Your cleverest use of a spell

[Jay R]

I’m looking for particularly clever uses for spells. I’m not talking about abusing the system, but using a spell as intended to achieve a result not usually associated with that spell.

Please restrict yourself to actual uses that occurred in play, not ideas you’ve had but never had the opportunity to use.

Here’s my first one:
Two PCs were at the ship when we were attacked by more people than we could handle. The fighter went down in a single round, and my 8th level gnome illusionist was hidden around the corner. The rest of the part was at the tavern 200 yards away – far too far to yell for help. I could probably slip away, but Finnegan would very likely be killed if I did.

The range for a major illusion is 720 feet. So I cast an illusion of a party member at the door of the tavern yelling, “We’re under attack at the ship. Hurry!” It was the fastest way to get a message to the party.

What clever uses for spells have you come up with?

[Guizonde]

i cast eternal flame on my cleric's dreadlocks before cutting them off. suddenly, the party had an always on but easily stowable source of light. the dm gave me grief for that one because the halfling pulled out his dreadlock and tossed it into an unlit cavern and rumbled an ambush not one hour after i'd created it.

another time, i waterboarded a prisoner using the create water cantrip.

finally, not me, but our pathfinder oracle used bone whip to stop herself falling into a chasm. the paladin tanked the hit like a champ and pulled her to safety.

[Pex]

High level Pathfinder game. We knew ahead of time we had to fight beefed up troglodytes. We fought this type of monster before, and their stench ability was devastating to us. The save DC was high and not everyone had a good save for it. Playing an Oracle I found a solution. I cast Bestow Curse on every party member with the curse being losing your sense of smell. The stench ability had no affect, and the troglodytes were defeated easily. Naturally I also knew Remove Curse for afterwards. This took a lot of my spell slots, but I still had plenty more for the rest of the day and it was worth it. Our previous encounter with these creatures was really bad for us.

[farothel]

We were playing a Mage, The Awakening game and there being creative with spells is quite a good survival trait. So we were in a car and being chased by some idiots (I'm not sure anymore who or what they were, it's been a while). I had a spell that could let a small item do something it was designed to do by simply asking it. Mostly I used it to open locks to get us inside locations we had to be in, but now it was time to be a bit more creative. One thing was that you had to be able to see the item in question, so manipulating the brakes was out of the question (and the car as a whole was too big). By having our driver weave a bit, I could however see the wheels and the screws holding them in place. A couple of castings later and the wheel came loose. The chase was finished quite quickly after that.

Another use of that particular spell is to let clips drop out of guns, or to let them go off while still in the holster. So many creative options exist if you think about it a bit.

[W41Blackr4zr]

I once used minor illusion when we were fighting a wyvern
in a jungle and made a noise of another wyvern as if it was behind and above it
the DM had the wyvern waste its action looking for the other one
and that one wasted action caused the whole party to survive
otherwise we would have been TPK

I also had a mage that was fighting a stronghold and we couldn't break the gate down no matter what
so i cast contingency teleport when i am reduced to 0 hit points to the cleric's location
and I walked up to the gate and broke my staff of the magi
It disintegrated the gate no problem and we won the fortress

[Hunter Noventa]

In a recent high-level pathfinder game we were trying to stop a bunch of cultists from summoning Cthulhu. Cliche I know. Anyway, it was during the big final battle in their evil temple that our Wizard realized the ritual could only be done when 'the stars were right', and that they weren't right at the time...so he promptly cast Disintegrate on the sacrifice that had been set up, totally ruining the ritual.

[Cygnia]

Wall of Stone (I've posted this elsewhere)

*****

When we last left our heroes, we had just bypassed an encounter with an aboleth and its skum slaves to go directly to the last boss of the dungeon: the Evil Morningstar artifact and its 4 giant skeleton guards. Having handily dispatched them all and subduing the relic, we spread the ashes of the previously deceased adventurers before the entrance of the tunnel and the dwarf popped up a Wall o' Stone to protect us so we could rest and recover for the night.

And I...I had a Plan.

"Don't worry, I have a Plan!" said I with confidence.

"Does it involve us being meatshields?" asked the dwarf, lacking my confidence.

"NO! Maybe..."

