Grrl Power #882 – The slippery arm of the law
Just be thankful it’s freshly summoned lube.
Sydney’s not actually correct about it being a cantrip. It’s like the level 6 version of “Lube.” Honestly I feel bad for whoever has to clean up after this fight. That stuff does not wash off easily, and the duration is about 500 hours. Because succubi wildly overestimate every other races’ endurance.
Dabbler is one of those adventurers who knows that in a universe of infinite possibilities, it doesn’t matter how many guns you have, or grenades or cool gadgets. They’re tough to use if you can’t stand. While the average merc or adventurer has good traction, it takes exceptional traction to resist a spell like that. And the ones who are prepared for that eventuality might not be ready for the web spell, and the ones ready for that might not be ready for the insect swarm spell.
Don’t get me wrong, Dabbler is a bullets and swords kind of gal most of the time, but she knows it’s the oddball attack that gets the job done.
Anyone have any unusual takedown stories from your tabletop games? I was in a D&D party once that wound up stripped of all their equipment and facing off against a bunch of vampires. The problem being that vampires in D&D can’t be hurt unless you use magical weapons on them. A friend of mine playing a barbarian with 18/100 strength and 3 intelligence (I watched him roll the character up – he had the craziest dice karma) logiced that vampires can’t be hurt by non-magical weapons… because they’re magic. So, one successful grapple check later and our barbarian was beating one vampire to death with another. If vampires can hurt each other in a fight, they can certainly hurt each other if one of them is being used as a maul.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
In a game of Spycraft my agent was on the ground, kneeling being covered by two grunts with shotguns, I grabbed both barrels lifted them just above my head and yelled “BANG !”
Nat 20 on the Charisma roll
(Granted my character was deaf for a few hours afterwards but it was fun)
Few years back I was paying 5th Ed D&d at the local game shop with my son (I’m a AD&D 2nd Ed boy all the way). I wS facing off against this evil druid guy who was standing high on this crane like device waving his evil staff around while the rest of my party (played by teenagers who couldn’t think outside the box yet) were still figuring out how to deal with him.
I cast vine whip, grab jo’s staff and try to pull it out of his hands. His passed his strength roll to hold the staff. He didn’t pass it to stay balanced high off the ground on his tiny platform. He falls and splat, breaks his neck. Probably my most satisfying game manouver in the last couple of years
In D&D 3.5 the first level spell Grease is a remarkably effective spell. It does what Dabbler just did, and there are all kinds of penalties for trying to do things while flat on your back, plus when you stand up you provoke Attacks Of Opportunity (which are basically a free attack for anyone within melee weapon range of you).
As a first level spell it’s not a cantrip as a geek such as Sydney should know (cantrips are 0 level spells), but it’s also not a 6th level spell as DaveB says in his author’s notes. There are some advantages for casting a spell in a higher level spell slot, but frankly using Grease in place of a 6th level spell is probably a very poor choice.
Grease is a foundational component of every dirty trickster mages toolset. (And dirty trickster casters are my favorite kind.) I’ve killed an umber hulk with nothing but Grease, Mage Hand, and the deep chasm the DM had just described in loving detail. :D
Probably the best was level 2? Or 3 at the time. Fought some bugbears, came back, befriended Minotaurs. Bugbears were controlled by a demon possessing a male drow. Bard made a check to convince the second in command to make a sneak attack, my wizard summoned a Celestial Badger which landed a smite behind it. And then minotaurs pulverized it and the leaders magical weapon ate the Demon’s Soul. :D
I played a Battletech tabletop game scenario where we the planetary defense had a set of mechs to work with by tonnage, invaded by a dropship with about twice the tonnage we had. We were supposed to split up and take them on in two battles. I picked up a Phoenix Hawk LAM (Land air mech) and flew up to meet them, taking a couple pot shots at the drop ship –to try and force them to land where we wanted– I rolled a critical hit on the dropship, forcing a piloting check and the guy running the game got this look on his face. The drop ship inverted and landed upside down and I got the kill count for every mech onboard as well as the dropship.
‘It still only counts as one!!!!’
