield and surfed over it with a friendly push from a party member (and another one pulling the other end of the rope).