We were playing a 1-shot. We were in a bedroom of a haunted mansion and we had bought attention to ourselves from a pair of vampires. The DM had then slowly materialise into the room, their body parts building from the inside out. My druid quickly placed his staff into the space where their hearts would go, and when the stake through the heart effect was achieved, i cast create flame to set it on fire. The vampires screeched and seared in pain as they died pretty instantly. I picked up the charred remains of the staff and used mending on it to restore it to its original form. I think i got inspiration points off that 😊
Vampire 1: "No, we don't barge in. We have to make them utterly scared, or it is ot fun." Vampire 2: "You sure?" Vampire 1: "c'mon, what can go wrong?"
Not most creative certainly effective. Dragonlance has a sunken city clatacism so there’s stairs the party comes across next to this great void for epic cliff side battle, and large footsteps tromping down stair way. So we set up a trip rope. But also cast a lowly grease spell on the bottom stairs… and wait. A bit of wafting smoke and torchlight later we get to see ogres ( IIRC ) going shooting past and down in to hundreds of feet drop
With a friend in DnD club at school. I'm playing a half-elf paladin who's also a pirate captain (makes more sense with lore) and the other guy -- who named his character John Carlos -- casually jumps off the side of my ship and uses Armor of Agathys to create a surfboard of ice upon colliding with the water. I'm not kidding.
Backatory: friends from school and me were playing DnD I have a kobold paladin with a little homebrew called draconic prayer ( basically super doller store dragon attacka ) and a changling and we were fighting pirates changling becomes captain and tells them all to go into the ocean ( 18 ) then I with a slightly devious used draconic prayer (18 ) for small blue and toaster bath tubed every SINGLE pirate
@@davidheien6251 ...My friend, you couldn't be more wrong if you had brought up Asmodeus- To clear it up, because I know for a fact that you just used the rule of the internet on me instead of just asking for the story like a normal person, I homebrewed a world of islands all as a single kingdom and the only way to get between the islands is seafaring mercantile, aka pirating/pirate life. The character I played would technically be a warlock since she was chosen by a deity of that world to inherit some power, but she runs more like a paladin so that's how I played her during the campaign. If you want a story you can just ask me man, no need to spread misinfo-
1:24 Bad guy comes up onto the beach with crutches and a crocodile still biting its leg cartton style, annoyedly mumbling: "I don't get paid enough for this"
1st time I played Pathfinder I was bit by a chupacabra on my turn I just blurted out "can I use prestidigitation to flavor it's tongue like horse manure?" The DM gave me an "um...um..?" Processing look. The whole party demanded to know how in and out of character I'd know what "THAT" tastes like. To which I told them in the form of a question. When you grow up on farms, summer camps, and out in the boonies/wilderness you some time smell things that have an odor so potent you can taste it...and that is what I was basing my prestidigitation on. That's when the DM goes, "yeah. Okay. You do it." So... Chupacabras don't like the taste of horse manure....and I earned a reputation for unconventional tactics.
We actually play BasicFantasy not exactly D&D, but prestidigitation would work in D&D and there used to be a cantrip called either Spice or Flavor years ago.
Funniest one was a triple cast of prestidigitation... a distraction during a bar fight (of course) where the Wizard shouted "FLASK OF FOULNESS" and proceeded to throw an illusion of a glass bottle, which 'broke' on the NPC's tunic producing a suspicious stain and a weird smell from the wrong end of a cow. This brought the fight to a screeching halt and allowed the Barbarian to sucker punch the guy and for everyone else to get out of the bar.
I was a Druid in my first campaign, Rime of the Frostmaiden, and we were going to confront the current arc villain, Sunblight, who had some evil plot to attack the Ten Towns. True enough, he had a freaking giant robot dragon made of evil rocks. What had Sunblight NOT anticipated? The Druid having Skywrite. Cue my druid Daphne warning ALL of Ice Windale of exactly what he was doing, including the exact order his attack on the Ten Tales was to happen in. This allowed us to have the final fight with Sunblight and his dragon (the DM overheard us guessing it was a mecha, so it became a mecha) in an evacuated town without any need to worry about civilians being caught in the crossfire. At the end of the Campaign after we defeated Auril the Frostmaiden, Daphne once more used Skywrite to tell Ice Windale that Auril had been beaten and Spring was finally coming.
This happened in a one-shot I was in last week. The boss was making his badass entrance by jumping from an airship onto the train we were guarding while both were moving. Because he was in freefall, he was essentially weightless, so one of the other players cast Gust on him. The DM had the boss make a dexterity saving throw against the character's spell save, and he failed... badly. So, the boss smacked his head on the glass-top train car and cracked it, fell between the cars, got run over by the train, and died. The minions, who had climbed down the rope ladder like sane people, just looked at each other and tried to confirm if they were still going to rob the train. They weren't.
we used a push spell as a glyph on a small piece of paper as means to propel lead shot out of a metal tube. this was proceeded by a quick dissertation on the physics behind the mechanics to a handful of engineers playing AD&D about forty odd years ago. shot weighed about 0.2 lbs, spell produced 1 lb⋅ft/s2 force per level. we limited its range to 10 ft as the spell would push a target creature that far after damage was assigned (rather than the maximum flight for the force created). this was decades before firearms and artificers. if a high enough level spell was cast, the musket became a one-time-use plasma rifle. technique was eventually used to create a plasma grenade and blew the head off an ancient black dragon. after that campaign, we mutually agreed to ban that application...
this reminds me of a weird one i read somewhere: a PC left a "decanter of endless water" running inside an "indestructible" container. the DM came up with a crazy scenario where the increasing pressure or more and more water in a small space eventually caused Nuclear Fusion, resulting in the equivalent of a huge H-bomb devastating the world!
@@ericb3157I would rule that without some mechanical intervention the pressure inside your container eventually matches whatever pressure your decanter of endless water is putting out, probably one atmosphere. No fusion, the container just fills up.
@@Drekromancer poor, infantile response: either learn to be a more effective troll or seek professional help for your deep psychological problems (likely caused by those daddy issues or that radon poisoning from your parents' basement)...😝
I recently had a character become a shadow sorcerer. The GM and I decided that her Hound of Ill Omen would be a goose instead. Same stats and everything, but a goose. Nothing important, right? Well, she started using minor illusion to cause honking noises to appear and used it to troll a particular party member who was constantly annoying her and getting in her way. She'd use it to cause honking to happen, have the goose burst in to attack him whenever he was interrupting him, honk at him whenever he got annoying, and occasionally just sic the goose on him for the lulz. It even managed to KO him several times and both in and out of character he's starting to develop goose-related paranoia. Best part is, several times now it's done stuff like reveal that the 'innocent girl' that he was trying to seduce wasn't actually innocent. My girl was trying to talk to her about something minor and he was at low HP. He proceeded to push her aside cause he had something he wanted to talk to her about. Rude, so my girl walked off a bit and used minor illusion to start the honking and, when he didn't get the message, she proceeded to sic the goose of ill omen on him which proceeded to 1HKO him due to his low HP. The 'innocent girl' revealed she was anything but and proceeded to blast the goose in response. My girl didn't even intend that, just wanted to get back at him for interrupting her. But it caused a massive change and plot reveal as a result. Minor illusion, a cantrip, made it all possible with a simple honk.
the water jetski idea: let's modify it further much smaller opening, and add sand to the 5'x5'x5' cube of water. suddenly, you have a water jet cutter. an abrasive cutter that can cut practically everything.
That's why usually the "only 1 spell per turn" ruling comes from. ... And also why barely anyone I know plays with these actual rules. Just kills too much fun like your idea. 😎
@1ordTakeo I was about to correct you that it isn't "one spell per turn" necessarily, but then I realized the rules do still stop this interaction, unfortunately. The rules just say if you cast a BA spell, you can't cast a leveled spell, and you can't cast a BA spell if you have already cast any other leveled spell on the turn. So you can cast an action spell and then a reaction spell on the same turn, but this specifically needs BA spell. You could do it with 2 lvls of fighter for action surge I guess
Actually, I should have re-read absorb elements as well. It specifically says only doing the extra damage on your **next turn**. I'd rule that it works tho for my own games cause it's cooler, but apparently the RAW doesn't want us to have fun
Me (wizard) gets in a shouting match with the knight's captain of the king's guard, over not paying attention to our party's "public concerns" survey (the adventures hook). The knight (a paladin) challenges me to a duel. I agree, and set the duel "to submission or death" at the fallow fields beneath the city's aquaduct. The court marches out, the king intrigued since we are fresh from the quest and my spell list is...poor. Also, I had been a royal DIK to the DM the entire adventure, ruining all his carefully laid plots and traps. So there we are on the field, and the gong rings. Him being a stereotypical slow-ass armored tank, I go first. I cast *mage hand* and use it to yank the key stone from the aquaduct arch, burying him in a half ton of stone AND drowning him in countless gallons of water. He should have read our report, particularly my character's section on "vital infrastructure maintenance". 😂
this reminds me of a scene in the webcomic "order of the stick": a Fighter is fighting a Barbarian in an arena. the Fighter tricked the Barbarian (who was Raging) into punching a load-bearing column, causing an arch to collapse on top of him! he then said he had studied architecture.
I used Fabricate to construct the pieces of a Shield Guardian to reduce the construction time of the creature. Since I can't make anything large, I just used the spell four times to create each piece and then fused them together. Trapped a man inside his plate armor by putting a lock on it and then using Arcane Lock. used Rime's Binding Ice on a flying creature, it causes an enemy's speed to reduce to 0 meaning if it can't hover it falls to the ground and fall prone. Used Catapult to hurl a net and chains on a flying creature to knock them down onto the ground. Used a 3rd level Catapult to launch a Bag of Holding with Supplies to allies before trapped in a Wall of Force. Used Leomund's Tiny Hunt to block an entryway into a room.