The elephant wasn’t hiding dozens of smaller elephants inside it though
I never really played much, mostly due to all interested parties not really living anywhere close to an easily accessed central location. But one game we put together only lasted one session.
It was one of those ‘starter campaigns’ that was found on the early days of the internet, with a few tweaks by our DM (the only well-experienced player among us; everyone had played a little, but this guy had been running for years on both sides of the screen). We all rolled our characters, did the first town meetup, and set off to the local cave system to take out a kobold camp. Eventually we find a wide open space inside the cavern, completely dark; there’s a glimmer of light showing from the far side, but not enough to see. Our torches don’t give off enough light to illuminate the roof of this room, and the various magical attempts either fail throws or also don’t reach far enough.
“Fine,” says our rogue. “I shout, to try to get some idea of the size by the echoes.”
DM: “… Alright, if you’re sure. Roll for effecti–” The rest of us panic, but we can’t talk him out of it. “Ahem. Roll d12 for effectiveness.”
It’s only a 10, but it’s enough. “Your shout echoes off a vaulted ceiling, rebounding a dozen times before finally fading. As it dies away, your party starts to hear rustling and squeaking from above.”
Rogue, not one to learn quickly: “I roll 14 to hit with an arrow.”
DM: [shrugs and rolls] “You hit ’em. The noises become full-out squealing, and a dead stirge drops to the floor a few feet in front of your group. However, you don’t have any time to celebrate, because you’ve also awoken the other 23. They attack en masse.”
It was something of a wash, after that.
Part was tasked with collecting 100 kobold tongues as part of a potion ingredient to save the entire kingdom from a disease. In our travels we had happened upon a kobold village, went back there to “collect.” DM tries to tell us that we’ll be sward, this isn’t a good idea, etc. He had planned for us to go somewhere else, was trying to herd us that was. Ignored him, went to village.
My cleric, the artificer and the battlemage came up with a plan. Artificer had made a folding boat that could unfold into a full three mast galleon. Battlemage used Tensr’s Floating Disc and Artificer used a wand of levitate to crane game the goat into place while I stood up on a giant rock and cast Enthrall. With Enthrall it doesn’t matter *what* you talk about as long as the target creature(s) can hear you. So the cleric went on a 5 minute ramble about how glorious his penis was, every kobold in the village was all about it. Artificer used a wand of ventriloquism to unfold the boat and we picked through the sea of bodies for our tongues.
Huh, normally it’s the bard who’s trying to save the world with their genitals…
See, if it’d been me I would have simply paid the kobolds for their tongues and restored them via healing magic
I played an Illusionist/Summoner gnome in a low level online campaign once many years ago. Saved the party from what was almost an accidental TPK by the DM. Small party of my gnome, elven ranger, a death paladin, a human ranger, and I think a fighter (I’ve forgotten at this point). Ambushed by a group of low level trolls. In looking back, I think some mistakes were made in how regeneration worked, but we played it that non-fire damage could be regenerated but fire damage couldn’t.
Initial contact went very badly, resulting in quickly reaching a situation where the human ranger and the fighter were down, the death paladin was one hit away from down, and the elven ranger was half health with one troll still left. My gnome had been ignored to this point, just tossing a couple of magic missiles in or something. And the DM also noted that there were sounds of more enemies approaching in the distance. Queue our turn again, and the gnome went to work.
First up, sphere of invisibility on the whole party. Then Summon Celestial Badgers x 3. Due to flanking, the badgers were very slowly slightly whittling the troll’s health given his regen, but of course they only had a few turns of existence, and the troll would kill one each round. A second group was brought in (most of my slotted spells were actually summons at the time) to keep things going. And then on my third turn, I used my then highest level summoning spell to bring in a thoqqua (fire worm).
Thus began the legend of Bob the Blind Thoqqua. I don’t actually remember why we named the thoqqua Bob initially, but we did. I rolled a miss on Bob’s attack. Some Celestial Badgers were still in play, but of course Bob got the Troll’s attention, and the troll attacked him. Successful troll attack roll, but low damage roll, resulting in the troll doing more fire damage to itself from hitting Bob than the damage it did to Bob. This repeated AGAIN on the second turn of Bob’s existence. Bob missed, Troll hit, troll did more damage to itself than to Bob. On Bob’s final turn of existence, Bob actually successfully hit the Troll, taking it down to low health before vanishing. Our death paladin decided to drop out of the invisibility bubble and attack with his scythe, rolled two nat 20s in a row, took the Troll down. With more enemies approaching, my gnome conjured a floating disc to load the fallen on and we beat a hasty retreat back to town for healing.
