Craziest combat move by a PC

[blargney the second]

One of my players pulled an awesome opening move in our last game. The group started to fight a hobgoblin archer and a human polearm fighter who were on a barge 60 feet down the pier the party was on.

The fighter readied his ranseur to skewer the first person who approached. Before the hobgoblin even had a chance to react, the PC xeph swordsage/swashbuckler charged down the left side of the pier and used her Twisted Charge trick to hang a sharp left turn. She jumped the 10 feet of water between her and the boat, dodging both the fighter's readied attack and his AoO, and kicked the archer in the head with her Charging Minotaur.

She simultaneously knocked him unconscious and tossed him into the water. (The first of three NPC mooks to suffer the same fate in that encounter...)
-blarg

 

[Aeric]

I did something similar to the monk's mid-air grapple once. We were fighting, among other things, a dragon. The party was out in the open, and had our Daern's Instant Fortress up (I think we may have just used it as a missile weapon on someone...good old 2nd edition!). My character, a fighter/thief with the swashbuckler kit, climbed to the top of the fortress and used a plain old 50' rope and grappling hook to snag onto the dragon as it flew by. He then made a couple of climb checks to get up onto the dragon and make his way along its neck in order to stab it in the eye (it was a pretty big dragon), all of which was happening in flight.

Having made all my rolls thus far, the swashbuckler was poised to stab the dragon in the eye when another PC decides to shoot the dragon in that very same eye with a longbow on the ground. Of course, he hits with a natural 20 - this player dropped 20s like a bad habit. Down comes the dragon, with me on it. I take a small amount of damage, but I was far more angry that this other guy had stolen my thunder.

 

[QuaziquestGM]

All different games, all different gnomes.

1) Gnome wizard (lev 2) casts the mount spell. Spell description says that the pony appears where the caster wants "within 30 ft +5 ft per caster level"......25 feet in the air above the giant skeleton 10 ft in front of him. (after rereading the rules on summoning spells, this maneuver was dissallowed for later combats)

2) Gnome cleric (high level) and party are sleeping on the upper floor of an inn. They are attacked by gnoll bandits. hung over gnome starts summoning greater earth elements. 13 innocent 1/2lings on the lower floor are killed in the resulting building collaspse

3) Gnome aristocratlevel 1 (pc generated completely by random rolls) and party are drugged after asking the wrong questions at the wrong inn. After escaping from the ghoul infested dungeon, they end up in the basement of the inn. (not giving too many details to avoid spoiling the module for others). they find their equipment, rearm and aquire an unlabled vile of an alchemical substance. They then hear the badguys plotting to jump the next person who had come into the inn. The party shadows them and catches 6 badguys dog piling their next victim in his bed in the 10 X 10 room. At this point it is important to mention that the randomly determined alighnment of this gnome is NE. The bad guys have a silence spell up and don't hear the gnome giving instuctions to his buddies as he reaches into his pack and start passing out alchemist fire and acid flasks.....They toss in these on surprize round, as well as the unknown vile, which it turns out has a very nasty effect. Fortunatly, the new, just being worked into the game pc on the bottom of the flaming dogpile had a d12 hit die and was pulled out of the buring inn and stabilized at -8.

 

[KrazyHades]

Well, this isn't my BEST, but it just happened 30 minutes ago.
Theres a party of 5 lvl 3 characters going through a dungeon. One of them is Ganz, the CN Barbarian. They are entering the last unexplored room of the dungeon, so they buff up Ganz, and Ganz uses his Brb rage. So, Ganz now has an insane 28 str! As they burst into the room, they see what they feared most: a rust monster. They had just received masterwork weapons from some dwarves as thanks, and did NOT want to lose them. Ganz, who won initiative, immideately says "I toss by Greataxe aside and try to RIP OFF ITS ANTENNAE! (the part which rusts metal" I'm thinking "Yah, right...lets play this out." I rule that if he gets a 20 on his grapple check, he can grab the antennae and rip them off with a DC 15 str check. After all, there's no way this is gonna happen. *roll* "WOAH! I got a 20!". Bye bye rust monster antennae. It was amazing. We were laughing for ten minutes straight.

Earlier today, in the same dungeon, the party was standing outside of a door behind which they knew were two elves (evil lvl 2 sorcerers). Ganz, standing in front, tries to rip the door off its hinges and throw it at one of the elves. I rule its DC 20 str check to rip off (its a stuck door) and then the attack (door as a 1d6 unproficient weapon not meant to be thrown). Well, Ganz being Ganz, he gets a 20, and then gets a CRITICAL on the attack, crushing one of the elves with the door!

