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

[pawsplay]

I once had the ignomy of GMing for a gang of players whose solution to the narrow tunnel leading to the vampire's coffin was to grease the halfling and slide her in.

One player of mine used acid orb to vandalize the door to a castle, threatening certain death to anyone who returned.

Passwall to make a 50 foot hole, dig a small pit at the bottom, place item, dismiss spell. Now it's buried 50 feet in the ground!

Mirror image. "Is it clear?" "Let me check--" (thwack) "No."

Scorching ray... very effective for destroying held weapons or even wands.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Years ago in a 1E game, party magic-user somehow ended up with a permanent Tenser's Floating Disc. He also had a fairly low level henchman (cleric/magic-user, I think) with a Wand of Magic Missiles.

Having little use for the Tenser's for hauling treasure or the like, it seldom got used. Until we returned to town and commissioned a man-height iron barrel, with eye slits all around.
Placing the henchman (with wand) in the barrel and the barrel on the Disc, he found himself with a floating, personal gun turret.

That reminds me of the Tensers Roller Coaster we sometimes used in 1e.

Mage #1 casts fly, and Tensers floating disk, which will float behind him.
Mage #2 sits on disk #1 and casts TFD which will float behind him.
Mage #3 sits on disk #2 and casts TFD... and so on.

The disks are loaded with a few extra flasks, boulders and wands of magic missile and the lead Mage #1 takes off with all the other disks trailing on behind, ready to unleash ariel bombardments on all and sundry.

Ah, those were the days!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Another creative use of spells (although not weak ones) went something like this in 1e:

1. Wizard casts delayed blast fireball
2. Just before it goes off, wizard casts timestop
3. Wizard walks up to fireball bead and casts temporal stasis on it. Temporal stasis can be keyed to end when a particular command word is spoken
4. Wizard casts a magic mouth on the bead, which will say the trigger word when the bead is no longer in this room
5. Repeat (with appropriate memorisations/preparations) until you have a handy room full of fireball beads in temporal stasis.

Wait until someone bugs you.

a. Scry them
b. Use the 'Vanish' spell to teleport one of your special beads to his vicinity. When it arrives the magic mouth goes off, ending the temporal stasis and 'BOOM'.
c. Continue to use 'Vanish' spells until the object of your bombardment is no longer a problem

There were problems in the days when creativity was allowed to run riot, for sure

 

[djdaidouji]

Recently, I played in a game, a large wizardess NPC was described as having a beauty mark, and she kept touching it throughout the day with a wand. Turns out it was a wand of arcane mark, and the beauty mark wasn't really there. I'm not sure if it actually works with the rules, but this DM didn't really care for cases like this, which was cool.

 

[joethelawyer]

i used to use one fly spell in combination with a lot of levitate spells. fly on one pc, levitate on the rest who are holding onto a rope, and you have pc's as kites, all flying with the use of one fly spell.

another one i used to do is to reverse the enlarge spell, shrink the whole party down to one foot tall, throw them all in the portable hole, allowing the wizard to teleport up to a dozen or so people with one spell.

i used to use the amulet of the planes to teleport to the positive energy plane to heal up hp's ultrafast

used same item to go to elemental planes, where i could rest up at twice the normal rate (per old manual of planes) and memorize spells faster.

i had party members cast spells at me while holding the staff of the magi so i could recharge it.

timestop with delayed blast fb was a hell of a lot of fun. stick the tiny marble up people's shirts, etc.

my all time favorite use of a magic item though was by a character with a mirror of mental prowess, from first ed dmg.

Mirror of Mental Prowess: This magical mirror resembles an ordinary one.
The possessor, however, knowing the proper commands can cause it to
perform as follows:
1. Read the thoughts of any creature reflected therein, even though
these thoughts are in an unknown language;
2. Scry with it as if it were a crystal ball with clairaudience, but even
being able to view into other planes if the viewer knows of them
sufficiently;
3. It can be used as a portal to visit other places (possibly other planes,
as well, at the DMs option) by first scrying them and then stepping
through to the place pictured - an invisible area remains on the
“other side”, and those using the portal can return if the correct
spot can be found. (Note that creatures being scried can step
through also if the place is found by them!);
4. Once per week it will answer one short question, briefly, regarding
a creature whose image is shown upon its surface.

the player used option 3. he scried out a location just behind where he was standing, then moved only halfway through the mirror, thus proving once and for all that when you tell someone to go f*** themselves, in d&d, it is possible.