Not a death itself, but while I was running a campaign one of my players did manage to set up a battle so they coud win in an amazing way.
The campaign started at 1st level, and we had played long enough everyone had earned 9th to 11th or so. Old, experienced group. The Druid, waaayy back at 1st level, got an item that could cast a few spells, and had the ability to summon your God. Literally “Hey, Zeus, come here!” Gods are generally not happy unless there is a GOOD reason for that. The Druid never used the item, for anything, ever, in over a year of play.
The party got in a fight with the Big Bad, who was only 12th level or so, but he had an artifact that unbalanced the power. It was a box that he could put gold in and pull out monsters on a 1 gold per hit point exchange rate (he was also rich.) He was also driven insane by the box’s power, and was very possessive of it.
Party bursts into room, and the Druid won initiative. Pulled out his item – which everyone had forgotten about by then – and called Thor to him.
Now this is all an me to figure out what happens.
Thor shows up, marches over to the Big Bad, takes his box, and disappears.
Big Bad, who is completely insane, uses the last wish on his ring to WISH FOR HIS BOX BACK.
Ok, you don’t mess with gods, so I reason that Thor wouldn’t have actually secured the box, because who would expect that? So Big Bad gets his box back.
Thor is now PISSED. He shows back up, takes the box again, looks at the party and says “You are going to take care of this, RIGHT?”
2 tales of games.
1) neverwinter nights old video game. multiplay- friend somehow rolled high on a beholder boss and it followed him around the server like a lost puppy as his pet. I heard him say “Puppy needs to play” (gaming place/multiple pcs) and let it loose in neversummer.
2) a gm forgot half the stats on a dragon. outside of play during break all the players determined that the dragon was an absentminded old fogey who forgot how to chew. which explained why the fighter was gummed and slobbered for an hour while the party rolled to rescue him
In a D&D 3.5 campaign where I was still trying to balance threats against a mid-teen level team, I had a party of 4 against a Blue Dragon. The sorcerer has a hair comb with destructive gems. The Thief steals the comb gets under the dragon and in a critical sneak attack fists the comb up the Dragon’s ass and fires off all the gems. The Dragon may have died of embarrassment.
Same team, fighting a lich in an underground cavern. The Druid summons the largest earth elemental, but out of the rock in the roof, above the lich. Over 100 ft. drop. I didn’t bother doing the calculations.
Okay, I’m stealing that idea for when my group’s finally able to meet again. My druid’s coming out of retirement just to pull that gag on somebody.
My 3rd Ed, 17th buff Cleric party rolled 1 on his spellcraft roll, and missed what kobolds were summoning. We “accidentally” dropped the avatar of the kobold god Kurtulmak with an over-powered sleep spell, cast by our war wizard (who that night couldn’t roll less than 18 on anything.) Out in the malstrom of screaming kobolds, lizard-men and one adult black, our berzerking Half-Orc barbarian had no idea what the hell that was… it just went away.
It’s wonderful to see how many responses you got with, “Anyone have any unusual takedown stories from your tabletop games?” Good to see that D&D is alive and well in 2020.
As an ump-teenth level wizard in 3.0 D&D, I used the Baleful Polymorph to turn a Pit Fiend into a herring. (In honor of the Knights Who Say “Ni”.) I didn’t expect to stand a chance in hell (pardon the pun) of overcoming both his spell resistance and saving throws, since I know my luck with the dice, but I somehow rolled absurdly high and our DM managed to tank the save.
In later editions it wouldn’t have worked, because the rules changed so that you can’t polymorph a target into a form that can’t survive- e.g., a herring on dry land.
I made note of the campaign date because I figured that one year later, when the little devil was able to return to the material plane, I’d better be prepared for his attempt at payback.