I've seen Leomund's Tiny Hut used in a similar fashion. The party trapped a bunch of nocturnal dire insects outside their hive, only for them to get picked off by rocs in the morning.
We were in the hells on a contracted hit to assassinate a dangerous Cambion. Problem was, he had lots of friends. A simple hit turned into a fullscale battle we werent prepared for. The dice were blessing us the whole fight and our Fighter/Barbarian duo were out front absolutely PUTTING IN THE WORK. Though after awhile the DM began to mention the Fighter slowly starting get frenzied, aquire tunnel vision, start hearing his heartbeat in his ears, then begin hyperventilating. At first we thought DM was describing the fighter starting to rage like Barb, then DM said he began to shiver... Next turn Fighter collapsed in the pile of corpses he and the barb made, mid swing.. When the Cleric got to him, she realized he was HAVING A HEATSTROKE!! It was so damn hot in the hells, he was pushing himself to hard and his heavy armor had brought his blood to a literal boil! It wasnt something a simple healing spell could fix and the party didnt know what to do, it was a really stressful and tense few rounds.. Then, in a stroke of absolute GENIUS, Cleric removed his helmet, took out a rag from her satchel and called the wizard over to her side. She cast CREATE WATER/FOOD and made a ball of water, then told wizard to cast Ray of Frost on the ball of water! Together they made an ice cold ball of water, poured it down his throat and doused the bandana sized rag she had with it. Then, She tied it around his neck and it was enough to cool him down, give him an actual 2nd wind and begin helping the team once more albeit with disadvantage until the fighting ended and they could cool him off further. DM was so impressed he gave us inspiration and let fighter keep the rag as a necklace slot item. Before every fight, fighter would use some of his water to douse the neckscarf and it was REALLY cool to see such a small, mundane item be used in such a cool & useful way!
used the cantrip light on a rock called it lightrock used it to scout dungeons for anti magic trap / fields by just throwing it down hallways/bridges , used it as a way to see what was at the bottom on a pit , used it as a guard tool when we toke a short rest so anything attacking are camp had to cross 80 feet to reach us giveing us a chance to dawn armor as it turned 30 feet to 80 when 2 of use used it, and used its as a shield for other spell and magic items if i was counter spelled or disabled magic was cast has the dm was force to roll to see what spell or item effect he disabled or countered. this all happened in one session to the point i started carrying arounld 5 rocks just so i could light them if i lost 1
I'm gonna steal this idea friend, thank you. Now THIS is creative use of a spell! In exchange for stealing your idea, low level characters can silver any weapon or ammunition themselves just by using glue and some silver shavings they got from using a dagger on some silver coins... The weapons are now "coated" in silver.
So... My party wasin a homenrew version of Hell- long story- and ran into Cerberus, the three headed dog... Who in universe is a giant mean dachshund. My bard in her stress about getting attacked at early levels by a giant three headed hell hound completely forgot her lute... And resorted to scratching him behind the ears and petting him with mage hand. It worked once our monk/cleric started helping with hers too!
Was on a ship. A school of fish started trying to eat the ship (cant remember why exactly). Went around the ship and repeatedly cast prestidigitation to make the wood taste like excrement. Worked like a charm
I once used magic stone with stone tipped arrows to get magic arrows at level 1. It helped a lot because I could use my wisdom as my main stat for the fighter/cleric build I was running.
There was one time my friend who was playing a halfling who was part of the shadow wizard money gang managed to convince not only a town of goblins but also an entire gnomish kingdom that my Goliath Vengeance paladin was a god by just using the spell light on my helmet and promptly got about 10000 gp worth of magic items and other loot. We had to start a new campaign soon after due to our army of zealots. Oh and this was at level 3. No joke.
i used call lightning to charge what was the equivalent of a magic car battery (only to 40% but still). ended up damaging it and the dm was like "do you wanna pick it up" to which i was like "no.... " then looked to the party "hey, someone with mending come fix this real quick" and then we had a perfectly functional battery. (dm asked if i wanted to do it again but i wasn't stupid enough to try to get away with that a second time. figured it works once but a second time will explode or something).. the battery was used to charge a heater to keep a tree on our spell jammer warm while we were on a frozen planet
Listening to these videos makes me realize that I don't play nearly enough D&D. I finally have a relevant story. Players were moving through a crowded city after a troop of Houndfolk. (Canine version of Tabaxi) To get their attention without garnering too much attention from the city guards, one player used Thaumaturgy to create a dog whistle. I was so impressed, I rolled for each Houndfolk to see if they were stunned by the noise. Unfortunately they all rolled really high, but they did successfully get their attention.
I don't have any particularly smart uses for weak spells that I can remember doing, but I do have some stories of neat ways we've weaponized utility items or cursed items. First off, we've had a few Portable Holes show up in our games. It's a circle of cloth that you can slap against a flat surface and it turns into a 10' deep hole with a 10' diameter. It's intended to be used as a storage device, since all the stuff stays in it like a Bag of Holding when you close it. My group has used them to trap and suffocate enemies before. One time we used it to capture a homebrewed golem that we couldn't kill, then later opened it where it rolled out behind a door, releasing the golem on our enemies behind the door. We've filled it with water then dumped it all out as a weapon several times. We cleared out an entire stairway of enemies coming up to get us once doing that. We've also severely damaged a ship doing it, since that much water translates to thousands of pounds, I think 200k something, hitting the deck all at once. We once took a cursed coin that deals increasing shock damage every round something touches it, and threw it into the mouth of something similar to a giant mimic, dealing a few hundred points of damage to it passively as we ran for our lives. My friend once got some Potions of Shared Memory, which allows the user to copy a memory they're thinking of into it and whoever drinks it will see the memory as if it was happening to them. He went and did some ... extracurricular activities ... with a priestess of the setting's diety of lust, then had her put that memory into the potion. He later force fed it, as a suppository, to a demon lord we were fighting, making the demon lord experience that memory for whatever the maximum amount of time you can load into it is, I think 3 minutes.
Two things I did with cantrips. First, used the (make a figure) part of dancing lights to enhance the prettiness of my and my dance partner’s performance (I’m a fairy so this made us seem same size) which led to a gorgeous light show and helped us win. This was followed up by the dance partner also doing so and our two other party members taking that cue to use their druidcraft to enhance their own performance by making flowers bloom at their feet as they danced too. We blew it all out of the park with that to the point that my character’s troupe leader (was a performer) told my character she had been holding back on them and to try and recruit her friends. It was pretty hilarious and wholesome. The second use was for a prank. So I used prestidigitation. The spell can make an inorganic thing warm or cold. After my character’s turn during watch was over, I decided she would pull a prank on the next character up for watch duty. She picked up a pebble, made it super cold…..and dropped it down the back of that person’s shirt to wake them. It was hilarious and the multiple laughing horrified “you didn’t”s I got from the party had me cackling. It was all in good fun though.
I’m a new player to dnd, but when my cousin was being the DM for me, he has explained that one of the things my character had started off with was an ability to make a weak poison. Later, when I had discovered a garrison that I would most likely be robbing much later in the game, I asked if I could use my weak poison as a laxative in the garrison’s alcohol shipment. So I rolled, got a 17. Success. Tampered with the shipment, delivered, guards had a party with the alcohol on the holiday, followed by utter chaos as they all emptied their bowels for hours while I looted the whole place
Me and my mom recently came up with a few commands for the command spell. These include... "Crawl": which makes the target drop prone and travel in a direction of your choosing "Submit": target automatically fails next non-damaging saving throw And last but certainly not least "Betray": target fights for your side
I know: *RAI > RAW* & *fun > rules* But I'd not have allowed that 'Mould Earth' trick ( 7:37 ) as it was used on stone- specifically it was used to 'form stone to a desired shape', and there is a specific spell for that: Stone Shape, which is a 4th level spell, and as such I'd not allow a cantrip spell to 'override' the effects of a higher level spell. I'm the GM you hate, I cannot change who I am, I'm the guy that likes rules - sorry, not sorry. 😐
I once used Prestidigitation to prevent a friendly NPC from getting sick by an imp's farts by making a piece of paper smell like fresh flowers and placing it over their face. I was still a newbie player, and that taught me the handiness of that cantrip. That and using it to make a pair of clippers to help a hairdresser.
I used Druid craft to call osha on a tavern that we didn’t like too much. Now they never did find that skunk but they probably won’t be finding their right to be open for business again
In AD&D I had a powerful mage named Machiavelli whom has since become a god. He designed a spell ritual using create liquid to make blood and control weather to make it rain blood, and yes he ingested large amounts of human blood to be able to do so (per the rules of the spell). He used this spell to make it rain blood on two warring armies, both armies abandoned the field in fear.
These are great. I especially appreciate the story from 4:38 through 5:52. The whole "staying awake because of nightmares" situation reminds me of Dawnstar's Waking Nightmare questline in Skyrim. I suppose I can contribute with a silly little story of when a DM wanted to troll the party by interrupting a long rest when we were camping in the wilderness by having a young dragon land near our campsite. The ranger was able to identify that it was a green dragon, meaning that it would likely NOT be friendly and that we were probably in it's territory. The DM continued to be "funny" by having the dragon take a dump, which I don't think D&D dragons even need to do? But the druid took advantage of the moment and used Shape Water to give it a well-timed "Neptune's Kiss" that grossed out the dragon and made it leave without a fight. Reactions of disgust and laughter around the table occurred in equal measure.
My roommate used thorn whip to indiana Jones his way across collapsed walkways and pull levers. He even got eaten by a dragon and used sword burst to cut open its stomach from the inside. As long as we made a case for why something should work our dm would let us role for it and she loved creativity so most things at least got a role.
Playing an old British produced game called Dragon Warriors. Low level Mage in tense confrontation with barbarian despot and his court. Announces that she can, with a word, geld (castrate) every man in the room and then casts a very low level spell (Spasm- causes a muscle twitch) on the groin of the warlord. "That was a demonstration - tell your men... do you doubt me?" He did not doubt her. He should have, but he didn't.
