What is the cleverest thing you've done to get out of a bad situation?

[BlueBlackRed]

The thread title says it all.

It's simple; your character is in a bind.
Your usual strategies can't or won't work.
You look at your situation and character sheet closely and you figure out a way to escape or even win. But your idea is...different. Almost in an A-Team/MacGyver way.

What was your idea?

(From the TPK thread) I had a monk who imprisoned himself in a Bead of Force to protect himself from a red dragon that was tearing the party apart, and ran around in it like a hamster in a ball for awhile.

 

[BlackMoria]

I remember one from a while back while playing 2E.

Our party consisted of seven 3rd level characters. Due to a combination of bad luck and some bad decision making, we found ourselves quickly being overwhelmed by a few ogres, a massive amount of orcs and dire wolves.

It was a TPK in the making. In short order everyone but the paladin and myself (I was a scout type rogue) was either dead or at minus hit points. The paladin was completely surrounded and cut off by a mass of orcs, dire wolves and one ogre. The only nearby companion I could try to save was the dying wizard who had gone down.

I was already making my move when the paladin screamed for me to save myself and run. I dashed over and picked up the wizard and moved off as fast (boots of speed don't fail me now) as I could through some brush and trees. The paladin, bless him, managed to buy me a few rounds head start, before he went down.

I found myself at the top of a long, wide cliff, which I suspect the DM just made up to put me out of my misery faster since he was basically hinting that it was all over as he reminded me that I could hear the howls of the dire wolves which had found my scent. And that with me carrying the wizard, the dire wolves would overtake me in a few rounds and that there was no escape.

I tied a 50ft rope to a sturdy tree near the cliff edge to climb down when the first of the dire wolves broke cover further down. I asked if I could jump over the edge (it was 60 feet straight down) and the DM said that the rope would most likely break, meaning that I would take 6d6 damage anyhow and that the even if the rope didn't break, the rope would do nearly as much damage to me due to the abrupt stop in acceleration.

Inspiration hit me. Stating that I was holding the end of the rope and with the wizard still draped over me, I ran along the top of the cliff in the opposite direction of the, by now, 5 dire wolves pursuers. The DM had a puzzled look on his face as he was wondering what I was up to.

The dire wolves were literally breathing down my neck when I reached the end of my rope as the rope went taunt. Then I told the DM I step off the cliff. The DM was astonished as I described the dynamics of using the rope as a massive tarzan swing to the bottom and that excessive G-forces on the rope or on me were negated by swinging in a arc on a taunt rope.

The DM allowed it to happen and after a few pendulum back and forth swings, I safely was on the ground. I poured a potion down the wizard's throat (which the DM said was a -9 when I performed this action) and then carried the wizard out of there as quickly as I could.

By the time the orcs caught up with the dire wolves after looting the bodies of my companions, I had too much of a headstart. It would take them a hour to move to a location where the dire wolves could get down off the cliff and the orcs couldn't track me if they climbed down my rope, because that would mean leaving the wolves behind.

So the wizard and I got to live another day. A clever idea prevented an almost certain TPK. I got bonus XPs for the clever escape and saving the wizard to boot.

 

[Rel]

Wasn't me but one of my players.

The party had interrupted a scene where an immortal, indestructable (except by powerful magic) demigod was drawing immense amounts of power from an artifact. Most of the party launched a brief series of attacks at this woman who laughed them off and kept sucking in the power. Then one of the players said, "I step into the stream of power."

At this point the rest of the party moved to prevent her from bodily removing the player from the power stream, even as she tried to pull more and more power from the artifact. They were successful but each round the PC in the power stream was taking a series of punishing Criticals (This was Rolemaster and these were Level E Essence Crits: Nasty!). But through tremendous luck and spending some "fate points", he held out for half a dozen rounds, taking horrific damage in the process.

In the end, his physical form just couldn't take it any longer and he just burned away. That was when all the energy she had been trying to pull surged through the conduit at once and it was HER turn to take the Essence Crits. She wasn't so lucky (though I did use every resource she had) and the magic melted her form into that of a boneless, amorphous blob. She was, unfortunately for her, still immortal and indestructable, consigned to eternity in her current form.

The PC who sacrificed himself (a Cleric of Light) was made a saint in his religion. I still regard this as one of the best moments in our group's gaming history.