Our role-playing group had a setting with one city, and the rest of the world dominated by dragons and other monsters, where each player took turns at being DM and running their own scenarios in and around this city. Until one DM decided (for no particular story reason) to have it invaded and occupied by a massive army of high level characters (fighters, thieves assassins and so on).
Needless to say this rather changed the tone of the campaign and rendered various story lines and already planned scenarios, by other DMs, obsolete. Yet nothing had been offered to replace them. So no scenarios of how to fight this oppressive force, or a way to make them withdraw or even interesting stories to be told in this repressive new regime. They were just used as an ever-present force to compel players to do whatever the DM’s whim of the day was, on pain of having a large force of high level enemies show up and beat them into submission, or kill them.
Needless to say this army had to be defeated, even if the DM was rather opposed to that idea.
So my mage scouted out their principle fortress (which had arbitrarily appeared overnight), polymorphed into an innocuous-looking mouse. Finding it to have ridiculously thick walls, reinforced by adamantium and impervious to magical attack. The entrance was heavily guarded, in such a way that most of the defenders would be able to focus their attacks on anyone attempting to fight their way in.
Furthermore it had copious supplies of water, piped throughout the castle, and food stored internally, so could not be effectively sieged.
So I promptly used a spell to transform the water into a flammable oil, set up a few delayed means of setting it on fire, and snuck out the front door and telling the party to get ready to wipe out the defenders. Who were making preparations to rush out and attack us. Not because my mage had been spotted, but just because. However this did not bother me, as I had a wall of stone spell memorised.
As such, when they tried to sally forth, to attack us, I simply blocked off their only way out. Their own overdone walls and single point of entry defence worked against them, and they had no way of escaping their now burning castle. The fact that their plumbing took water to all parts of it, but was now full of flammable oil, helping to spread it throughout.
All the party had to do was counter any attempts to break down the wall of stone, but not having any mages amongst their huge army of high level characters, they had no easy way to do that. Whilst their high level thieves could use scrolls, the DM was fair in ruling that reading a burning scroll was not practical. And I had a back up wall of force ready, in any event.
The army was so big and so high level, that the total XP would have been sufficient to take every party member up by more than twenty levels, if not for that pesky rule about not being able to earn more than one level from a single encounter.
Of course wishes can be used creatively too. ;-)
playing a goblin bard in 5e once, wound up facing a gelatinous cube, was down to the wire and rolled for a bite attack. Nat20, my gob ate the slime cube.
That’s like when a dwarf attacked a pudding in YAFGC… with a giant spoon! :D
SPOOOON
My group once used a bench that had been turned invisible as a tripwire. The fighter and barbarian held each end and ran the length of the room, knocking everything back and down, so the rogue could sneak up and finish the job.
FYI: That’s … not what ‘tripwire’ means.
We needed to both deal with a fairly large pack of Drow raiders (led by several priestesses) and close the tunnel that connected their warren to the overworld. There was some plot about some demon-bred monster they had down there that they were preparing to release through that tunnel, and they had been raiding human villages to feed it. At the same time, they were scared of it. They didn’t want to ever let it get hungry because they couldn’t control it.
So our objective, of course, was to cut off its food supply while blocking the way to the surface world, and let the Drow below worry about how to deal with it getting hungry.
The mage had a spell that let him phase through rock. The DM had made this spell very dangerous – specifically if you rematerialized at the end of its duration you needed to not be occupying the same space as something else. We had already had one character explode (RIP, no remains). But he still used it to go peek at them and see where they were in the caves. And he showed back up, with time still on his spell. to report that they were rapidly approaching.
But I noted that his gear – everything he was carrying – it all phased into the rock too. So I started handing him more rocks, to stack inside an obelisk in the middle of the hallway. And, well, things being all phased, we were able to stack seven or eight times as much stone into that obelisk as it was made of. My thought was that if we timed it juuuuust right the spell would expire right as they passed it.
Being tremendously outclassed by the group coming up the shaft, we beat a hasty retreat to see whether we would get lucky with the timing. To make a long story short, we didn’t. They showed up way sooner than we thought they would.