 

[STARP_Social_Officer]

A story that's become legend in our group is the Tale of the Plummetting Demon. The PC was atop a very high tower in hand-to-hand combat with a demon (the type of demon varies depending on who tells the story - I heard it was a balor). The demon was losing, and so decided to make a quick getaway by leaping off the tower (meaning it wasn't a balor because they can teleport). The PC, thinking either extremely quickly or, more likely, not at all, declared he was going to jump off the tower, hoping to land on the demon in mid-air, sword pointed downwards, hoping to hit the demon and impale it.
The DM told him that this was a ludicrous idea, and that he would need to roll a natural 20 to hit the demon. Anything else and he'd miss and plummet to his pizza-shaped doom. The PC, always ready for some death defiance, did it anyway. He rolled a natural 20 and his plan pulled off - his attack did enough damage to kill the demon and the corpse he was now riding lessened the impact of his fall enough for him to survive.

The story loses integrity with the simple 8th-grade physics knowledge that all objects fall at the same rate, and that one falling creature can't ever catch up to another one unaided. But I guess it's possible the DM didn't know that (this was years ago when everyone involved was still in school) and that's why he allowed it. Even if it's not true, it's a cool story. That player still plays with us, and is legendary for this exploit.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

During a chase scene in Eberron -- two horses with PC riders attempting to run down a carriage carrying the Bad Guy -- the ranger was on the lead horse when a fireball streaked from the carriage.

The player, thinking fast, immediately asked me if she could stand in the saddle and vault upward as the fireball hit. The ranger was next in the initiative order, so I explained to the player that she couldn't avoid the fireball by doing so, but if she spent an action point and made the requisite Jump check, she could vault upward from the saddle.

So in comes the fireball, slamming into the ranger's horse and blowing it to pieces. The ranger vaults into the air with an action point and a very good jump check. "Now what?" I ask the player.

She says, "Well, I have a ring of feather falling, and the rogue is on the horse directly behind me ... " So, with another couple of good rolls, and with cooperation from the rogue, the ranger settles into pylon and the chase continues.

Pretty cool thinking from the (newish) player, and a great scene to imagine visually.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

In a short-lived game I played a barbarian who nearly died after leaping onto the back of an aboleth in the middle of a whirlpool, the better to chop it up.

Kind of like Johnny Rico in the film version of Starship Troopers.

 

[Treacherous_B]

I was playing a twin-scimitar-wielding fighter when our party found ourselves on an icy slope with a large band of orcs camped out at the bottom. I look at the elf ranger we have, who already has her bow at the ready, and say "jump on my back". Before she can ask what I have planned I draw my weapons and do a running leap onto my chest, sliding down the slope with them held out to either side. The elf jumps on my back as I planned and we form probably the deadliest luge ever.

I love my big, confident fighter.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I was playing a twin-scimitar-wielding fighter

...

I love my big, confident fighter.

Big? Drow are only about 5" tall

A story that's become legend in our group is the Tale of the Plummetting Demon.

...

(meaning it wasn't a balor because they can teleport).

...

The story loses integrity with the simple 8th-grade physics knowledge

...

But I guess it's possible the DM didn't know that (this was years ago when everyone involved was still in school) and that's why he allowed it. Even if it's not true, it's a cool story. That player still plays with us, and is legendary for this exploit.

A great tale, even though it smacks of inexperienced DM: most demons can teleport - only the weakest versions, and some special cases, can't. Many of them can also fly. And, of course, a Balor would blow up at the moment of death, so you don't want to hang onto one in mid-air when he croaks...

Good tale nonetheless

 

[Chris Tavares]

My favorite move on a personal level:

We were fighting a mummy wizard in his tomb. Hid had a chance to prepare, and had stoneskin and a bunch of fire resistance up. He then proceeds to drop several ground-zero fireballs on us, while we were impotently trying to do any damage to it.

One more fireball would have dropped several of us. So on my turn, instead of attaching, I dropped my weapons and grappled the mummy.

It turns at that mummies aren't all that strong. While I kept it immobile and unable to cast. the half-orc barbarian was finally able to chop through the stoneskin and kill it.

Were sitting there, realizing that most of us one at single digit HP's, and my shadow companion had been destroyed by the fireballs. That's when the gnome piped up with "oh, I did have dispel majors memorized. That would have taken the defenses down pretty easily."

The gnome was almost the next grapple target.