Cool stunts you've seen

[Quickleaf]

The PCs were fighting shadowhunter bats amidst a raging fire, and one of the bats had just abducted a girl. A quick huddle from the PCs came up with this plan. 2 readied actions to attack the shadowhunter bat when it landed adjacent to them, and one readied an action to catch the girl if she fell adjacent. The party's mounted barbarian charged up a burning farmhouse then kept off the roof at the bat...

She missed her Athletics check by one square. But she asked if she could jump off her horse to make the attack. I said sure but she'd take falling damage. The barbarian smacks the bat, her power knocking it prone. The 2 PCs below pummel the bat dead. The bard catches the falling girl.

And the barbarian plummets to the ground like a stone.

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

A few things spring to mind from 2 of our current running campaigns:

Once on a boat, we had to fight some skeletons along a shoreline. Many of our party had no ranged powers at all so I handed my rope to our fighter and told him to lasso a skeleton, which, making his check, he did, then proceeded to drag it to death along the bottom as the boat moved. Best part was our fighter talks in character with a bad Scottish accent, and he was trash-talking the skeleton the whole time he was dragging it. Hilarious.

Facing a Dragon that we did not want to fight, we needed 1 round to get clear, so I rammed a Nail Of Sealing into its hind foot. I know, I know, that wouldn't actually work legally, but this was very early in our first campaign in 4e, and we hadn't completely read up on the Nail Of Sealing, so the DM let it go because he liked the out of the box thinking. We got away.

In the center of a town in WOTBS, in the middle of winter, we were ambushed by invisible something or the others in the town square. We were getting owned, unable to find or hit them, so on my turn I asked the DM if the well I was standing next to was functional. He said yes, so I used minor and standard actions to draw up a bucket of water and sling it around me in a circle as far as I could. It hit almost all of our attackers, freezing and showing their location. I got a lot of "attaboy!" and pats on the back from our group after that encounter.

 

[Pour]

This is still talked about in my live group...

While playing through a much stranger version of Tomb of Horrors: Garden of Graves, the PCs ended up in a ruined casino/banquet hall that, upon entering, filled with ghosts reenacting a long-forgotten wedding feast. While two PCs fell into a roulette trap, compelled to play (and gambling points of random stats in the process) until the trap failed to hit their Will, the dwarf had a much harder experience. He'd wandered to the buffet, which compelled whoever sampled the fare to continue to eat, and eat, and eat until they gorged themselves to death. The dwarf nearly succumbed to the gorging, having lost 1 to his Speed and gained 75 pounds, before tearing himself away. Before he left, though, he resisted another attack against Will to stow away a 'haunted turkey' from the buffet table for later use. He was convinced it would come in handy later... and he was right.

Later on, the party used a dungeon-shaping artifact which allowed them to rearrange one dungeon tile on the table to a location or position of their choice. They turned the tile they were camped in to remove the door and provide a perfectly safe location for an extended rest (yeah right). You see there was an eladrin witch after them and the artifact, who was actually a lamia. She was able to squeeze... over the course of a few hours... through minute cracks. Well-above their level, and assisted by two scarab swarms, she'd kill or cow them, steal the artifact, and entomb them forever in order to work her evil in Acererack's satellite installation.

The PCs had a hell of a fight on their hands, and despite some momentary brilliance began taking huge hits. As hp was nearly spent for the three of them, the sorcerer managed to activate the artifact with a great Arcana check and turn the tile so that the door reappeared. The party risked OAs to escape through the door and slam it shut behind them... not quite understanding, I suppose, the lamia and swarms ability to squeeze through the gaps. As they started to do just that, the sorcerer fumbled with trying to activate the artifact one last time to trap them all in the chamber. He just could not roll for beans, and she was steadily flowing through. The rogue and dwarf managed to drive her back... and then he remembered the haunted turkey.

Ripping the turkey from his pack, he tore it to pieces and shoved the cursed meat into the cracks and crevices. The swarms and the lamia, of course, had to eat through in order to proceed- and the haunted turkey successfully snared them. The dwarf proceeded to, round after round, shove turkey into the spaces, stalling her until it was spent. Go figure, the dice made it extra dramatic, for as soon as the turkey ran out and she was about to get through, the sorcerer rolled a natural 20 and the chamber turned. She was trapped for hours. They proceeded to move the dungeon several more times, taking hours themselves, removing the nearby dungeon so far from the lamia's tomb she could never find a proper crevice back. She was entombed forever, a beautiful, deadly encounter foiled by... a haunted turkey.

