Craziest combat move by a PC

[celewritor]

The craziest combat action I've seen involves a lot of the elements already on this thread.

High level rogue uses a scroll of Otto's Irresitstable Dance on a Very Old Green Dragon. Then jumps on top of it and squirms down its throat. Drops a half dozen Quaal Feather Token : Trees. Splat!

Some PCs have a death wish.

 

[maggot]

I had a player load up two crossbows, run and dive into a T-intersection and fire in both directions simulatenously. Normally, you would only get one attack for having moved, but I gave him two for the effort. He rolled complete garbage and laid on the floor while the monsters charged and devoured him.

Crazy, yes. Successful, no.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I had a player load up two crossbows, run and dive into a T-intersection and fire in both directions simulatenously. Normally, you would only get one attack for having moved, but I gave him two for the effort. He rolled complete garbage and laid on the floor while the monsters charged and devoured him.

Crazy, yes. Successful, no.

He needs John Woo as his Celebrity DM.

-Hyp.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

As befits the game, dragons seem be coming up pretty often in this thread.

Many years ago, a PC attempted a similar feat as below. Except he was trying to get up to the dragon (a great red wyrm), not pull it down. He managed it (but not after a few moments reminiscent of the scene in Darkman with the helicopter), and soon was fighting in mid-air with the dragon.

He barely won the battle, and barely survived the subsequent falling damage.

The player and I still talk about that battle, close to 15 years later.

5th level party fighting a bunch of mooks and a strafing (medium) dragon. The swordsage/barbarian has climbed to the top of a tower. He readies and action to "tackle the dragon out of the air when it flies by". Given the situation, it pretty much has to fly-by the tower to use it's breath weapon. He jumps, hits, wins the grapple (I forgot the AoO from the dragon, but there you go) and pulls the dragon out of the sky and both take falling damage. I rule (mainly because of the forgotten AoO) that both are prone but the landing knocked them apart. The dragon gets a single attack off then dies...

What's the craziest/oddest move you've seen a PC try to pull off in a fight?

Mark

 

[Henry]

The craziest I've seen? A Star Wars Jedi, separated from his light saber, using dual-wielded paint cannisters as improvised weapons against stormtroopers.

Same player, playing a cleric who is attempting to charm a Deinonycus (the iconic "Velociraptor") as the thing is attacking him repeatedly and eating him.

The craziest I've ever heard about? A Dragon Magazine editorial about a Paladin who tackled a Pit Fiend with a magic dagger after his sword fails a fireball save. He attacks the pit fiend with the only weapon he has left -- a magic dagger. He grabs the pit fiend, the pit fiend flies into the air, with the grappling and stabbing paladin. The pit fiend is killed, and the paladin RIDES HIM DOWN STILL CURSING AND STABBING. He takes falling damage at the end, gets up, and dusts himself off. "Got Him."

 

[Sir Brennen]

Was quite a while ago, and I don't recall all the specifics, but the gnomish cleric in our party somehow ended up on the back of an unfriendly wyvern we were fighting. Not doing much bonking it with his quarterstaff, he took off his pants, and managed to get them over the wyvern's eyes, effectively blindfolding it.

Another more recent one had our dwarven fighter using his shield to sled down a spiral staircase in pursiut of a badguy.

My namesake character once had to stop an opponent from getting away on a horse. Having no missle weapons, he drew out the greatsword slung on his own horse, and threw it at the fleeing mount. The DM told me I'd have huge penalties, but I had little else I could do.

Natural 20. Took the horse down in one hit.

That character often would try to disable enemy mounts in combat first, much to the dismay of our ranger

 

[3d6]

This was a d20 Modern game with lots of supernatural elements.

We were trying to rescue a hostage from a mind flayer. We had fought our way through the mind flayer's guards, and had arrived in the mind flayer's penthouse on the 10th floor. The mind flayer grabs the hostage and jumps out the window (mind flayers have levitate as a psionic ability, remember).

We can't beat the mind flayer to the ground. The elevators are out, and 10 flights of stairs will take too much time. His car was in the parking lot below him, so if we can't beat him to the ground, he'll get away.

We can't shoot him. He's in a grapple with the hostage, who is almost certainly 1st or 2nd level. A stray shot may kill the hostage.

I jump out off the balcony onto the mind flayer, and make my touch attack and grapple check. However, getting into a grapple check was more of a "least bad" than a "good" idea. By the time we had descended to the 3rd floor, the mind flayer was done feeding, and I started rolling up a new character.

 

[STARP_Social_Officer]

This happened years ago in my old campaign.
The scene: a kingdom where the function of magic is erratic due to an aeons-past magical war. In 'wild zones', wild magic rules and a caster level check is needed to cast any spell correctly without something going wrong. The PCs are in a wild zone.
Wizard at top of stairs. Dwarf at top of stairs. Evil cleric at bottom of stairs.
Cleric casts hold person. Dwarf fails save. Wizard casts dispel magic. Fails caster check. Dispels himself. Unable to cast any spells for 24 hours. Player curses; other players laugh heartily.
Cleric casts spiritual weapon, begins attacking wizard. Wizard can't attack back. Wizard has no ranged weapon. Wizard can't cast.
Wizard picks up dwarf and hurls down stairs. Wizard rolls natural 20 on attack roll, despite almost total lack of skill and complete lack of rules for dwarf bowling. Dwarf hits cleric, knocks cleric over, does 10 points of damage. Wizard slides down bannister, punches cleric in face, pins cleric until other fighter arrives to finish him off.

Wizard gained a level's worth of XP just for making us laugh so hard.

 

[shilsen]

The craziest I've ever heard about? A Dragon Magazine editorial about a Paladin who tackled a Pit Fiend with a magic dagger after his sword fails a fireball save. He attacks the pit fiend with the only weapon he has left -- a magic dagger. He grabs the pit fiend, the pit fiend flies into the air, with the grappling and stabbing paladin. The pit fiend is killed, and the paladin RIDES HIM DOWN STILL CURSING AND STABBING. He takes falling damage at the end, gets up, and dusts himself off. "Got Him."

That's beautiful

Definitely not that high level, but I had a short-lived PC who did something similar. He was an elven ranger whose group was attacked in the middle of a very thick forest by a number of large poisonous spiders, led by a huge one. The spiders would pop down out of a tree, bite someone, and scuttle back, and they apparently could travel faster than us leaping from branch to branch.

Angry and wounded, the ranger went up a tree, fought one of the smaller spiders among the branches, and killed it. As he did so, he saw the big spider in another tree, heading down toward his allies. So he jumped. And landed on the big spider, causing it to lose its balance, while he barely kept his.

The first his allies saw of them was the spider falling through the branches, screeching with pain, as the ranger held onto it with a hand on the hilt of a dagger buried in its back and stabbed it over and over again as they fell. I think he walked away with 2 hp.

 

[Richards]

The PCs are in a haunted mansion, hunting vampires, when a group of shadows fly through the walls and attack. The fighter's getting Strength-drained pretty bad, so the wee little elven sorceress kicks him through an open doorway and slams the door shut, leaving her in the room with all the shadows.

She then proceeds to drop a fireball spell at her feet.

The fighter opens the door back up to find her at 2 or 3 hit points, singed quite a bit around the edges, but none of the shadows survived.

Johnathan