The final quest of my first campaign (which ended in a TPK) was in a red dragon's lair against a bunch of kobolds. I was using a lighter version of Tucker's kobolds and near the entrance of the cave, the kobolds closed these large, heavy stone doors to prevent to party from getting to them. It was going to be a whole elaborate thing with the party being trapped while the kobolds peppered them through slits behind the rocks (like a medieval castle). The party wizard cast Enlarge/Reduce and just shrank one of the massive doors down. It made the eventual TPK worth it when they finally fought the dragon.
Found a Helmet of a Huge Creature, big enough for my character to hide in, Used Floating Disc under the helm to levitate it around while sticking a wand of magic missile out of one of the eye sockets to cast spells from. Went from weak Sorcerer to partys "tank" rather quickly.
Once had a player who played as a yuan ti druid. The adventure they were playing was in the middle of a large desert scouting ruins for loot. Water was scarce so they came up with an interesting way to get at least some water every night. They would use the spells Mold Earth and Fog Cloud to produce water to drink in the desert by digging a deep pit, placing a big clay pot at the bottom, cover the top with a large oil treated cloth, placing heavy on top of the cloth in the center, and then cast fog cloud inside of the pit. They managed to produce an average of five to seven galleons of water after spending all their spell slots left over from their adventures to cast fog cloud. It wasn't enough for everyone bit it was enough to make it bearable.
1e pathfinder; a swarm of fire-elemental butterflies were fluttering around over the town, slowly burning everything they touched. I cast Create Water in its rainfall form to put out the existing fires and weigh down the butterflies' wings; it was easy to kill them once the water had them immobilized, and the worst damage the town suffered was a few roofs needing repairs.
Heard a story about someone in an AD&D campaign killing someone with the Cantrip spell. Back in Second Edition, Cantrip could be used to do minor things that couldn't deal damage or mimic other spells, or it could be used to create items that were fragile and made of small, obviously magical materials. The enemy was in a body of water, and the wizard proceeded to create as many small, obviously magical fishing weights per round as the DM would allow on the enemy where they couldn't reach easily.
Older version of DnD: Locate City has no saving throw, can have added spell modifiers that cause it to do damage, with the right combination: citywide nuke.
The last remaining enemy was fleeing through and had managed to get out of range of all of the party's attacks. My water genasi used shape water to turn the rain above the enemy into ice. DM rolled for some improvised damage and the heavily injured enemy died from hail damage from a spell that's specifically meant to not hurt people. Great moment i'll never forget
I've quickly fallen in love with Vortex Warp playing an artificer in a modern setting tank is a paladin who cannot stealth. not because of bad rolls, but because it goes against his oath. we're doing a night ops raid on an enemy base we want to get the drop on them my character turned a security camera into a drone that he can see out of. cast invisibility on the drone, and fly it in so we can see into the base for some scouting...and cast Vortex Warp to get the paladin in without causing a ruckus later in the campaign, we were helping save civilians from a wizard school was getting raided by some big bad (though not THE big bad). big caster. had a world ending mcguffin in the form of a book (think the necronomicon on crack, and you have a good idea of what we're dealing with) he's holding the only remaining student of the school hostage behind a Wall of Force. no one knows Disintegrate currently Party wizard used Polymorph to turn her into a Trex. I used Vortex Warp to teleport our living blender in the shape of an elf Fighter to the side of the wall the boss as on he either drops concentration in the 1v1 with the fighter or drops it from all the hits the rest of the party tosses his way out here either way, that Wall of Force is as good as gone bonus love for the fact that I've flavored it as Kamui
Not exactly weak, but I used scorching ray for laser tattoo removal surgery, bad guy who surrendered to us had a tattoo preventing him from talking about the bbeo (Big bad evil organization) which he used to be a part of without dying on the spot, he wanted to tell us but couldn't, then I laserred off the tattoo
The multiple uses of "silent image," I've been witness to over the years. From quickly obscuring a doorway and creating a fake one to buy some extra seconds for escape, someone having a seemingly endless supply of caltrops or "casting" spike growth, to the incredibly OP "casting" of the darkness spell (one-way cover, one way line of sight, magical darkness cant be physically touched, or interacted with, and you *would* naturally pass through a magical patch of darkness, so the illusion can't be broken this way - but you can tell your party it's an illusion, which means the illusion no longer effects them)
I was playing a ranger that had a necklace of beads that would cause several different levels of fireball when broken. We were on a ship and started getting attacked by a much more powerful privateer. I broke off three beads and tied then to the end of my arrow heads. After a single triple notch shot, the enemy ship went down in flames.
that "defeat a golem with loud noises" reminds me of an annoying enemy in a videogame called Icewind Dale 2: a crystal golem that can ONLY be hurt by "bludgeoning" attacks. PS: that game used an earlier version of the D&D rules, where you have to choose SPECIFIC spells for each spell slot when resting... that part about "casting Identify on the wound" reminds me of an old webcomic (no longer available) where a coroner determined that a nasty guy had been killed with an enchanted dagger with a "true strike" enchantment.
In the first campaign I played in, myself and 2 other players did a triple play. One cast darkness, another cast confusion, and I cast spike growth. All in the same area. Our ranger picked off the people who managed to get out of the AoE, and my character was nibbling on some nuts and just enjoyed the show.
I’m a wizard in my campaign, and one of my cantrips was Ray of Frost (it has since been replaced with Frostbite). We had all subconsciously agreed that it dealt damage by actually lowering temperatures to harmful levels, thus freezing water sometimes. We were in a cave with a river running through it, and had just finished a fight on a bridge. Due to the damage it sustained and the weight it held, the wet bridge was about to collapse. I cast Ray of Frost on the bridge and one nat 20 later, successfully froze it solid!
I used light to ward off an ambush. We succeeded in a perception check to see raptors trying to ambush our camp. Figured a bluff would scare them off, so i cast light on a stone and had the barbarian launch it at the biggest one. It worked, and they turned around after we ruined their element of suprise
In 3.5 Prestidigitation worked a bit different, and I figured I could use the creation, coloring, and taste aspects to make zero-calorie snacks (fragile, artificial-looking items that can not deal damage: such as chocolate mouse (essentially a mass of tiny bubbles), popcorn, potato chips, salt sticks, etc.). I planned out a magic item, Snack Bowl, that would do this on command, but never got around to actually making it in-game.
So we were playing Curse of Stradh and had made it to the Amber Temple, where we found a room with VERY old spell scrolls. Tried to pick one up and it crumbled to dust, so I - being sure it wouldn't work - told my DM I was going to try and use the Frostbite cantrip to see if I could solidify the scroll so it could be unrolled without crumbling. He allowed the attempt with a slight of hand check after to avoid breaking the frozen scroll, and I managed to salvage one - which he promptly had to pull out an RNG machine to pick a random spell to be on the scroll, since the module hadn't anticipated us actually getting any of them intact.
I had a similar experience than the magic sword one. I DM'd for a Tiefeling warlock, with 20 charisma at LVL 1. He had Thaumaturgy and a spell I forgot the name of that allows you to make an illusion in 3x3x3 cube. It was on his pact so he could use it at will for free. Broke the campaign alone. The guy collected the bones of every enemy they killed, made powder out of it, and one night, he got out of the inn with his "white powder" and sold it to sketchy guys in an alleyway. He made em test the product . They sniffed it and he made illusions of random effects, casting thaumaturgy for even more and whispering random shit in abyssal. He made 80 Gp like that.
I used Thaumaturgy in an attempt to decieve some would be threats that there was a gas leak and that their actions would explode the place if they continued. Unfortunately the bluff failed but woulda been neat
My favorite from my campaigns was an evil campaign in 2e, I'm playing a vampire and my brother playing a goblin. We are in the underdark and run into a group of dwarves at a natural stone bridge across a very deep chasm. First round they start charging across the bridge and I ask my DM if I can cast reduce on the bridge, he allows it, we calculate how much the bridge shrinks and make some rolls to see if bridge crumbles, dwarves precede to all fall in the chasm except the priest wearing a featherfall ring, who is flipping us off as he's floating down. I proceed to pick up my bro and roll nat 20 at throwing him at the priest, he catches on the priest and rides him down, kills him, and finishes off the dwarf leader that had single digit hp from the fall. Pretty nice loot and great fun.
We were infiltrating a BBEG's castle in a desert city by sneaking into vacant rooms and onto rooftops, and we landed in a wine cellar that had a clear opening to the BBEG's castle, but the window was 15ft above ours. I (Half-Elf Storm Sorcerer) decided to cast Shape Water on the wine to to form a frozen staircase connecting the two balconies... almost. There was a 5ft gap in between the stairs and window, so I cast Gust on myself to push myself into the window.
I did something similar😂 We were fighting a group of wererats and my rogue decided his best course of action was to risk getting bitten, shoving his arm down the throat of the leader and set off a bead from a necklace of fireball. The rest were horrified and most fled, but there was some serious questions about his sense of self preservation afterwards😂😂
Disguise Self has gotten my Aberrant Mind Sorc so deep into an enemy fortress he had killed and replaced the commanding officer, within a day and a half he and the party had freed experimented on captives, robbed the place of some magic items humiliated the guards anytime they were about to be caught and slipped away, then stole a flying ship and blew up the fortress as we escaped.
While traversing a water temple level. I had my Cleric/Warlock dedicated to the God of secrets memorize destroy water. Figuring it would come in handy at some point. Sure enough, during a boss fight we encounter two Water Weirds. I make a knowledge check and roll a nat 20 + a huge modifier from my build. Having now determined that my character knew all of the secrets of water weirds, I cast destroy water to delete the top Inch of water on the entire pond they inhabited. Per the monster manual; being separated from their source water causes Water Weirds to die instantly. Killing the creatures with the equivalent of a first level spell.
