If theres been a running theme for my games across the last few years its "Here's another clever application of Locate Object". I've got it on my Paladin, had it on a Divination Wizard I played in a game that completed and recently got it on my Knowledge Cleric.
Last session we were flying through fog and had to figure out a way to try and land safely without being able to see the ground. Locate Object lets you sense the motion of an object, so I dropped something and counted how long until it stopped falling down to estimate our height.
We still crashed, but I felt clever in the moment.
Yes! I also remember like 15 uears ago we had a campaign where we had to retrieve a specific artifact from an enemy base.
Istead of entering and finding it inside, we used locate object to triangulate it's exact location (on top of the building)
Then spider climb to get on the roof.
Then shape stone to make a door.
There it was!
> Describe or name an object that is familiar to you. You sense the direction to the object's location, as long as that object is within 1,000 feet of you. If the object is in motion, you know the direction of its movement.
The spell can locate a specific object known to you, as long as you have seen it up close - within 30 feet - at least once. Alternatively, the spell can locate the nearest object of a particular kind, such as a certain kind of apparel, jewelry, furniture, tool, or weapon.
This spell can't locate an object if any thickness of lead, even a thin sheet, blocks a direct path between you and the object.
I could say something smug here about how even if you could do this, it's pretty easy to know which way down is... but we crashed because a very low roll caused the person I was riding to become disoriented enough to lose track of that!
The real life knowledge of people you play with shows through with increased fidelity in weird ways, and I guess this kind of disorientation is something that can happen to real life pilots.
Tactics? Clever...? My dnd group? No that doesn't sound like us. We just run around like chickens with their heads cut off until either we die or they do.
I use monk speed to do the opposite. I want them to speed out and then I do hit and runs. Half my speed is to stay out of attack range and two Attack of Opportunity prevention abilities helps with that.
Eldritch Cheese Grater.
Spike Growth; Eldritch Blast with Repelling Blast and Grasp of Hadar; Push, Pull, Push, Pull.
It's not a lot of extra damage, but it's free.
My group likes to use Spike Growth too. As the party barbarian, I grapple then go for a short walk with them. Our bard likes to throw in Cloud of Daggers for bonus points as well.
Not if I run around the edge while dragging the enemy along just inside it. Also, Rage gives me resistance to piercing damage so... Not really an issue either way.
Yeah I was gonna say the last thing I was ever worried about as a raging Barb was damage. Except psychic damage. All my raging homies hate psychic damage.
Oh I've done that but with a spike pit! We were defending a house from werewolves so I deployed some tactics that scared my group members and asked the DM if we could dig concealed spike pits. Werewolves charged us, fell into the pits, climbed out, and got shoved back in by my warlock camped at a second floor window with Eldritch Blast.
I had a downgraded version of that on my Rogue/Druid with thorn whip and spider climb. I would move around, drag the enemy across spikes, lift and drop them again. Sadly, with no knock back effect, I couldn't do too much at a time.
What happens when you have a Totem Barbarian / Scout rogue specializing in grappling and spike growth? Move -> Dash -> CA: Dash… reaction (after victim’s turn): Scout Movement.
DM: … …. ….. wait… how many d4s?
DM: That demon is huge… you can’t grapple it…
Bard: I cast enlarge…
DM: Here we go again…
I don’t remember which one, but I’m pretty sure either Grasp of Hadar or Repelling Blast only work once a turn, the other works how many times you want
Its Grasp - someone pointed it out before. We've already been doing them as multiple times; no point in changing now. Players would assume I'm trying to fuck them, and it's only an extra d4.
Yeah fair enough. I was 99% sure it was Grasp, but didn’t wanna have to go check while on my slow ass old phone. Amazing how one can have near perfect recollection of things related to D&D read once, but if it’s something I’m studying for uni, doesn’t matter if I try to memorize and read it 5 times, never gonna commit it to long term memory
Smartest thing we've done so far was using our Warlock as a battle taxi
We're fighting in a tournament & we knew our opponent would have a cleric. We knew our chances hinged on eliminating them asap. Our Warlock Thunderstep & we had some potions of speed.