They showed up way sooner, took one look at an obelisk that was now shining brightly magical, rightly suspected a trap, and dispelled it.
….
My only regret was that there was nothing intact enough to loot.
In the one and only D&D campaign I’ve taken part in, we were playing level 5 characters. I designed a Ranger, using a bow (which I had to roll to get, and lucked out in receiving). I had a favored enemy of Beasts, fighting style of Archery, archetype of Hunter, Hunter’s Prey, Horde Breaker, Extra Attack, proficiency +3, dexterity/constitution of 16, strength/intelligence/wisdom of 13. First time ever designing a D&D character, I had no clue how to actually play.
Our dungeonmaster pitted my party against some form of incredibly tough rats, rats that were meant to provide the entire party a challenge, including one boss monster rat that we were not intended to kill at all (it was meant to be unkillable).
Because of my stats, I was able to mop the floor, basically singlehandedly killing most of the monsters and getting the intended-to-be-unkillable boss-monster down to near-lethal range, because my character got bonuses for fighting that type of enemy in that type of situation and I rolled well with most of my rolls, almost never missing and almost always dealing high damage.
I accidentally made an OP character, without even trying. (I was literally just trying to fit a D&D character to my personality, choosing abilities that I thought suited my nature.)
The campaign fell apart soon after, but it was still a very good experience for me to have.
Once in shadowrun playing an immovable object tank type troll martial artist adept I was fighting a speedster and couldn’t hit them so I dropped grenades at my feet and tanked it to kill them.
In d20 modern my party used a petrified “vampire” as a toboggan down some stairs to kill ersatz the predator in a game that can be summed up as “poirot murder mystery on the titanic with the serial numbers filed off that gets interrupted by a predator hunt”. He wasn’t a vampire but my party refused to believe me….
I remember Spelljammer. Grease was my favourite spell. Sailing ships in space is one of the worst places to have the enemy grease your rigging.
Oh God, ARCHON IS DOOMED!
COME ON! You can’t make the enemy THAT overpowered!
SHARP STICKS! THEY HAVE SHARP STICKS!
Yes, but are they sharp pointy sticks?
I hope not. It’s already horribly one-sided as it is an Archon has maybe a 2 percent chance of winning. With sharp POINTY sticks? They’ll be lucky if they even all survive. Or any survive.
You is alive! Yay!
*wags tail*
Yeah sorry for not being very post-y lately. Pre-trial review got in the way. But when I heard someone was using sharp sticks, I couldn’t refrain from posting.
*gives a Yorpie Snax*
Yummy!
*gobble gobble*
Recovering from surgery, myself. Will be back to my long shifts again soon, so will be less vocal too.
Hey, sharp sticks can be a good start for an enemy getting their feet under them.
Well, I guess that once he was TOUCHING the vamp continuously, he wouldn’t have to worry about loosing *another* two levels. The only thing he would have needed to worry about was the vamp’s own effective 18/00(?) strength.
In my gaming history, I’ve seen a +5 dagger snap when a friend used my dice one day…while attacking a +3 or better high level Greater Devil.
The look of utter disbelief and surrender when my max level (1st ed) Bard failed his Planar Travel (psionic power) roll trying to shift from the 9th to 8th level of Hell, and the resulting random warp dropped us on the Prime Material (a “30” on my d30).
The shock on everyone’s faces when my Half Ogre was trapped behind the party when we were ambushed from the rear in a “living room.” After a round of not being able to do anything, he picked-up the “sofa” in the room and threw it at the biggest baddy in the attacking group…and rolled a nat20 to hit! (OHOK!)
A friend with a character whom was deathly afraid of the undead freaking out after failing his save and running away from a group of them in the Labyrinth of Madness…across a room that caused him to teleport back to the point where the undead were, causing him to flee across the room and teleport back… All because someone used a Passwall spell, causing them to appear in the first place.
Same friend in a low-level campaign…a spelless mage, critically hit for 3 points, reducing him to 1hp while trapped in a room being assaulted by goblins and kobolds…he managed to barricade the doors, but in such a way that the monsters managed to break-in through the bottom of the door. He held-off 20 goblins and 15 or so kobolds, killing over half of each group as they had to crawl in, with them coming in waves as they had to pull their companions out for them to get in.