While the wizard and rogue tried sneaking into the baddies camp, my bard was scouting from the cliff surrounding the camp 100 feet up. My bard was keeping track of how they were doing and they got found out by the BBEG. Quickly my bard used mage hand to hold a 10lb stone about 30 ft away from me, ie 100 ft high right above the BBEG 's head. It was an instakill
One thing I've wanted to try but haven't had the chance is to get a decanter of endless water. Then use the geyser function, and at the same time the water blasts out use Shape Water to freeze some of the water so the stream has chuncks of ice in it. They both take an action so I would have to have a party member or a minion use the decanter.
Used Beguiling Gift (A Pathfinder 1e spell) to trick a gug into wearing a cursed robe that reduced its strength and intelligence by 10, making it barely stronger than a commoner and so stupid it no longer knew how to fight.
Our party was transporting an artefact. It was mostly there as a mcguffin, but it had the once-per-day ability to cast a variant of the Slow spell. Importantly, this could affect objects as well as creatures. Our party were on a pirate ship, being persuaded by a larger and faster warship. We couldn't use the artifact to slow the enemy ship (the DM ruled that it wouldn't affect things larger than the AoE). But then one player had the idea: what if we use it to slow parts of the ship? So we gave the artefact to our druid (wild-shaped into an octopus), who swam out to within range or the enemy ship, and then cast Slow on the ship's anchor, steering wheel, foremast, and any other heavy or critical piece of equipment that could fit in the AoE. With the result that the ship tore itself apart. (The DM allowed this on the grounds that it was cool and a clever idea, but also declared that this would never be allowed again).
It was a one-shot dungeon crawl almost 20 years ago, so I don't remember if it was 2nd edition, 3rd or 3.5. Anyway, towards the end, we were fleeing the dungeon boss, and found the exit was blocked by a wall of fire. There were some skeletons dressed in old armor on the ground and a small fountain next to the wall (I think the DM had planned for us to use the armor to get water from the fountain to put out the fire). I, being the healer, cast a spell called Healing Fountain in the fire instead, putting it out and allowing us to escape before the boss arrived.
We were fighting a dragon-riding bad guy, and we were with a powerful ally archer who also happened to have a dragonslaying arrow. The problem was that the bad guy had cast a wind wall, so our archer friend couldn't do squat against him. And since he was flying around on his dragon, neither could most of the party since they couldn't reach him. Then my silly little spellcasting guy had an idea, and asked her how *sturdy* that dragonslaying arrow was. Considering how powerful it was, we figured it was probably very tough. So I readied my spell and told her "alright, shoot it" She did, and immediately afterward I cast Magic Missile, rolling spellcraft to change the trajectory of the missiles mid-flight so they would *clamp around* the arrow and force it through the wall of wind without veering off-course, because if the missiles can't miss and the arrow is stuck between them, it won't miss either. The dragon saved against the arrow's instant-death, but it still did enough damage to immediately knock him unconscious and the fall finished him off. The rider was very *very* unhappy.
this reminds me of a story involving a nasty DM: a player had acquired a magical bow called "thunk", that would do a guaranteed crit on it's next attack if the owner said it's name, BUT that would ALSO make the PC lose one Constitution, point, PERMANENTLY. the nasty part is that if he said it OUT OF CHARACTER, the DM would still count it! BUT that player also found an enchanted arrow that could turn the target to gold, btu ONLY on a Crit... yes, he used them together to one-shot the BBEG!
Theres a cantrip in PF2 that removes the soul from the target for a round, 2 rounds on a critical fail. This allows you to attack the body. The soul is invisible and has a fly speed of 60, can fit through small openings, etc. normally you use it on an enemy to make their body vulnerable. I used it on our rogue for scouting rooms by slipping through the keyhole.
On the first day of the campaign the bois reach a cave that’s got two entrances, DM tells us it’s very dark and damp inside the cave and there’s 1000’s of harmless Bats hanging everywhere, my Buddy Em the Wizard decides he’s gonna use 💡 Cantrip so we all can see better (Cantrips are free will movements IG) so he lights up his staff and triggers a dominoes effect of the Bats flying outta the Cave, a band of 10 Goblins that have made the cave a HQ are able to see Em casting magic and have had negative experiences with dangerous spell-casters in the past coupled with the thousands of fleeing Bats decide this HQ is no longer safe and abandoned the cave fearing for there safety. The Dm was like well you scared the goblins away so theoretically you’ve overcome the Challenge of 10 goblins we all reaches level two and got the loot, without using up our resources, it was a great campaign with many funny misunderstandings from otherwise formidable enemies.
my shadar-kai rune knight got pinned under some rubble, i failed the save but tanked the damage so i was alive but trapped. i used my giants might to grow to a size large, asked the DM if that opened any holes in the rubble, and when he said yes i misty stepped out. i then got a nat 20 to resist an increased gravity field and looked like an absolute badass in front of the final boss. for all of one turn before his six attacks killed me.
2:43 as a DM, the correct thing to do in my opinion would have been a "you detected the Otheon, with your falling body." I.e. he was always going to get what he wanted because he was clever and made the table laugh, but the total flub of the roll means his success was going to hurt.
I killed someone with the grease spell. A drow alchemist kept spider climbing on the ceiling to snipe our backline with bombs. So, I greased her, and she died from fall damage.
I once used animate rope to try and choke a CR 9 chimera as a level 1 bard (the DM that day was purposefully trying to wipe us and sent it out despite the protest of the players). We still wiped because I would have needed to hold the spell for 120 rounds before it would suffocate as per the DnD 3.5 rules, but I made the DM sweat that day
I was playing a Bard with no offensive spells other than viscous mockery. We were ambushed by some giant blind worms that react to sound. Not having a lot to do i had an idea to cast knock on one of the worms, then dodging. The resulting knock lead the other worm to do a full round of attacks on its partner.
I used the cantrip shape water to shoot water up someones nose once. Keep in mind most spells require verbal components and I forced water into their windpipe so they were coughing and unable to use said components for a solid minute. Our opponent had levels in bard couldn't really sing with his lungs filled with water.
Party knew there was a powerful wizard established at the top of an old clock tower. They assumed the tower was filled with minions and traps. (they were right, but I digress) The druid set a few swarms of rats and termites loose on the tower while they all went off for a long rest. First thing the next morning, they came back and hit a cornerstone of the tower with stone to mud and stood back to watch as two weeks of prep and a two session crawl was reduced to rubble. The worst of it was I had a friend from out of town (and fellow DM) over who was excited to play the wizard. In all my years, that remains the only time a party has caused two DMs to both hang their heads and sigh in unison.
Pathfinder. Saw a player cast aqua orb (i think that was its name). A spell that captures you in a ball of water for 1 minute. Then on the next turn cast "hideous laughter" on the victim in the orb.
Under attack by invisible creatures, mage cast Prestidigitation, to create 1 full pound of nonmagical glitter, and declared to the DM that his next spell was going to be Gust of Wind. The monsters fled for their lives.
i spent so long writing a comment only to lose all of it when i accidentaly clicked on another video. 😭 some of my favorite uses of low level spells have been when my sister's druid cheesed a boss fight by throwing half of the cult they were fighting off a tower with thunderwave and entangling the rest, when my cousin's paladin ordered a guard to poop with Command and when another cousin's air genasi rogue became a ballon with levitate and a rope in order to navigate through a maze. while it was more a clever use of a class ability, my artificer/wizard from another game once faked a fire with magic tinkering (i was charmed during a fight and found myself in a fog cloud cast by another character so i used magic tinkering to create an object with the smell of smth burning and went to call for help). i've also discovered that the best course of action for a cleric that is about to get captured is to cast spirit guardians and laugh at their pursuers' demise. 🙃 oh, forgot to mention a recent clever use of polymorph. my sister's druid polymorphed an npc into a killer whale during a ship to ship boss battle and it chomped on the bbeg and dragged him underwater. after they absolutely curbstomped him, my cousins decided to cut him in pieces and offer his teeth to the tooth fairy as a get rich quick scheme. so i ended up making tooth fairy cannon as this bloodthirsty pixie that rewards warriors who defeat powerful foes. instead of money, i homebrewed jewellry made of teeth for the players. 😅
We were playing a 1-shot. We were in a bedroom of a haunted mansion and we had bought attention to ourselves from a pair of vampires.
The DM had then slowly materialise into the room, their body parts building from the inside out.
My druid quickly placed his staff into the space where their hearts would go, and when the stake through the heart effect was achieved, i cast create flame to set it on fire.
The vampires screeched and seared in pain as they died pretty instantly.
I picked up the charred remains of the staff and used mending on it to restore it to its original form.
I think i got inspiration points off that 😊
Vampire 1: "No, we don't barge in. We have to make them utterly scared, or it is ot fun."
Vampire 2: "You sure?"
Vampire 1: "c'mon, what can go wrong?"
Used purify food and drink to recycle my own urine in a desert once.
A twist on Kevin Costner in "Waterworld".
Dune vibes
The only creative thing in this video is not even in the video, but here
Not most creative certainly effective. Dragonlance has a sunken city clatacism so there’s stairs the party comes across next to this great void for epic cliff side battle, and large footsteps tromping down stair way.
So we set up a trip rope.
But also cast a lowly grease spell on the bottom stairs… and wait. A bit of wafting smoke and torchlight later we get to see ogres ( IIRC ) going shooting past and down in to hundreds of feet drop
I had a player once use Create Water for the party to track an invisible creature by the wet footprints.
With a friend in DnD club at school. I'm playing a half-elf paladin who's also a pirate captain (makes more sense with lore) and the other guy -- who named his character John Carlos -- casually jumps off the side of my ship and uses Armor of Agathys to create a surfboard of ice upon colliding with the water. I'm not kidding.
Why is it always characters with the name of “John” that pull the most ridiculously awesome stuff?