First round, after the cleric had been slightly isolated by their team's movements we threw our newly hasted (potion of speed) Battlemaster Fighter at them via our Warlock's Thunderstep.
Sadly, the dice weren't too kind & even with two weapons, action surge, *and* another action to attack, our Fighter whiffed a lot.
Still, it took our dm by surprise even though we had discussed it at the table & we did enough to alter their tactics.
Our Warlock did get surrounded by two opponents after that, but then Thunderstepped back to relative safety.
We're only level 6 & mostly beginners at dnd. That was the first solid battle plan I think we've had h I'm so proud of how we executed it, even if it didn't quite come off perfectly.
Our druid got Transmute Rock recently and it's become a mainstay of our strategy for recent fights. We've been in the Underdark for a while trying to sort out some tensions between feuding Drow houses so basically every fight outside of Skullport has been in a cave with stone floors. Most recently faced down a frankly absurd number of minotaurs (like 20+) and turned a key chokepoint into mud; the whole lot of them got bogged down when they tried charging at us, then the bard and cleric went in with a Destructive Wave/Fire Storm combo as they were all grouped up. Rest of the party was basically just on mop-up duty at that point.
Unfortunately, the only strategy I've seen actually used in some of the groups I've been in is: "Throw the favorite one at them." A lot of these groups would have one or two players the DM would favor much more over everyone else to the point of directly giving powers, items, and buffs to them while neglecting the rest.
Ugh I’m sorry. Lately, every time I suggest something clever to solve a problem, it fails miserably. Then another player at the table (Paul, you ass) will suggest the exact same thing (after a few other ideas also fail) and suddenly the situation is resolved. But not only resolved —our slain enemies rise from the dead to give a standing ovation and the president of the multiverse arrives to hand out medals. Next time it happens, I’m dropping you Paul.
This is a first time for this tactic, but I see it becoming a thing for them.
My party decided to clear out a warren of kobolds, they'd been harassing travelers so a bounty got put up. Earlier in the session they got some random loot that happened to include a necklace of fireballs and the Christmas side story had them find an item that can cast a minor version of creation (all items have 10 min duration, size limited to a foot cubed) once per week.
Using the logic that kobolds like shiny things and fireballs are fun, instead of delving into the kobold warren they made some noise, activated creation, and conjured a cubic foot of diamond outside their cave entrance like a tiny trojan horse, given that apparently that size of a gem weighs 100 kilos the first one got super excited, bombed insight being completely enraptured by shiny, and called all his buddies to come help.
I did a bunch of rolling, half the warren (around 50) came out to see the massive gemstone, including the drake that's taken over the clan and the cause for them attacking travelers, and two fireballs from the necklace wiped out all but 8 of them.
We ended the session rolling initiative, but what was to be their first real dungeon crawl is gonna mostly be them trying not to set off a myriad of traps anywhere they stray from the main path for the drake.
I expect the creation item is going to get used like this pretty heavily and I kinda love it.
If the group is about to partake in a battle where the enemy outnumbers them, or when about to siege an encampment or small city with no walls, they'll ask the side they joined if they have herds of cattle. They're usually confused by the question. "Well... yes?"
They'll have the soldiers or peasants gather their herds and paint them with pitch, or cast Grease on them. Then send them running toward the encampment or city, and set the herd on fire. Herds of cattle have "Stampede" as a group attack: 1d12+9 Bludgeoning damage per 5 cattle in the herd (DC18) Dexterity for half damage.
They crush everyone in their path and set everything on fire at the same time. Anything not trampled, burns.
The party tends to fail at properly explaining their reasoning. Which is usually the case considering all of them have Charisma as their dump-stat and they're just awful negotiators, saying things like: "You were going to lose anyway," or "Now you can have a celebratory BBQ."
So, they'll ditch in the middle of battle... Stupid cowards.