Evidence of the last night confirmed that skum had been checking out the wall while we rested. Verifying that yes, we had our respective spell slots refreshed, I asked the GM a simple question: How wide was the whirlpool the aboleth was lurking in? He gave his answer -- and my confidence grew as I shared the power of the Plan. And lo, my party members nodded in agreement as they too saw the brilliance of the Plan. And the eyes of the GM widened in shock as he realized the full scope of the Plan.

So we snuck back to the tunnel and, with the element of surprise backing us, had the dwarf cast Wall o' Stone -- horizontally over the whirpool, sealing the aboleth in for the time being. Mike meanwhile summoned a huge fire elemental to start having a fish fry with the skum and I got myself to a proper vantage point JUST in case.

The aboleth was NOT happy as its first attempt to break the wall of stone was less than successful. It was even more unhappier when the dwarf cast spike stones, thereby giving it even more of a headache and nickel & diming its HP away. Mike, Nicci, their respective dogs and the fire elemental were merrily taking names and kicking skum butt while I was readying myself...

...and the aboleth FINALLY broken the wall of stone and I read my fireball scroll to blast it in the face and take out the last skum to boot. It was still alive! It was angry! It was then flushed down the drain as the dwarf then cast Control Water to lower the water in the whirlpool.

It was at this point that the GM conceded the aboleth fled in shame.

[Frozenstep]

We were attacking a wizard grandmaster who was in the middle of a giant room in a wizard college. He had basically done some insane transmutation and was basically fused with a giant creature, along with most of his students. Thankfully, we had an unexpected entrance angle, and we had like 10 friendly npc clerics (most under level 5) with us determined to help. Problem was, our unexpected entrance angle was a hole in the ceiling of the room, and to drop on the monster you'd have to fall like 70 feet (and then a further 50 feet anywhere else in the room). We had a few spellcasters, but only one capable of featherfall. It had taken us significant effort and luck to get the clerics there, and they had already expended a bunch of healing after getting hit by a reverse gravity by one of the grandmaster's minions.

We debated our options. Having the bard devote themselves to featherfalling a few a turn was an option, but it would mean we'd arrive in waves. There was also very little cover in the massive room. Trying to collapse the ceiling was not an option, because there was another wizard npc who was looking to profit off our victory by taking the grandmaster title himself, and we didn't need another spellcasting enemy mad about us destroying their future school.

So I used wall of force. One panel like 10 feet down, horizontal. One panel at a 90 degree angle to that one so that it was vertical. Another panel at a 90 degree angle to that one at the bottom edge. And just like that, I built a spiral staircase. The clerics were able to follow my instructions to climb down quickly without taking fall damage, and several of us also simply stood on top of the wall of force in order to gain full cover (turns out the grandmaster couldn't really move, although his monster attachment had enough benefits that it was still quite a fight).

[thorr-kan]

Currently playing in a 2E, Al-Qadim campaign as a half-orc bard, barber kit.

We're investigating a tomb when a series of terracotta warriors march into the room to attack us. But on the way in, they triggered a sprayer of some type that smelled like naptha.

I ask the DM, "How easy is it to set the liquid on fire?"

DM says, "What's your plan?"

I cast cantrip, spark the naptha, and the terracotta warrior fails its save. Whumph! goes the naptha. After that, it's just a matter of staying out of the construct's reach until it succumbs to fire damage. Repeat until the party's the only one's standing.

I tool special care not to set afire the constructs in melee with the rest of the party.

[King of Nowhere]

we were at 6th level and we were raiding a formian anthill. we had some fights and realized it was going to be though to fight the entrenched formians. better if we could make them come to us. but how?
we decided to use phantasmal sound to reproduce the sound of something that the formians would inherently abhor, so that they would want to charge us. after some discussion on what could better offend a formian's lawful nature, we settled for slaads playing vuvuzelas. the formians were so mad that all those within hearing range charged through a narrow corridor and were slaughtered easily.

[Solamnicknight]

The one that comes to mind is in a fairly recent 5e game DMed by my friend, a Storm King's Thunder campiagn that's ongoing, my character Elise Esperanza-Baenre used major image to make an illiusory fire giant to scare some hill giants away from a farm, allowing the party to completely avoid combat. She's a bard so she rolled really high on her deception as well to make the giant illusion convinvcing. Of course Hill giants in D&D aren't the brightest...

[Dimers]

I don't recall which spell exactly, but one that lets you create unliving plant matter ... I used it to give somebody an allergy attack at a crucial moment. A cubic foot is a LOT of pollen.