Backatory: friends from school and me were playing DnD I have a kobold paladin with a little homebrew called draconic prayer ( basically super doller store dragon attacka ) and a changling and we were fighting pirates changling becomes captain and tells them all to go into the ocean ( 18 ) then I with a slightly devious used draconic prayer (18 ) for small blue and toaster bath tubed every SINGLE pirate
@@davidheien6251 ...My friend, you couldn't be more wrong if you had brought up Asmodeus-
To clear it up, because I know for a fact that you just used the rule of the internet on me instead of just asking for the story like a normal person, I homebrewed a world of islands all as a single kingdom and the only way to get between the islands is seafaring mercantile, aka pirating/pirate life. The character I played would technically be a warlock since she was chosen by a deity of that world to inherit some power, but she runs more like a paladin so that's how I played her during the campaign.
If you want a story you can just ask me man, no need to spread misinfo-
@@makenatowner1849 bro I am telling you a story that happened to me what do you mean stop spreading mis info
@@davidheien6251 My bad, thought you were making up a backstory to my character lol-
1:24
Bad guy comes up onto the beach with crutches and a crocodile still biting its leg cartton style, annoyedly mumbling: "I don't get paid enough for this"
1st time I played Pathfinder I was bit by a chupacabra on my turn I just blurted out "can I use prestidigitation to flavor it's tongue like horse manure?" The DM gave me an "um...um..?" Processing look. The whole party demanded to know how in and out of character I'd know what "THAT" tastes like. To which I told them in the form of a question. When you grow up on farms, summer camps, and out in the boonies/wilderness you some time smell things that have an odor so potent you can taste it...and that is what I was basing my prestidigitation on. That's when the DM goes, "yeah. Okay. You do it." So... Chupacabras don't like the taste of horse manure....and I earned a reputation for unconventional tactics.
It's all fun and games until a scat loving chupacabra falls in love with you.
Faked a poisoning at a banquet by using a cantrip to put ghost peppers on the food of someone who couldn't stand even the slightest spiciness.
That is evil. I love it.
Which cantrip?
Was that cantrip Prestidigitation?
I bet it’s Prestidigitation. You have the option to flavor food with it.
We actually play BasicFantasy not exactly D&D, but prestidigitation would work in D&D and there used to be a cantrip called either Spice or Flavor years ago.
Funniest one was a triple cast of prestidigitation... a distraction during a bar fight (of course) where the Wizard shouted "FLASK OF FOULNESS" and proceeded to throw an illusion of a glass bottle, which 'broke' on the NPC's tunic producing a suspicious stain and a weird smell from the wrong end of a cow. This brought the fight to a screeching halt and allowed the Barbarian to sucker punch the guy and for everyone else to get out of the bar.
I was a Druid in my first campaign, Rime of the Frostmaiden, and we were going to confront the current arc villain, Sunblight, who had some evil plot to attack the Ten Towns. True enough, he had a freaking giant robot dragon made of evil rocks.
What had Sunblight NOT anticipated?
The Druid having Skywrite.
Cue my druid Daphne warning ALL of Ice Windale of exactly what he was doing, including the exact order his attack on the Ten Tales was to happen in. This allowed us to have the final fight with Sunblight and his dragon (the DM overheard us guessing it was a mecha, so it became a mecha) in an evacuated town without any need to worry about civilians being caught in the crossfire.
At the end of the Campaign after we defeated Auril the Frostmaiden, Daphne once more used Skywrite to tell Ice Windale that Auril had been beaten and Spring was finally coming.
This happened in a one-shot I was in last week. The boss was making his badass entrance by jumping from an airship onto the train we were guarding while both were moving. Because he was in freefall, he was essentially weightless, so one of the other players cast Gust on him. The DM had the boss make a dexterity saving throw against the character's spell save, and he failed... badly. So, the boss smacked his head on the glass-top train car and cracked it, fell between the cars, got run over by the train, and died. The minions, who had climbed down the rope ladder like sane people, just looked at each other and tried to confirm if they were still going to rob the train. They weren't.
we used a push spell as a glyph on a small piece of paper as means to propel lead shot out of a metal tube. this was proceeded by a quick dissertation on the physics behind the mechanics to a handful of engineers playing AD&D about forty odd years ago. shot weighed about 0.2 lbs, spell produced 1 lb⋅ft/s2 force per level. we limited its range to 10 ft as the spell would push a target creature that far after damage was assigned (rather than the maximum flight for the force created). this was decades before firearms and artificers. if a high enough level spell was cast, the musket became a one-time-use plasma rifle. technique was eventually used to create a plasma grenade and blew the head off an ancient black dragon. after that campaign, we mutually agreed to ban that application...
this reminds me of a weird one i read somewhere:
a PC left a "decanter of endless water" running inside an "indestructible" container.
the DM came up with a crazy scenario where the increasing pressure or more and more water in a small space eventually caused Nuclear Fusion, resulting in the equivalent of a huge H-bomb devastating the world!
@@ericb3157I would rule that without some mechanical intervention the pressure inside your container eventually matches whatever pressure your decanter of endless water is putting out, probably one atmosphere. No fusion, the container just fills up.
Oh man, this is some OG grognard activity. I wish I could have been around in those days. 🙂
@@Drekromancer poor, infantile response: either learn to be a more effective troll or seek professional help for your deep psychological problems (likely caused by those daddy issues or that radon poisoning from your parents' basement)...😝
I recently had a character become a shadow sorcerer. The GM and I decided that her Hound of Ill Omen would be a goose instead. Same stats and everything, but a goose. Nothing important, right? Well, she started using minor illusion to cause honking noises to appear and used it to troll a particular party member who was constantly annoying her and getting in her way. She'd use it to cause honking to happen, have the goose burst in to attack him whenever he was interrupting him, honk at him whenever he got annoying, and occasionally just sic the goose on him for the lulz. It even managed to KO him several times and both in and out of character he's starting to develop goose-related paranoia.
Best part is, several times now it's done stuff like reveal that the 'innocent girl' that he was trying to seduce wasn't actually innocent. My girl was trying to talk to her about something minor and he was at low HP. He proceeded to push her aside cause he had something he wanted to talk to her about. Rude, so my girl walked off a bit and used minor illusion to start the honking and, when he didn't get the message, she proceeded to sic the goose of ill omen on him which proceeded to 1HKO him due to his low HP. The 'innocent girl' revealed she was anything but and proceeded to blast the goose in response. My girl didn't even intend that, just wanted to get back at him for interrupting her. But it caused a massive change and plot reveal as a result.
Minor illusion, a cantrip, made it all possible with a simple honk.
the water jetski idea: let's modify it further much smaller opening, and add sand to the 5'x5'x5' cube of water.
suddenly, you have a water jet cutter. an abrasive cutter that can cut practically everything.
A sorcerer can cast fireball on himself as bonus action, then use absorb elements on high spell slot and hit the enemy with it for big damage XD
That's why usually the "only 1 spell per turn" ruling comes from.
... And also why barely anyone I know plays with these actual rules. Just kills too much fun like your idea. 😎
@1ordTakeo I was about to correct you that it isn't "one spell per turn" necessarily, but then I realized the rules do still stop this interaction, unfortunately. The rules just say if you cast a BA spell, you can't cast a leveled spell, and you can't cast a BA spell if you have already cast any other leveled spell on the turn. So you can cast an action spell and then a reaction spell on the same turn, but this specifically needs BA spell. You could do it with 2 lvls of fighter for action surge I guess
Actually, I should have re-read absorb elements as well. It specifically says only doing the extra damage on your **next turn**. I'd rule that it works tho for my own games cause it's cooler, but apparently the RAW doesn't want us to have fun
I've done -exactly this- interaction on BG3 (i have mods for extended 5e spell list for and bladesing wiz)
@@1ordTakeo reaction spells do not count into your turn it is possible RAW
Me (wizard) gets in a shouting match with the knight's captain of the king's guard, over not paying attention to our party's "public concerns" survey (the adventures hook).
The knight (a paladin) challenges me to a duel. I agree, and set the duel "to submission or death" at the fallow fields beneath the city's aquaduct. The court marches out, the king intrigued since we are fresh from the quest and my spell list is...poor. Also, I had been a royal DIK to the DM the entire adventure, ruining all his carefully laid plots and traps.
So there we are on the field, and the gong rings. Him being a stereotypical slow-ass armored tank, I go first. I cast *mage hand* and use it to yank the key stone from the aquaduct arch, burying him in a half ton of stone AND drowning him in countless gallons of water.
He should have read our report, particularly my character's section on "vital infrastructure maintenance". 😂
this reminds me of a scene in the webcomic "order of the stick":
a Fighter is fighting a Barbarian in an arena.
the Fighter tricked the Barbarian (who was Raging) into punching a load-bearing column, causing an arch to collapse on top of him!
he then said he had studied architecture.
I used Fabricate to construct the pieces of a Shield Guardian to reduce the construction time of the creature. Since I can't make anything large, I just used the spell four times to create each piece and then fused them together.
Trapped a man inside his plate armor by putting a lock on it and then using Arcane Lock.
used Rime's Binding Ice on a flying creature, it causes an enemy's speed to reduce to 0 meaning if it can't hover it falls to the ground and fall prone.
Used Catapult to hurl a net and chains on a flying creature to knock them down onto the ground. Used a 3rd level Catapult to launch a Bag of Holding with Supplies to allies before trapped in a Wall of Force.
Used Leomund's Tiny Hunt to block an entryway into a room.
I've seen Leomund's Tiny Hut used in a similar fashion. The party trapped a bunch of nocturnal dire insects outside their hive, only for them to get picked off by rocs in the morning.