 

[Arctic Wolf]

Well, I have 2 things that happened that our group mentions every now and then. The first thing that happened was that I was trying to get to this wraith that was in the air since I made the mistake of having no ranged weapons for my warlord. So I threw my grapping hook on a newby statue and the forcefield on it flew me back and I was able to hit and confuse her lol. The second thing that I did was destroy another forcefield by charging at it since our arcane users were having a bit of trouble. Failed the first time but the second time I destroyed it. Now that I am DMing I don't see as much crazy stuff done which saddens me

 

[Phebius]

The tiefling in our party picked up the halfling and tossed her at a dying character. The halfling then used her readied action to administer a potion to said character and then dropped an action point to kings castle.

 

[Keenberg]

Many first level adventures take place in the sewers... not so many go down like this.

Evil campaign, the party is sneaking into a vampire's keep via the sewer. They sneak along until they are under the castle, where they find the lavatories. The minotaur decides that, instead of waiting for the peasant on the jake above him to finish pinching a loaf, he is going to use his axe to fish-hook him down. The mother of all messes ensues.

 

[On Puget Sound]

Two recent events, both from Encounters:
1. When only 3 players showed up and the dice went sour on them, 2 of them were down and only one pixie remained conscious, with 3 HP left. She used a combination of Shrink and Pixie Dust, plus an Arcana check, to make both her teammates small or floaty enough to drag them out of the encounter.

Yes, shrink works only on objects, but an unconscious person is kinda sorta object-like, and yes, pixie dust lets someone fly as a free action and unconscious people can't take actions, but if they're just sort of floating there taking a nap, you can tow them.... right? It was Encounters, after all.

Second one was during the Unicorn hunt, which had become a game as all participants realized the unicorns were treating it that way. The briar witch had been dropped by non-lethal damage to zero, and a unicorn healed her with its horn but told her she was out of the game now and could not fight, so she sat, sulked and grumbled. Then the pixie PC (same one as above) also took a big hit and went down, so she too was out.

The half-orc jumped on a unicorn's back (grab check) and managed to hang on when the unicorn tried to buck. At that point the pixie spoke up, "I can't fight, but do I have to sit here?" "No", replied the unicorn, "but you can't try to catch us." "Well, I want to teach you to fly, would you like to learn?" The unicorn was intrigued and allowed itself to be pixie-dusted, then joyfully flew up into a tree, the half-orc still clinging. It then jumped down, 30' into a shallow pond, and STILL failed to dislodge the half-orc. Impressed by his stubbornness and her playful spirit, the unicorns agreed to cooperate.

 

[Hactarcomp]

The halfling bard of the party has a habit of jumping on top of things and being incredibly lucky when he does so. This has included two invisible monsters (high perception roll and then a near perfect acrobatics roll) and a dragon. This helped the other PCs see the invisible creatures and distracted the dragon.

Beyond that, I've seen the parties paladin strip every weapon he had and chuck them at a fleeing enemy who had betrayed them. He got her right in front of the minotaur guards of the city with his razor shield. That was an interesting diplomatic encounter.

In a one shot with the players fooling around, there was some attempted halfling chucking which failed due to shadow tentacles holding him to the ground.

 

[Keenberg]

Another campaign comes to mind (3.5e) where a friend and I were Shadowbane Inquisitors of Pelor. The devout deciples of Pelor that we were, we had had our holy symbols burned into our hands so that we would never be without our God. It came in extremely useful when we found ourselves face-to-face with a horde of a few hundred skeletons charging us from across a plain. We knew that even though they were weak, they would have been one hit each in melee, we would fall under the sheer load of them if we allowed them to swarm us. We dug our boots into the earth, called out to the heavens for power, and unleashed a Turn Undead that was blinding, shaking the ground and the heavens above. When the light faded, the plains in front of us were completely covered in ash. Pelor had once again smiled upon us.

 

[Ryujin]

Well there was the time our Sorcerer managed to leap onto the back of an animated statue trap and rode it for the entire encounter. Turned out to be the only safe place, in the room.