Crazy D&D plans...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Sure, threads like this have been done in the past, but it’s been a while, and I just had to share this.

So yesterday, I was enjoying my regular D&D session with friends. We had gotten to a point where we knew where the current bad guy was holed up, thanks to some recon information from a local village of elves. The elves use giant owls as mounts, which let them check out the ruined city (which was sinking, so it was essentially buildings sticking out of the middle of a lake), but they weren’t willing to just fly us in. So we were discussing our insertion options. Do we sneak up on the lizardman outposts on the lake shore, take them out, and steal a boat? Maybe the cleric can get everyone with water walk?

Then one player gets “that look”. If you’ve gamed enough, you’ve probably seen it. It usually precedes something insane, but “it just might work!” He turns to me (I’m playing the wizard) and asks “You’ve got featherfall, right? How many people will that effect?”

Well, yeah, I’ve got it. And since it works on 1 creature per level, I could cover the entire party.

He then turns to the DM (now playing the elf chieftan). “And how high can the owls fly? High enough to be out of bowshot, maybe even high enough to not be noticed?”

The DM doesn’t yet realize where this is heading, and says “Sure, why not.”

The player leans back and says the memorable phrase: “HALO jump”. To stave off the RP purists, after doing that, he did go on to explain his idea “in character”. And our characters had done something similar a while ago, although that was just jumping from the top of tower (the D&D equivalent of BASE jumping…) as a last-ditch escape, so this was just the next logical step.

So our plan (put off until next session since one player had to leave early yesterday, and we do not want him to miss it) is to fly on giant owls over a ruined city (infested with lizardmen, goblins, ogres, and a young adult black dragon), jump off at high altitude, gather together in mid-air, then have my wizard cast featherfall roughly 400-500 feet off the ground. We’ll invade the head guy’s stronghold in the center of the city (and the lair of the dragon) fresh, instead of fighting our way through the perimeter guards first. Ideally, we’ll catch the dragon inside the building and can contain it there instead of having to deal with it flying around.

This is either going to be the greatest victory ever, or a TPK (total party kill, everyone’s dead). Either way, it’s got to be the zaniest plan I’ve been involved in. :smiley:

So, anyone got any fun stories of plans that, once brought up, were too cool to pass up? How did it work out for you?

2

I’m impressed, sciguy, and I can’t wait for the after-action report!

The closest I’ve got is from some years ago. Our party was spending the night in a village, where we were negotiating something-or-another with the village leaders. We woke up to a mid-night raid by the kobold army. I, playing an ex-infantry two-weapon-style fighter, had the sudden bright idea of a flying wedge formation to cut through the army and rally around the village leaders. It worked well enough, we killed enough kobolds to prevent them from overrunning the village.

3

Our party was underground. My DM was fond of wandering monster rolls and had been having a good night of beating the snot out of the the party. We were low in hit points and limping around trying to find a rest and recovery point.

Earlier, we had discovered a post, than when grabbed, teleported us to another matching post in another part of the cave system. It took some fussing around to work right because to return you had to go out in the reverse order you came in.

So here we are, trudging around and he rolls for wandering monsters and hits. He rolls up lemurs? I forget, it’s been a long time. These little melty proto-deamon thingees, a herd of them. Either way, we’re in no shape to handle these so we fall back on the Monty-python “run away” defense.

We grab the teleport pole, beasties in pursuit, and teleport to the other part of the caves.

We wander, he rolls and hits and rolls up a Chimera. Again we squeal “run away”. He rolls for wanderers again and we come on a band of thieves. We shout to them, “Run! There’s a chimera after us”.

Roll “What’s a chimera”, says they.

We lie, kinda, “It’s like a dragon only worse.”

Roll They start to run with us.

We end up at the teleport room and we shot, “Grab that pole, it’s Chimera protection.”

Roll “OK!” they shout and they all poof-off away to the room filled with little melty proto deamons. Two wandering monsters gone off to meet each other and I think we outran the Chimera.

The DM was pleased. Amusing the DM means EP’s for all.

4

There is a million ways for a pissed DM to make that go wrong. Is he one to welcome and reward innovation?

ETA: From your last post, I guess he is.

Still, make your plans well. Will the spellcaster be able to cast under the conditions (material components flown away, somatic components at terminal velocity)? Will you all be able to gather (it is tricky for experienced divers without full metal plates, 3 pounds of wolfsbane and 11-foot poles)? Will you be able to stay together (with the spell caster doing funny arm motions in freefall)?

5

Another jumping idea: My char had gymnastics (or tumbling - whatever it was it halved falling damage). I was on top of teh castle walls. The idea was to grab the monster (a doppleganager) and jump off the wall. Of course the GM could have ruled that I couldn’t use the skill while entangled (I think I still would have survived teh fall). Instead teh dopplegagnger got free of my grasp.

Brian

6

For the record, the prior post was not the OP.

Another story about my DM. He had another party that was always shopping for EP moments. “Eeps, eeps, we want eeps”, they’d say.

