Things your players do that IMPRESS you as a DM.

[MasterMercury]

We've had a lot of threads recently about things that irk us about our fellow players and DM. Let's turn it around. DMs, what is it about your players that you like. Something that continues to surprise you.

My players are always ready to innovate, and are smart enough to survive my incredibly complicated and deadly traps.
They once had to get to an island in the middle of a Troglodyte infested lake in a Mushroom forest. Instead of swimming or making a raft, they decided to tie a bunch of mushroom heads to make a bridge, and no one died.
I can throw deadly encounters against my players, and they are fine. What more could I ask for.

[Calen]

In no particular order,

They don't think of fighting as the first option.
They think of off the wall creative solutions. (Bonus points if they make in game sense)
They remember details about something. (unlike the inverse, "Can he get his sword...axe...weapon [hammer] and")

[Laserlight]

When I have something difficult planned and they are smart enough to circumvent it entirely. Last session, they woke a Necron Wraith while exploring a shipwreck. They didn't know what it was, but when I showed them a picture, the cleric immediately realized "That looks like a whole lotta Nope! I cast Banish. And then I run for the closest exit."

And when they do good roleplaying. The party had just (less than a minute, game time) met a new PC, an artificer. The cleric and artificer were both squirming through low, narrow companionways (gnome-built ship) to the stern, about 12 seconds apart. Something happened which made the cleric curse, which he did in Deep Speech because it's a great language for cursing. The artificer heard it and said "Mind flayer speech! It sounds like that cleric but I only met the guy like 30 seconds ago, I have no idea what he really is. I shoot the mindflayer!" And rolled a crit. When the cleric's player stopped laughing (and passed his Concentration roll for his Banish), he cried "You shot me! You shot me in the butt! I can't believe you shot me!"

[Addaran]

They managed to weaponize an environmental encounter that was just there for story-ish reason and scare them a little (brown mold). Not half the cult dungeon is death, infested with insanely huge mold thanks to all the fire spells and enemies it ate...

When they planned the defence of a siege on farms with commoners and managed to avoid any casualty thanks to there tactics and scary novas.

I'm also very impressed at their ability to convince themselves of something enterily false based on 1-2 clues.

[The Shadowdove]

For me the best feeling as a DM is when you have a solution determined for a problem or obstacle, and the players surprise me by finding another solution that I hadn't thought of.

[guachi]

- when players remember anything about the world they are in.

- when players for something out about the adventure. "It's Princess and the Pea" "It's Invasion of the Body Snatchers" "it's Scooby-Doo"

- when I role play an NPC well enough that the PCs can figure them out without needing to roll. Like last session. A few minutes into taking to the barkeep several of them say "He's a little too eager to have us stay here". Exactly. I was able to pull off the charade exactly as long as perceptive PCs would allow.

[Kane0]

- Their ability to make mountains out of molehills

- Their ability to under or overestimate their strength

- Their ability to devise cunning plans 3x more complex than necessary

- Their ability to completely forget crucial, repeated and obvious information

- Their ability to recall tiny, off-hand and dismissed details

- Their ability to use and abuse one or two powers in such a way that they can emulate most other powers they already have

- Their ability trope while simultaneously being completely unaware of tropes

- Their ability to provide levity to any situation that they come across. Especially the ones that you want to be terrifying. Seriously, they were being dragged into the water unconscious after a fight with some Chuul and they're chanting Crab People (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykWPyaqbebo)