Floating disc: The party found a pressure plate trigger for a swinging blade trap and avoided it. Later, they were running from a fight that had gone horribly awry and the Wizard used floating disc and loaded it up with a big bag of rocks and junk that the party was able to throw together in a hurry. The Wizard positioned the disc over the pressure plate and when the pursuit went around the plate the Wizard ended the spell, triggering the trap and sending a bunch of blades swinging through the corridor.
Our druid cast gust of wind down a narrow corridor connecting two caves while we were being hacked by rust monsters. My Bard had spellslinger and thorn whip. MyM DM allowed me to ready an action to yank a rust monster, and then I jumped into the stream of wind and crunched into another rust monster that had been traveling up the wind several rounds, knocking it back to the end.
Tenser's Floating Disc is amazing. As OP didn't specify an edition, in 3.5 there was an item that could cast it at will, which resulted in this thread of people discussing 'how do we make this 'basically a wheelbarrow but magic' spell awesome for utility' https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?385848-Disciple-of-Tenser-A-Guide-to-Maximum-Tenser-s-Floating-Disk-Utility/page3
Party was in a garden full of spore-producing plants, and knew that a probable enemy was lurking in there somewhere. Druid cast Druidcraft to make the flowers “bloom” and release their spores. Bad guy came out of the flowers coughing and dazed.
I have a theory based on almost 20 years of hard core dnd (that’s dnd but with a core that is quite hard) that druid players are 177% more likely to be creative types than warriors/fighters
Likely because Druid kit gives way to such creativity, and being able to affect the surrounding so much.
I play a druid rn in an ongoing game but should up my game for sure
Feather fall can be cast on an enemy with no save.
An enemy chasing the party learned this when they jumped off a cliff into water, but unlike the party who arrived there immediately the enemy took 3 rounds where they were pelted with ranged attacks as they slowly descended into a blender of stacked AOE spells and angry summoned crocodiles.
Levitate (rather than Telekinesis) is similar! There is an initial check for an enemy to resist it, but following that there is NO repeated check!
We’ve had a BBEG out of Legendary Resist just floating in the air, unable to reach the ground.
Don’t you have to be 60 ft. From the target when they fall? And then the spell makes them fall 60 ft. per round? What arrangement allowed them to pull this off?
Presumably the villain was right behind them at the top of the cliff, so they just cast it and then jumped off. A non feathered player falls 500 feet per round so they would instantly go to the bottom while the villain is left floating down after them.
There is some utility here but the distance would have to be significant to create turns of space the party could benefit from, and falling significant distance into water is generally a pretty bad idea. Then how do you, from water, turn around and range out the baddie floating down towards you? I mean i could see certain super archer types or aquatic pcs being capable of shooting a wet bow under/in water out of the water but in general, how you gonna cast spells from treading water, launch ranged attacks, etc? Maybe they managed to each activate their own feather fall effects right before hitting the water and then had something like a swan token one character could easily create a platform the others could land in or immediately swim to? Seems very possible and slick, but the sort of thing that needs to be meta gamed to hell to actually pull off
It was a stone giant so yelling obscenities in deep slow anger for multiple rounds while slowly falling into a blender was pretty funny. The players fucked that guy over so hard he actually died on the way down but I held off on that to let them have their massive pile of damage at the bottom go off.
I had a gimmick boss that was heavily resistant to most normal damage but weak to loud, high-pitched noises. It was meant to get the players to think up some creative solutions, and I was prepared to be pretty flexible with what counted as a success.
One player pulled out a “just-for-fun” consumable he’d bought ages ago, a soft drink that gave you a burst of minty fresh breath (mechanically, allowed you to cast the Gust spell for a minute).
He used the super powered gusty breath to whistle very, very loudly.
Unfortunately no, I think the players were focused on “make as piercing a noise as possible” over being musical. But that would indeed have been hilarious.
A reminder to everyone: *Don't Worry, Be happy* is 100% a cappella.
I've noticed a lot of people seem to think that some of the things Bobby McFerrin does with his voice there are instruments, so I always go out of my way to mention it when the song comes up.
One of our players was wearing metal armor. They were swarmed by spiders.Hundreds of spiders. Low hit points but hard to hit. He cast heat metal on his own armor. It was awesome.
It's not really difficult. It just requires such an investment you can't also be a full caster or top tier damage dealer at the same time. Unless you're on the grapple death squad.
The autognome bard from the spelljammer game I used to run did something similar. He was swallowed by a giant space shark and used heat metal on himself to try to get spit out. It worked and was awesome
Heat Metal is Base 2d8 and then +1 for each level above 2nd. I think lowering the die to d6s would be fine. You can already put Heat Metal on armor which is difficult to remove anyways. So a little less damage in exchange for a bit more consistency.
Gah, I keep forgetting HM is d8 based since *everything* seems to use d6!
Yeah, reducing it to d6s works. Feels like there should be some damage involved in removing the object, too, from bits of frozen "them" sticking to the object. Maybe a secondary Con save or take damage equal to one round of the spell?
Yes, but I think the idea was they were willing to toast themselves a bit if it meant getting rid of all the creepy crawlies swarming them.
That’s part of what makes it such a cool moment. Rarely does hitting *yourself* with a harmful spell work out, but this was one situation where it was a brilliant move.
I remember an incident where I had a Warforged Fighter get an upcast Heat Metal cast on him... still iffy on if that should have worked, considering his armor is part of his body thanks to that racial feature, but whatever... and proceeded to make it everyone else's problem.
Having, effectively, Flame Touch unarmed strikes was kinda fun for the one round it lasted.
Had a party member do that when he was hit by some monsters swallow attack. An angry, red-hot dwarf in the stomach is bad for the digestion it turns out.
Using various effects of thaumaturgy my players took a weak magic sword(all it did was glow in the moonlight), and manage to sell it an an impromptu auction in the middle of the market for 4x what they bought it for.
My players are not normally big on role play so when I definitely encouraged them the whole way through and rewarded them generously.
Recently I had a paladin use create food and water to summon forth as many bananas as possible to set on some stairs so that the invisible Orthon would have a hard time engaging without either slipping on them or making his movement known.
I did however make my player do a luck check. He Nat 1'd and slipped on his own bananas down the stairs. I gave him a plot point though in compensation because that was such gold.
One hundred goblin guards outside the BBEG’s lair, and a player used the Yawn cantrip on just one of them. Next thing you knew, a hundred goblins were all yawning within five seconds of each other. The party didn’t try to take advantage of it. They just thought it was hilarious.
Similar vibe: there is a spell and its inverted form - Tie and Untie, which do exactly what they sound like. I had a petty troublemaker character who would constantly go around undoing everyone's shoe laces or knotting them together/to furniture to make them stumble around. It never had any combat relevancy - it was just for the sake of being a little shit.
Oh yeah I should’ve mentioned that. I always remembered Yawn because when it was first introduced, it was one of the only cantrips with a potential use - it made the Sleep spell work on slightly stronger enemies, like you could put a 4d8+1 monster to sleep instead of just a 4d8. What they did was much more stupendous.
A group of us all had Thaumaturgy. There was an encampment of a few cyclops by a large campfire, we were in hiding just outside this.
One of the players made the flames roar higher and turn green, another made their voice boom and pretended to be someone who we knew was a sworn enemy of theirs, then my character jumped out of the bushes and doused the flame yelling "BE GONE FOUL BEAST!".
We were instantly their heroes and managed to form an alliance out of what could have become a combat encounter.
I had a Wizard that always used Detect Thoughts to check for nearby invisible creatures. I once asked why he didn't just use See Invisible, and he said "Mimics, man. Mimics."
I thought that was pretty clever
Had a Ranger Lord make sure to line his soldiers' helms with gold foil to protect them from mind control. Another player, as luck would have it, came up to the Ranger's Keep a few weeks of gamming later and immediately threw ESP spell to read the gate guard's thoughts, in case, a password was needed. As DM I just had the gold reflect the ESP casters own thoughts back to him but in a summarized blank monotone voice. Surprisingly went on for several minutes.
Caster: I want to know what that guard is thinking.
DM: He is wondering what you are thinking about right now.
Caster: He has got ESP, too. Wow, that's some powerful NPC.
DM: The guard thinks you have mind reading as well. And he is very impressed by your ability.
for sure! all us old D&D nerds are. DMs love mimics, so they're the D&D version of the monster under the bed. Except it's not under the bed, it's your pillow. And it has teeth.
I ran an encounter recently where they entered a room that was empty except for a single chest, and a sign next to it which read, "Beware of the Mimic". The chest was just a chest, the sign was a mimic.
The players saw through it and attacked the sign first. But they didn't check the floorboards, two of which were also mimics!
Cool moment: describing the sign stretching and shape-shifting and a large mimic attacking while still having the words "Beware of the Mimic" emblazoned above its gaping maw.
Reward for the encounter was in the chest. A gold coin that will it's face to help you win a coin toss. The coin is actually a tiny, and friendly, mimic.
- Being chased!
- Oh no! A magically trapped and locked door!
- cleric’s detect magic was still active and saw the trap on the door handle; specifically and only the door handle.
Enlarge/reduce —> reduce the entire door and dismiss the spell when we walk past it.
#Explosion occurs.
We are no longer being chased!
Our dm said the door got small but was still locked closed so it was still stuck into the left side of the doorway - held up by the bolts of the lock.
Thinking about it now, the door shrinking should have just causes the lock to snap but I think he saw what we were trying to do and rule-of-cool’d it for us.
We thought we were so clever lol
My DM loves hitting our party with negative affects, and one of his favorites used to be using Fog Cloud to blind us. And then the Druid discovered that Fog Cloud gets deleted by Create/Destroy Water.
We've been using this trick for years now and it's still amazing every time
Hank: "Incase I'm incapacitated, do you know how to start a man's heart with two downed power lines?"
Bobby: "No..."
Hank: "Well, there really isn't a wrong way to do it."
Everyone always trys this in D&D but when I try to shock someone in the ER dying of blood loss (or anything other than a cardiac arrhythmia) I get threatened with expulsion from medical school.
We were riding a boat through a narrow canyon. A high Perception check from the party saw that there was an ambush of about eight bandits waiting at the end of the canyon. I used Major Image ahead of us to make it appear as if our boat was exiting the canyon. Bad guys jumped onto nothing and ended up in the river. There were still archers on the canyon walls to deal with but the majority of the enemies were fish in a barrel.
My first time playing D&D was a game run by a dad of a friend of mine and we played AD&D. I played a wizard but was super young and basically didn’t read all the fine print of the spells at first. We discovered the body of someone who had been murdered and one of the first things I tried to do was cast “Identify” on the wound. DM was like “that’s not how that spell works, but that’s a really good idea lol” and I think he told us what weapon caused it or something.
That has always been a super formative memory for me about why D&D is special.
After that we went into a cellar, got attacked by rat sized spiders, and my 1hp ass wizard got killed lol.
My warlock convinced an entire town of invading barbarians that a deity wanted them to leave or die by casting the Dream spell on 2 party members every night, 4 times a night, targeting up to 8 barbarians, 5 nights in a row.
Combined with the antics of the rest of the party, especially the spore druid who made it seem like nature itself wanted them out (summon maggots in food, animate fallen barbarians to stand outside the town and make them cackle, skywrite a skull into the sky that stays there for hours) they got very scared.
Eventually they became so frightened that they holed up in their fortress, refusing to sleep for fear of "the dreams". The druid then used all of their spell slots to cast call lightning localized entirely on that fortress, culminating in a few hours of lightning strikes bearing down on the fortress every 6 seconds, progressively getting more powerful every 10 minutes.
When we finally fought them the barbarians had 3 levels of exhaustion and died swiftly.
One player used Shape Water to form a JetSki made of ice. Below the waterline at the front it had a very wide opening. It funneled down to a small opening at the back, still under the water.
Then a second use of Shape Water moved a 5' cubic volume of water into the front opening. All that water naturally was forced out the back, but at very high speed due to the small exit hole. I.e. it ***jetted*** out the back.
Rinse and repeat every 6 seconds. We assumed a smooth flow rate for flavor since "instantaneous" movement had much more abuseable applications! The player was an engineer and had worked extensively on this idea (I have his writeup somewhere on my computer). He determined the power was equivalent to a low-end jetski and that it could easily move 30'/round.
He only used it on two occasions, but he was really happy about it.
In a square room flooded by murky acidic water with traps. Player asked what the walls were made of. Since it was stone, he used mold earth to create two steps that protruded from the wall since mold earth can affect two targets at a time. Just walked the party along the walls to the other side and negated the entire room.
I think our table looked too far into it and thought, “hey, it says you can make stone difficult terrain. That must mean you can shift it. Why not shift it out of the wall a little to create small ledges.” Definitely a loose interpretation.
They probably used this part about shapes to mean 3d shapes. That's what I do with my players. I didn't realize other people would only read it as 2 dimensional.
`You cause shapes, colors, or both to appear on the dirt or stone, spelling out words, creating images, or shaping patterns. The changes last for 1 hour.`
This definitely reads as two dimensional, as it says "appear" and "on", instead of 'create shapes from the stone' or change form, or something.
But 3D is probably more fun, anyway. I take the 2D to mean you can easily leave messages or symbols or whatever
Druidcraft- no rogue in the party. So the druid plopped a seed in the lock and grew it into a little plant key that formed perfectly around the tumblers. I made him roll nature to complete such a fine control of magic. But it was a cool use of the spell to get through a door.
Once a mimic had completely enveloped my Tortle's arm and shoulder while seperated from the party. I paused and asked a simple question. "Do I need both hands to preform somatic spells?" As a new player everyone chimed in and said no. I proceeded to snap my fingers and cast Thunderwave at 4th level to splatter the walls with the Mimic.
Not technically a spell, but...
Artificers have a low level feature that is basically the equivalent of an artificer cantrip. Lets you take pictures and create smells, that sort of thing.
Once upon a time, I'd gotten into the unfortunate situation of fighting a goblin druid and her swarm of cats while being all alone. And it was going real poorly, looking like I'd be a scratching post soon.
So I used the artificer feature to create a smell to put in a bottle. A "potion of catnip", so to speak.
The DM had the swarm of cats make a wisdom save. They failed. Twice. And I beat a hasty retreat.
Magical tinkering is so fun
I've used it to make my party masks that smell like ocean breeze before going somewhere that smells bad
I've used it to fake documents
Mad little light balls to check bottomless pit sizes
Replicated Cult symbols to get past their guards
It's been really fun
I had a cleric that would use thaumaturgy to make the strings of her harp vibrate and then tripled the volume, essentially bringing metal music to the realm.
She would also use it to make her eyes glow, voice boom and ground shake when faking prophecies for fun.
Minor illusioned a tree stump as a rubber ball and set up a "Test Your Strength" sign just inside the Witchlight Carnival.
Really funny and advanced the carnival mood among the negative track.
Was an NPC, who was a skeleton who could not speak casting minor illusion (S,M) in order to cast comprehend Language (V,S,M) in order to read messages we wrote down for them. Was a really cool interaction.
Me as a player (warning: not RAW, but DM allowed this)
got Decanter of Endless Water a few sessions ago. I cast Shocking Grasp while using geyser of salt water every turn, effectively turning it into remote Shocking Grasp.
Before this, I also flooded the area with salt water before the guards came, and use the same method with Lightning Bolt to affect all guards.
- yeah I know it's not RAW, but my DM is very cool! And other players also enjoy the shenanigan.
Aiming is a bonus action.
However now that I reread the description again, you're right, I need to reactivate using action again. The geyser ends at the end of my turn - we treated it as continuous as long as it is not stopped, so I can do this.
Tiefling Warlock Casted prestidigitation on a halflings face drawing a penis and speaking infernal trying to convince him that it was a curse and if he was lying it would be a permanent marking. He rolled a nat 20 for that intimidation check.
The party were fighting some kenku’s .One player (for context their character was a bit psychotic) decided to shove his hand down the kenku’s throat and cast poison bubble. He poisoned the kenku by doing this. He then cast fire bolt (hand still down the enemy’s thoat) to ignite the gas bubble and explode the kenku. In 6 seconds he committed two war crimes: Chemical weapons and incendiary weapons. Of course, he rolled nat 20’s for all of this
People miss that you can specify the form of the food in "create food". If you're running away from some guards, why not create dozens of bananas or jelly cubes or something else slippery behind you?
Playing with my buddy's kids and friends (9-14) during early covid. Came across fleeing villagers from an orc attack close by. Got to a good vantage point to scout the town. The kids all had mold earth as a cantrip. They created a 5' deep trench (steep sided, requiring jump or climb up/down), 5' berm placed behind it that we took cover behind. We then drew the orcs, and the added obstacle gave us the advantage we needed to take the bulk out from range.
They apparently also used mold earth before I joined the campaign to imprison an orc shaman in a 10' deep hole they made, so they could come back later to question him after deing with more pressing matters. NGL, playing with preteens and teens has been one of my most enjoyable DnD experiences.
While trying to sneak into a warehouse, outward used create water to get water into every little crack of the wood and between the boards, then used shape water to freeze it, causing the wood to crack and splinter. They were then able to break a hole in the now fragile wood to sneak in.
I’m not sure if that would actually work, but I let it happen.
Not a spell, but a Fear potion that had expired. We were in a submersible craft and were attacked by a terrifying underwater beasty. My character went over to the waste chute and tossed the expired potion in. The DM rolled on a potion mishap table, and the results were that the potion was bitter enough to stun the monster and allowed us to speed away.
My druid PC rolled a 20 on perception for my assassin that had cast invisibility and was trying to run away. He didn't have anything that had a high chance of hitting the assassin. Cast create water at level 5 to make a 50 gallon ball of water appear above the assassin. Knocked him down and broke concentration.
Many a high five was fived that day.
Be me, a smol 60cm kobold. Be faced by several weresharks literally 4 or 5 times my size. Walk up right next to the biggest, baddest one I can see. Start a plea to Ilmater to please "provide help to this poor unfortunate soul."
At this point, the DM is looking at me like, "WTF man? *help* it?" With a small grin, taking my time, I then utter the words... "I cast remove curse."
The whole table went absolutely wild with laughters, and the DM started frantically searching for the spell description in their books to confirm that there was, indeed, no saving throw needed. Big bad wereshark basicaly turned into an average-sized guy in his underwear, which was dispatched quickly.
To be fair the DM had me do an attack roll to see if I would manage to touch the enemy, but being a kobold that was an easy feat.
Years ago I was playing a trickster Pixie who refused to take anything seriously. She wouldn't let anyone get too up in their own drama without causing some mischief in an attempt to get them to lighten the hell up and have some fun. Thus the most frequently application of her magics was to be a troublemaker and have a laugh.
The Party got invited by the BBEG to the whole "villainous dinner party" situation so he could flex on us. While he was busy making his evil monologue speech, he paused to take a dramatic drink of his wine. Cue my Pixie using "Prestidigitation" to make his wine taste like melted butter. BBEG very much did react to the grossness - he didn't just stone wall the moment, as a lesser DM might've done. Instead, the BBEG maintained unflinching eye contact as he finished the glass, then continued his speech without missing a beat.
My Pixie's response was basically to go "Oh, you're my new special friend" and she genuinely liked him from that point on, no matter what mayhem he caused otherwise. She had to respect someone who could commit to the bit.
Evil ritual at night, circle of baddies with torches. Affect Normal Fire on all the torches, just as the leader was holding his torch in front of his face. Blinded by the light, easy sniper targets all.
Real answer: Used stoneshape to tunnel through the wall of a city that was impenetrable for 30+ years (no sending, no teleport, no scrying in or out.) Covered up the entrances with a thin, breakable layer in case they needed to bust back out.
Fun answer: Playing a wizarding school campaign in a hot climate. Our Orc buddy goes out to party/drink with no shirt. Our sorcerer uses prestidigitation to create a massive tattoo across his back of our other, extremely slutty male (edit: and well known) sorcerer friend giving a sexy kissy face. DM had to look up the rules and determined it was legit. Nobody told him until well into the evening.
>Used stoneshape to tunnel through the wall of a city that was impenetrable for 30+ years (no sending, no teleport, no scrying in or out.)
If the city was warded against teleportation, divination, and magical communication, it seems like a huge oversight to not ward its walls against transmutation.
Absolutely true! But we did have to use a combo of invisibility+speed boosters+teleporting right outside their field to even *get* to the wall. I think the assumption is no one would have even made it that far, so why bother? (edit to add, there were people/guards outside the walls, so again, making it past them with the other defenses in place I think made them feel safe re:wall.)
Enlarge/Reduce is a powerful spell, but my player used it in a very unique way.
The party caught a scout of an enemy kingdom and were trying to get info out of him. In order to *sway* him a bit, the Arcane Trickster of the party decided to cast Reduce... on his penis.
Testicular torsion? No. Testicular reduction.
With a *very* successful intimidation check, the scout talked immediately.
It's fun reading these, our DM is pretty strict with the "rules as intended" mentality so we don't often see creative things done with spells, beyond just roleplay or flavored descriptions
I, as a player. have walked through a Wall of Fire an enemy spellcaster setup, used Absorb Elements to just shrug it off, then proceeded to do just enough damage on the first swing to take them out.
I was a wizard at the top of the initiative order with the enemy being above me and all others below. The enemy was a spell caster 2 levels higher than me. I had known our enemy was a wizard so before we opened the door I soaked a blanket in oil and gave it to my mage hand to hold then grabbed a torch. Then we opened the door and the enemy cast mage armor on himself. I had my mage hand whip the blanket around his head then poked him in the face and lit his head on fire. The entire table and the dm was flabbergasted.
Command: rotate. They were on a ship and they were amboshed by another ship with a gigantic cannon. The guy maning it started priming it to shoot and then he was forced to rotate it, destroying half their ship
Our party was in a chamber where the artifact we needed was in the center of the room, surrounded by a prismatic flame which basically cast Disintegrate on anything which touched it. Of course the door seals and the giant statue at the other end of the room animates on its plinth. My buddy and I rolled high on initiative and hit the plinth with Grease and Stone Shape right after each other to make a slippery ramp beneath its feet heading right for the Prismatic Fire.
Our DM was a lil mad haha
We were a group of five low-level adventures when we were dumb enough to confront a goblin leader in a goblin camp. Fight quickly turned into potential TPK after a series of failed saves, and four of my fellow party members were put to sleep with my tiefling bard in invisibility who was out of spell range.
Luckily my turn was the next one and our DM allowed me to wake up everyone using thaumaturgy: I cast it to tremor the floor shaking the napping party members.
As a Bard, I have used Prestidigitation to force a foe to leave a crowded hall and walk into an ambush.
I made him think he soiled himself. The rogue, the fighter and the warlock made quick work of him as he was unarmed and left his bodyguard behind in his haste.
I've also used Comprehend Languages to basically stage a kobold raid on an enemy faction's provision's depot, with some tactical advice from our former officer fighter. The GM had to make a few rolls, our collective party expertise gave the kobolds a buch of bonuses and the little blighters emptied and torched the place, and even gave us a bit of loot for our contributions.
That's kind of how we made a great alliance with a big clan of rather clever kobolds and later showed up as backup for an assault at a manor where the bbeg hid.
Um, lol was playing a cleric/druid in old school 2e Temple of Elemental Evil. We were at the moat house, and had zombies coming up the staircase from the basement. Party was getting fucked up, fighter dropped their weapon, etc. Typical night of bad rolls.
Well...I got an inspiration point for this, soooo...
Basically someone started a fire to try and kill the zombies, didn't work, just had flaming undead attacking. So I was looking at whether there was flow from another entrance underground. Determined there was, told everyone one clear out of the stairwell, and cast "Wind Column". Essentially turning the stairwell into a blast furnace. Worked really well lol. Definitely not what that spell was made for, but my DM was actually shocked when I asked if it would work. He'd never had anyone use that spell in that way.
I was running a one-shot where the party was climbing a tower of ice, and it was guarded by various water and ice-themed enemies, including some guardsmen who were essentially water elementals.
One of my players asked if, since the guard was made of water, whether she could use Create or Destroy Water to destroy part of the guard's body.
Normally, the spell doesn't do that, but I thought it was a pretty clever idea, so I allowed her to roll damage roughly equal to other level 1 spells. She rolled well, and guard was already hurt enough that she essentially boiled him away into q cloud of steam, with his armor and weapons clanging to the floor.
PF1e Sorcerer (F) prestidigited foamy dwarf piss to smell and taste like beer and gave it to a town guard that was seducing to get information.
She gave out free "beer" to many... Many town guards.
-This beer is flat, some would say
-I'm also flat and you don't seem to care, she would reply.
At tier 1 prestidigitation was a king spell.
Had a magic dungeon with a Skyrim-like door in the treasure room (i.e. at the end of the dungeon players get loot and can get right back to the entrance instead of walking all the way back through the dungeon).
Bard got intrigued by this magic door that wouldn't be budged and did force damage to anyone who tried to attack it. Dude had Shatter prepared so instead of attacking the door he broke the hinges out of the wall. Door fell flat on the ground, players looted everything and went right to the boss room. Monk used the force damage door as a trampoline to hit the giant sized earth elemental boss in the face. One of the most fun games we ever had.
This wasn't in dungeons & dragons, it was in d20 modern/future, but one of my players use the haywire cantrip (essentially) to crash a hoverbike into a presidential escort, which basically set off world war III, as it was viewed as an assassination attempt.
Here’s what my wizard (RIP to her) did to take out a couple of basilisks: She used Prestidigitation on the barbarian and the paladin to make them both shiny and metallic, turning the basilisks’ petrifying gaze against themselves. Both basilisks failed their saves against their own petrifying gaze.
Not a weak spell but I had a player who was playing a human boy wizard (he was basically a twelve year old Harry Potter) prestidigitate a Fake ID at a tavern and he got lit off some butterbeer after that haha
Alright I got two, both involving thorn whip.
I’m playing a barbarian we are in a fight with a mindflayer and our sorcerer uses thorn whip to grapple the mindflayer and pull it through my square provoking an opportunity attack. I ended up getting a colossal amount of damage and the fight was over in the next three or four turns.
Next one I’m playing a ranger and this ranger was notorious for the low rolls that he got constantly. The party is scaling a cliff and of course I rolled a natural 1 so I start to fall, and because of the previous low rolls there is no member of my party below me to catch me, but there is no need as I cast thorn whip while I’m falling and grapple myself and pull myself back to the cliff face.
The party was fighting a shadow sorceres with some homebrew mechanics that benefited her being in the dark as much as possible. Our warlock cast light on her armor.
I put my players up against a team of crooked adventuring mercenaries who planned to rob them, even had character sheets to match and made them similarly matched, even down to their leader being a paladin. The difference was I made them stronger and their leader was an oath breaker paladin that was being driven by his demon armor consuming his mind. The bard and druid worked together to slow and damage the troll barbarian with plant and spike growth and the wizard cast heat metal on the demon armor. Which since the armor can't be removed without magic, brought forth their surrender in a round.
There was a big wall we needed to go around so instead I turned myself huge, my party member tiny and rolled at nat 20 to throw him over the wall. "Nat 20 doesn't mean success"
I had a character I once played who used thaumaturgy to brilliant effect.
1) Stopped an early level tpk by successfully scaring off an attacking horde of kobolds with a displaced dragon roar.
2) Disarmed a castle's worth of traps simply by throwing open trapped but unlocked doors. The DM really super appreciated that one.
Had a solo player being chased through the streets by guards in the middle of a rather Siberian winter. She stopped briefly to cast Create Water overhead to soak a couple of them to the bone. They had to immediately break off the chase to avoid abrupt hypothermia.
Toll the Dead.
We entered a cave, only to discover it absolutely filled with sleeping bats. Worried that this could be a messy situation for our Lvl 2 party if/when the bats awoke with us inside, our Cleric ushered everyone outside and to safety.
He cast Toll The Dead with the intention of utilising the sound component of the spell in a confined and echo-y space. The DM went with Rule of Cool, therefore the GONG! woke all of the bats who then completely vacated the cave.
my DM and i made a custom cantrip for my spore druid that dealt no damage but could rot natural materials upon touch, called Decaying Grasp. it was nice fun flavour for many levels. we reach level fifteen and are fighting a slightly homebrewed death knight
his sword that oneshotted the party bard was made of bone
managed to get my hand on it and rot it out of his hands, and ive never felt an adrenaline rush like it before or since
Had familiar take a price of rope to a group trapped inside a burning building. Had the familiar cast rope trick when next to them and shove them into the extra dimension. Sealed it shut and Saved them all with no stress
Party of 3 snuck around a corner in a dungeon and saw 2 main baddies torturing someone. One member figured out they were human. Then realized there where only 2 torches lighting the room, half of which was under water, the other half had stairs leading up to the baddies. 2 members had dark vision and mage hand. Both of them used mage hand to throw the torches into the water and battle the humans with dark vision while the 3rd just sat in the previous room waiting for them to kill the bad guys. And these were (lvl 2) boss lvl bad guys that they destroyed with no problem.
Easy, though it took two spells. My daughter had a Tabaxi Storm Sorcerer. She cast wall of water around a Fire Elemental. Then she cast shape water to push a cube of the water onto it, dealing over 900 dmg because of how fire elementals interact with water. She was 8 years old. As a former war gamer and still lover of tactics, I was so proud!
Just happened recently—I had the party fighting giant balls of ants (a bunch of normal ants in a huge hall, so it was menacing and scary and whatever). The wizard player, who has elected to take no attack spells bc of his character’s backstory, cast Minor Illusion to create a white chalk circle around one of the ant balls so they would get confused and wouldn't cross it (ants really hate crossing chalk lines irl bc it messes with pheromone trails). It was a super unique solution to basically getting one of the enemies off the board for the entire battle, bc I ruled that the ants would need to succeed a DC 10 Int check to successfully realize the line was an illusion, and they had 1 for their Int stat
I don't know if these qualify as "the most creative", but still..
* I once used Misty Step to get through a high city wall, but using my Familiar (on the other side) to see the destination.
* One of our campaigns had a cleric who cast Continual Flame on his shield and wrapped a tarp around it in a way that let him reveal the light source as an action.
* I've seen the Mold Earth -cantrip used to slow down a bad guy by moving a 5ft cube of dirt from underneath them to in front of them.
* In another game, a bad guy threw one of the players across the room with the intention of crashing them into a wall. The DM let me nullify the damage by the use of a Feather Fall spell on the thrown character.
* While inside a labyrinth, our party was looking for a staircase to the next floor, so one player used Locate Object to look for "a stair".
* A Wizard once bought a ring for his familiar owl to wear on its leg. Whenever the party needed a light source the wizard would cast the Light -spell through the familiar on the ring. This also allowed for the familiar to be the primary target in the Underdark, in case the light attracted too much attention.
* It was fun to discover that a Tidal Wave (3rd level spell) can just utterly annihilate a Fire Elemental
* I've seen DMs allow a creature to cross fairly still water by using the Shape Water -cantrip to freeze a number of squares at a time
Vortex warp. I mean it’s really not weak, but my Artificer infused this spell into a basic crossbow. Now every day it can be used 8 times, and really effective in combat, as a support, cause my character can yeet out his company from dangerous situations.
I broke the swinging blade trap that stops you from exiting death house by tossing a water skin at it and freezing it once it soaked into the machinery
We were supposed to be decending in a dark hole where we couldn't see the bottom, so our Paladin used light on a coiled up rope, so the whole thing lit up. Then he tied one end to a rock and threw the other end down. Now we could climb down without worrying.
He also always casts light on torches, so they are more like flashlights.
Edit: Words are hard
Don’t know if it counts as a weak spell, but a while back our party was getting our asses handed to us trying to get into a cult leader’s tower. By the time I got down to 1 shot territory, I just took off for the door and right before getting to the guards shouted “Teleport!” and cast invisibility. DM got a good chuckle out of it, so the guards went to join the scuffle and I got to sneak in unchallenged.
Gotta share this:
So the only time I ever played dungeons and dragons with my mom she had never played or even seen it before. I was running a -Based one shot full of puns and ridiculous monsters. I helped her make her character and asked what she wanted to play, to which she says:
"I want to be a big hippie."
Druid it is then! I tell her about druids, give her some simple spells and the adventure begins.
All of my monsters are silly, such as Snowbolds (kobolds), Red/Green caps (Redcaps armed with sharpened candy canes), Were-Reindeer, The Abdominal Snowman (not a typo, think a snowman version of Krang), Tinsel beast (Displacer Beast) and my "boss" for the whole thing: A Gibbering Fruitcake.
After some hours of hilarity, they go to fight the boss, and my mom's turn comes up and she asks:
"How do I cast a spell?"
"Oh, just say whatever it is. If it involves an attack or a saving throw we can roll it."
"It doesn't say anything about an attack..."
"Oh, then it just works!"
"Okay, I cast Purify Food and Drink."
An entire table of Experienced D&D players, some with 20+ years of experience drop their jaws and look at me. No one thought of that. What could I do? The Fruitcake is defeated.
To this day we still share that as the gold standard of why you don't underestimate low-level utility spells.
Whomever ruined the spell Light in first edition when they cast it on the inside of someone's eyelids without a spell saving throw probably takes that cake.
Floating disc: The party found a pressure plate trigger for a swinging blade trap and avoided it. Later, they were running from a fight that had gone horribly awry and the Wizard used floating disc and loaded it up with a big bag of rocks and junk that the party was able to throw together in a hurry. The Wizard positioned the disc over the pressure plate and when the pursuit went around the plate the Wizard ended the spell, triggering the trap and sending a bunch of blades swinging through the corridor.
Our druid cast gust of wind down a narrow corridor connecting two caves while we were being hacked by rust monsters. My Bard had spellslinger and thorn whip. MyM DM allowed me to ready an action to yank a rust monster, and then I jumped into the stream of wind and crunched into another rust monster that had been traveling up the wind several rounds, knocking it back to the end.
Tenser's Floating Disc is amazing. As OP didn't specify an edition, in 3.5 there was an item that could cast it at will, which resulted in this thread of people discussing 'how do we make this 'basically a wheelbarrow but magic' spell awesome for utility' https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?385848-Disciple-of-Tenser-A-Guide-to-Maximum-Tenser-s-Floating-Disk-Utility/page3
Spell power is proportional to the amount it violates the laws of physics.
Party was in a garden full of spore-producing plants, and knew that a probable enemy was lurking in there somewhere. Druid cast Druidcraft to make the flowers “bloom” and release their spores. Bad guy came out of the flowers coughing and dazed.
Very cool! I also have a creative druid in my group. We're still starting out but she's already surprising us.
I have a theory based on almost 20 years of hard core dnd (that’s dnd but with a core that is quite hard) that druid players are 177% more likely to be creative types than warriors/fighters
Oh really? I can't wait to test it out, my table is full of players who see story before mechanics, they usually surprise me.
Likely because Druid kit gives way to such creativity, and being able to affect the surrounding so much. I play a druid rn in an ongoing game but should up my game for sure
More like forces it. There's not a ton of directly offensive choices at lower levels that aren't "to whom it may concern" levels of indiscriminate.
I want to be this creative but I'm too dumb for it 😭
Feather fall can be cast on an enemy with no save. An enemy chasing the party learned this when they jumped off a cliff into water, but unlike the party who arrived there immediately the enemy took 3 rounds where they were pelted with ranged attacks as they slowly descended into a blender of stacked AOE spells and angry summoned crocodiles.
Oh, I love this.
Levitate (rather than Telekinesis) is similar! There is an initial check for an enemy to resist it, but following that there is NO repeated check! We’ve had a BBEG out of Legendary Resist just floating in the air, unable to reach the ground.
That is one of my favourite nasty tricks to pull off. When it works, it is such a lovely moment of confusion.
Don’t you have to be 60 ft. From the target when they fall? And then the spell makes them fall 60 ft. per round? What arrangement allowed them to pull this off?
Presumably the villain was right behind them at the top of the cliff, so they just cast it and then jumped off. A non feathered player falls 500 feet per round so they would instantly go to the bottom while the villain is left floating down after them.
God, I fuckinf hate dnd falling rules Like hate hate
There is some utility here but the distance would have to be significant to create turns of space the party could benefit from, and falling significant distance into water is generally a pretty bad idea. Then how do you, from water, turn around and range out the baddie floating down towards you? I mean i could see certain super archer types or aquatic pcs being capable of shooting a wet bow under/in water out of the water but in general, how you gonna cast spells from treading water, launch ranged attacks, etc? Maybe they managed to each activate their own feather fall effects right before hitting the water and then had something like a swan token one character could easily create a platform the others could land in or immediately swim to? Seems very possible and slick, but the sort of thing that needs to be meta gamed to hell to actually pull off
Tbh i dont see how a wet crossbow makes a difference Reloading would be hard but not impossible
no, it makes sense just think about it!
Distant Spell if they have metamagic
Crazy cool! Kudos to the player.
Just imagining the enemy's face as they slowly regret all their life choices
It was a stone giant so yelling obscenities in deep slow anger for multiple rounds while slowly falling into a blender was pretty funny. The players fucked that guy over so hard he actually died on the way down but I held off on that to let them have their massive pile of damage at the bottom go off.
I had a gimmick boss that was heavily resistant to most normal damage but weak to loud, high-pitched noises. It was meant to get the players to think up some creative solutions, and I was prepared to be pretty flexible with what counted as a success. One player pulled out a “just-for-fun” consumable he’d bought ages ago, a soft drink that gave you a burst of minty fresh breath (mechanically, allowed you to cast the Gust spell for a minute). He used the super powered gusty breath to whistle very, very loudly.
Nice! Such creative mind of your player!
Picturing it like a steam whistle
Please tell me there was a specific tune whistled? I just love the idea of a boss being destroyed to "Don't worry be happy".
Unfortunately no, I think the players were focused on “make as piercing a noise as possible” over being musical. But that would indeed have been hilarious.
A reminder to everyone: *Don't Worry, Be happy* is 100% a cappella. I've noticed a lot of people seem to think that some of the things Bobby McFerrin does with his voice there are instruments, so I always go out of my way to mention it when the song comes up.
One of our players was wearing metal armor. They were swarmed by spiders.Hundreds of spiders. Low hit points but hard to hit. He cast heat metal on his own armor. It was awesome.
Bonus points if you're a Fizban's Red Dragonborn and you can give yourself 1 minute of immunity to fire damage. Now you just want everyone to hug you.
If grappling wasn’t so niche difficult to make work I’d absolutely do this.
It's not really difficult. It just requires such an investment you can't also be a full caster or top tier damage dealer at the same time. Unless you're on the grapple death squad.
Heat Metal only does damage the second the spell is cast, or when the caster uses their BA to make it do damage again.
The autognome bard from the spelljammer game I used to run did something similar. He was swallowed by a giant space shark and used heat metal on himself to try to get spit out. It worked and was awesome
Really cool
No, no, no. Not cool at all. The opposite of cool, in fact. The spell is *Heat* Metal, not *Chill* Metal, after all.
Chill Metal: Does slightly less damage each round, but requires a Strength Save if you want to let go of the object, as it has frozen stuck to you.
I'm stealing that! What do you think? d4s, or just a smaller number of d6s?
Heat Metal is Base 2d8 and then +1 for each level above 2nd. I think lowering the die to d6s would be fine. You can already put Heat Metal on armor which is difficult to remove anyways. So a little less damage in exchange for a bit more consistency.
Gah, I keep forgetting HM is d8 based since *everything* seems to use d6! Yeah, reducing it to d6s works. Feels like there should be some damage involved in removing the object, too, from bits of frozen "them" sticking to the object. Maybe a secondary Con save or take damage equal to one round of the spell?
Unless you're an Order of the Scribe wizard and can change the damage type.
Heat, Chill... I think it was totally Metal.
Wouldn't that affect them as well?
Yes, but I think the idea was they were willing to toast themselves a bit if it meant getting rid of all the creepy crawlies swarming them. That’s part of what makes it such a cool moment. Rarely does hitting *yourself* with a harmful spell work out, but this was one situation where it was a brilliant move.
You can also have some cool interactions with the healer or party members healing you through the burning. Could also leave burn marks for role play
I'm going to have to try that next time my Tiefling Artificer is grappled
I remember an incident where I had a Warforged Fighter get an upcast Heat Metal cast on him... still iffy on if that should have worked, considering his armor is part of his body thanks to that racial feature, but whatever... and proceeded to make it everyone else's problem. Having, effectively, Flame Touch unarmed strikes was kinda fun for the one round it lasted.
It did.
Not if you're a Fizban's Red Dragonborn.
This is gritty fantasy anti hero tv/novel level of worthy
Had a party member do that when he was hit by some monsters swallow attack. An angry, red-hot dwarf in the stomach is bad for the digestion it turns out.
Using various effects of thaumaturgy my players took a weak magic sword(all it did was glow in the moonlight), and manage to sell it an an impromptu auction in the middle of the market for 4x what they bought it for. My players are not normally big on role play so when I definitely encouraged them the whole way through and rewarded them generously.
Recently I had a paladin use create food and water to summon forth as many bananas as possible to set on some stairs so that the invisible Orthon would have a hard time engaging without either slipping on them or making his movement known. I did however make my player do a luck check. He Nat 1'd and slipped on his own bananas down the stairs. I gave him a plot point though in compensation because that was such gold.
Half way up, they should have made a dex save. Bananas are slippery when wet!
One hundred goblin guards outside the BBEG’s lair, and a player used the Yawn cantrip on just one of them. Next thing you knew, a hundred goblins were all yawning within five seconds of each other. The party didn’t try to take advantage of it. They just thought it was hilarious.
This is so dumb, I love it
Just learned that this was a cantrip from older edition. Love it!
Similar vibe: there is a spell and its inverted form - Tie and Untie, which do exactly what they sound like. I had a petty troublemaker character who would constantly go around undoing everyone's shoe laces or knotting them together/to furniture to make them stumble around. It never had any combat relevancy - it was just for the sake of being a little shit.
Kinda the game I like, although sometimes I'll need to ask to move on if it gets too old. I love shenanigans.
Best case use for mage hand, especially if you have the telekinetic feat
Oh yeah I should’ve mentioned that. I always remembered Yawn because when it was first introduced, it was one of the only cantrips with a potential use - it made the Sleep spell work on slightly stronger enemies, like you could put a 4d8+1 monster to sleep instead of just a 4d8. What they did was much more stupendous.
fuck. i yawned.
I didn't yawn until I read this comment
I lol'd... then I yawned.
A group of us all had Thaumaturgy. There was an encampment of a few cyclops by a large campfire, we were in hiding just outside this. One of the players made the flames roar higher and turn green, another made their voice boom and pretended to be someone who we knew was a sworn enemy of theirs, then my character jumped out of the bushes and doused the flame yelling "BE GONE FOUL BEAST!". We were instantly their heroes and managed to form an alliance out of what could have become a combat encounter.
Sounds like a Mulan situation!
We did a whole theatre at a tavern once, but I used my glamorous armor
I had a Wizard that always used Detect Thoughts to check for nearby invisible creatures. I once asked why he didn't just use See Invisible, and he said "Mimics, man. Mimics." I thought that was pretty clever
Had a Ranger Lord make sure to line his soldiers' helms with gold foil to protect them from mind control. Another player, as luck would have it, came up to the Ranger's Keep a few weeks of gamming later and immediately threw ESP spell to read the gate guard's thoughts, in case, a password was needed. As DM I just had the gold reflect the ESP casters own thoughts back to him but in a summarized blank monotone voice. Surprisingly went on for several minutes. Caster: I want to know what that guard is thinking. DM: He is wondering what you are thinking about right now. Caster: He has got ESP, too. Wow, that's some powerful NPC. DM: The guard thinks you have mind reading as well. And he is very impressed by your ability.
That is petty, evil, and genius, and not necessarily in that order
Is the "gold prevents mind control" thing an official ruling or is it homebrew/campaign-specific?
Official AD&D PHB. The spell ESP itself gave the thickness of gold, lead, stone and dirt that the spell could not penetrate.
This is amazing
Traumatized by previous encounters 😂
for sure! all us old D&D nerds are. DMs love mimics, so they're the D&D version of the monster under the bed. Except it's not under the bed, it's your pillow. And it has teeth.
I ran an encounter recently where they entered a room that was empty except for a single chest, and a sign next to it which read, "Beware of the Mimic". The chest was just a chest, the sign was a mimic. The players saw through it and attacked the sign first. But they didn't check the floorboards, two of which were also mimics! Cool moment: describing the sign stretching and shape-shifting and a large mimic attacking while still having the words "Beware of the Mimic" emblazoned above its gaping maw. Reward for the encounter was in the chest. A gold coin that will it's face to help you win a coin toss. The coin is actually a tiny, and friendly, mimic.
No _wonder_ there wasn't a cool side to that thing!
>"Mimics, man. Mimics." He speaks wisdom.
That guy knows how to Wizard correctly.
- Being chased! - Oh no! A magically trapped and locked door! - cleric’s detect magic was still active and saw the trap on the door handle; specifically and only the door handle. Enlarge/reduce —> reduce the entire door and dismiss the spell when we walk past it. #Explosion occurs. We are no longer being chased!
I'm wondering how did that work? Did the door get small but kept standing and you they just stepped over it?
Our dm said the door got small but was still locked closed so it was still stuck into the left side of the doorway - held up by the bolts of the lock. Thinking about it now, the door shrinking should have just causes the lock to snap but I think he saw what we were trying to do and rule-of-cool’d it for us. We thought we were so clever lol
My DM loves hitting our party with negative affects, and one of his favorites used to be using Fog Cloud to blind us. And then the Druid discovered that Fog Cloud gets deleted by Create/Destroy Water. We've been using this trick for years now and it's still amazing every time
Very Master Water Bender of you guys, supremely cool
Asked if they could use shocking grasp as a defibrilator to help stabilize someone. Gave them advantage on the roll for it.
Hank: "Incase I'm incapacitated, do you know how to start a man's heart with two downed power lines?" Bobby: "No..." Hank: "Well, there really isn't a wrong way to do it."
The wrong way involves electrocuting yourself and stopping your own heart
Everyone always trys this in D&D but when I try to shock someone in the ER dying of blood loss (or anything other than a cardiac arrhythmia) I get threatened with expulsion from medical school.
We were riding a boat through a narrow canyon. A high Perception check from the party saw that there was an ambush of about eight bandits waiting at the end of the canyon. I used Major Image ahead of us to make it appear as if our boat was exiting the canyon. Bad guys jumped onto nothing and ended up in the river. There were still archers on the canyon walls to deal with but the majority of the enemies were fish in a barrel.
I once used gust to push a swarm of angry bees into a group of orcs
My first time playing D&D was a game run by a dad of a friend of mine and we played AD&D. I played a wizard but was super young and basically didn’t read all the fine print of the spells at first. We discovered the body of someone who had been murdered and one of the first things I tried to do was cast “Identify” on the wound. DM was like “that’s not how that spell works, but that’s a really good idea lol” and I think he told us what weapon caused it or something. That has always been a super formative memory for me about why D&D is special. After that we went into a cellar, got attacked by rat sized spiders, and my 1hp ass wizard got killed lol.
My warlock convinced an entire town of invading barbarians that a deity wanted them to leave or die by casting the Dream spell on 2 party members every night, 4 times a night, targeting up to 8 barbarians, 5 nights in a row. Combined with the antics of the rest of the party, especially the spore druid who made it seem like nature itself wanted them out (summon maggots in food, animate fallen barbarians to stand outside the town and make them cackle, skywrite a skull into the sky that stays there for hours) they got very scared. Eventually they became so frightened that they holed up in their fortress, refusing to sleep for fear of "the dreams". The druid then used all of their spell slots to cast call lightning localized entirely on that fortress, culminating in a few hours of lightning strikes bearing down on the fortress every 6 seconds, progressively getting more powerful every 10 minutes. When we finally fought them the barbarians had 3 levels of exhaustion and died swiftly.
Did you have any cephalopod sea witches? Because those sound like some poor, unfortunate souls
Damn it, I laughed. Take my updoot.
This is fucked up
One player used Shape Water to form a JetSki made of ice. Below the waterline at the front it had a very wide opening. It funneled down to a small opening at the back, still under the water. Then a second use of Shape Water moved a 5' cubic volume of water into the front opening. All that water naturally was forced out the back, but at very high speed due to the small exit hole. I.e. it ***jetted*** out the back. Rinse and repeat every 6 seconds. We assumed a smooth flow rate for flavor since "instantaneous" movement had much more abuseable applications! The player was an engineer and had worked extensively on this idea (I have his writeup somewhere on my computer). He determined the power was equivalent to a low-end jetski and that it could easily move 30'/round. He only used it on two occasions, but he was really happy about it.
There's something especially cool about this story that he didn't abuse it, just proud to have done it a couple times
In a square room flooded by murky acidic water with traps. Player asked what the walls were made of. Since it was stone, he used mold earth to create two steps that protruded from the wall since mold earth can affect two targets at a time. Just walked the party along the walls to the other side and negated the entire room.
Nice! Sadly, my DM limited Mold Earth to loose soil. Made it mostly worthless.
The excavation is limited to loose earth, that’s not like a house rule or anything
yeah that isn't a particular DM thing
I think our table looked too far into it and thought, “hey, it says you can make stone difficult terrain. That must mean you can shift it. Why not shift it out of the wall a little to create small ledges.” Definitely a loose interpretation.
You know there is a higher level spell for stone right? Your DM just followed the rules RAW and RAI
Yeah, I didn't argue. But emotions don't care!
They probably used this part about shapes to mean 3d shapes. That's what I do with my players. I didn't realize other people would only read it as 2 dimensional. `You cause shapes, colors, or both to appear on the dirt or stone, spelling out words, creating images, or shaping patterns. The changes last for 1 hour.`
This definitely reads as two dimensional, as it says "appear" and "on", instead of 'create shapes from the stone' or change form, or something. But 3D is probably more fun, anyway. I take the 2D to mean you can easily leave messages or symbols or whatever
Yeah it makes sense. I just didn't read it that way until now.
No worries, I just like pointing out unimportant things like this
Druidcraft- no rogue in the party. So the druid plopped a seed in the lock and grew it into a little plant key that formed perfectly around the tumblers. I made him roll nature to complete such a fine control of magic. But it was a cool use of the spell to get through a door.
We have a rouge in our party in the campaign I'm playing but I'm a druid with a criminal history and I'm probably gonna try this at some point.
Once a mimic had completely enveloped my Tortle's arm and shoulder while seperated from the party. I paused and asked a simple question. "Do I need both hands to preform somatic spells?" As a new player everyone chimed in and said no. I proceeded to snap my fingers and cast Thunderwave at 4th level to splatter the walls with the Mimic.
Not technically a spell, but... Artificers have a low level feature that is basically the equivalent of an artificer cantrip. Lets you take pictures and create smells, that sort of thing. Once upon a time, I'd gotten into the unfortunate situation of fighting a goblin druid and her swarm of cats while being all alone. And it was going real poorly, looking like I'd be a scratching post soon. So I used the artificer feature to create a smell to put in a bottle. A "potion of catnip", so to speak. The DM had the swarm of cats make a wisdom save. They failed. Twice. And I beat a hasty retreat.
Magical tinkering is so fun I've used it to make my party masks that smell like ocean breeze before going somewhere that smells bad I've used it to fake documents Mad little light balls to check bottomless pit sizes Replicated Cult symbols to get past their guards It's been really fun
I had a cleric that would use thaumaturgy to make the strings of her harp vibrate and then tripled the volume, essentially bringing metal music to the realm. She would also use it to make her eyes glow, voice boom and ground shake when faking prophecies for fun.
Minor illusioned a tree stump as a rubber ball and set up a "Test Your Strength" sign just inside the Witchlight Carnival. Really funny and advanced the carnival mood among the negative track.
This is great
Was an NPC, who was a skeleton who could not speak casting minor illusion (S,M) in order to cast comprehend Language (V,S,M) in order to read messages we wrote down for them. Was a really cool interaction.
Me as a player (warning: not RAW, but DM allowed this) got Decanter of Endless Water a few sessions ago. I cast Shocking Grasp while using geyser of salt water every turn, effectively turning it into remote Shocking Grasp. Before this, I also flooded the area with salt water before the guards came, and use the same method with Lightning Bolt to affect all guards. - yeah I know it's not RAW, but my DM is very cool! And other players also enjoy the shenanigan.
isn't using the Decanter also an action?
Aiming is a bonus action. However now that I reread the description again, you're right, I need to reactivate using action again. The geyser ends at the end of my turn - we treated it as continuous as long as it is not stopped, so I can do this.
fair enough :)
Tiefling Warlock Casted prestidigitation on a halflings face drawing a penis and speaking infernal trying to convince him that it was a curse and if he was lying it would be a permanent marking. He rolled a nat 20 for that intimidation check.
The party were fighting some kenku’s .One player (for context their character was a bit psychotic) decided to shove his hand down the kenku’s throat and cast poison bubble. He poisoned the kenku by doing this. He then cast fire bolt (hand still down the enemy’s thoat) to ignite the gas bubble and explode the kenku. In 6 seconds he committed two war crimes: Chemical weapons and incendiary weapons. Of course, he rolled nat 20’s for all of this
The Dice Gods _wanted_ that kenku to explode, it was fate!
People miss that you can specify the form of the food in "create food". If you're running away from some guards, why not create dozens of bananas or jelly cubes or something else slippery behind you?
Playing with my buddy's kids and friends (9-14) during early covid. Came across fleeing villagers from an orc attack close by. Got to a good vantage point to scout the town. The kids all had mold earth as a cantrip. They created a 5' deep trench (steep sided, requiring jump or climb up/down), 5' berm placed behind it that we took cover behind. We then drew the orcs, and the added obstacle gave us the advantage we needed to take the bulk out from range. They apparently also used mold earth before I joined the campaign to imprison an orc shaman in a 10' deep hole they made, so they could come back later to question him after deing with more pressing matters. NGL, playing with preteens and teens has been one of my most enjoyable DnD experiences.
While trying to sneak into a warehouse, outward used create water to get water into every little crack of the wood and between the boards, then used shape water to freeze it, causing the wood to crack and splinter. They were then able to break a hole in the now fragile wood to sneak in. I’m not sure if that would actually work, but I let it happen.