[Mordaedil]

We were fighting an entire army of orcs after upsetting them and a giant ogre. It was looking pretty bleak as our warblade had just gotten a fully grown brown bear tossed at them and he was looking rough. The plan first looked like we were going to need to retreat and force the orcs to approach us through a bottleneck before. I had recently gotten a wand of major image and I knew silent image, so we were between 3rd and 4th level. I was having a bit of a panic moment as we'd have trouble getting everyone out, so I told the DM "I create a field of bears between here... and here" and indicated two points on the map within range and size for the wand.

The DM sighed, and started drawing bears everywhere and rolled will save for every orc in the camp and they all failed, except the giant ogre. So we managed to delay them sufficiently by having them engage im

aginary bears, but the ogre was coming closer. I decided to drop concentration on the major image spell and cast silent image and made a giant ogre that mocked the other ogre. This time he failed his save and started tumbling with the fake ogre and fell through it into a giant hole behind it.

Before the major image wore off we had successfully reduced the number of orcs by quite a bit and was able to face the real leader of the tribe and could easily wrap up the encounter that was otherwise looking overwhelming.

So yeah... "field of bears" is my most creative use I think.

[Personification]

I don't recall which spell exactly, but one that lets you create unliving plant matter ... I used it to give somebody an allergy attack at a crucial moment. A cubic foot is a LOT of pollen.

[blink][blink] Th-tha-that's SO EVIL!

Well done!

[Telwar]

In our 5e Birthright game, I was playing a mystic/wu jen, and we were in low teens/T3.

We had to fight a huuuge awakened tree for some reason, and it had a pretty big aura of Suck around it. Again, I don't remember what it was, but we didn't want to melee it at all.

After looking at my discipline spreadsheet, and double checking the playtest document, I announced I could trivialize the encounter, and cast Wall of Thunder.

The length I could get was enough to extend the wall to and around the tree, and I could just concentrate on the power until the tree went down.

DM looked, and realized I was right. (And to be fair, I think Wall of Fire would have worked just as well!)

So, of course, we got attacked by the emergency backup treants, but they were easily dealt with, especially using mind control to have them run through everyone and take OAs.

[Draconi Redfir]

i've been using the Pathfinder spell "Sonic Thrust" less as some kind of attack or utility spell, and more of a "Move my allies" ability.

So far i have:

Shouted the Barbarian across a lava-river so she could fight a hydra

Shouted the Rogue down a hallway so she could reinforce a surrounded ally

and Shouted the Paladin up the side of a tower to attack some Gargoyles that were attacking some of our allies.

i actually hit one of the gargoyles with that last one. Delt 26 damage with a Paladin since she counted as a hard, dense object

[Seto]

So, it's not actually the intended use of the spell, and I'm pretty sure it's not rules-legal, but...
One time, we were facing a Water Naga, and it used Mirror Image to protect itself. It was my first campaign, I was a newbie at the time, and I think I was seeing that spell for the first time. After thinking about it, my reaction was... "well, my Bard is gonna cast Dancing Lights inside the mirror images, to interact with several of them at once and see if the light goes through or if they're actually a solid body". I wasn't trying to game the system, I was casting in good faith. Today, if I was GMing, I wouldn't let that fly; given the difference in spell levels, I would probably say: "the illusions are opaque", or give an ad-hoc small bonus to hit for the effort. But my GM at that time was caught off-guard, and he found it clever so he allowed it to work.

[Avista]

I was playing wizard and the construct the party was fighting suddenly sprouted wings and flew 20 ft up, out of range of the melee. 3/4 of the members relied on melee damage, and I didn't prepare any anti-flight spells before the fight.

My turn comes along and I'm looking at my spells. I could cast a few bolts of magic missiles, or...

"If I cast Enlarge/Reduce, can someone reach the construct?"

Answer is yes. An enlarged barbarian who makes a running start and leaps at the target can indeed reach the construct. And pin it back down.

[Solamnicknight]

In our 5e Birthright game, I was playing a mystic/wu jen, and we were in low teens/T3.

We had to fight a huuuge awakened tree for some reason, and it had a pretty big aura of Suck around it. Again, I don't remember what it was, but we didn't want to melee it at all.

After looking at my discipline spreadsheet, and double checking the playtest document, I announced I could trivialize the encounter, and cast Wall of Thunder.

The length I could get was enough to extend the wall to and around the tree, and I could just concentrate on the power until the tree went down.

