Crazy and inventive uses of the enviornment.

[Meynolds]

Have any stories to tell?

Just tonight I was playing a game with Druid_lord and two other friends and some interesting events occurred. We're playing the WotC "Matters of Vengeance" campaign and one of my friends threw the party wizard... and hit! The wizard came out swinging and killed the shade.

Later on he used a mercenary body.

By the way, what is the critical range of a body?
And would strength or dex determine attack bonus?

[JaronK]

Ranged: Dex. Crit: 20/X2. Improvised weapons, yo.

I'm a big fan of stealing the environment. If your GM puts up some ludicrously expensive thing (like giant adamantium doors in your way or super complex unpickable locks) just shrink item it and carry it away... it'll sell for a ton!

JaronK

[Indoril]

I would say a thrown body would count, in terms of crit range anyways, as a 'natural' weapon. Meaning it's critical is 20/X2.

If the body is swung it's a melee attack. If it's heaved, it's a ranged attack.

As for crazy inventive uses of the environment, I had placed in a ruin of an ancient palace a door to the old throne room that was made of iron. This door was encrusted with throusands of precious gems and stones; diamonds, rubies, opals, emeralds, jade, you name it. The worth of the gems was well over 50gp each (one of the PC's noticed this with a moderate appraise check, he was trying to determine the relative wealth of the old kingdom. It basically worked out to the door being worth roughly 500,000 gp in gems).
Our asanine druid was scanning through her spell list at the time. The other PC's were busying themselves about the room, disarming traps and uncovering secrets and I think they killed an Iron Golem. After about 5 minutes of silence she comes out with "AHA! I know what I'm going to do!" She askes all the PCs to stand a goodly distance away from her, goes to the door, and casts transmute metal to wood. The iron door encrusted with 500,000gp worth of gems was now made of wood. She set the door ablaze, collected the gems from the ashes and put them in her Portable Hole. Rather contented with herself, she left the other PC's in the dungeon and went back to town, and bought more powerful gear than any 15th level druid should ever, ever have.

[Beleriphon]

Dwarf. Booze. Tower. Kobolds. Mattresses. Mix well. Result: falling, flaming mattresses. I think that covers the concept well enough.

[Little_Rudo]

In one PBP game I'm in, our characters were holed up in an inn as the town was attacked by bugbears. All the doors and windows on the bottom floor were barricaded, and the front porch was weakened by a wagon that had crashed into it earlier. As several bugbears approached the front door and tried to bash it down, a swashbuckler and two archers (all PCs) were watching upstairs. One realized how bad of shape the porch was in, and they dropped an armoire through the window, onto the porch ceiling... it did enough damage that the whole roof of the porch collapsed, killing all of the bugbears below it.

Hey, when you're level one characters and outnumbered more than two to one, you need to do whatever you can to make it!

[pita]

A friend of mine used a wizard (killed a goblin and reduced the wizard to -8), As a changeling I did an action movie stunt by bursting through a door, and having a shard hit a goblin between the eyes.
Ahh, the joys of getting a critical hit out of a closet.

[Dervag]

I'm a big fan of stealing the environment. If your GM puts up some ludicrously expensive thing (like giant adamantium doors in your way or super complex unpickable locks) just shrink item it and carry it away... it'll sell for a ton!

Ah, yes, the standard PC approach to the 100 lb. diamond.

After about 5 minutes of silence she comes out with "AHA! I know what I'm going to do!" She askes all the PCs to stand a goodly distance away from her, goes to the door, and casts transmute metal to wood. The iron door encrusted with 500,000gp worth of gems was now made of wood. She set the door ablaze, collected the gems from the ashes and put them in her Portable Hole. Rather contented with herself, she left the other PC's in the dungeon and went back to town, and bought more powerful gear than any 15th level druid should ever, ever have.

That shouldn't have worked very well. Fire actually damages a lot of gemstones; she'd lose a large fraction of the value of the door in the process.

...it did enough damage that the whole roof of the porch collapsed, killing all of the bugbears below it.

Hey, when you're level one characters and outnumbered more than two to one, you need to do whatever you can to make it!

And if it involves dropping a house or portion thereof on your enemies, all the better.

[Ali]

In the next session we arrange, the players in my game will finish an intense battle with their arch nemesis and his hired mercenaries on a large but rickety bridge above lava. There is probably going to be a lot of bull-rushing and grappling!

Important battles should always be set in an interesting environment, I say.