So one day, he invented a new monster. A small flightless, fast-running bird, rather like a small Dodo. It had one hit point, it could bite for one hit point of damage. The problem for the party is that they start in herds of a thousand.

The next “Eeps, eeps” chant was answered, “You hear a rumbling in the distance.”

Same DM, campaign he never did with us but claimed was a dream of his: Recover a lost alien transport artifact from the depths of the underworld.

The campaign was known as “Get the Dodge out of Hell”.

7

oops, my mistake. I am liking your DM. Sounds much like one I once had.

8

I keep reading the title as “Crazy dead plants”, and clicking on the thread, thinking there’ll be something here about zombie begonias.
There never is.

9

Oh, we got the DM firmly in the grip of “we gotta do this to see what the heck happens” mania. :slight_smile: A mediocre GM will quote you the rules why your plan won’t work. A good GM will let you get away with it anyway if it’ll make for a good story.

And if you get into it, our plan’s not that infeasible. Feather fall is a verbal-only spell, so no fumbling with components or mystic handwaving while in freefall. The toughest limitation is that no two targets can be more than 20 feet apart, but the mid-air grouping up will be handled by roping everyone together (with sufficient slack to allow for formation flying). We’re going to need some luck to hit the ideal landing zone (the roof of the goblin headquarters), but our cleric will be hitting everyone with Water Walk to cover the contigency of landing in open water.

10

Have the Fighters switch to leather armor, just in case they need to swim out.

BTW–just how will you get out?

And, I do believe Feather Fall has a weight restriction. Check those scales.

11

Sorta. “The spell affects one or more Medium or smaller creatures (including gear and carried objects up to each creature’s maximum load)”.

Presuming there are no ogres in the party, they should be good. Feather Fall is one of those “You’re an idiot if you don’t have it” spells. Cheap, few downsides, and it will save your life.

12

Just yesterday I was playing in a Ptolus session (the setting written by Monte Cook, originally used for D&D 3.0 playtest sessions). Our mission was to recover a chest of ill-gotten gold that was being transported semi-secretly across the city. We learned that the enemy party was to pass through a steep side street called Broken Leg Alley, rather than the nearby main thoroughfare of Urgent Street. The plan we came up with was this: we piled some crates on certain parts of the street to get the enemy party to move across more treacherous portions. The rogue hid behind one of the stacks. Meanwhile, my character Khazad and another fighter, Rachel, pretended to be loading a wagon, which we would move uphill to a chokepoint and then fake a stuck wheel at an opportune moment. Mrowr the Litorian (lionman) cleric and Isaac the lizardman barbarian hid out in a squatters’ building nearby. We wanted to try to provoke them into a fight, so that if the city guard showed up they would be on our side.

We were expecting a party of fighter types, carrying the chest on poles or something, that we could split up by rolling the wagon through them and then picking them off. Instead, we watched as an elf, a dwarf, and an ogre laborer came trudging uphill. When they neared the rogue’s hiding place, Rachel and Khazad moved the wagon into position. We pretended to be pissed off at this crappy job on this crappy street, whereas the enemy party was actually pissed off at theirs. Then Isaac wandered out, pretending to be a lizardman bum (In Ptolus, lizardmen aren’t actually bums, but everyone perceives them that way) and started hitting on Rachel, who took mock offense. Things escalated nicely, until the elf cast a successful sleep spell on Isaac and knocked him out. The rogue slipped out of hiding and tried for a sneak attack but missed, at which point the enemy party knew they were under attack.

We were more spread out than we had planned on, so I improvised. Khazad “accidentally” let the wagon roll downhill and cried, “Look out, the wagon’s loose!” The DM rolled some dice to see where it went, and it plowed directly into the enemy dwarf, who proceeded to go splat at the bottom of the street. Mrowr woke up Isaac by having his pet dog lick Isaac’s face, and then they joined in the rest of the fight. Fortunately the ogre kept stumbling on the uneven pavement, but he managed to get a lucky critical hit in and killed Rachel. We carried her off along with the phat lewts, and our sponsor House resurrected her for our successful mission.

The DM liked our plan, except for the part where I ran over his awesome enemy dwarf fighter with a wagon. Apparently if that hadn’t happened we would have been in much worse shape.

13

Lemures. Lemurs are little harmless proto-monkeys that hang out in Madagascar. At least, they’re harmless until the DM gets creative. :slight_smile:

The party I was once in had the cunning idea of everyone but one climbing into the portable hole and then the last member sneaking into the enemy stronghold, opening up the hole and letting everyone out to wreak havoc. Unfortunately there turns out not to be enough air in a portable hole to keep eight or nine people alive for the time it took for the sneak to do the necessary sneaking. Oops. At least it was easy for him to carry us out and go searching for a high-level cleric. :smack:

A bunch of my friends were infiltrating a castle and came up with the bright idea of disguising themselves and hiding all their weapons and magic items in a laundry hamper. You know, the big oblong wicker basket on wheels kind of thing. Then when they got into the chamber where the bad guy and his minions were, they yelled “Surprise!” and flung open the lid of the laundry hamper, to reveal…

laundry. (Because it was funnier that way. They use some cards like in TORG to modify the plot. The DM then back-filled with a shot of the party, a few minutes earlier, bumping into a laundrymaid in a castle corridor and, in trying to manoeuvre the two hampers past each other, accidentally coming away with the wrong one.)