 

[Pants]

Once, in a 3.0 game I played in, we were fighting a Clay Golem and none of the party had any bludgeoning weapons. We could not hurt it at all. The party wizard crafted a plan to (ab)use Dimension Door to drop a tree on the golem. Yes, it probably wasn't by the rules, but anyways... my ftr/wiz tried to keep the golem busy until the wizard could pull it off. In the end, he used Dimension Door to get above the Golem with the tree and then Feather Falled to safety as the tree splattered clay golem goo everywhere.

In a game I ran, the PC's had been going through a large, ancient wizard's tower and came upon a stone statue blocking a portal. They correctly assumed that it was a Stone Golem. The party didn't really want to fight the golem (it was a rogue, a wizard, a druid, and a cleric/barbarian, spellcaster heavy), so the druid decided to Stone Shape the floor beneath the Golem and, sadly, the poor golem proceeded to plummet through four or five floors of the tower, before shattering on the bottom floor.

 

[Jdvn1]

This wasn't a life-or-death situation, but it was another sort of bind.

In a WoT game I was being accused of theft (of the Horn... for those of you not familiar with WoT, just rest assured this is a very important artifact) and I needed to talk to the dockmaster in order to get information to clear my name. The ogier (big ugly guy, sometimes confused with a monster) came along with me to "keep an eye" on me. He didn't trust me and was always getting in my way.So we go to the dockmaster's office, but there's a huge line to see him that extends out of the building and then for a couple hundred feet. So I run to the front of the line, point at the ogier and yell, "Ahh! Trolloc!" and everyone runs away in terror. No line, and the trolloc is suddenly busy trying to explain himself to the guards.

 

[drnuncheon]

So there I am, dangling from a tree by a rope around my ankles. Hey, whaddaya want? First level thief, so I blew a Find Traps roll. Trouble is, I'm never going to make it to second level, because I hear something tall, dark, and ugly heading my way.

So I twist up and climb up the rope using my hands, and I manage to get myself up on the branch. I pull my dagger, figure I'll be able to cut myself loose and-

There he is, a hobgoblin. He's looking where the snare used to be, and in another second, he's going to look up. No way to run.

So I jump, out, as far as I can. The rope grabs me and swings me in a screaming arc. The last thing the hobgoblin sees is me heading towards him, upside down and dagger first.

Best. Natural 20. Ever.

 

[Rel]

So I jump, out, as far as I can. The rope grabs me and swings me in a screaming arc. The last thing the hobgoblin sees is me heading towards him, upside down and dagger first.

Best. Natural 20. Ever.

Just gotta say: SWEEEEET!

That one would have stuck with me too.

 

[Romnipotent]

swinging rogue dagger pendulums! thats cool.

For me, the best dealing with a problem I've had was spending days with a gnome tickerers group, organising to acquire stuff and bring them into the fold. Next morning theres a clattering of violence. The rest of the party had returned and killed all the gnomes. So there I was, back with the party! With intimate knowledge of the gnomes best stuff. It wasn't great but we hauled that place out on the backs of Thayan Red Wizards (our employers, but we didn't tell them about the gnomes or the haul).

 

[drothgery]

Way back in the 2e days, I had a transmuter that used a nested pair of Walls of Force to evade a "entire passageway gets filled with rushing water"-type trap which the DM had figured would kill a few people. Instead, I blocked the rushing water for a few rounds with a "wall"-mode Wall of Force, then had everyone huddle around me, cast a "hemisphere" Wall of Force, and let the first wall disappear. Water rushes in, drains out, everyone lives to kill some more monsters and take their stuff.

 

[Hanuman]

A couple of years ago I was in a five member group playing a 12th lvl red half dragon ftr/clr.When the party encountered a half black dragon T-rex, well this beast was beating the tar out of us and we were all getting low on hit points. Then the T-rex scores a crit on me and I get swallowed! Now at this point I think I'm screwed and should hope my party can get me raised later (I pay insurance, they will raise me right,right?) and the Dm has this "it's not my fault" look on his face.Well then I started to smile slow and evil like, with everybody saying "what?,what?" as I turn to the Dm and say "So I'm guessing that it's kinda hard to make a reflex save when something is inside you hmmmm?..... save vs fire breath!"(you never use it after about 8th lvl). Twenty nine points of damage later out I came with the cry "THATSA ONE SPICY MEATBALL!!!"

High fives all round!