We were in the hells on a contracted hit to assassinate a dangerous Cambion. Problem was, he had lots of friends. A simple hit turned into a fullscale battle we werent prepared for. The dice were blessing us the whole fight and our Fighter/Barbarian duo were out front absolutely PUTTING IN THE WORK. Though after awhile the DM began to mention the Fighter slowly starting get frenzied, aquire tunnel vision, start hearing his heartbeat in his ears, then begin hyperventilating. At first we thought DM was describing the fighter starting to rage like Barb, then DM said he began to shiver... Next turn Fighter collapsed in the pile of corpses he and the barb made, mid swing.. When the Cleric got to him, she realized he was HAVING A HEATSTROKE!! It was so damn hot in the hells, he was pushing himself to hard and his heavy armor had brought his blood to a literal boil! It wasnt something a simple healing spell could fix and the party didnt know what to do, it was a really stressful and tense few rounds.. Then, in a stroke of absolute GENIUS, Cleric removed his helmet, took out a rag from her satchel and called the wizard over to her side. She cast CREATE WATER/FOOD and made a ball of water, then told wizard to cast Ray of Frost on the ball of water! Together they made an ice cold ball of water, poured it down his throat and doused the bandana sized rag she had with it. Then, She tied it around his neck and it was enough to cool him down, give him an actual 2nd wind and begin helping the team once more albeit with disadvantage until the fighting ended and they could cool him off further. DM was so impressed he gave us inspiration and let fighter keep the rag as a necklace slot item. Before every fight, fighter would use some of his water to douse the neckscarf and it was REALLY cool to see such a small, mundane item be used in such a cool & useful way!
Only goes to show;
The most powerful spell isn't the highest level one, its the one you utilize the best.
Fireball solves all problems
used the cantrip light on a rock called it lightrock used it to scout dungeons for anti magic trap / fields by just throwing it down hallways/bridges , used it as a way to see what was at the bottom on a pit , used it as a guard tool when we toke a short rest so anything attacking are camp had to cross 80 feet to reach us giveing us a chance to dawn armor as it turned 30 feet to 80 when 2 of use used it, and used its as a shield for other spell and magic items if i was counter spelled or disabled magic was cast has the dm was force to roll to see what spell or item effect he disabled or countered. this all happened in one session to the point i started carrying arounld 5 rocks just so i could light them if i lost 1
I'm gonna steal this idea friend, thank you. Now THIS is creative use of a spell! In exchange for stealing your idea, low level characters can silver any weapon or ammunition themselves just by using glue and some silver shavings they got from using a dagger on some silver coins... The weapons are now "coated" in silver.
@@anonymouse2675 lol
So... My party wasin a homenrew version of Hell- long story- and ran into Cerberus, the three headed dog... Who in universe is a giant mean dachshund. My bard in her stress about getting attacked at early levels by a giant three headed hell hound completely forgot her lute... And resorted to scratching him behind the ears and petting him with mage hand. It worked once our monk/cleric started helping with hers too!
Was on a ship. A school of fish started trying to eat the ship (cant remember why exactly). Went around the ship and repeatedly cast prestidigitation to make the wood taste like excrement. Worked like a charm
I once used magic stone with stone tipped arrows to get magic arrows at level 1. It helped a lot because I could use my wisdom as my main stat for the fighter/cleric build I was running.
Brian…i am convinced you have magic, because i yawned when you mentioned the yawn cantrip.
There was one time my friend who was playing a halfling who was part of the shadow wizard money gang managed to convince not only a town of goblins but also an entire gnomish kingdom that my Goliath Vengeance paladin was a god by just using the spell light on my helmet and promptly got about 10000 gp worth of magic items and other loot. We had to start a new campaign soon after due to our army of zealots. Oh and this was at level 3. No joke.
i used call lightning to charge what was the equivalent of a magic car battery (only to 40% but still). ended up damaging it and the dm was like "do you wanna pick it up" to which i was like "no.... " then looked to the party "hey, someone with mending come fix this real quick" and then we had a perfectly functional battery. (dm asked if i wanted to do it again but i wasn't stupid enough to try to get away with that a second time. figured it works once but a second time will explode or something).. the battery was used to charge a heater to keep a tree on our spell jammer warm while we were on a frozen planet
Listening to these videos makes me realize that I don't play nearly enough D&D. I finally have a relevant story.
Players were moving through a crowded city after a troop of Houndfolk. (Canine version of Tabaxi) To get their attention without garnering too much attention from the city guards, one player used Thaumaturgy to create a dog whistle. I was so impressed, I rolled for each Houndfolk to see if they were stunned by the noise. Unfortunately they all rolled really high, but they did successfully get their attention.
8:44 if it sounds like a war crime, its gonna be a fun time
I don't have any particularly smart uses for weak spells that I can remember doing, but I do have some stories of neat ways we've weaponized utility items or cursed items.
First off, we've had a few Portable Holes show up in our games. It's a circle of cloth that you can slap against a flat surface and it turns into a 10' deep hole with a 10' diameter. It's intended to be used as a storage device, since all the stuff stays in it like a Bag of Holding when you close it. My group has used them to trap and suffocate enemies before. One time we used it to capture a homebrewed golem that we couldn't kill, then later opened it where it rolled out behind a door, releasing the golem on our enemies behind the door. We've filled it with water then dumped it all out as a weapon several times. We cleared out an entire stairway of enemies coming up to get us once doing that. We've also severely damaged a ship doing it, since that much water translates to thousands of pounds, I think 200k something, hitting the deck all at once.
We once took a cursed coin that deals increasing shock damage every round something touches it, and threw it into the mouth of something similar to a giant mimic, dealing a few hundred points of damage to it passively as we ran for our lives.
My friend once got some Potions of Shared Memory, which allows the user to copy a memory they're thinking of into it and whoever drinks it will see the memory as if it was happening to them. He went and did some ... extracurricular activities ... with a priestess of the setting's diety of lust, then had her put that memory into the potion. He later force fed it, as a suppository, to a demon lord we were fighting, making the demon lord experience that memory for whatever the maximum amount of time you can load into it is, I think 3 minutes.
Two things I did with cantrips.
First, used the (make a figure) part of dancing lights to enhance the prettiness of my and my dance partner’s performance (I’m a fairy so this made us seem same size) which led to a gorgeous light show and helped us win. This was followed up by the dance partner also doing so and our two other party members taking that cue to use their druidcraft to enhance their own performance by making flowers bloom at their feet as they danced too. We blew it all out of the park with that to the point that my character’s troupe leader (was a performer) told my character she had been holding back on them and to try and recruit her friends. It was pretty hilarious and wholesome.
The second use was for a prank. So I used prestidigitation. The spell can make an inorganic thing warm or cold. After my character’s turn during watch was over, I decided she would pull a prank on the next character up for watch duty. She picked up a pebble, made it super cold…..and dropped it down the back of that person’s shirt to wake them. It was hilarious and the multiple laughing horrified “you didn’t”s I got from the party had me cackling. It was all in good fun though.
I’m a new player to dnd, but when my cousin was being the DM for me, he has explained that one of the things my character had started off with was an ability to make a weak poison. Later, when I had discovered a garrison that I would most likely be robbing much later in the game, I asked if I could use my weak poison as a laxative in the garrison’s alcohol shipment. So I rolled, got a 17. Success. Tampered with the shipment, delivered, guards had a party with the alcohol on the holiday, followed by utter chaos as they all emptied their bowels for hours while I looted the whole place
9:37 TBH, this is probably the doctrine that an actual military would develop if mold earth was available.
Me and my mom recently came up with a few commands for the command spell. These include...
"Crawl": which makes the target drop prone and travel in a direction of your choosing
"Submit": target automatically fails next non-damaging saving throw
And last but certainly not least
"Betray": target fights for your side
8:53 "oh God" that hit hard, bro
I know: *RAI > RAW* & *fun > rules* But I'd not have allowed that 'Mould Earth' trick ( 7:37 ) as it was used on stone- specifically it was used to 'form stone to a desired shape', and there is a specific spell for that: Stone Shape, which is a 4th level spell, and as such I'd not allow a cantrip spell to 'override' the effects of a higher level spell.
I'm the GM you hate, I cannot change who I am, I'm the guy that likes rules - sorry, not sorry. 😐
The Pixie one sounds like the Animainiacs when they find a "New Friend" shudder.
I once used Prestidigitation to prevent a friendly NPC from getting sick by an imp's farts by making a piece of paper smell like fresh flowers and placing it over their face.
I was still a newbie player, and that taught me the handiness of that cantrip.
That and using it to make a pair of clippers to help a hairdresser.
I used Druid craft to call osha on a tavern that we didn’t like too much. Now they never did find that skunk but they probably won’t be finding their right to be open for business again
Sealing pipes while cooling off pressurised liquids with ice knife like a popcicle
In AD&D I had a powerful mage named Machiavelli whom has since become a god. He designed a spell ritual using create liquid to make blood and control weather to make it rain blood, and yes he ingested large amounts of human blood to be able to do so (per the rules of the spell). He used this spell to make it rain blood on two warring armies, both armies abandoned the field in fear.
These are great. I especially appreciate the story from 4:38 through 5:52. The whole "staying awake because of nightmares" situation reminds me of Dawnstar's Waking Nightmare questline in Skyrim.
I suppose I can contribute with a silly little story of when a DM wanted to troll the party by interrupting a long rest when we were camping in the wilderness by having a young dragon land near our campsite. The ranger was able to identify that it was a green dragon, meaning that it would likely NOT be friendly and that we were probably in it's territory. The DM continued to be "funny" by having the dragon take a dump, which I don't think D&D dragons even need to do? But the druid took advantage of the moment and used Shape Water to give it a well-timed "Neptune's Kiss" that grossed out the dragon and made it leave without a fight. Reactions of disgust and laughter around the table occurred in equal measure.
My roommate used thorn whip to indiana Jones his way across collapsed walkways and pull levers. He even got eaten by a dragon and used sword burst to cut open its stomach from the inside. As long as we made a case for why something should work our dm would let us role for it and she loved creativity so most things at least got a role.
