Creative skill use in your game

[knightofround]

My favorite skill challenge was my partys attempt to exorcise a demon from a possessed prince. Diplomacy was used to convince the prince that he could resist the demon's will. Heal was used not to mend wounds, but to heal the psychological trauma the prince experienced from when the demon used his body to murder his wife. Streetwise was used to barter with the demon in exchange for leaving the prince's body.

Me, I was just expecting a straight up Religion/Arcane check =P

 

[BraveSirKevin]

In 4e, using an Arcana to make a counterfeit magic sword look convincing and using Streetwise to convince the buyer of the seller's sterling reputation in the black market.

Streetwise is a skill that really should have more direct uses. As written, it basically allows you to quickly gather gossip, which isn't all that great. In our campaign, streetwise is used instead of Nature/Arcana/Religion for all monster knowledge checks based for humanoids that could be considered civilised, and are likely to be encountered on the streets of a city.

I think your streetwise value should be usable in place of diplomacy or intimidate, or any of the information gathering skills like perception, provided that the Player is using it in an urban environment.

 

[Quickleaf]

*Using Arcana to "minionize" an isolated NPC, so that he could then be killed with a single magic missile.

Wow, how did that work? Was the NPC statted already or were they a non-combatant?

 

[OnlineDM]

Back story: The party had retrieved a magic staff from a band of orcs who had stolen it, killing the orcs in the process. They also recovered a Sending Stone and pieced together that someone (call him Mr. X) had hired the orcs to steal the staff and was communicating them via Sending Stone to provide instructions.

The party was on the road, and the Sending Stone activated and spoke to them. The person on the other end (Mr. X) started making demands about bringing the staff to him... so the sorcerer in the party pulled out a huge Bluff, acting like he was the leader of the orcs.

This was interesting because, unbeknownst to the PCs, one of the orcs had escaped and had told Mr. X what had happened (the orcs were dead, the PCs had the staff). Thus, when Mr. X heard "the orc leader" (the bluffing sorcerer), he took a minute (offscreen) to beat up the orc who had apparently lied to him about the other orcs being wiped out.

It threw me for a loop as the DM, but everything worked out okay in the end.

 

[Umbran]

This is from Deadlands, not from a D&D game, but this probably fits the bill anyway...

The characters are aware of a train care full of cargo they don't want to reach its destination. The obvious choice in a Western would be to pull off a train robbery - but no, my players have to be special

They use Profession: Arms Dealer, Tinkerin', and Science: Engineering to forge copies of paperwork and communications, and hack some telegraph lines, to make it seem (temporarily) like they'd bought the cargo, and were having it sent to a different destination for them to receive.

What with the guard on the train who knew the actual destination of the cargo, though, this did not work as flawlessly as they'd hoped....

 

[pemerton]

Note, all of these uses were player generated and not actually part of the adventure.

By "not actuall part of the adventure" do you mean "not anticipated by the GM/module author"?

 

[pemerton]

Wow, how did that work? Was the NPC statted already or were they a non-combatant?

The NPC was a mid-level tiefling (encountered in the Well of Demons in H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth). In the module, the two tieflings are statted up.

As I ran the encounter (described in more detail here) the tieflings were unlikely to come onto the scene until a whole bevy of gnolls (plus there hyenas and demons) had been dealt with. And indeed that was how it happened.

When the PCs started negotiating with the tieflings, it turned out that the gnolls had fed them rot grubs and one of them collapsed an reanimated as a rot grub zombie, which the PCs dealt with fairly handily.

The other tiefling then followed them around the rest of the abandoned temple of Baphomet, with a status ambiguous between that of rescuee and captive. He tried to persuade the PCs to do a deal with his diabolical patron ("The Master Trapped in Ice") but while one PC was quite keen on this, another - the wizard - was vehemently opposed.

The climax of the scenario was stopping a gnoll warlock from rededicating the temple to Yeenoghu. This involved stopping a ritual - which, naturally enough, led to the unleashed magical energies bringing the temple collapsing down!

As the PCs fled for the entrance, the player of the wizard stated that he wanted to execute the tiefling NPC with a Magic Missile. There seemed, to me as GM, to be no good reason for insisting on playing this out as a full-fledged combat, when the outcome (8th or 9th level PC wizard vs 6th or 7th level tiefling NPC from the MM) was not in doubt. On the other hand, the other players were likely to be disapproving of this, and it seemed fair that they at least get a chance to intervene. So the player rolled an Arcana check to go along with his Magic Missile. He made a Hard DC, which I decided was enough to "minionize" the NPC, and hence have him die automatically from the Magic Missile. The other players (and PCs) were then unable to do anything but express their shock at the wizard's ruthless behaviour.

 

[Hussar]

By "not actuall part of the adventure" do you mean "not anticipated by the GM/module author"?

Yes, this is what I meant. It's not like these solutions were even considered by either the GM or the adventure writer (not always the same person) before they were tried.

And I definitely have to remember the minionize idea. That's very cool. Might be a very neat way to use Intimidate - instead of the baddy surrendering, he get's minionized.

 

[fitch3k]

I haven't seen many post about creative spells:

in my last session kobolds had my wizard in a net and where pulling me off a dock into water - I stuck my hand in the water and cast shocking grasp (after a successful Concentration check) hitting all 3 of them

in the hay day of pen + paper before miniatures I used to pull off great creative spells but most DMs don't know how to handle anything that doesn't involve an attack roll anymore. some of my fav memories are

high lvl caster using creat water to flood a dungeon room
rock to mud on a stone golem
animate object on a dragon skeleton to scare miners
using ghost sound to mimic a cave in causing orcs to flee
I once cast light on a holy symbol and the rogue succeded in bluffing vampires to leave us alone before he activated the "sun amulet that forces the sun to rise"

ahh those where the days !!! sigh