Crowning Moments of Awesome and Cleverness

[Lycanthromancer]

I'd like to hear some stories about times when you used your character's abilities (even just smarts) to unusual and clever effect. Especially when the ability in question wasn't meant to work that way, but it was totally within the rules.

(By the way, if the abilities in question aren't widely known, or available in the SRD, make sure to give a brief description, if you please.)

For example, I had a CE male blue goblin shaper 6/constructor 10 (a psion focused on metacreation powers with a PrC focused on astral constructs - psionic summoning, basically) named Terval that used his constructs for almost everything. And he did so in rather interesting ways.

Our party got ambushed by a (CR 23) black dragon dracolich because Terval pissed off its epic level master with an off-hand comment, and the undead beastie was commanded to capture Terval and bring him back for torture, etc. Terval may have been CE, but he was a team player (seeing the others as useful for standing between him and the inevitable victims of his temper, ire, and kleptomaniacal (and megalomaniacal) tendencies). And so he attempted to prevent his 'friends' from becoming casualties by creating a domed wall of ectoplasm to encase it (the fact that it would be delayed from grabbing him for another round was a happy side-effect, and had nothing to do with anything ).

It barreled through the wall as if there was nothing there, and ended its movement near Terval (he made his Will save to avoid being hit with dragon fear - if barely). He pre-empted it next round by placing a Huge astral construct between them, and tried to run. Didn't work. On the dragon's next action it merely jumped over (flew?) the construct, and paralyzed Terval with a touch (bad Fort save! play dead!), intending to grab him and fly away the next round. Instead, Terval mentally directed the construct to pick him up and run like hell into the surrounding forest.

Luckily, one of the other members of the party managed to blind the dracolich that round (I'm thinking a heightened glitterdust). The rest of the party swarmed it, and slowed it down on the next round, so Terval instructed the construct to hide him in the leaf-litter. He then created a whole bunch of constructs of his exact size (and the same shape, thanks to a good Craft check), and had them 'Hide' (but very badly) in the surrounding trees.

When the dragon arrived, it swooped in, and couldn't decide which of the Tervals was the real one (since it couldn't actually see), so it had to spend several rounds grabbing at the Terval-clones while more popped in every round to confuse matters. Thankfully, it had a poor Spot modifier, and hadn't seen the real one, before the rest of the Superfriends arrived. They beat it down from afar while it continued trying to snatch at the constructs, until it attempted to flee at low HP.

A couple of AoOs later, and the undead beast was just a dead beast.

So, what's your story?

[Dragonsdoom]

At one point my (Tallfellow, size medium)halfing monk helped half our party out of the way of a nasty encounter.
A raging triceratops tried to attack us while we were standing outside a city. The gates were closed so we made for the wall.
The Tibbit(mini-werecat) cast reduce person on the elven bard, shapechanged into his <tiny>cat size. I put the two of them in my backpack and ran for the wall as the druid wildshaped into a owl, leaving our halfling thrower. The halfling thrower caught up to us, grabbed onto my backpack, and I ran up the wall with my slippers of spider climbing, safely taking us out of range of trample attacks. After a couple nasty attacks from the triceratops we managed to make it safely up the wall.

Spiderclimb has saved me on several other occasions as well.
Reverse gravity traps come to mind...

[Narmoth]

Our group escaped imprisonment by a mage of appropriate CR that used an illusionary dragon and some city guards to force us to surrender, but failed
by use of my 15 ranks in intimidate coupled with fear-augmenting spells. She ran away :D

[Corathan]

Last game I played, my group had to kill a hydra.

Now to start with, this is our group.
Bard,Wizard-cleric, half orc barbarian, half elf paladin, and then me the elven ranger.

Our wizard created a smoke screen, after I shot an arrow into the hydra. Now, this resulted in a) the hydra being kinda peeved, and b) myself being in full sight.

Needless to say i was nearly killed when it attacked.

Few rounds later, our barbarian was raging, i had cast entangle to (hopefully) help us and attacks were being planned.

Our wizard whispered something to the bard, and he got an evil grin.

Our bard than told our DM basically, he was "using ghost sound to create the mating call of a female hydra".

Much laughter ensued. We can basically thank the bard for not only bluffing a dragon but also tricking the hydra with the female mating call and the challenge of another male hydra through another ghost sound.


Another best that happened for my char was, we were trying to break a siege on a town. Two enemies were on a tower and I took a shot at one and rolled a natural 20. The DM looked at me, and said "his head explodes". He later went on to make a webcomic depicting it...

My Char: Time to do something useful! *takes shot*
Enemy: And then I proposed, and she said yes! *head suddenly dissapears*

In the same battle, our barbarian and paladin were trying to kill an earth elemental. It knocked our paladin off his mount and he basically told it to attack the elemental and allow him to get to safety. The horse kicked the elemental once in the head and killed it.

[Dublock]

*snip* We can basically thank the bard for not only bluffing a dragon but also tricking the hydra with the female mating call and the challenge of another male hydra through another ghost sound.
*snip*

lol, that reminds me of what my group did to me as the DM. They were in the sewers, facing off against some goblins, they just wanted treasure so they figured if they trick the goblin leader that they have a dragon, the goblin leader would just fork it over.

I immediately asked for a buff check (I would have accepted a nature check, but the wizard had a bigher buff check, and for RP purposes :p). He rolled a nat 1.

Needless to say, the goblin attacked the wizard for trying to trick him (range :P)

[Zenos]

Our wizard whispered something to the bard, and he got an evil grin.

Our bard than told our DM basically, he was "using ghost sound to create the mating call of a female hydra".

Much laughter ensued. We can basically thank the bard for not only bluffing a dragon but also tricking the hydra with the female mating call and the challenge of another male hydra through another ghost sound.

Reminds me of when my bard (the guy in my avvie at current) and his six or seven team-mates were fighting a Young Adult or Adult (not really sure) White dragon at level six, he cast an illusion of summoning a fire elemental in a flanking position. Coupled with a bluff in Draconic (which all my character speak) the dragon wasted its next turn and its ice breath on an illusion. I got extra exp for good gameplay.

[Onmi]

our DM was allowing real world physics into the game, so the Wizard and Sorceress manipulated the climate to conceal the entire party in a veil and create multiple disfigured copies of everyone.

Fighter: UNIVERSE!!!!!

We finished the room off quickly. and we gave him red eyewear