DM looked, and realized I was right. (And to be fair, I think Wall of Fire would have worked just as well!)

So, of course, we got attacked by the emergency backup treants, but they were easily dealt with, especially using mind control to have them run through everyone and take OAs.

Birthright? As Obi Wan said “that’s a name I’ve not heard in long time.” That’s cool that your group is using that setting!

[Phhase]

Don't get me started with Shape Water. I was left alone with a prisoner and a barn. Let's just say when someone tried to bust the prisoner out later, I called it "Attack on Icecrown".

But the best must've been one of my players, a gnome illusionist. He was struck with a very powerful Abyssal curse, which made it seem like he'd been transported to the Abyss. In reality, he was turned invisible, immobile, and the whole thing was in his head, but still very much real enough to cause damage. He rolled a 20 on the Will Save, which I ruled allowed him to automatically realize the nature of the phantasm, but not to just completely negate it (it was some real crazy-juiced up stuff, and they're only level 4). He followed this up with what I think must've been one of the most creative uses of suggestion I've ever seen. He cast it on himself with the suggestion "Wake up!". It was a really hard call, but since he wasn't technically asleep, I ruled that while it not break the effect, it did allow him to make checks so his illusions became 100% real inside this mindscape-fight (Against three abyssal maws on a small island). That turned out pretty cool.

[Son of A Lich!]

I had a player in high school who will remain unnamed for personal privacy, who always played wizards. To this day, I have an irrational hatred for Wizards because of him. I'm going to call him Gandalf for sake of simplicity.

Everything I tried to throw at the party, Gandalf would trivialize with uncanny gamesmenship. He truly was a savant of Game Theory and it irritated the heck out of me.

I tried to emulate him occasionally by having wizards on my side of the board, using his tactics and strategies but he would throw up a fog cloud and shut them down (Turns out, a lot of spells in 3.X D&D have a "You can see" clause, and the darkness spell can be circumvented by creatures with Darkvision and the ilk. No seeing through the fog cloud.

Frustrated, I had a cabal of Yuan-ti Cultists try to throw up a fog cloud over him and figured that the other players would have a chance to shine. Then he whips out a scroll of gust of wind and just... blows it away. Just... Naw, I'm prepared for that. Don't try to shut me down.

Me: Aha! Counter spell!

Gandalf: How? I'm in a fog cloud..?

*Reads counterspell* Counters a spell being cast by a caster... you can see and hear...

GAH!

... Stupid frickin' wizards with their stupid broken spell list... Scribe Scroll at level one, what a load of horse manure... *grumble grumble*

[Mongobear]

In a naval themed campaign, we were being boarded/assaulted by the BBEG Pirate Lord's flagship and they were just about the approach the range for actually crossing onto our ship.

A friend of mine cast Wall of Iron, laying it our on the very edge of their ship, opposite of us, and formed it as tall as allowed by his level. It was something like 50ft wide by about 100 ft tall. Then next round cast Control Weather or like a very upcast Gust of Wind, or stronger, and blew the hardest wind they could into the wall, causing the amazing amount of weight and top heavy wall to capsize their ship, drowning most of the mooks, and making it quite easy to capture to BBEG.

It also totally ruined his ship, as the wall was "attached" to the boat, and acted as an anchor, dragging it down to the depths, until the spell ended.

[farothel]

So, it's not actually the intended use of the spell, and I'm pretty sure it's not rules-legal, but...
One time, we were facing a Water Naga, and it used Mirror Image to protect itself. It was my first campaign, I was a newbie at the time, and I think I was seeing that spell for the first time. After thinking about it, my reaction was... "well, my Bard is gonna cast Dancing Lights inside the mirror images, to interact with several of them at once and see if the light goes through or if they're actually a solid body". I wasn't trying to game the system, I was casting in good faith. Today, if I was GMing, I wouldn't let that fly; given the difference in spell levels, I would probably say: "the illusions are opaque", or give an ad-hoc small bonus to hit for the effort. But my GM at that time was caught off-guard, and he found it clever so he allowed it to work.

One of my party members did that years ago, in one of the older D&D versions (I think 3.0, but I'm not sure anymore, it's been a while). We were almost out of spells and quite well wounded. The player, a cleric at the time, looked on his sheet and had only a prepare food and drink spell left. This is a spell that has range for some reason and back in the day, nothing else in the way of restrictions (now it has to be case on a solid surface). So he went 'I can create food to feed 10 people. Now what is the nutricional value of a coconut?'