[blackout]

Naturally. Makes the battles seem a bit more important. :) One time, my group entered a village that the surrounding towns haven't recieved word from for the last couple of months. Turns out that it was completely overrun with a Necromancer and his zombie/skeleton minions. We barricaded ourselves in the town's inn, and when the zombies broke through that, we fell back to the second floor, barricaded that. This kept on until we reached the fifth floor, and then we all started throwing stuff like beds and other things out the window, to keep the zombies on the outside from getting inside intact.
Not much of a story, but it works. Luckily, we got out of this ok...more or less.

[Thrawn183]

I used dispel magic to crash an entire floating fortress/prison. It was kind of like destroying all of the environment at once. Though we got to come back later...

[blackout]

Dude, you destroyed an entire fortress with Dispel Magic? Awesome! >:)

[Spasticteapot]

Casting Grease on both sides of the keystone in a large arc...and then Mage Hand.

"So, how much damage does a 200 lb. stone block falling from ten feet do?

[Ali]

Heh heh, nice zombie battle there, blackout.

"Luckily, we got out of this ok...more or less."

How did you manage it? Did it involve another crazy and inventive use of the enviornment? *Grins.*

[bosssmiley]

I'm a big fan of stealing the environment.

My kind of player!

Casting Grease on both sides of the keystone in a large arc...and then Mage Hand.

"So, how much damage does a 200 lb. stone block falling from ten feet do?

*GM slap!*
Mage hand has a 5lb weight limit. You should have used telekinesis, one of the mage's fondling hand spells or a burly friend to shift the block. Crazy kids!

Then again I can't talk. To swashbuckler/pulp players the entire gaming environment is nothing but improvised weapons. Some recent GM calls:

"What's the DC to dodge a speeding wagonload of burning kegs?"
"Can I lunge and slip the line holding up the boom as a single action?"
"How much damage would dropping a large table on someone from 3 storeys up cause? And if I set it on fire first?"
"Will bottling the guy in the head with a lamp cause a Concentration check? And if I set the oil on fire first?"
"What's the Str check DC to slam the gate on his head?"
"Caltrops don't counter-act grease do they?"
"While he's bragging about how he has us exactly where he wants us I'll bullrush him into his own brute squad."
"But why is spamming defenestrating sphere tasteless?"
"Why do you think the monk in "Monkey" was called trip attacker?"
"I have the Throw Ally feat you know..."
and worst of all:
"DESTROY EVERYTHING!!!"

[blackout]

Heh heh, nice zombie battle there, blackout.
"Luckily, we got out of this ok...more or less."
How did you manage it? Did it involve another crazy and inventive use of the enviornment? *Grins.*

Well, the party wizard had some serious fire-power at his disposal. He kept refusing to use his magic early on, despite the reprisal(and begging)from the rest of the party. He kept on hanging back, and sending his familiar into the fight despite the fact that we could've won earlier with more assistance from him. The fight progressed with us firing ranged weapons out of the windows of the inn, trying to pick off the zombies one-by-one before they broke through the barricade, and whenever they broke through, we fell back to the next floor. We kept this up until we got to the fifth floor, at which point we proceeded with the 'throw stuff out the window and hope it helps in the long run' tactic. Finally, our wizard decides to hit the zombies with everything he has when several of us are, quite literally, back up against a wall, and brings down the entire damn zombie horde, and accidentally causes some serious damage to the party cleric. We commenced with the usual thwappage penalty(ie, everyone hit the player that played the wizard once on the back of the head) for holding back the big guns for so long. Then we left the inn, in the hopes of getting to a better hideout. On the way to the smithy(an ideal choice, as it probably had some decent hardware in it, and maybe even something to sell.) the necromancer that lead the undead army showed up, and...well, yeah. With everyone in the condition that they were, we ran. We ran. We ran like freakin crazy, left the village, and then proceeded to camp in the woods. Needless to say, everyone was very mad at the end of this little escapade. No loot, minimal XP(zombies really ain't worth much.). So, yeah. Not the best results from a contract that was meant to simply be "go here and find out what happened."

[Closet_Skeleton]

A party in my d20 modern game managed to take down an two enemy Blackhawk helecopters. Since you have to deal twice it's hp in damage to completely destroy a vehicle I decided that being reduced to 0 hp probably meant it would crash so I rolled a Warhammer scatter die.

The first helecopter crashed into some oil drilling equipment, taking out half the floating industrial facility and sending the cyborgs that didn't immediately die into the water. Their cybernetics made them too heavy to swim.

[Ali]

Heh heh.

Wizards tend to be overly reluctant to use their spells I suppose, because they know when their spells run out it is usually over. What they forget is, they have the rest of the party to look out for 'em.