Ah…good times, good times.
Oops… 18/76… It’s been a LONG time since I played 1st ed AD&D! lol
Got a couple. Funniest one was playing Pathfinder on Roll20 with one player playing a Dhamphir(sp?) Blackblade, myself a Tiefling Rogue/Gunslinger, and other friend playing a Assimir(sp again…)Paladin. Short and sweet, we met up with some bandits, Paladin tries to talk nice with them(didn’t know intentions at time). They start copping an attitude, I get bored and shoot one in the head(critted, naturally). I started getting lectured by the Paladin, until I had to stop and point out the chat log. Turns out, right after my attack roll was the attack roll from the bandit trying to gut him(in game, I pointed out the dagger he had quick drawed).
*beat*
“Well, that was a bad move. Let the punishment commence.” It did not end well…..
Gruesome Warning! the following is not recommended for children…
Many years ago my low-leveled Paladin was tanking for an equally low-leveled party, when we turned a corner in a corridor and encountered a Mage at close proximity. The Mage responded by summoning four Evil…things, which immediately proved to require magic weapons to hit (we had none).
Reasoning that there had to be a magical relationship between summoner and summoned I grappled the Mage. The DM ruled that wielded two-handed (gripped by belt and throat) a Mage did bludgeoning damage: d8 for two turns, d6 for three turns, d4 for four turns, d3 for 5 turns and then was useless as a weapon.
Combined with spells from the party, my temporary club did enough damage to kill all the summons. Sadly the Mage did NOT survive this impromptu use as a weapon…
In one campaign we were waiting for an attack of blue dragons. Everyone waiting impatiently on the battlements of some fortress like in lord of the rings, how’s and magic ready. I had a monk character, got the highest initiative, but had very little ranged attack to speak of. DM says the dragons are now viable, but too far for any ranged attack, do I hold action?
I answer, no, I grab the other monk next to me and dimension door onto the largest dragon’s head
Long ago I was playing a DnD wizard who was also a skilled alchemist, so he knew more about mundane chemistry than most low-tech folks. One time the PCs were being menaced by a large group of baddies in a big room with a swimming pool sized body of water in the center. I grabbed a dropped sword, and used a ‘Change’ cantrip to convert it to a similar mass of ‘dry ice’ and tossed into the pool. The resulting cloud of fog was big and thick enough to conceal us as we made our escape.
Had an adventure where the team got out of a really tight bind by someone, quite accidentally, seducing the warden of a prison by critical failure of intimidation. Played it to their advantage and ended up with the master keys, a new ally, the prisoner they were sent for rescued, and fleeing the detention block before Lord Vader (Yes, it was a Star Wars RPG) landed… also they set the AA canons to shoot at him on auto before fleeing, completely avoiding what was supposed to be a tense moment during the escape. They basically let Vader’s anger at such incompetence cover their escape instead. Good times! Especially when the elite squad started combing the city for them after that fiasco.
Solo’d a boss fight that the party bailed on me with, with marbles. They were fallout style servitor with massive guns and I was an agility character. Apparently the gm forgot to give them a way to stand up
Sharp sticks?!
HOLY CRAP!
These guys ARE prepared!
Yup, this is D&D rules alright. The group of bad guys has a huge pile of magic items, don’t actually use any of them. Giant pile of loot for the heroes!
They are using them, all around, one or two each, and being individually creamed by the locals.
They just aren’t acting like a trained team, and they had better if they are going to get a momentary “Act Two” before they go down.
is that a dbza reference I caught thrown in there?
I don’t have any D&D takedown stories quite as epic as some of the ones shared here, but I do have a couple fun ones.
My first story took place when my group was all at 3rd level or so, and we were all quite new to D&D. At this point, I hadn’t properly joined the campaign- I was just spectating, learning about the game and its mechanics, and deciding whether I wanted to create a character and join for real. I later did, after the DM let me control an NPC who’d been following the party for a while, but I’m getting off topic.