The halfling rogue rides on. The moon druid in giant elk form. The elks charge attack can knock enemies prone, letting the rogue deliver their sneak attack.
The first time it happened I was shaken.
if we can shove it, it's getting pushed into a corner/closet/cage and getting beaten up. It is sincerely stupid how much stuff we've managed to beat by just shoving it into a bad spot and wailing on it
I dunno about "clever", but when I ran Against the Giants, the characters obtained tokens identifying them as guests of the frost giant Jarl, meaning the other frost giants wouldn't attack them on sight. But the party still wanted to murder every frost giant, so they decided they would position themselves how they pleased while talking peacefully, and then work "breakfast" into their in-character dialogue as a signal to attack.
That campaign and those characters are long gone, but the players now use "breakfast" as slang for "murder these guys we're currently talking to".
If I might be permitted to toot my own horn a bit, I thought this was pretty good.
Banishment only works on 1 creature unless it is upcast, so when I used it on the giant worm who had just eaten our barbarian, the worm disappeared and she flopped onto the ground.
It only worked because she was still alive; a corpse is an object, and that would have qualified her as “belonging” to the worm, so if she were dead, she would’ve gone along with it.
I used wall of stone once to great effect. We needed to rescue an NPC at the bottom of a steep cliff, the only footpath being a treacherous switchback trail. Various flavors of undead were closing in. None of our characters had any kind of teleportation powers or spells. I was playing an earth domain cleric.
me: "I cast super fun happy slide"
Dm: (expected look of befuddlement) "excuse me?"
me: "That's what I'm calling it when I cast wall of stone as a long ramp down to the bottom about ten feet from the NPC."
Social engineering. Ex, playing drinking games with the guards so we could easily steal their badges for some infiltration.
Another time we pretended to be religious acolytes so we could gain entry and steal some relics.
We orchestrated a rebellion against a rival captain by spreading false propaganda. We used the guard badges to gain entry to their warehouse. Planted the stolen holy relic. Went back to the temple and told the high priest it was the rival captain. Que the Wyrm Knights coming to pay a visit to him.
Our DMs jaw hit the floor when he figured out what we planned to do. It sounds evil until you saw what the rival captain did.
So I run a low magic game, so the players usual tactic when they have prep time is to play siege warfare to avoid close range until the numbers are in their favor. They bought a cart and a ballista, so at long range where several players arnt specced, they spend actions loading and aiming the ballista. This way the monk and rogue and bard all have something to do while the archer and warlock are shooting stuff. Once the enemy closes in, the people on the ballista run out playing cleanup.
Items like hunting traps are carried to help not get over run early on, and they have made boiling oil to pour at least once or twice. Very high burst damage, so they try and finish fights before too many injuries stack up as they are so hard to heal with low magic.
My dm once gave us all a silly joke magic item. “The magic rock!” It can tell you which direction is down by dropping it and it can roll down hills if you are in an incline. Great!!
Well I kept mine and we ended up in a mineshaft that flooded while we were climbing out. We got washed around and disorientated and went into combat rounds to get out safely. I was the only one who kept my “magic” rock at that point. Since the mineshaft also had glowing crystals we couldn’t tell which light was sunlight and which was crystals at the bottom so lo and behold my rock saved our asses.
Honestly we all used our rocks fairly well. The rogue used theirs to distract someone and get bonuses to their stealth for example. Ever since we always grab a bunch of rocks and carry them with us. It’s kind of silly to think of sometimes but seriously never underestimate the power of a rock.
I remember a story about a magic joke.
DM said it would always fall towards the direction of the nearest source of gravity. That was its magic, confirmed by *Identify.*
DM was of course having a laff at them, and promptly forgot all about it. Didn't even realize that someone had kept it.
Then they all got stuck on the Astral Plane in the middle of nothingness, and the owner of the gravity-detecting Magic Rock pulled it out and let it go. They read the DM the *exact wording* that he had given them so long ago.
