Cool stunts you've seen

[Truename]

Inspired by the "nod to realism" thread, what are some of the cool stunts you've seen in 4e? By "stunt," I mean anything that's interesting and requires DM adjudication. I'll start.

In last week's Encounters session, we had to capture a pair of unicorns. We weren't very diplomatic and got into a fight. My friend playing Opie, the hick elf hunter raised by humans, lassoed one of the unicorns but didn't have the strength to hold onto the rope. So he wrapped the rope around a tree and lassoed the other unicorn with the other end. That was pretty much the end of that encounter.

The same player once had a wizard that owned a picnic basket that created free meals. I forget the name of it. He found a mattress in a dungeon and for some reason decided to start hauling that mattress around with him everywhere he went. Every morning, he'd reach into his magic picnic basket and coat the mattress with oatmeal. I'm not exactly sure what he intended to do with it, but somehow he got it into his head that the oatmeal would make the mattress explosively flammable. Eventually, he chucked it under a falling portcullis, where it did a reasonable job of providing cover, but utterly failed to explode when ignited. The oatmeal-encrusted mattress is a running joke in our group to this day.

 

[Aenghus]

The coolest thing I saw recently was a goliath fighter piicking up a stunned carrion crawler and swinging it as an improvised missile weapon to hit a troll in the face. This was in a sewer encounter with the PCs being trapped in a tunnel between the crawler and an advancing troll.

As the referee, the crawer is a large creature, and could have been too heavy to use, but the idea was great, and I ruled on the spot the crawler was skinny and light enough. I only applied a -2 penalty on the secondary attack on the troll because the idea was so fun.

It even worked, the troll ending prone with the carrion crawler on top of it. The two monsters proceeded to fight each other as well as the PCs.

The PCs are only 5th level and it was great to see them try something like this and succeed. My tendency is to say no too often, I'm trying to improve my flexibilty.

 

[LostSoul]

My game is a little strange so maybe this doesn't apply. Anyway.

The PCs were fighting a medusa who, if you met her gaze, would turn you to stone on a hit (no save). She also had a poisoned dagger that, if the secondary Fort attack hit, would kill.

One PC got turned to stone, so the PCs realized the danger. They ended up in her bedroom and one PC tossed a blanket over the medusa's head. Another PC grappled her to the ground. She was still stabbing at the PC grabbing her with her poisoned dagger (his high Fort defence had already saved him a few times), so he decided to look into her eyes.

He turned to stone with her stuck in his grasp. She couldn't slip out. Another PC came up from behind and cut her head off, I believe.

A couple Remove Afflictions were cast and the stoned PCs were restored.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It went down like this, didn't it?

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWcrIewuEQ4&feature=youtube_gdata_player]cross the streams.m4v - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Wormwood]

(4e. Assume I've used "page 42" DCs and damage expressions)

• Large creatures will use occasionally use PCs as weapons (when appropriate)
• PC pulled a sack over an Irontooth's head in order to blind him for a round, allowing another to pull a fallen PC away.
• Kobolds pushed into iron maidens. Thievery checks to lock them in until after the battle.
• A nasty magical turret was blasting the party in the middle of a fight (arcana/thievery skill challenge to disable). A wizard asked if he could pack it with residuum to 'overload' it. He rolled well enough that I granted enough successes for it to work.
• A PC threw his blanket on top of a fire-pit in order to generate enough smoke to grant concealment for a few rounds. This was in Paragon, and he'd been carrying the same stupid blanket around since 1st level.
• I'm not even counting the number of times PCs have used social skills to completely alter my plans. For example, there is a tribe of orcs currently living outside Gardmore Abbey that worships one of my player's character as the Lost Son of Gruumsh (thanks to his +bluff/disguise items and some phenomenal roleplaying)

 

[RangerWickett]

Spiked-chain wielder tosses the chain like a grappling hook, swings on the line, and does a flyby attack bull rush kick. This was mid-heroic, so the GM didn't let him continue, in the same action, to grapple the monster with his chain and ride the thing to the ground.

Out of combat, a warlock knew he was going to be going undercover, and that the enemy had a mind-reading imp as a pet. So the warlock made an Arcana check and expended a daily attack power granted by his far realm patron to basically store 'pure insanity' in the corner of his mind. When the imp showed up, he shifted the insanity to the front of his mind. The imp's head exploded.

Self-described 'earth mage' (lots of stone shaping rituals, stoneskin, etc.) was fighting a dragon that tried to knock the party into a pit of lava. The mage said he wanted to stoneshape a bunch of the lava inward, like making a fist in a pool to squirt water. A spout of lava shot upward and pegged the dragon.

Before there were garrote rules, a rogue wanted to strangle someone. I basically handled it as a grab with free sneak attack damage each round.

Oh, and there was the time the swordmage stalled an airship so it would crash on top of a dragon.