Nice tale though, blackout.

[blackout]

Nice tale though, blackout.

Lemme know if ya wanna know more, I got plenty. :)

[Spasticteapot]

*GM slap!*
Mage hand has a 5lb weight limit. You should have used telekinesis, one of the mage's fondling hand spells or a burly friend to shift the block. Crazy kids!

1. This was in 2e.

2. I'm prettty sure we just had a tall PC push the block originally.

[The_Werebear]

When I was DMing, I had a group of bandits shooting at the party from across a gully the had filled with spikes. The party druid summoned a fire elemental on their side of the ravine and had it throw them into their own pit.

My party was facing a kobold sorcerer in his study filled with knicknacks and curios. They killed him in the end by shoving a display case full of random junk over on him.

The same party used a rod of wonder to turn a second of stone ethereal, then shove someone in it until it came back

[Stormcrow]

My party had orders to chase off a small half-elven community so they convinced the mayor to have a parade and even payed out of their own pockets to build some floats to be paraded through the market square. Looked great for tourism so the mayor was keen.

Long story short. Powder Kegs, Mixed with Caltrops, Exploding Floats, Mass Death, Town Gone.

[blackout]

Long story short. Powder Kegs, Mixed with Caltrops, Exploding Floats, Mass Death, Town Gone.

...Lemme guess, serious points in the evil department?

[Stormcrow]

Ah huh, they ARE pirates though so it was a matter of time.

[Deathcow]

My party had orders to chase off a small half-elven community so they convinced the mayor to have a parade and even payed out of their own pockets to build some floats to be paraded through the market square. Looked great for tourism so the mayor was keen.

Long story short. Powder Kegs, Mixed with Caltrops, Exploding Floats, Mass Death, Town Gone.

Nice. The opening scene of Swordfish is playing in my head from reading that.

Also, I have a fighter/monk gestalt character in a piratey-type game who's favorite tactic is bullrushing people off the sides of boats.

[Simius]

I'll try to describe a little scene I once set up as a DM a long time ago.

I ran a campaign for an evil party and one of them, a hexblade, wanted to take levels in the Warrior of Darkness PrC from the BoVD. To do so, he first needed to collect a number of rare books on dark magic.

After arriving in a certain big city, he went to library but found nothing. To gain access to the section with rare and magical books, he had to do a little side-quest for the librarian, a very powerful but naïve wizard. (yes, it's cliché, I know)

They had to get some special kind of holy water from a forgotten temple, which took them ages to get. When they finally brought the bottle with the water to the librarian, he told them he had laid his hands on a Book of Vile Darkness (minor artifact described in the DMG) and he needed the holy water in a ritual to destroy it. As an additional reward, the hexblade was allowed to attend the ritual. So we had this situation:

1 wizard's tower room with:
1 magically protected Book of Vile Darkness
+ 100 openly exposed magical items and potions including:

• -beads of force
• -potions of fly
• -a lot of other nasty things I can't remember

1 hole in the ceiling to let the moonlight through
1 evil Hexblade trying to steal the artifact
1 naïve level 20 wizard
1 iron golem guarding the exit

Well, you can imagine the result. The character escaped with the Book using a potion of fly and some other things to distract the wizard. He took his PrC level, but sadly the party had to flee the city from law enforcement.

[blackout]

but sadly the party had to flee the city from law enforcement.

Dude, STORY OF MY PARTY'S LIVES. We're humanoids, y'see. Ogres, Kobolds, that sorta thing. So, naturally we get run out of town alot more often than other parties might. We cause trouble, occasionally, but otherwise, we just step inside the city limits, and we start getting attacked by the town guards. The towns that are a bit more tolerant though...well, usually, if we get run out, it's a little something like THIS.
Kobold Wizard: Hey, guys, I'm gonna go blow up the local smithy.
Minotaur Barbarian/Fighter: If you do, I swear to god, I will hurt you.
Kobold Wizard: Ok, seeya later.

I swear, my party's wizard NEVER DOES HIS JOB and ALWAYS CAUSES TROUBLE.

[Ali]

HAHAHA!

Humanoids are decent. Much better then drow... sadly I cannot seem to get hold of any information on Ibixians...

[blackout]

Still, it's a party of eight easily excitable humanoid mercenaries, from various races and walks of life. Barrel full of fun.

[Ali]

Heh... I predict that one day that kobold will find himself impaled on the minotaur's right horn.

[blackout]

Well, the Minotaur happens to be me, so your little prediction might come true soon. >:)