Creative Use of Low-level Magic.

[Malk]

So my wife is playing her first primary spellcaster in a long campaign. She decided to play a scorcerer, and over the first couple of sessions decided that her character is going to be a tricky illusionist style caster. The problem is though that she gets distracted by innovating cool uses for silent image and looses focus on the battle. So what I would love to see in this thread is very interesting 'outside the box' uses for low level magic. What have your experiences been?

To start, my wife and the other caster in the group found themselves in a box car on the lightning rail surrounded by cyran refugees and being attacked by bandits, while all of the melee characters were off fighting someone else. So she casts prestidigitation to create the odor of death and disease and shouted to the bandit that they were carrying plague victims. The guys freak out and move off to join the larger battle.

 

[shilsen]

Unseen Servant for creating minor distractions during a battle or for doing things like dropping alchemist's fire on enemies as they come through a door.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Well, this was psionics, but I'm sure it could translate well to magic. In my now completed Story Hour (see link in sig) - a character named Rhema uses the power Control Flames to remove a man's smoking tobacco from his pipe and distract a man attacking her friend. If I can say so myself, I enjoyed that particular burst of creative juices. The thought of an old man watching his smoking tobacco rise up out of his pipe and fly through the air just strikes me as funny.

 

[Darklone]

My favorite was Dancing Lights and See Invis to pinpoint the hostile invisible wizard

 

[broghammerj]

In 2nd edition, we used stone shape (3rd level) to entrap an evil cleric within a nearby boulder. He was granted a reflex save (or whatever the equivalent was back then) to jump out of the way and failed. This was after a big battle royale and several members were near death, out of spells, unconscious, etc.

The next morning when we had recovered our spells we un-stone shaped the boulder to find the cleric had disappeared. Our GM said he gave us a little latitude with the spell use so we had to give a little latitude in not killing his major recurring villian.

 

[EricNoah]

For the first time ever I recently saw someone use Pass Without Trace to keep our party from being tracked through a dusty section of dungeon. 'twas kinda cool!

 

[Slife]

For the first time ever I recently saw someone use Pass Without Trace to keep our party from being tracked through a dusty section of dungeon. 'twas kinda cool!

Why didn't they use prestidigition to dirty it evenly, concealing any dust they removed?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Mage hand gets a lot of use with our party. The unlimited use mage-hand item from the DMG is always a Best Buy.

Last adventure mage hand was used to...

1. Help cheat at a game.
2. Embarass an NPC at a game.
3. Sneak gross food onto an NPCs plate to embarass him further.
4. Steal small unattended items at a party.

It has also been used to pass a ring of feather falling back up a cliff to facilitate the party climbing down, as well as dumping bowls full of boiling water on bad guys during a low-level fight.

DS

 

[Odysseus]

I once managed succesfully to pretend to open a gate to hell and summon a demon. Cast silent image of a firey gate opening, and throw some sulpher into the air. Fooled the orcs that we're giving us a beating, into running off.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Two different players have used grease to good effect. Grease on the handle of the bad guy's weapon so that the bad guy dropped said weapon and incurred an AoO (which killed him) when he went to pick it up off the ground. And someone else recently greased a companion so that the companion could more easily squeeze through a crack in a cave.

I love grease.