My party once exploded a grain silo using Spark and a bottle of air.
Playing an old British produced game called Dragon Warriors. Low level Mage in tense confrontation with barbarian despot and his court. Announces that she can, with a word, geld (castrate) every man in the room and then casts a very low level spell (Spasm- causes a muscle twitch) on the groin of the warlord. "That was a demonstration - tell your men... do you doubt me?"
He did not doubt her. He should have, but he didn't.
The final quest of my first campaign (which ended in a TPK) was in a red dragon's lair against a bunch of kobolds. I was using a lighter version of Tucker's kobolds and near the entrance of the cave, the kobolds closed these large, heavy stone doors to prevent to party from getting to them. It was going to be a whole elaborate thing with the party being trapped while the kobolds peppered them through slits behind the rocks (like a medieval castle). The party wizard cast Enlarge/Reduce and just shrank one of the massive doors down. It made the eventual TPK worth it when they finally fought the dragon.
Oh wait, I just realized this is slay the spire music, cool 0:41
The utility cantrips are gold.
One if my players used shape water as a means to interrogate a criminal by almost drowning them.
Found a Helmet of a Huge Creature, big enough for my character to hide in, Used Floating Disc under the helm to levitate it around while sticking a wand of magic missile out of one of the eye sockets to cast spells from. Went from weak Sorcerer to partys "tank" rather quickly.
Once had a player who played as a yuan ti druid. The adventure they were playing was in the middle of a large desert scouting ruins for loot.
Water was scarce so they came up with an interesting way to get at least some water every night.
They would use the spells Mold Earth and Fog Cloud to produce water to drink in the desert by digging a deep pit, placing a big clay pot at the bottom, cover the top with a large oil treated cloth, placing heavy on top of the cloth in the center, and then cast fog cloud inside of the pit.
They managed to produce an average of five to seven galleons of water after spending all their spell slots left over from their adventures to cast fog cloud.
It wasn't enough for everyone bit it was enough to make it bearable.
1e pathfinder; a swarm of fire-elemental butterflies were fluttering around over the town, slowly burning everything they touched.
I cast Create Water in its rainfall form to put out the existing fires and weigh down the butterflies' wings; it was easy to kill them once the water had them immobilized, and the worst damage the town suffered was a few roofs needing repairs.
Heard a story about someone in an AD&D campaign killing someone with the Cantrip spell. Back in Second Edition, Cantrip could be used to do minor things that couldn't deal damage or mimic other spells, or it could be used to create items that were fragile and made of small, obviously magical materials.
The enemy was in a body of water, and the wizard proceeded to create as many small, obviously magical fishing weights per round as the DM would allow on the enemy where they couldn't reach easily.
Older version of DnD:
Locate City has no saving throw, can have added spell modifiers that cause it to do damage, with the right combination: citywide nuke.
The last remaining enemy was fleeing through and had managed to get out of range of all of the party's attacks. My water genasi used shape water to turn the rain above the enemy into ice. DM rolled for some improvised damage and the heavily injured enemy died from hail damage from a spell that's specifically meant to not hurt people. Great moment i'll never forget
Melted butter tastes nice though? It'd be a bit of a surprise if you were expecting wine I suppose, but it's not a bad taste. What an odd spell.
I've quickly fallen in love with Vortex Warp
playing an artificer in a modern setting
tank is a paladin who cannot stealth. not because of bad rolls, but because it goes against his oath.
we're doing a night ops raid on an enemy base
we want to get the drop on them
my character turned a security camera into a drone that he can see out of.
cast invisibility on the drone, and fly it in so we can see into the base for some scouting...and cast Vortex Warp to get the paladin in without causing a ruckus
later in the campaign, we were helping save civilians from a wizard school
was getting raided by some big bad (though not THE big bad). big caster. had a world ending mcguffin in the form of a book (think the necronomicon on crack, and you have a good idea of what we're dealing with)
he's holding the only remaining student of the school hostage behind a Wall of Force. no one knows Disintegrate currently
Party wizard used Polymorph to turn her into a Trex. I used Vortex Warp to teleport our living blender in the shape of an elf Fighter to the side of the wall the boss as on
he either drops concentration in the 1v1 with the fighter or drops it from all the hits the rest of the party tosses his way out here
either way, that Wall of Force is as good as gone
bonus love for the fact that I've flavored it as Kamui
Not exactly weak, but I used scorching ray for laser tattoo removal surgery, bad guy who surrendered to us had a tattoo preventing him from talking about the bbeo (Big bad evil organization) which he used to be a part of without dying on the spot, he wanted to tell us but couldn't, then I laserred off the tattoo
The multiple uses of "silent image," I've been witness to over the years.
From quickly obscuring a doorway and creating a fake one to buy some extra seconds for escape, someone having a seemingly endless supply of caltrops or "casting" spike growth, to the incredibly OP "casting" of the darkness spell (one-way cover, one way line of sight, magical darkness cant be physically touched, or interacted with, and you *would* naturally pass through a magical patch of darkness, so the illusion can't be broken this way - but you can tell your party it's an illusion, which means the illusion no longer effects them)
I was playing a ranger that had a necklace of beads that would cause several different levels of fireball when broken. We were on a ship and started getting attacked by a much more powerful privateer. I broke off three beads and tied then to the end of my arrow heads. After a single triple notch shot, the enemy ship went down in flames.
that "defeat a golem with loud noises" reminds me of an annoying enemy in a videogame called Icewind Dale 2:
a crystal golem that can ONLY be hurt by "bludgeoning" attacks.
PS: that game used an earlier version of the D&D rules, where you have to choose SPECIFIC spells for each spell slot when resting...
that part about "casting Identify on the wound" reminds me of an old webcomic (no longer available) where a coroner determined that a nasty guy had been killed with an enchanted dagger with a "true strike" enchantment.
One if my party members had cast true sight on me, and I used minor illusion to show the position of an invisible creature.
In the first campaign I played in, myself and 2 other players did a triple play. One cast darkness, another cast confusion, and I cast spike growth. All in the same area. Our ranger picked off the people who managed to get out of the AoE, and my character was nibbling on some nuts and just enjoyed the show.
I’m a wizard in my campaign, and one of my cantrips was Ray of Frost (it has since been replaced with Frostbite). We had all subconsciously agreed that it dealt damage by actually lowering temperatures to harmful levels, thus freezing water sometimes.
We were in a cave with a river running through it, and had just finished a fight on a bridge. Due to the damage it sustained and the weight it held, the wet bridge was about to collapse. I cast Ray of Frost on the bridge and one nat 20 later, successfully froze it solid!
10:29 As for how well it would work, look up "frost heave", or just forget to drain a garden hose for the winter.
That kenku story honestly distracted me from the rest of the video because, to my horror, I couldn’t stop _visualizing it._
I used light to ward off an ambush. We succeeded in a perception check to see raptors trying to ambush our camp. Figured a bluff would scare them off, so i cast light on a stone and had the barbarian launch it at the biggest one. It worked, and they turned around after we ruined their element of suprise
Used message and minor illusion spells to slowly make a bandit party paranoid about each other and break their cohesion.
In 3.5 Prestidigitation worked a bit different, and I figured I could use the creation, coloring, and taste aspects to make zero-calorie snacks (fragile, artificial-looking items that can not deal damage: such as chocolate mouse (essentially a mass of tiny bubbles), popcorn, potato chips, salt sticks, etc.). I planned out a magic item, Snack Bowl, that would do this on command, but never got around to actually making it in-game.
So we were playing Curse of Stradh and had made it to the Amber Temple, where we found a room with VERY old spell scrolls. Tried to pick one up and it crumbled to dust, so I - being sure it wouldn't work - told my DM I was going to try and use the Frostbite cantrip to see if I could solidify the scroll so it could be unrolled without crumbling. He allowed the attempt with a slight of hand check after to avoid breaking the frozen scroll, and I managed to salvage one - which he promptly had to pull out an RNG machine to pick a random spell to be on the scroll, since the module hadn't anticipated us actually getting any of them intact.
2nd edition Mount spell. Using the horse to get full plate armor across the river.
I had a similar experience than the magic sword one. I DM'd for a Tiefeling warlock, with 20 charisma at LVL 1. He had Thaumaturgy and a spell I forgot the name of that allows you to make an illusion in 3x3x3 cube. It was on his pact so he could use it at will for free. Broke the campaign alone. The guy collected the bones of every enemy they killed, made powder out of it, and one night, he got out of the inn with his "white powder" and sold it to sketchy guys in an alleyway. He made em test the product . They sniffed it and he made illusions of random effects, casting thaumaturgy for even more and whispering random shit in abyssal. He made 80 Gp like that.
I used Thaumaturgy in an attempt to decieve some would be threats that there was a gas leak and that their actions would explode the place if they continued.
Unfortunately the bluff failed but woulda been neat
Maintaining eye contact is a baller ass move.
~_~
My favorite from my campaigns was an evil campaign in 2e, I'm playing a vampire and my brother playing a goblin. We are in the underdark and run into a group of dwarves at a natural stone bridge across a very deep chasm. First round they start charging across the bridge and I ask my DM if I can cast reduce on the bridge, he allows it, we calculate how much the bridge shrinks and make some rolls to see if bridge crumbles, dwarves precede to all fall in the chasm except the priest wearing a featherfall ring, who is flipping us off as he's floating down. I proceed to pick up my bro and roll nat 20 at throwing him at the priest, he catches on the priest and rides him down, kills him, and finishes off the dwarf leader that had single digit hp from the fall. Pretty nice loot and great fun.
We were infiltrating a BBEG's castle in a desert city by sneaking into vacant rooms and onto rooftops, and we landed in a wine cellar that had a clear opening to the BBEG's castle, but the window was 15ft above ours. I (Half-Elf Storm Sorcerer) decided to cast Shape Water on the wine to to form a frozen staircase connecting the two balconies... almost. There was a 5ft gap in between the stairs and window, so I cast Gust on myself to push myself into the window.