14

This wasn’t a plan, just creative thinking. Others must have thought the same way, tho, because I’ve seen manuals that specifically forbid it:

“I cast long door on the big fella.” (short teleport, can’t go through solid objects)
“OK… on what direction?”
“Oh, straight up :D”

This wasn’t a plan either, unless you count me planning on throttling the other players. My char at the time, Helter (born Helen Skartaris) was a dwarf warrior. A female dwarf warrior. Who could swim, but that’s not part of this particular story.
She usually “passed” for a young male. We were exploring these huge caves:
a halfling with a magical +100cooking pan which could only be used by halflings (the rest of his skills and kit weren’t particularly important, but ah that pan!)
a bat who had a human mage as a familiar (the bat had more brains, so we never let my brother claim that it was the bat who was the familiar)
a demielven cleric who was usually the first casualty in any fight
and the dwarven can whose first action after any fight was “I bandage the priest - again!”
along with 40 dwarven mercenaries and their captain.

At first the mercs had been a bit wary about “that young dwarf,” the first couple encounters had them bowing and going “yessir.” And then…

and then the halfling went and told them I was a chick.

Oh,

my.

41 unrequited lovers. All of them wanting to convince me to drop the platemail and retire with them someplace nice with cozy granite walls :smack: We had our first deaths in the next fight: several of them had been so distracted trying to protect me (remember, this is like protecting a firehammer-bearing Sherman tank) that they’d been overrun. When I told their captain to Put A Stop To It, he offered me a part of his cut, with tears in his eyes.

Next fight they were doing the same. After a line about the testicles of the dwarven war god which most priests would not be likely to approve of, I got the mage to do our traditional “'port Helter to the middle of the group,” only in this case I had him send me behind them.

The dwarves got all pointed in the same direction (i.e., the one where I’d just appeared) and wedged their way through the goblin horde in less die rolls than it takes to tell. After some yelling at the captain and sergeants and a head count (I’d gotten twice as many as the next person) they finally Stopped It. More or less…

Pity about the spear that gutted the halfling, though. Not only did it deprive us of supreme breakfasts, but I really, really, really wanted to strangle him with me own two hands!

15

Dupe

16

An army of mechanical war machines and golem-entities descending on a city.

Us : a moderately high-level party who’d come to stop the attack.

The plan : Wrangle a few rust monsters, and teleport them into the middle of the battle after applying a few choice buff spells.

The outcome : Metallic forces gutted.

17

Reminded me of the last panel of this comic. “Run, my pretty little chunks of XP, run!”

18

2nd Ed AD&D.

I was playing a Cleric.

Minor Dark Lord leading an Undead Army against a fortified city.
The force was mostly Skeletons, as they can use weapons, & Zombies can’t.

I stood in front of the gates.

Alone.

Turned Undead time after time.
Hundreds of Skeletons destroyed.

Held em off for 2 turns (20 rounds) before the heavy hitters started to show, & I pulled inside the gates.

We sallied the gates 30 minutes later, & broke the force.

19

Possibly the ultimate one: moderate-level party paying through old Dragonlance adventure. Lord Soth and his Skeleton Knights come charging through the city gates.

Party dumps a load of rocks on them. Rock to Mud. They are annoyed and go sinking into the goo, which they’ll rip out of shortly. Mud to Rock. O.K., now they’re pissed but stuck for a short while. Start drilling through the rock and drop in holy water. A few gallons of the stuff and bam all fixed.

Previously, the charatcer playing Raistlin had become well-adjusted, healthy, and happy as another party character was a kind and generous druid. Needless to say, this group screwed up the “plot” something fierce. :smiley: Amusingly, after an early episode where the party was captured by slavers (and elves were supposed to come to their rescue, putting the party into their debt), the same druid escaped, handily poisoned most of the enemy, and broke the rest of the party out of jail, killing the last of the slavers just as the elves were showing up. The GM was PO’d and the elves tried to insist the party do them a favor. :smiley:

Unfortunately, WotC keeps trying to grind down the spells until they no longer actually do anything except to manipulate game statistics. They don’t want anyone ever doing anything which they can’t stick inside a neat little cage and control.

20

Low level game. I was playing a Mage/Cleric, 2nd edition.

Party stumbles on to the lair of a big black dragon. Except, the catch was, it’d already lost most of its hit points. I think the GM wanted to mess us around a bit.

The NPC fighter in the party charged the beast - the GM said his sword embedded in its hide, and stuck there - then the dragon swatted him down.

From safety, I cast Heat Metal on the sword, doing enough damage to finish off the dragon.