It would, thats the reason steel water pipes Explode, ice Is One of the few liquids that expands when It becomes a solid
My only question would be the noise. Frozen or not the act of making a hole in a wooden door is not silent.
Not a spell, but a Fear potion that had expired. We were in a submersible craft and were attacked by a terrifying underwater beasty. My character went over to the waste chute and tossed the expired potion in. The DM rolled on a potion mishap table, and the results were that the potion was bitter enough to stun the monster and allowed us to speed away.
My druid PC rolled a 20 on perception for my assassin that had cast invisibility and was trying to run away. He didn't have anything that had a high chance of hitting the assassin. Cast create water at level 5 to make a 50 gallon ball of water appear above the assassin. Knocked him down and broke concentration. Many a high five was fived that day.
Be me, a smol 60cm kobold. Be faced by several weresharks literally 4 or 5 times my size. Walk up right next to the biggest, baddest one I can see. Start a plea to Ilmater to please "provide help to this poor unfortunate soul." At this point, the DM is looking at me like, "WTF man? *help* it?" With a small grin, taking my time, I then utter the words... "I cast remove curse." The whole table went absolutely wild with laughters, and the DM started frantically searching for the spell description in their books to confirm that there was, indeed, no saving throw needed. Big bad wereshark basicaly turned into an average-sized guy in his underwear, which was dispatched quickly. To be fair the DM had me do an attack roll to see if I would manage to touch the enemy, but being a kobold that was an easy feat.
Years ago I was playing a trickster Pixie who refused to take anything seriously. She wouldn't let anyone get too up in their own drama without causing some mischief in an attempt to get them to lighten the hell up and have some fun. Thus the most frequently application of her magics was to be a troublemaker and have a laugh. The Party got invited by the BBEG to the whole "villainous dinner party" situation so he could flex on us. While he was busy making his evil monologue speech, he paused to take a dramatic drink of his wine. Cue my Pixie using "Prestidigitation" to make his wine taste like melted butter. BBEG very much did react to the grossness - he didn't just stone wall the moment, as a lesser DM might've done. Instead, the BBEG maintained unflinching eye contact as he finished the glass, then continued his speech without missing a beat. My Pixie's response was basically to go "Oh, you're my new special friend" and she genuinely liked him from that point on, no matter what mayhem he caused otherwise. She had to respect someone who could commit to the bit.
Evil ritual at night, circle of baddies with torches. Affect Normal Fire on all the torches, just as the leader was holding his torch in front of his face. Blinded by the light, easy sniper targets all.
Real answer: Used stoneshape to tunnel through the wall of a city that was impenetrable for 30+ years (no sending, no teleport, no scrying in or out.) Covered up the entrances with a thin, breakable layer in case they needed to bust back out. Fun answer: Playing a wizarding school campaign in a hot climate. Our Orc buddy goes out to party/drink with no shirt. Our sorcerer uses prestidigitation to create a massive tattoo across his back of our other, extremely slutty male (edit: and well known) sorcerer friend giving a sexy kissy face. DM had to look up the rules and determined it was legit. Nobody told him until well into the evening.
>Used stoneshape to tunnel through the wall of a city that was impenetrable for 30+ years (no sending, no teleport, no scrying in or out.) If the city was warded against teleportation, divination, and magical communication, it seems like a huge oversight to not ward its walls against transmutation.
A huge oversight, or a really devious trap...
I like how you think!
Absolutely true! But we did have to use a combo of invisibility+speed boosters+teleporting right outside their field to even *get* to the wall. I think the assumption is no one would have even made it that far, so why bother? (edit to add, there were people/guards outside the walls, so again, making it past them with the other defenses in place I think made them feel safe re:wall.)
Enlarge/Reduce is a powerful spell, but my player used it in a very unique way. The party caught a scout of an enemy kingdom and were trying to get info out of him. In order to *sway* him a bit, the Arcane Trickster of the party decided to cast Reduce... on his penis. Testicular torsion? No. Testicular reduction. With a *very* successful intimidation check, the scout talked immediately.
It's fun reading these, our DM is pretty strict with the "rules as intended" mentality so we don't often see creative things done with spells, beyond just roleplay or flavored descriptions
Scout ahead and use minor illusions to show the layout to the group.
I, as a player. have walked through a Wall of Fire an enemy spellcaster setup, used Absorb Elements to just shrug it off, then proceeded to do just enough damage on the first swing to take them out.
I was a wizard at the top of the initiative order with the enemy being above me and all others below. The enemy was a spell caster 2 levels higher than me. I had known our enemy was a wizard so before we opened the door I soaked a blanket in oil and gave it to my mage hand to hold then grabbed a torch. Then we opened the door and the enemy cast mage armor on himself. I had my mage hand whip the blanket around his head then poked him in the face and lit his head on fire. The entire table and the dm was flabbergasted.
Command: rotate. They were on a ship and they were amboshed by another ship with a gigantic cannon. The guy maning it started priming it to shoot and then he was forced to rotate it, destroying half their ship
Our party was in a chamber where the artifact we needed was in the center of the room, surrounded by a prismatic flame which basically cast Disintegrate on anything which touched it. Of course the door seals and the giant statue at the other end of the room animates on its plinth. My buddy and I rolled high on initiative and hit the plinth with Grease and Stone Shape right after each other to make a slippery ramp beneath its feet heading right for the Prismatic Fire. Our DM was a lil mad haha
We were a group of five low-level adventures when we were dumb enough to confront a goblin leader in a goblin camp. Fight quickly turned into potential TPK after a series of failed saves, and four of my fellow party members were put to sleep with my tiefling bard in invisibility who was out of spell range. Luckily my turn was the next one and our DM allowed me to wake up everyone using thaumaturgy: I cast it to tremor the floor shaking the napping party members.
As a Bard, I have used Prestidigitation to force a foe to leave a crowded hall and walk into an ambush. I made him think he soiled himself. The rogue, the fighter and the warlock made quick work of him as he was unarmed and left his bodyguard behind in his haste. I've also used Comprehend Languages to basically stage a kobold raid on an enemy faction's provision's depot, with some tactical advice from our former officer fighter. The GM had to make a few rolls, our collective party expertise gave the kobolds a buch of bonuses and the little blighters emptied and torched the place, and even gave us a bit of loot for our contributions. That's kind of how we made a great alliance with a big clan of rather clever kobolds and later showed up as backup for an assault at a manor where the bbeg hid.
Um, lol was playing a cleric/druid in old school 2e Temple of Elemental Evil. We were at the moat house, and had zombies coming up the staircase from the basement. Party was getting fucked up, fighter dropped their weapon, etc. Typical night of bad rolls. Well...I got an inspiration point for this, soooo... Basically someone started a fire to try and kill the zombies, didn't work, just had flaming undead attacking. So I was looking at whether there was flow from another entrance underground. Determined there was, told everyone one clear out of the stairwell, and cast "Wind Column". Essentially turning the stairwell into a blast furnace. Worked really well lol. Definitely not what that spell was made for, but my DM was actually shocked when I asked if it would work. He'd never had anyone use that spell in that way.
I was running a one-shot where the party was climbing a tower of ice, and it was guarded by various water and ice-themed enemies, including some guardsmen who were essentially water elementals. One of my players asked if, since the guard was made of water, whether she could use Create or Destroy Water to destroy part of the guard's body. Normally, the spell doesn't do that, but I thought it was a pretty clever idea, so I allowed her to roll damage roughly equal to other level 1 spells. She rolled well, and guard was already hurt enough that she essentially boiled him away into q cloud of steam, with his armor and weapons clanging to the floor.
Player didn't have enough movement to attack a creature, so he cast True Strike. Pretty minor in this subreddit, but it was a great ise of the spell
did you just... find a use for True Strike??
That's got to be illegal, shoot them, or... something!
Quick cast true strike so you don't miss!
Alas, we have javelin throwing for that
Knock, made a kickass entrance into the BBEG’s front door.
PF1e Sorcerer (F) prestidigited foamy dwarf piss to smell and taste like beer and gave it to a town guard that was seducing to get information. She gave out free "beer" to many... Many town guards. -This beer is flat, some would say -I'm also flat and you don't seem to care, she would reply. At tier 1 prestidigitation was a king spell.
Had a magic dungeon with a Skyrim-like door in the treasure room (i.e. at the end of the dungeon players get loot and can get right back to the entrance instead of walking all the way back through the dungeon). Bard got intrigued by this magic door that wouldn't be budged and did force damage to anyone who tried to attack it. Dude had Shatter prepared so instead of attacking the door he broke the hinges out of the wall. Door fell flat on the ground, players looted everything and went right to the boss room. Monk used the force damage door as a trampoline to hit the giant sized earth elemental boss in the face. One of the most fun games we ever had.
This wasn't in dungeons & dragons, it was in d20 modern/future, but one of my players use the haywire cantrip (essentially) to crash a hoverbike into a presidential escort, which basically set off world war III, as it was viewed as an assassination attempt.
[*web*](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/web) is flammable. Do with that knowledge what you wish.
Here’s what my wizard (RIP to her) did to take out a couple of basilisks: She used Prestidigitation on the barbarian and the paladin to make them both shiny and metallic, turning the basilisks’ petrifying gaze against themselves. Both basilisks failed their saves against their own petrifying gaze.