I did something similar😂 We were fighting a group of wererats and my rogue decided his best course of action was to risk getting bitten, shoving his arm down the throat of the leader and set off a bead from a necklace of fireball. The rest were horrified and most fled, but there was some serious questions about his sense of self preservation afterwards😂😂
Disguise Self has gotten my Aberrant Mind Sorc so deep into an enemy fortress he had killed and replaced the commanding officer, within a day and a half he and the party had freed experimented on captives, robbed the place of some magic items humiliated the guards anytime they were about to be caught and slipped away, then stole a flying ship and blew up the fortress as we escaped.
While traversing a water temple level. I had my Cleric/Warlock dedicated to the God of secrets memorize destroy water. Figuring it would come in handy at some point.
Sure enough, during a boss fight we encounter two Water Weirds. I make a knowledge check and roll a nat 20 + a huge modifier from my build. Having now determined that my character knew all of the secrets of water weirds, I cast destroy water to delete the top Inch of water on the entire pond they inhabited.
Per the monster manual; being separated from their source water causes Water Weirds to die instantly. Killing the creatures with the equivalent of a first level spell.
While the wizard and rogue tried sneaking into the baddies camp, my bard was scouting from the cliff surrounding the camp 100 feet up. My bard was keeping track of how they were doing and they got found out by the BBEG. Quickly my bard used mage hand to hold a 10lb stone about 30 ft away from me, ie 100 ft high right above the BBEG 's head. It was an instakill
One thing I've wanted to try but haven't had the chance is to get a decanter of endless water. Then use the geyser function, and at the same time the water blasts out use Shape Water to freeze some of the water so the stream has chuncks of ice in it. They both take an action so I would have to have a party member or a minion use the decanter.
Used Beguiling Gift (A Pathfinder 1e spell) to trick a gug into wearing a cursed robe that reduced its strength and intelligence by 10, making it barely stronger than a commoner and so stupid it no longer knew how to fight.
Our party was transporting an artefact. It was mostly there as a mcguffin, but it had the once-per-day ability to cast a variant of the Slow spell. Importantly, this could affect objects as well as creatures.
Our party were on a pirate ship, being persuaded by a larger and faster warship. We couldn't use the artifact to slow the enemy ship (the DM ruled that it wouldn't affect things larger than the AoE). But then one player had the idea: what if we use it to slow parts of the ship?
So we gave the artefact to our druid (wild-shaped into an octopus), who swam out to within range or the enemy ship, and then cast Slow on the ship's anchor, steering wheel, foremast, and any other heavy or critical piece of equipment that could fit in the AoE. With the result that the ship tore itself apart.
(The DM allowed this on the grounds that it was cool and a clever idea, but also declared that this would never be allowed again).
It was a one-shot dungeon crawl almost 20 years ago, so I don't remember if it was 2nd edition, 3rd or 3.5. Anyway, towards the end, we were fleeing the dungeon boss, and found the exit was blocked by a wall of fire. There were some skeletons dressed in old armor on the ground and a small fountain next to the wall (I think the DM had planned for us to use the armor to get water from the fountain to put out the fire). I, being the healer, cast a spell called Healing Fountain in the fire instead, putting it out and allowing us to escape before the boss arrived.
We were fighting a dragon-riding bad guy, and we were with a powerful ally archer who also happened to have a dragonslaying arrow.
The problem was that the bad guy had cast a wind wall, so our archer friend couldn't do squat against him. And since he was flying around on his dragon, neither could most of the party since they couldn't reach him.
Then my silly little spellcasting guy had an idea, and asked her how *sturdy* that dragonslaying arrow was. Considering how powerful it was, we figured it was probably very tough. So I readied my spell and told her "alright, shoot it"
She did, and immediately afterward I cast Magic Missile, rolling spellcraft to change the trajectory of the missiles mid-flight so they would *clamp around* the arrow and force it through the wall of wind without veering off-course, because if the missiles can't miss and the arrow is stuck between them, it won't miss either. The dragon saved against the arrow's instant-death, but it still did enough damage to immediately knock him unconscious and the fall finished him off.
The rider was very *very* unhappy.
this reminds me of a story involving a nasty DM:
a player had acquired a magical bow called "thunk", that would do a guaranteed crit on it's next attack if the owner said it's name, BUT that would ALSO make the PC lose one Constitution, point, PERMANENTLY.
the nasty part is that if he said it OUT OF CHARACTER, the DM would still count it!
BUT that player also found an enchanted arrow that could turn the target to gold, btu ONLY on a Crit...
yes, he used them together to one-shot the BBEG!
Theres a cantrip in PF2 that removes the soul from the target for a round, 2 rounds on a critical fail. This allows you to attack the body. The soul is invisible and has a fly speed of 60, can fit through small openings, etc.
normally you use it on an enemy to make their body vulnerable. I used it on our rogue for scouting rooms by slipping through the keyhole.
On the first day of the campaign the bois reach a cave that’s got two entrances, DM tells us it’s very dark and damp inside the cave and there’s 1000’s of harmless Bats hanging everywhere, my Buddy Em the Wizard decides he’s gonna use 💡 Cantrip so we all can see better (Cantrips are free will movements IG) so he lights up his staff and triggers a dominoes effect of the Bats flying outta the Cave, a band of 10 Goblins that have made the cave a HQ are able to see Em casting magic and have had negative experiences with dangerous spell-casters in the past coupled with the thousands of fleeing Bats decide this HQ is no longer safe and abandoned the cave fearing for there safety. The Dm was like well you scared the goblins away so theoretically you’ve overcome the Challenge of 10 goblins we all reaches level two and got the loot, without using up our resources, it was a great campaign with many funny misunderstandings from otherwise formidable enemies.
my shadar-kai rune knight got pinned under some rubble, i failed the save but tanked the damage so i was alive but trapped. i used my giants might to grow to a size large, asked the DM if that opened any holes in the rubble, and when he said yes i misty stepped out.
i then got a nat 20 to resist an increased gravity field and looked like an absolute badass in front of the final boss.
for all of one turn before his six attacks killed me.
2:43 as a DM, the correct thing to do in my opinion would have been a "you detected the Otheon, with your falling body." I.e. he was always going to get what he wanted because he was clever and made the table laugh, but the total flub of the roll means his success was going to hurt.
8:44 It ain't a War Crime the first time!
The water freezing the wood and breaking it, that would actually likely work, water that freezes has a scary power
Was it Nobody the Cyclops hated?
I killed someone with the grease spell. A drow alchemist kept spider climbing on the ceiling to snipe our backline with bombs. So, I greased her, and she died from fall damage.
that reminds me of a story where a BBEG was monologuing while climbing down some stairs, and a player cast Grease on the stairs!
I once used animate rope to try and choke a CR 9 chimera as a level 1 bard (the DM that day was purposefully trying to wipe us and sent it out despite the protest of the players). We still wiped because I would have needed to hold the spell for 120 rounds before it would suffocate as per the DnD 3.5 rules, but I made the DM sweat that day
I was playing a Bard with no offensive spells other than viscous mockery. We were ambushed by some giant blind worms that react to sound. Not having a lot to do i had an idea to cast knock on one of the worms, then dodging. The resulting knock lead the other worm to do a full round of attacks on its partner.
I used the cantrip shape water to shoot water up someones nose once. Keep in mind most spells require verbal components and I forced water into their windpipe so they were coughing and unable to use said components for a solid minute. Our opponent had levels in bard couldn't really sing with his lungs filled with water.
I think it was prestidigitation. I had a gnome with it, everytime they said my name, I used the spell to make it taste good.
Party knew there was a powerful wizard established at the top of an old clock tower. They assumed the tower was filled with minions and traps. (they were right, but I digress) The druid set a few swarms of rats and termites loose on the tower while they all went off for a long rest. First thing the next morning, they came back and hit a cornerstone of the tower with stone to mud and stood back to watch as two weeks of prep and a two session crawl was reduced to rubble.
The worst of it was I had a friend from out of town (and fellow DM) over who was excited to play the wizard. In all my years, that remains the only time a party has caused two DMs to both hang their heads and sigh in unison.
Pathfinder. Saw a player cast aqua orb (i think that was its name). A spell that captures you in a ball of water for 1 minute. Then on the next turn cast "hideous laughter" on the victim in the orb.
Under attack by invisible creatures, mage cast Prestidigitation, to create 1 full pound of nonmagical glitter, and declared to the DM that his next spell was going to be Gust of Wind.
The monsters fled for their lives.
i spent so long writing a comment only to lose all of it when i accidentaly clicked on another video. 😭
some of my favorite uses of low level spells have been when my sister's druid cheesed a boss fight by throwing half of the cult they were fighting off a tower with thunderwave and entangling the rest, when my cousin's paladin ordered a guard to poop with Command and when another cousin's air genasi rogue became a ballon with levitate and a rope in order to navigate through a maze.
while it was more a clever use of a class ability, my artificer/wizard from another game once faked a fire with magic tinkering (i was charmed during a fight and found myself in a fog cloud cast by another character so i used magic tinkering to create an object with the smell of smth burning and went to call for help).
i've also discovered that the best course of action for a cleric that is about to get captured is to cast spirit guardians and laugh at their pursuers' demise. 🙃
oh, forgot to mention a recent clever use of polymorph. my sister's druid polymorphed an npc into a killer whale during a ship to ship boss battle and it chomped on the bbeg and dragged him underwater. after they absolutely curbstomped him, my cousins decided to cut him in pieces and offer his teeth to the tooth fairy as a get rich quick scheme. so i ended up making tooth fairy cannon as this bloodthirsty pixie that rewards warriors who defeat powerful foes. instead of money, i homebrewed jewellry made of teeth for the players. 😅
Used Mage Hand to scoop up a handful of molten lava and poured it down an enemy’s armor