You can blind orcs with Porridge!

[banjo1985]

Yeah, I played DnD for the first time in ages last night, a one-shot dungeon run while some of our usual players were away. We rolled randomly for some pre-genned characters, and I came up with a Lvl 1 Monk with a sling and his bare hands....joy.

Anyhow, we ended up clearing out a fort full of orcs and goblins that were threatening the town. We came across a kitchen with some goblin slaves in there, and managed to befriend them. We got them to make a lot of porridge, which they usually sent up to a locked door that the orcs would come out of to collect. Instead we went up with it, and when the door opened we jumped them.

For my first round, I decided to shove some piping hot porridge into my sling and fire it at the nearest orc. Amazingly, a confirmed success left the orc blind, ready for an easy kill! Amazed, I tried again in the next combat, and again I criticalled, this time blinding a goblin cleric while he was casting! Unfortunately the next shot was a natural 1, leaving me with a broken sling, and the end of my porridge flinging exploits. Floyd the Phanton Porridge Flinger will live long in the memory!

I was wondering, has anyone else tried something ridiculous, only to find it working better than you ever could have hoped? Would be good to hear some more stories!

[RTGoodman]

I was running a (rather unlucky) half-orc monk in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and at some point pretty early we had an encounter with (I think) a Medium-sized Blue Dragon. Well, it's only tactic was to use Fly-By Attack repeatedly, and then fly down to use it's breath weapon when more than two or three of us could be hit by it.

Needless to say, I was basically useless. Sure, I had a sling, but it's a freakin' dragon. In fact, the only people able to really hit it and do damage were the Warlock and the Rogue (with her Small-sized light crossbow). So, being obsessed with rope, Krell (my character) decided that was the best course of action - he pulled out his 100 feet of rope and affixed his grappling hook and proceeded to ready an action to lasso the dragon when it came close enough.

And it worked. I had to make a touch attack to see if the rope hit the dragon. Check. Had to make a Use Rope check to see if it hooked him or wrapped around or something. Check. Had to make a Strength check to see if I could hold him. Check.

So for the next several rounds, I was basically dragon-fishing, making opposed Strength checks to pull him in. The Paladin decided that was a good idea, so he joined in on the pulling also. Eventually, once the dragon was close enough, I decided to let go and grapple it. Of course, I didn't manage to hold it for more than a round (stupid high-strength/BAB dragons...), and the Paladin was summarily carried high into the air as he continued to hold onto the rope...

[Lost Outrider]

We were playing a mostly homebrew campaign and the DM had us all start out as peasants from the same village. The four of us were hitching a ride on a trader's wagon when bandits attacked. Of course we were unarmored, mostly unskilled, and outnumbered. I think the intent was to have us taken as prisoners to advance the plot - but my knucklehead character (good str, low wis) grabbed a cast iron skillet from the trader's goods and started wailing on the bandits. This encouraged the rest of the guys to find improvised weapons from around the wagon and we ended up turning a kidnapping into our first victorious combat.

Later on, all it took was a few low damage rolls and a couple of unlucky attacks with a bandit's sword for me to abandon the captured bandit weaponry for my old trusty skillet. I even tried to get it enchanted at one point. . . but the DM drew a line at that.

[Guy_Whozevl]

I have a kinda similar story, although the event in question was for a player I was DMing for. The party is around level 10 and are persuing a serial killer-turned vampire named Barry the Butcher. They finally corner him in a huge underground chamber and proceed to attack. The battle goes poorly with the main damage dealer (a crusader) taking 6 negative levels (his race had LA, so he was only level nine) and everyone else failing to hit, or hitting and doing no damage due to vampire DR. Through sheer luck, our party monk (a dragonborn) wore the vampire down to four HP with his breath weapon. Then, it was the crusader's turn (the vampire's turn was after his, so it was all or nothing). He had some silver stakes he stole a while back to finish off helpless vampires, but they were not meant for combat (being improvised weapons). He declares he will attack the vampire with the silver stake, but would do so by throwing it from 30 ft away. With negative levels and throwing an improvised weapon from 3 range increments away, he had about a -1 modifying the d20 for his attack role vs. the vampire's AC of around 26. Bam! He rolls a natural 20. I rule that the attack does damage equal to a dagger. He his d4 and gets 4. Vampire dies, everyone's happy.:smallbiggrin:

In retrospect, it sounds less exciting that the porridge story due to that being at a lower level, but it was pretty cool at the time for our party, as Barry the Butcher was a major antagonist.

[Beleriphon]

Dwarven ale + straw matresses + stuck at the top of a tower surrounded by kobolds = flaming fun. Thats right we, soaked straw matresses in highly flammable booze, lit them and tossed them at the waiting kobolds. That was fun.