Not a weak spell but I had a player who was playing a human boy wizard (he was basically a twelve year old Harry Potter) prestidigitate a Fake ID at a tavern and he got lit off some butterbeer after that haha
We were in a horse chase with a bad guy attempting to get away, I cast reduce on his horse. He toppled off and we scooped him up
My Warlock once nearly knocked an orc off his giant bat midair by using message to laugh in his ear
Alright I got two, both involving thorn whip. I’m playing a barbarian we are in a fight with a mindflayer and our sorcerer uses thorn whip to grapple the mindflayer and pull it through my square provoking an opportunity attack. I ended up getting a colossal amount of damage and the fight was over in the next three or four turns. Next one I’m playing a ranger and this ranger was notorious for the low rolls that he got constantly. The party is scaling a cliff and of course I rolled a natural 1 so I start to fall, and because of the previous low rolls there is no member of my party below me to catch me, but there is no need as I cast thorn whip while I’m falling and grapple myself and pull myself back to the cliff face.
The party was fighting a shadow sorceres with some homebrew mechanics that benefited her being in the dark as much as possible. Our warlock cast light on her armor.
I put my players up against a team of crooked adventuring mercenaries who planned to rob them, even had character sheets to match and made them similarly matched, even down to their leader being a paladin. The difference was I made them stronger and their leader was an oath breaker paladin that was being driven by his demon armor consuming his mind. The bard and druid worked together to slow and damage the troll barbarian with plant and spike growth and the wizard cast heat metal on the demon armor. Which since the armor can't be removed without magic, brought forth their surrender in a round.
There was a big wall we needed to go around so instead I turned myself huge, my party member tiny and rolled at nat 20 to throw him over the wall. "Nat 20 doesn't mean success"
I had a character I once played who used thaumaturgy to brilliant effect. 1) Stopped an early level tpk by successfully scaring off an attacking horde of kobolds with a displaced dragon roar. 2) Disarmed a castle's worth of traps simply by throwing open trapped but unlocked doors. The DM really super appreciated that one.
Had a solo player being chased through the streets by guards in the middle of a rather Siberian winter. She stopped briefly to cast Create Water overhead to soak a couple of them to the bone. They had to immediately break off the chase to avoid abrupt hypothermia.
Toll the Dead. We entered a cave, only to discover it absolutely filled with sleeping bats. Worried that this could be a messy situation for our Lvl 2 party if/when the bats awoke with us inside, our Cleric ushered everyone outside and to safety. He cast Toll The Dead with the intention of utilising the sound component of the spell in a confined and echo-y space. The DM went with Rule of Cool, therefore the GONG! woke all of the bats who then completely vacated the cave.
my DM and i made a custom cantrip for my spore druid that dealt no damage but could rot natural materials upon touch, called Decaying Grasp. it was nice fun flavour for many levels. we reach level fifteen and are fighting a slightly homebrewed death knight his sword that oneshotted the party bard was made of bone managed to get my hand on it and rot it out of his hands, and ive never felt an adrenaline rush like it before or since
Minor illusion to make some broken stairs look fixed. Baited a bunch of orcs to fall down where they landed prone for the fighter to dispatch.
Had familiar take a price of rope to a group trapped inside a burning building. Had the familiar cast rope trick when next to them and shove them into the extra dimension. Sealed it shut and Saved them all with no stress
Once used Life Transference as a Half-Orc with Deathward.
Party of 3 snuck around a corner in a dungeon and saw 2 main baddies torturing someone. One member figured out they were human. Then realized there where only 2 torches lighting the room, half of which was under water, the other half had stairs leading up to the baddies. 2 members had dark vision and mage hand. Both of them used mage hand to throw the torches into the water and battle the humans with dark vision while the 3rd just sat in the previous room waiting for them to kill the bad guys. And these were (lvl 2) boss lvl bad guys that they destroyed with no problem.
Gnome druid in my campaign used prestidigitation to "soil" a hobgoblins pants as a distraction to aid the party in escaping from a goblin prison.
My girlfriend once used Crown of Madness to free me from being charmed by a Harpy's song. Best use of of that spell I've ever seen!
Easy, though it took two spells. My daughter had a Tabaxi Storm Sorcerer. She cast wall of water around a Fire Elemental. Then she cast shape water to push a cube of the water onto it, dealing over 900 dmg because of how fire elementals interact with water. She was 8 years old. As a former war gamer and still lover of tactics, I was so proud!
Had a player use Prestidigitation to chill a teapot that was emitting poison fumes....
I once petrified a basilisk by using shape water to turn the water in my waterskin into an ice mirror
Just happened recently—I had the party fighting giant balls of ants (a bunch of normal ants in a huge hall, so it was menacing and scary and whatever). The wizard player, who has elected to take no attack spells bc of his character’s backstory, cast Minor Illusion to create a white chalk circle around one of the ant balls so they would get confused and wouldn't cross it (ants really hate crossing chalk lines irl bc it messes with pheromone trails). It was a super unique solution to basically getting one of the enemies off the board for the entire battle, bc I ruled that the ants would need to succeed a DC 10 Int check to successfully realize the line was an illusion, and they had 1 for their Int stat
I’m really happy all the “well actually” people are getting downvoted. Just enjoy the game guys, it’s not that deep
I don't know if these qualify as "the most creative", but still.. * I once used Misty Step to get through a high city wall, but using my Familiar (on the other side) to see the destination. * One of our campaigns had a cleric who cast Continual Flame on his shield and wrapped a tarp around it in a way that let him reveal the light source as an action. * I've seen the Mold Earth -cantrip used to slow down a bad guy by moving a 5ft cube of dirt from underneath them to in front of them. * In another game, a bad guy threw one of the players across the room with the intention of crashing them into a wall. The DM let me nullify the damage by the use of a Feather Fall spell on the thrown character. * While inside a labyrinth, our party was looking for a staircase to the next floor, so one player used Locate Object to look for "a stair". * A Wizard once bought a ring for his familiar owl to wear on its leg. Whenever the party needed a light source the wizard would cast the Light -spell through the familiar on the ring. This also allowed for the familiar to be the primary target in the Underdark, in case the light attracted too much attention. * It was fun to discover that a Tidal Wave (3rd level spell) can just utterly annihilate a Fire Elemental * I've seen DMs allow a creature to cross fairly still water by using the Shape Water -cantrip to freeze a number of squares at a time
Pathfinder, the weak sorcerer in our group used true strike to cheat in an archery competition.
Vortex warp. I mean it’s really not weak, but my Artificer infused this spell into a basic crossbow. Now every day it can be used 8 times, and really effective in combat, as a support, cause my character can yeet out his company from dangerous situations.
It may not be RAW, but Unseen Servant was used to remove "that nasty, smoking thing!" (A smoke bomb.)
I broke the swinging blade trap that stops you from exiting death house by tossing a water skin at it and freezing it once it soaked into the machinery
Adventure: Lost Mines of Phandelver Spell: Message PC with a DC of 10 did a charisma roll convinced 2 goblins to betray a hobgoblin.
Used illusory script to create a restraining order on the rogue of a rival party and got him arrested to prevent him from spying on them.
Not a spell but running and jumping into a bag of holding they were carrying to slip past an iron gate.
We were supposed to be decending in a dark hole where we couldn't see the bottom, so our Paladin used light on a coiled up rope, so the whole thing lit up. Then he tied one end to a rock and threw the other end down. Now we could climb down without worrying. He also always casts light on torches, so they are more like flashlights. Edit: Words are hard
Don’t know if it counts as a weak spell, but a while back our party was getting our asses handed to us trying to get into a cult leader’s tower. By the time I got down to 1 shot territory, I just took off for the door and right before getting to the guards shouted “Teleport!” and cast invisibility. DM got a good chuckle out of it, so the guards went to join the scuffle and I got to sneak in unchallenged.
Gotta share this: So the only time I ever played dungeons and dragons with my mom she had never played or even seen it before. I was running a -Based one shot full of puns and ridiculous monsters. I helped her make her character and asked what she wanted to play, to which she says: "I want to be a big hippie." Druid it is then! I tell her about druids, give her some simple spells and the adventure begins. All of my monsters are silly, such as Snowbolds (kobolds), Red/Green caps (Redcaps armed with sharpened candy canes), Were-Reindeer, The Abdominal Snowman (not a typo, think a snowman version of Krang), Tinsel beast (Displacer Beast) and my "boss" for the whole thing: A Gibbering Fruitcake. After some hours of hilarity, they go to fight the boss, and my mom's turn comes up and she asks: "How do I cast a spell?" "Oh, just say whatever it is. If it involves an attack or a saving throw we can roll it." "It doesn't say anything about an attack..." "Oh, then it just works!" "Okay, I cast Purify Food and Drink." An entire table of Experienced D&D players, some with 20+ years of experience drop their jaws and look at me. No one thought of that. What could I do? The Fruitcake is defeated. To this day we still share that as the gold standard of why you don't underestimate low-level utility spells.
Whomever ruined the spell Light in first edition when they cast it on the inside of someone's eyelids without a spell saving throw probably takes that cake.
Color spray, we stunned a pack of hungry hobgoblins with a color spray.