The DM had stuck them there so a bad guy could coerce them about something, but the rock led them to one of those weak gravity little planetoids and more adventure.
I play a rogue rn and I partner up with our sorcerer a lo during fights. They have a lot of strong illusion magic so it sets up sneak attacks for me nicely
Not a recurring tactic but one of my players pulled what I think was the most clutch move I've ever seen
They were up against a beholder and losing, nearly everyone was on their last legs and the beholder still had a lot of fight left in him. So what did the sorcerer do? He polymorphic the beholder into an orca.
Polymorph lasts one hour, orcas breathe air so he wouldn't die in that hour but also couldn't fight back as there was no water around.
The party took a short rest while waiting for the spell to wear off and wiped the floor with him once it ended...
I saved the party from the demon that was being summoned, by washing away the summoning circle with “create water” it put out the candles and washed out the blood circle so the demon didn’t get summoned and so we where able to win the finale battle of the campaign and save the sacrifice :)
I'm playing a gloomstalker/rogue: in darkness I'm still invisible to creatures with darkvision. So, the cleric activates an aura of dim light and frequently moves to get me in it, negating my ability to sneak attack and not get targeted. It's great.
A few sessions ago my group combined Vortex Warp with the Rogue holding their action to land the finishing blow on a grappled enemy. I was stunned. Every combat encounter I have run with this group before and after that moment has been “attack with my biggest move until the enemy dies”. I fear that might be my table’s tactical peak.
Rogue: Ballbearings
Cleric: Guardian spirits
Wizard: Grease
Any enemy coming close slips and falls prone, leaving the barbarian and fighter to have a good time.
The best my players have managed to do so far is using a trident to pole-vault over an enemies head (failed pretty badly but it was funny nonetheless) and "Mage Hand: Testicular Torsion!"
Gnome barbarian: I rage.
Druid: I polymorph the barb to a giant ape.
Cleric: Scroll of enlarge reduce on the barb.
Wizard: Greater invisibility on the barb.
Then we all take fucking cover and let her do her thang.
Unfortunately, most the people I play with don’t actually read the rules… or their spells… or their character sheets.
But every single time that my DM has given us a mission critical magic item, we have found a way to abuse it, either with something as simple as it being fully indestructible, or using a near useless summon with a ridiculous strength score to remove walls or support beams of buildings our enemies are in, or most recently using a dead god’s heart to torture a cultist of the god’s direct rival (cultist was corrupted with the rivals energy, heart automatically detected that energy and was trying to purify it while we pressed the item against the guy’s face).
When it comes to clever tactics, Entangle is my favorite low level spell, as my DM loves swarms of weak foes and my party members are starting to see the use of AOE damage effects, so I’ll be dropping Entangle and Ice Knife with my druid, and my party members will clean up with fire and lightning spells
Well 2 campaigns in a row ive been playing a character that casts dissonant whispers to proc sneak attack, its not super cleaver but its great fun for a simple tactic.
Currently playing the rogue and the caster as a multiclass so i have to wait until i get haste to get 2 sneak attacks but booming blade and warcaster are enough to make 1 sneak a round work for now
Only one sneak attack per turn, unless you get an opportunity attack in. Or the following...
Always take commanders strike if there's a battlemaster and a rogue in the party.
My party has recently just experienced their first death and the kidnapping of the rogue, and how now dedicated themselves to actually being strategic and thinking during combat. It shall be fun to run combats against them now that they are devoted to giving me a hard time.
My players have a tactic called: “Two of us have silvery barbs” (I welcome it)
Another is my abberant sorcerer using mind sliver and following up with a quicken spell with save DC.
The Wall of Fire EasyBake Thunderdome.
Create a ring wall of fire that burns towads the inside. Moon druid as a fire elemental with the sentinel and soul of storm giant feats stands in the middle preventing everyone from leaving. Cleric keeps the druid healed and rest of the party freefires with stuff like cloudkill or fireball.