[EvilElitest]

I have a kinda similar story, although the event in question was for a player I was DMing for. The party is around level 10 and are persuing a serial killer-turned vampire named Barry the Butcher. They finally corner him in a huge underground chamber and proceed to attack. The battle goes poorly with the main damage dealer (a crusader) taking 6 negative levels (his race had LA, so he was only level nine) and everyone else failing to hit, or hitting and doing no damage due to vampire DR. Through sheer luck, our party monk (a dragonborn) wore the vampire down to four HP with his breath weapon. Then, it was the crusader's turn (the vampire's turn was after his, so it was all or nothing). He had some silver stakes he stole a while back to finish off helpless vampires, but they were not meant for combat (being improvised weapons). He declares he will attack the vampire with the silver stake, but would do so by throwing it from 30 ft away. With negative levels and throwing an improvised weapon from 3 range increments away, he had about a -1 modifying the d20 for his attack role vs. the vampire's AC of around 26. Bam! He rolls a natural 20. I rule that the attack does damage equal to a dagger. He his d4 and gets 4. Vampire dies, everyone's happy.:smallbiggrin:

In retrospect, it sounds less exciting that the porridge story due to that being at a lower level, but it was pretty cool at the time for our party, as Barry the Butcher was a major antagonist.

Barry the Butcher, isn't he from Full Metal Alchemist, one of my favorite characters? You DM has good taste
from,
EE

[BRC]

My group was fighting a pair of sheild guardians, I use stone Shape to create a pit under them that they fall in, then we find a big rock and rolled it so it fell on them.

[....]

Back in AD&D me and my cousin were playing as a ranger with 18/00 STR and a fighter with 18/00 STR.

We were investigating some cave in a watery area and got into a fight with several orcs. During the corse of the fight my ranger lost his bow and was fighting with a bastard sword. Eventually we hacked through the orcs and came to realize they were fighting a horde of gripleys (bonus points if you remember gripleys).

Low on HP and outnumbered, we ran from them, but they were outside the cave too. We ran over to some date trees and climbed up them. The gripleys had slings and were throwing rocks, but not really hurting us. We had no ranged weapons and didn't want to risk going down to melee... so my cousin the fighter grabs a date and hurls it at one of the gripleys. He rolled a natural 20 and the DM let him roll 1d4 for damage. He rolled and 4 and with his strength bonus x2 he killed the gripley in one hit.

We proceeded to hurl dates at the gripleys (who were already pretty freaked out by one of their number having his skull caved in by fruit) untill they left.

[Weirdlet]

A while back, my half-orc rogue was waiting, as were others in the party, at strategic points in a casino while the more diplomatic sorts were retrieving a guy we needed to kidnap. There was a dwarven comedian onstage where my gal was at, and the DM mentioned he was doing a whole line of half-orc jokes.

Well- we got the word that our mission was accomplished and the lot of us needed to make tracks, and the dwarf had just paused to let the audience show their appreciation by chucking coins at him (He held up a small buckler on his arm for just such purposes). Seeing as the rest were leaving and that if there was going to be trouble it was going to be something bigger than just being asked to leave, I indulged the whim that came upon me- my halforc plucked out a silver coin, took off the bandana she wore in her hair, and rolled a natural twenty to sling it into the dwarf's head.

There was a concussion and a muttered "Everyone's a critic..." involved. She was most satisfied with the outcome.

[PlatinumJester]

Dropping a match onto a trickle of clear liquid coming out of some rubble that my friends were trapped in, to see if it was water or oil. It turned out to be oil :smallamused:.

[Chronos]

We were going up against some bandits, and the party's rogue (a severely ADD kender) offered to start the battle by sneaking up on them. Well, it turned out that his notion of "sneaking up" involved skipping gaily down the center of the main road straight towards them, while wearing brightly colored clothes and whistling loudly off-key. While it didn't work very well as a sneak, it did make for a decent diversion, letting the rest of us get off our attacks while the bandits focused on the kender. Amazingly, even with all of the bandits attacking the kender every round, he didn't get a scratch on him.

[Guy_Whozevl]

Barry the Butcher, isn't he from Full Metal Alchemist, one of my favorite characters? You DM has good taste
from,
EE

Yeah, the name is a combination of Barry the Chopper from FMA and that one guy from Gangs of New York. Good eye!:smallbiggrin:

[dyslexicfaser]

At one point, we had to sneak an NPC out of a city under lockdown. One of us had Profession: Tailor, so we were all set to enact a diabolically cunning plan involving equal parts stealth, moxie, and cross-dressing.

...

Then the gnome illusionist PC reminded us what we paid him for and cast a spell: problem solved.

[Ditto]

The first D&D game I played, back before I knew what D&D was. Must have been, like, 3rd grade. I played a solo module, 2e I suppose - it had a neat soundtrack that you would "Play track 2 when you enter the crypt!" gimmick. The voices were a Fighter and a Rogue, and the plot involved me going into some old mansion to find an undead BBEG; my DM strongly encouraged me to play the cleric, which I later found out was due to the turning - does anyone have any idea what I could be talking about? I'd like to find it again, since I only *seriously* played D&D some 10 years after this.

Sorry, here's the story: I walked into the dining room. There are three zombies scattered around the room. My DM asks what I'd like to do, and I counter-ask about improvised weapons and bizarre actions. I wanted to know if I could throw my mace like a boomerang to hit all three of them (I was 10, it sounded plausible). He allowed it at some penalty (...reasonable to a 10-year-old, I'm sure), and I managed to hit each of them. I rolled 6 damage on a d6, killing the zombies who happened to have 1, 2, and 3 hp. It was the best mace ever.