 

[Truename]

one PC tossed a blanket over the medusa's head.

That reminds me of a time when the party was fighting a troll in room lined with tapestries. The wizard Thunderwaved the troll next to a tapestry, then the cleric cast Command and ordered the troll to roll itself up in the tapestry. I had no idea what was being planned, but Command usually causes forced movement, so I said okay, and the game effect would be that the troll would be restrained.

Then the rogue dumped a flask of oil on the tapestry and lit it up. Fwooomph.

 

[Nyronus]

Not in 4e per se, but in Gamma World this weekend the PCs were trying to sneak up to an old off-shore oil drilling platform controlled by what were essentially Deep Ones. They got attacked by the Deep One's mutant giant octopus guard-dog and alerted the sentries with a mix of gunfire, screaming, and leaky laser fire. It was night though, so they didn't get spotted exactly. After some discussion they moved the boat away from the site of the battle to avoid the first few scouts. They then saw the Deep Ones dive into the water and spread out in a circle from the rig. They were right boned.

What followed was a string of pure awesome.

They rushed the boat to the rig, straight through the scouting ring, killed the Deep One scout in a single hit with a crossbow so not to make noise and alert the Deep Ones on the pier, landed the ship guns (literally) blazing, gunning down the four mooks waiting on the pier, and wounding the captain with them. The captain still managed to warn a sentry on the next level up, who then rushed to get the troops stationed on the third level. The party killed some killer eels the Deep Ones used as watch-dogs, and then offed the captain, but had no hope catching the guard before he could warn the other troops, and the remaining 15 scouts were quickly moving towards the rig.

Calculating based on run speeds and the size of the rig, I gave the party 27ish rounds to do something. They had 60% of a CL+1 encounter coming towards them from the sea, and about 90% of a CL+2 encounter coming in from above. They also had no time to rest from any wounds gotten by the eels on the pier. They were on the second level, but there was no real good place to defend against the 45ish minions about to come down on them like the wrath of god. They considered cutting the ropes the deep ones had hung in the old elevator shaft which they used to move from level to level in the oil rig, to slow them down, but that would only do just that.

Then one character realizes hes carrying five gallons of gasoline.

So, the scouts come climbing up one elevator shaft while the guards on the top level begin climbing down a second. One character waits in the downshaft with a single piece of flint and steel, having doused the entire ring of ropes in gasoline during the 27 rounds of waiting. Three more party members are waiting in the upshaft, two with ranged at-wills and the other with a gun which I house-ruled 4e's long range rules back into Gamma World, giving him and effective 200 ft. range, albeit at a penalty. This just so happened to be the length of the elevator shaft.

14 minions fell 50-150 feet to a horrible burning death, while eight more were killed on their way down, still leaving the party split (one went to guard the staircases leading up and down the sides) and over ten really nasty minion brutes and artillery to deal with. Two character go down after being ganged up on, and when you go down in Gamma World you stay down. Unfortunately for the Minions, one character could auto-kill them if they engaged in melee (Pyrokinetic) and the other was invincible to them (Ectoplasmic). So they grabbed the downed PCs and threatened Coup de grace if the party didn't let them go. After a mexican stand-off one character convinced them to leave after he threw down his weapon... not telling the poor sods he had radioactive eyebeams. They ran, and he killed the leader as he ran, mostly for trying to take a hostage.

Most of this was completely off the top of my head. No planning other than drawing maps and stating out the guards. I had to do a lot of math to figure out the time table the party had to work with for this whole insane adventure. Probably the greatest moment of brilliance came when the PCs realized they had a tank of gasoline. I was considering having some of the minions climbing the upshaft survive and try to flank the party, but then I realized... 50 drop. Onto concrete and scrap. Yeah. 14 kills for two minutes of work and a single standard action.

That game also featured the party killing an infant shoggoth as it tried to escape with a single well lobbed car stereo. Have I mentioned that I love the fact that when you take Gamma World's gear rules to their logical conclusion, every object with any weight and heft in the setting becomes a deadly weapon?

 

[Rechan]

I had a power stunt houserule. The party was fighting a spirit that could possess statues until the statues broke, and it had ot find a new one. The Shaman played the power stunt, and 'exercised' it from the statue.

In a game I was in, we were in a very narrow chamber with statues, fighting spiders. I climbed up on one of the statues, put my back to the wall/feet against the statue, and shoved it over on top of one of the spiders, killing it instantly.

 

[Evenglare]

Not 4e, but I was playing starwars saga edition at onepoint. And we were doing some sort of trade on a building that was a couple miles high. Some bounty hunter jumped off, I jumped after him, sliced his pack off , we fought for several rounds falling, eventually one of my team mates who were fighting on the bridge up top, used a destiny point, to kick someone off their speeder, and came down and caught me. It was the most awesome fight I have been in so far.