Anyhow, the party had run afoul of a group of six or eight orcs. Partway through the fight, our tiefling cleric looks through his spell list, and finds something that looks interesting: Command. For those of you who don’t know, Command is a low-level spell that allows the caster to speak one word, and force a single enemy to spend a turn doing whatever it was that the caster said, if said enemy fails a saving throw. The book gives a few examples of what this spell can do: saying “Drop” would make the enemy drop their weapon, “Flee” would make them run away, etcetera.
So this cleric calls upon the might of Tempus (his war-god), aims a finger at one of the orcs, and what does he say?
“Copulate!”
I won’t go into the details, but it took that orc and the orc nearest to him out of the fight for a while, and also slowed down several other orcs while they vomited. And one of them even took a few points of psychic damage. Meanwhile, we were all laughing our butts off.
My second story takes place about a year and a half later, when I gathered most of the group for a one-off Tomb of Horrors campaign, which our DM had kindly (albeit clumsily) ported to 5e. My character was a wood-elf druid who had avoided most of the traps by Wild Shaping into a giant spider and crawling across the ceiling.
At some point in the dungeon, we came across a room containing a mummy or something. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it was quite powerful, and hostile towards us. Our eldritch knight (that’s a specialized kind of fighter who can cast some magic spells, by the way) had found a magical club of some sort in the corridor leading up to the mummy’s room, though I kind of got the feeling that killing the mummy with the club would trigger some kind of nasty trap. That didn’t keep the eldritch knight from wanting to use it, though.
Anyhow, the eldritch knight (as our main tank) was leading the way with the magic club when we awoke the mummy, while I (a squishy spellcaster) was hanging back. Naturally, the mummy got up in the eldritch knight’s face and began attacking.
My first move was to cast Wall of Fire across the corridor, right in front of the eldritch knight, with the hot side facing away from her and toward the mummy. This was the strongest spell in my arsenal: it creates an opaque wall made of flame that deals substantial fire damage to everything inside it or within ten feet of one side of it. I hoped to make it harder for the mummy to see us to shoot us with any ranged attacks it might have, and to make sure it couldn’t attack us in melee without having to pass through the wall and take a ton of fire damage.
The wall also meant that we couldn’t see the mummy to shoot at it, but it turned out that didn’t really matter much: The eldritch knight’s club was magnetically attracted to the mummy. She didn’t have to see it to hit it.
After being burned twice by the wall, the mummy finally steps through it, moving to the side of the eldritch knight, and begins to cast what I can only assume was a nasty spell of some kind. Being on the cool side, it wasn’t going to get burned by the wall of fire again, and I didn’t have any of my most powerful spells left. I considered casting Moonbeam, a weaker area-of-effect spell, but I couldn’t do that without dismissing my wall of fire, which I didn’t really want to do. So, I took another look at my character sheet.
Now, because this was Tomb of Horrors, I was fully expecting my character to get killed off. Multiple times. So, instead of bothering with making paper character sheets for all three of the characters I prepared for the campaign, I downloaded a PDF character sheet template and filled that in instead. And the particular template I found included some of the more obscure combat rules in D&D 5e.
One of them was “Shove”.
The rest of the party saw the spindly little elf, who up to this point had been hanging back and slinging spells, abruptly charge forward, holding his druidic staff horizontally in both hands, and plant the middle of staff right in the mummy’s chest.
The mummy was pushed back into the wall of fire, and finally disintegrated. No nasty spells were cast, and no traps triggered. None that we ever found out about, anyway.
And then, later on, we all got pasted by this animate stone elephant thing. Oh well.
Some readers will find amusing
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8096183/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Natural-20
which is mostly not about Harry Potter but about Milo, a character from a universe where the D&D rules are exact and always followed. At one point, Milo invoked the Tower Shield rule. If you are hiding behind a tower shield, neither you nor any part of your encumbrance may be targeted.
The Tower shield is part of the encumbrance, so if you hide behind it, it protects itself from being targeted. By anything. If you like this sort of stuff it is extremely amusing.
There was also a Champions campaign I was in, in which the DM decided it would be amusing to kill one of my characters. He showed up with a speed 12 robot — characters were speeds 4-6 — with a 2D6 autofire armor piercing attack. He chanted ‘armor piercing, halves your force field, ignores all your bodily defenses.’