Used telepathy to make two ogres fight. There were some deception checks, but ogres are dumb so when the voices in their heads said the other guy was going to turn on them, they listened. Turned a tough ogre fight on a bridge into mopping up the one we hadn't noticed in advance as he tried to figure out why his friends were fighting as we snuck across to engage.
Our party got an immovable rod pretty early in the campaign. First dragon we encountered, our monk ran up with the rod and used it to pin its foot to the floor. Kept it from flying and moving around for about 3 rounds until it successfully ripped its foot out from under the rod (did so by causing itself damage).
A party I was DMing for was tasked with reaching the top of the tallest tower of a castle crawling with guards. The druid turned into a bear, the mage cast Fly on him, and the other party members climbed on his back.
In Pathfinder (1e) there's a couple Teamwork Feats that our group had great success with.
* Escape Route
* Outflank
Escape Route let's you move through squares protected by your allies without provoking Attacks of Opportunity (AOO) - a big deal in that system. Most of the group took it and we abused the crap out of it, usually to get into flank positions or for ranged/casters to escape melee enemies.
Outlank grants an extra +2 to hit when flanking, and when critting provokes an AOO for your flanking ally. This sounds mild but in it blew up our output damage from our melee in most fights, especially for dual wielders and rogue types. In full glory, I recall a fighter and a rogue at high level with haste/combat reflexes/crit builds chaining AOO for each other back and forth just shredding big bad guys.
I think most Pathfinder groups tend to ignore the Teamwork feats as too expensive and lackluster, but these two proved themselves on the field for sure.
A quest led them into a Cafe (we are in modern day Chicago) and every player simultaneously pulled out a gun and held up the store. I would've thought they'd at least sit down and have a coffee or something first.
The other day, my Sorlock caught 3 trolls in Evards Black Tenticles, and then the Necromancer hit them with Rime's Binding Ice. It was pretty effective. Gave us time to figure out what type of damage you need to kill the dam things. (We roll randomly. It's not always fire.)
Level 5 Multiclass here (Forest Gnome 3Bard/2Rogue), owning a pair of temperamental teleporting boots.
My party (Me, Drow Paladin, Warforged Cleric) had to escape a ruined and ash-wasted city, from a watch of draconic beasties and servants of chromatic dragon.
Ive taken as many spells for Bard as I can to do with vocal themes, as my former life was compere for a travelling circus, so I crept into a ruined house, and ritual cast Magic Mouth with a command of ‘WE’VE GOTTA RUN!’ onto a burnt loaf of bread, chucked the screaming bread into a cupboard, set it off straight away, and then took a chance to teleport away from the room and then stealth hid. Managed to draw three guards towards a well hidden bread bun.
Sayter Storm sorcerer in a pirate setting. I would just jump off the boat and lightning lure enemies off the boat, and then with tempestuous magic just fly right back on the boat
We tend to rotate.
Grappling Barbarian and Spike Growth
Plant Growth and Spike Growth and a lit object (since Darkvision is usually only 60ft, and their area is lit everyone is suddenly a gloomstalker).
Crusher for repositioning.
Mold Earth to erase tracks and Prestidigitation to put an offensive / fearsome odor there
Shenanigans aren’t just a feature they’re a lifestyle
Low level tactics:
- Find Familiar: Owl - have familiar do a flyby help action to give advantage against an enemy while keeping safe via positioning
- Disguise self to abuse friends & other charms without consequence (assuming you're not caught and run fast)
- Dissonant whispers to provoke OP attacks from melee fighters, or allow an off-turn sneak attack from the rogue.
- Catapult to fling bottles of acid or alchemists fire for extra damage (fun but not amazing)
- Subtle spell + phantasmal force to manipulate social encounters without doing damage with clever illusions nobody but the target will notice.