We all looked at him before we got the idea. The GM ruled (after he recovered from laughing) that this once he was allowed to do it, but only this once. One spell later a lot of Coconuts fell down on the BBEG from the highest his range was.

[King of Nowhere]

I had a player in high school who will remain unnamed for personal privacy, who always played wizards. To this day, I have an irrational hatred for Wizards because of him. I'm going to call him Gandalf for sake of simplicity.

Everything I tried to throw at the party, Gandalf would trivialize with uncanny gamesmenship. He truly was a savant of Game Theory and it irritated the heck out of me.

I tried to emulate him occasionally by having wizards on my side of the board, using his tactics and strategies but he would throw up a fog cloud and shut them down (Turns out, a lot of spells in 3.X D&D have a "You can see" clause, and the darkness spell can be circumvented by creatures with Darkvision and the ilk. No seeing through the fog cloud.

Frustrated, I had a cabal of Yuan-ti Cultists try to throw up a fog cloud over him and figured that the other players would have a chance to shine. Then he whips out a scroll of gust of wind and just... blows it away. Just... Naw, I'm prepared for that. Don't try to shut me down.

Me: Aha! Counter spell!

Gandalf: How? I'm in a fog cloud..?

*Reads counterspell* Counters a spell being cast by a caster... you can see and hear...

GAH!

... Stupid frickin' wizards with their stupid broken spell list... Scribe Scroll at level one, what a load of horse manure... *grumble grumble*

how about casting another fog cloud? have one of the enemies do nothing but cast fog cloud every time the wizard dispels it. it still removes the wizard from action.

[iceman10058]

I had a player in high school who will remain unnamed for personal privacy, who always played wizards. To this day, I have an irrational hatred for Wizards because of him. I'm going to call him Gandalf for sake of simplicity.

Everything I tried to throw at the party, Gandalf would trivialize with uncanny gamesmenship. He truly was a savant of Game Theory and it irritated the heck out of me.

I tried to emulate him occasionally by having wizards on my side of the board, using his tactics and strategies but he would throw up a fog cloud and shut them down (Turns out, a lot of spells in 3.X D&D have a "You can see" clause, and the darkness spell can be circumvented by creatures with Darkvision and the ilk. No seeing through the fog cloud.

Frustrated, I had a cabal of Yuan-ti Cultists try to throw up a fog cloud over him and figured that the other players would have a chance to shine. Then he whips out a scroll of gust of wind and just... blows it away. Just... Naw, I'm prepared for that. Don't try to shut me down.

Me: Aha! Counter spell!

Gandalf: How? I'm in a fog cloud..?

*Reads counterspell* Counters a spell being cast by a caster... you can see and hear...

GAH!

... Stupid frickin' wizards with their stupid broken spell list... Scribe Scroll at level one, what a load of horse manure... *grumble grumble*

Two things

One: In 3.x, darkvission only works for non magical darkness.

Two: Casting while in melee sucks, concentration check everytime you are attacked while casting, and it always provokes attack of opportunity.

Next time, vast darkness centered on him, followed by any aoe spell.

[Son of A Lich!]

I want to preface this by pointing out that it was a decade and half ago, and while I had my 10,000 hours of DMing in, I was still a socially awkward teen at the time; adhering to rules as written was pretty important to Gandalf, and it was really easy to fall prey to it. I'm sure it was possible that he had cheated, but knowing Gandalf pretty damn well, I doubt he ever intentionally broke the rules. It was more of a case of making mistakes by not knowing the system or it's implications as well as he did.

how about casting another fog cloud? have one of the enemies do nothing but cast fog cloud every time the wizard dispels it. it still removes the wizard from action.

More importantly, he kept scrolls of Gust of Wind, that he would accumulate in our down time. My enemy would have been tied down casting fog cloud tied to their spell slots, while he gusted it away without losing anything. Further, it was a bit of jerk move to have one enemy designed specifically to counter one player in particular.

Side note; I didn't really track XP and we just did Story beat progressions. I understand that it was a resource that he was 'Exploiting' but it didn't really register to me much when he had used to predominately to make scrolls of things like Gust of Wind or Knock. Useful, sure, but not game breaking.

Two things

One: In 3.x, darkvission only works for non magical darkness.