I responded ‘force field! Hardened defense!’ That cancelled the armor piercing. He was highly annoyed, but got what he deserved. He commented that the attack would have killed any other character in the campaign.
I had a witch named Claire, we were doing a canned module in Pathfinder which was based around Transylvanian horrors, the monster from Frankenstein, the mummy, werewolves, Her sister, (Lol) and we’re finally at the last boss which is a lich absorbing all the power from a god destroying lich which killed some of the most powerful gods of the realm. The area has a unhallowed effect that halves all positive energy effects cast by players.
I found out by accident that scrolls were at full power. I’d bought a scroll of Heal and had a feat that allows me to use them at my caster level instead of the normal one. I had the brilliant idea of telling the group “Hey guy’s I got this!” The DM smiled evily at me and since the big baddy was next, the lich cast power word kill. I failed misserably but on my turn my familiar cast the scroll and the lich rolled a 1.
The DM looked up at us and frowned. lifted up her screen and showed us the die. With his level it was the only way he could fail the roll. She smiled and congratulated us on the kill. Since I’d made a deal with my goddess Pherasma goddess of death who’d recharged my spells at the cost of never being able to ressurect again. I ended up helping to find lost souls find their way back home.
Creature from Frankenstein! Named Adam!
Dabbler: “Every tool in my box has…multiple uses.”
Grrl Power #310, panel 9 (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-310-dabblers-happiest-meal/):
Yep. That even includes “tools” that Dabbler has in her “box” that are made for using on the “tools” of others that are put in it…
Appologies if someone has brought this up, but I did not read all Comments….But in the First Panel is “Elastic-Man” fighting a Sontaran??? I recognize the armor.
Yes. Mr Amorphous DOES seem to be fighting an armored potato person.
Unusual takedowns? Let’s see, there’s the Shadowrun Decker hacking a vehicle’s Pilot program to ram a van through a storefront to mow down mooks, the classic grenade into an armored van “chunky salsa” effect, but I think my favorite takedowns have been in Anima Beyond Fantasy. Using a “cantrip” level spell (Move Object) to steal everyone’s weapons is a favorite, not for ending a fight but seriously unbalancing them at the start, similar level spell to conjure roller skates to escape a dungeon by lassoing a passing dragon (another PC’s familiar), but the actual takedown is a recent one. Group was attacked by a Pyrokinetic (Anima has distinct Psychics, Summoners, and Magicians, in addition to “Ki” users who are basically DBZ and Naruto knock-offs). Guy could teleport through fire and was hired to kill one of the PCs, a noble with an expansive estate. So he first appeared in the Lord’s personal forge, started taunting the party (my PC was in his own alchemy lab at the time) then ported to the manor house to set it all on fire. Party runs to the manor to try to save everyone except for our big bruiser who simply couldn’t move that fast so he was still in the forge when the Pyro teleports back into the forge fires. They get one round of melee in before my character steps in sightline of the forge, sees the fight, and throws the spell he’d been holding in case something needed to happen. Metamorphism is a strange spell, it is in effect the quintessential “witch’s curse,” it changes anything (with certain restrictions that are unique to the system) into a form of equal or lesser capacity (again, the exact terms are system specific) with the restriction that the new form is completely mundane (no magic, psychic abilities, or “Ki,” even if that form would normally have those abilities). So I turned him into a newt. While he was in a forge that had minutes earlier been forging steel.
That DOES look like Mr Amorphous is beating up a Potato person.
The vampire trick is more useful than it sounds. I’m pretty large and very strong. The last time I was attacked by multiple people was in the late 80s. A group of teenagers tried to roll me. There were five of them and I’d been drinking. So I grabbed the smallest one and used him as a bludgeon. It was only really effective on him and the first guy that I used him to hit. But it made the others run away.
Sidney… you really need to learn to stop asking questions for which you do not want the answer.
Or, already know! :)
Big difference between “I bet that has sexy applications” and “Dabbler has given specific examples… with diagrams… actually no wait, those are holo-photos, aren’t they?”
Can it, Hudson.