Creative Encounters

[Scowling Dragon]

Tell stories of encounters that where not based on number crunching. Tell stories of how you defeated the encounter with creative tactics and ingenuity.

[Re'ozul]

These happened in a 4E game, where I was playing the guy who had an idea/item for any occasion.

Party is in a place thats made out of a fleshy substance. We walk to the end of a corridor thats dscribes a spiral ending in the center of said spiral. Along the path were a lot of already deactivated or gone-off traps. We find our macguffin in the center. Sadly, taing it resets all the traps and activate two tough stone golems.
Expected actions: Kill golems then tiptoe back along the corridor.
My solution: Wall is made of fleshy stuff, cut hole in it, escape. Golems too big to fit.

Shortly afterwards we were in a church that seemed to fluctuate between now and a millenia ago at random. We had to find a means to gain entrance into some place that was only vaguely described to us and all of us botch our searches. Luckily I had several pieces of everlasting chalk with me. When we were 'in the past' I wrote something with it and dropped a piece. Someone from back then wrote an answer that we could then see. So we initiated conversation that ultimately not only netted us the entrance but also a ring of some sort of immunity for creativity.

In the current 4E game we were going to take on a large group of hill giants trying to invade our city. The DM (and everyone except me) thought we'd just barge in and start killing.
When we got close to the steading we failed stealth hard and the guards and dogs came out in force. Thinking fast I bluffed them into thinking that we were a wandering group of circus folk (easy as our group is incredibly diverse: Drow, Kalashtar, Human, Gnoll, Dragonborn). They bought it, but in order not to end up on the menu we had to put on a show. Luckily my cleric likes his rituals so he could impress with some bonfire and the control fire ritual. The gnoll missed his attempt at impressing slightly, and the hill giant boss was about to put us down. So I asked the DM wether me making the streams of bonfire red, having them circle me while using control fire to flare the large campfire behind me would give me a bonus to intimidate him not to follow up on that. Suffice to say I barely made that check.
Once all the giants were asleep, I used eavesdropper's foil (ritual that is effectively silence centered on me). We robbed them blind, placed the barrels of hard booze they had strategically around the place, then set it on fire. They noticed and gave chase, but with another ritual (wavestrider enchantment) we were able to run away over a lake where they couldn't follow.

[Elvenoutrider]

I was in a party running through a dungeon with a new dm. We managed to stealthily eliminate all of the enemies on one floor and make our way into a barracks while the guards were sleeping. We activated a silence spell and nailed all of their doors shut. We encountered a homebrewed monster and lured it through a trapped hallway with an illusion - thus taking care of the monster as well as the traps - noisily, though the guards who heard us couldn't get out of their rooms. We finally got to the end of the dungeon where, well we think it was a lich, opened its sarcophogus and stepped out, only to have us push him back into the sarcoughagus with magic, while the barbarian charged and slammed it shut. We then chained and soverign glued it shut and, when we left the dungeon, we threw it in the ocean. The guards surrendered and became our henchmen. It was grand

[Kane0]

During a standard caravan guard job we get stopped by a log on the road. We get it moved out of the way using a pair of the wagon horses before the ambushers are ready for us so we only have to content with half a dozen starving villagers. After we rout them I make sure to take one with us (in a coma) and once he recovers he spills all he knows, saving us at least half a dozen encounters over the next few sessions.
Would have been perfectly normal if we weren't an evil party

Another session we were fighting zombies after they dropped out of bags and cages hanging overhead. We positioned ourselves so they fell on zombies that had already landed and were engaging us, almost halving the amount he had to fight at any given time.

Not spectacular, but I have a feeling that this campaign will have a lot of these moments and they will get better and better.