Best creative use of an obscure or "weak" spell?

[RangerWickett]

In Red Hand of Doom, we're exploring a dungeon, and we know some baddies are hiding out there. We find a secret door, quietly prep for an assault, and then kick open the door. Inside are several warriors led by a bard.

Our melee warrior charges in. The door closes behind him. Crap, we think.

Our next guy moves up and opens the door. We see that the melee warrior is already pretty hurt. Then the door closes again. We wonder what the hell is going on, because there's no one who could be closing the damned door.

Inside, our warrior nearly goes down while we plan our tactic. Various people ready actions, foremost among them being a fireball to chuck through the door. We manage to open the door and hurl a fireball through before the door closes. This knocks out our fellow PC who was stuck inside, but it kills the two unseen servants which were ordered to keep the door closed.

Best trick I've seen in a while.

 

[Philodendron]

Mage hand to the rescue

The elven empereror, who had been poisoned to a state of near-total incapacity, is standing in the center of his throne room protected by a prismatic sphere-like effect. My sorcerer/rogue is standing outside the sphere with the antidote and no way to communicate this fact through the sphere. And the bad guys are busy gating in demons in the room next door...
One mage hand spell later, the emperor is holding the antidote.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I played the Scalegloom Hall 4E preview adventure at D&D XP. The final encounter with the dragon was a TPK (as it was with 80% of the parties that played that adventure, I think).

I played it again back home. When we got to the dragon encounter, I mage handed the mcguffin and ran like hell.

Not exactly the cleverest new use of a cantrip, but it did manage to defeat a normally-TPK encounter with a single use of a non-combat 1st-level at-will power. (Though, to be fair, we still lost two of the party as we made our escape. . . .)

 

[Shayuri]

I recall casting Light on arrows to fight an aboleth. We had an effect that allowed us to use arrows underwater...not Freedom of Movement, but it might have been related, I forget... The aboleth kept using illusions and projected images to try to fool us into wasting our spells. So my sorceror uses a lull to put Light on 3 or 4 arrows, which our ranger then takes potshots at each of the images with.

When the arrow stuck into one without also whizzing merrily on through, that was the real one. It also provided illumination of the target as a bonus. We were deep enough that light was an issue, and it was hovering out of darkvision range. The ranger was an elf though, so she could see farther than the rest of us using party lights...

 

[Plane Sailing]

Back in 1e my poor, weak magic user was suddenly assaulted by a monk, who charged out and made a flying kung-fu kick.

I shouted out 'feather fall!' and the monk said several naughty words as his leap turned into a float. Then I set my dogs on him.

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A party rogue had a wizard cohort. With a crystal ball. There was (at one time at least) a way of casting message spells via a crystal ball, enabling the rogue to keep in contact with his cohort and give him research tasks to help them.

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Again Message - my sorcerer could quickly have a long lasting message spell targetting all members of the party - enabling him to act as 'operator' for whispered communications between party scouts and the rest of the party even when 150ft+ apart, for instance.

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In Sagiro's storyhour, I was guesting as One Certain Step in one game. I noticed that Step had a number of riding feats (up to and including spirited charge), but no mount. I asked one of the wizards whether he happened to know 'Phantom Steed'. As it happens he did, so he cast it for me. In the next encounter OCStep managed a ride by spirited charge with Smite Evil and raised eyebrows around the table. "I didn't know he could do that much damage" someone said.

All thanks to Phantom Steed.

 

[Evilhalfling]

my fav spell is mount.

Cover, Trap finder, Shark bait, free cash. It only requires a bit of grey morality and a 1st level spell.

 

[rossik]

my fav spell is mount.

Cover, Trap finder, Shark bait, free cash. It only requires a bit of grey morality and a 1st level spell.

i see...thats why you are a evil halfling

 

[Nifft]

my fav spell is mount.

Cover, Trap finder, Shark bait, free cash. It only requires a bit of grey morality and a 1st level spell.

Pshaw, grey morality. It's a spell effect, just like the spongy thing you get when you cast flaming sphere.

- - -

As a DM, my favorite spell must be phantom steed. I made a Mass form so the two wizards would get to keep some of their 3rd level slots. It's enabled high-level play to expand properly in scope, while not needing cheesy stuff like scry + teleport.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Phlebas]

'Grease', the mages best friend when spell resistance applies......

Unseen Servant is also good for miscellaneous inventiveness

 

[caelum]

A fun trick for a zero-level spell: maneuver an enemy in front of a trapped door, and use open/close to open it in front of them.

This was by far the most effective thing my 13th level wizard could manage against an armada of stained glass golems we faced - fortunately all the doors in the complex had nasty acid traps!