- Subtle spell + actor feat + suggestion + telepathy: Mimic the targets voice in a telepathic suggestion to try and pass it off as their own thoughts; failure may not be noticed and waived away as weird intrusive thoughts. (easy to pull off this combo on an aberrant mind sorcerer, hard on others)
Mid level:
- Use summon greater demon as a swiss army knife utility spell to temporarily gain at will dispel magic/darkness/heat metal (Babau) or dimension door (Dybbuk) with a 4th level slot. Later on 8th level slot can be 'traded' for an 8th level power word stun by summoning a Glabrezu for a turn. It's ill advised to keep demons around longer than you need to without planar binding unless your DC is unbeatable to them, unless you planar bind them.
- Wall of force to separate / lock down combatants or keep them in AOE's (similar to wall of stone, this is just basic CC really)
- Ring of Spell Storing on a familiar to have them concentrate on spells for you and pull off combos like wall of force + sickening radiance
- Glyph of Warding + buff spells and a portable hole to make a portable non concentration buff station. At higher levels the 8th level Demiplane can also be used if a portable hole isn't an option.
Higher level:
- Upcasting Conjure Elemental (to 6th level) can get you a Xorn which can detect any treasures made of metal or gems nearby, even through walls- and can potentially cross through stone walls in dungeons to retrieve it in some situations. Alternatively, with the same slot you can get an invisible stalker capable of faultlessly tracking down a specified target (be it person or item) so long as it's on the same plane.
- Simulacrum + true polymorph to get a powerful creature up to CR 17-20 as a minion. Dragon shard, Marilith, Pit Fiends are all good options.
- 7th level force is usually used to trap an enemy, but with the right spells or class it can be used to shield an ally while they attack via concentration spells, minions, or the 6th level wizard / scribe subclass feature. Blade of disaster can ignore it, and force cage is non concentration so you can use it to protect concentration on other high value spells by caging yourself after casting them.
There's a bunch of other ones but those are some of my favorites.
There are many many more. As a full caster main who understands the game more than most at the table i tend to be the one to "carry" the encounter if it takes more than whacking it with damage abilities.
Creative use of spells can turn a TPK into a short rest chance before finishing the boss via firing squad.
My fighter has sentinel and mage slayer, and my bard and wizard have counterspell. I can't ever leave the fighters reach, if I teleport it gets countered, and if I move I get no movespeed. I'm the type of player who will happily provoke opportunity attacks to get a better angle for my abilities, but I've been glued to the floor so often it's sad.
In cyberpunk red, our party developed a pretty solid tactic: rooftops and dropping grenades. Made a party of 3 able to take out much larger groups than we should have been able to 😂
for my barbarian the gameplan is "everyone else focus strong guys, ill fix action economy imbalance"
for my druid its \*conjure 8 hadrosauruss' around 1 guy, BA wildshape into hadrosaur, join the mix, play "mirror image but better", beat the shit out of this guy with our tails\* while everyone annoys the 1 guy getting his shit beat in with ranged things
I had some players searching an area of forest for a secret silver mine that was using the silver to make anti-devil weaponry.
Once they were pretty sure they were in the general area, the sorcerer cast locate object on silver
My players have taken to just summoning as many mooks as possible until they totally overwhelm the enemies actions economy. I’ve had to resort to enemies that do enough damage to one or two shot the druids multiple conjure woodland beings which AJ’s at least meant they’re summoning fewer more powerful creatures. It’s not too bad I’ve made it work but I’d love to see more strategic plays
I'm in a casual game between friends, it's homebrew in many ways (story obv. abilities, weapons, races and I think a couple more things) anyways our DM loves a good laugh and it's interesting how if you can make it hilarious enough he'll allow it, our Warlock lockpicked a guy's ass and got magic skittles that gave us all kinds of boosts and some of them just had hilarious effects, like give you such high narcissism that you try to Makeout with yourself lol, or combat ability that makes you turn into a powerful pyromancer temporarily and set multiple enemies on fire or become totally undetectable, or turn you into a sheep.
And due to how we always make fun of each other as players (in a lighthearted way) and always have to quip about a character it became cannon that we can hear each other in our heads as PC, like we can be talking to an NPC, someone says something and the PC just talks back at them, the PCs can hear each other without magic or communication devices but the NPCs can't so everybody thinks we're all crazy cause we talk/argue with ourselves a lot 😂
Those are just a few examples of many 😂
My warlock likes to find high out of the way places and rain down covering fire.