Two: Casting while in melee sucks, concentration check everytime you are attacked while casting, and it always provokes attack of opportunity.

Next time, vast darkness centered on him, followed by any aoe spell.

1) Gandalf justified Fog Cloud over Darkness because some monsters can see in magical darkness, especially spell casting Monsters (I'm 90% confident that the Rakshasa can, because that's when it first got explained to me). Fog Cloud always worked (Even if it could be dispelled with Gust of Wind, but no one prepares that). I can only remember him playing Humans, aside from the one time I forced him to not play a wizard and learned Druids were MUCH worse for him to have. I think that campaign lasted 3 sessions before I dropped it.

2) And there are a number of ways of keeping someone out of combat with magic. More importantly, he didn't usually have all that high of an Intelligence bonus because control spells just... work and didn't need to worry about saves. His Con was usually the highest and Combat Caster was always one of his first picks (I think it was +4 to Concentration checks in Combat? I know it didn't absolve them completely).

3) Gandalf lives far and away from me, and I don't plan on ever going back to 3.5 as a DM. Darkness probably would work better (Does Light counter Darkness? He had a few things for that, but simply because he was human), but AOEs require a square you can see and Obscuring Mist was wider then a fireball.

[Pleh]

More importantly, he kept scrolls of Gust of Wind, that he would accumulate in our down time. My enemy would have been tied down casting fog cloud tied to their spell slots, while he gusted it away without losing anything.

To be fair, the point would be that he is wasting his *actions* even if he isn't losing his spell slots.

So say you have 2 enemy casters. One of them casts Fog Cloud to lock the PC wizard down and then he burns a scroll to dispel the cloud. The second caster, who was waiting for the cloud to disperse, uses a readied action to Fireball the PC wizard, who has already acted in combat.

No, you don't want this to become a habit in your encounters as directly targeting someone can be uncool. But it's not like it wouldn't make sense for once or twice having the enemies know the wizard is a threat and aim to lock him down first, giving the other PCs a chance to shine. Play that encounter once, then back to letting the Wizard trivialize things.

[Leon]

Not one i came up with but one that i was party to and had my share of casting when it was needed. Weighty Chest on Ballista Bolts. We knew that we were going to have to fight a wing of dragon while on our airship (the Eberon style but ported into 2e).

The DM and his dragons didn't know what hit them, the ones that didn't plummet out of the sky took massive damage as the now super heavy barbed bolts tore themselves back out of the targets. We still had a tough fight but it did significantly even the scores and reduce a lot of damage the ship would have otherwise have taken.

[Toric]

5E. I was playing a Sorcerer with the Keen Mind feat in a Victorian pulpy setting. The party was working a job as investigative "yellow" journalists. We were tasked with infiltrating a whale processing factory and given a camera to capture any evidence of misdeeds. Two tricks of note:

1. Found a wax sealed envelope. Broke the seal, snapped a photo of the enclosed letter, replaced the letter, cast Repair on the seal.

2. Due to dangers, time constraints, and poor lighting conditions, the letter was one of the few conclusive photos we took. On the way back to the office I remembered I'm a sorcerer with Silent Image and Keen Mind. Keen Mind gives me perfect recall going back a month. So while my colleagues were going through the verbal debriefing and I was supposed to be developing the prints I was in an empty room downstairs taking crystal-clear photographs of the things I'd seen. A pity the wall I cast the illusion against was made of brick and not adobe.

[Segev]

I don't recall which spell exactly, but one that lets you create unliving plant matter ... I used it to give somebody an allergy attack at a crucial moment. A cubic foot is a LOT of pollen.

[blink][blink] Th-tha-that's SO EVIL!

Well done!

That is both beautiful and horrifying (speaking as someone allergic to pollen).



This isn’t me, but a ranger in my 5e game. He was suspended in a net between two gargoyles dozens of feet in the air two sessions ago, and unable to get out. His player said, “I cast Rope Trick.” I asked her about getting the rope out of her pack and how she planned to anchor herself to it, etc, and she said, “No, I cast it on the rope making up the net.”

After I stopped laughing and gave her a point of inspiration, the gargoyles were very confused at the net ripping out of their claws and leaving them spinning in the air for a moment. By the time the recovered in the air and looked back for it, it and their captive had vanished.

Because the rope in the net has extended up 50 feet higher and anchored there, and the dwarf had climbed up and pulled it into the extra dimensional space behind him while they recovered.