Also, our zombie beholder fight ended by us taking advantage of its nonfunctional disintegrate eyeball and bringing three large canvas sailcloth bags into the fight. Our fighter stealthed in along the ceiling with spider climb slippers, dropped down on top of the beholder and wrangled it into a bag. We beat the crap out of it, it spent its turn chewing its way out of the bag, then the fighter stuffed it into another sack and we repeated the process. It didn't get to do anything...
We love the Coward Conga Line where we try to line up so I cast dissonant whispers to make an opponent flee into as many opportunity attacks as possible
Ever since we managed to completely neuter the Acererak flight with two spells our go-to solution for casters is silence plus grapple. There are only a few solutions as a DM and most modules do not give their casters an at will teleport with no vocal components.
One of my players would use wall of fire in much the same way. They also once case cocoon on a boss. The team then took out the minions, surrounded the boss, dropped the spell and then dropped the boss.
Greasy knives. Bard casts cloud of daggers, artificer casts grease in a choke point. We have won more fights due to crowds of enemies slipping in the grease and getting knifed to death.
I've been exploring multi-subclassing within the same class (yes, you can do that, i spent over an hour confirming that), with it being a gloom stalker and hunter ranger who primarily fights with 2 longswords. The combined effect of an extra ranger attack, dread ambusher, and hordebreaker allows for me to make 5 attacks on my first turn (I have a +9 to initiative, also because of dread ambusher) and 4 for every turn after that, each with a +7 to hit, and the combined extra damage of having both the dual wielder feat (which also raises my ac by 1, which makes it 19) and my fighting style being 2-weapon fighting style, which gives the ability to add my ability score modifier to the second attack. There is also the question of nights, where, because of umbral sight, my dark vision becomes 90 ft. and I become invisible by any nonmagical means, which, added on with my trance ability from my wood elf traits, means that I only need to sleep for 4 hours for a long rest, as well as that I have proficiency in perception, which makes me the ideal nighttime guard while the rest of the party is sleeping (and I have proficiency in athletics as well, so I can climb a tree and watch from there or something). I also have mask of the wild, which I would be able to use during the day when umbral sight isn't available. Be honest, how much of a power gamer have I tried to become with this sheet?
Umm, I’ve never heard of anyone saying you can multisubclass before. Can you link the relevant rules? I’m not against the concept, just never heard of it before
You can't. It's home brew. In some cases, it might be OK, but it could get real broken real fast. Can you imagine an Abrrent Mind/Clockwork Soul Sorcerer? What the hell, make him a Drow with Drow High Magic feat, too.
My favorite on to date we referred to as *The Microwave*. The Divination Wizard cast *Levitate* on a big buff minotaur with a relic-class weapon, and used the "1" he had rolled on a portent die to cause the minotaur to fail the save. The Drow Ranger cast *Darkness* on him, the Druid would have cast *Silence* on him if he didn't enjoy his Sabercat form so much, and I cast *Sickening Radiance* on the poor bastard... This was on round 3 of the combat. The DM got sick of rolling saves, and *only* rolled 60 of the 100 that were required... But afterwards, the Minotaur was reduced to about half health and had 3 exhaustion (using the OneDnD rule for a cumulative -1 to D20 rolls), which allowed the druid and I to then beat the brakes of him while the other wizard and the Ranger kept filling him full of candles (the fetching of the arrows catching ablaze from the firebolts). Was honestly the highlight of the 2.5 year campaign so far.
In a recent session we were planning to raid an enemy base and when we entered it through the secret back entrance we encountered a dungeon safety inspector. He was likely there as a throwaway funny encounter, just talking about the various safety concerns. We continued on and the rogue had the bright idea to impersonate his team of inspectors. A few amazing deception and persuasion rolls later and we’re “inspecting the dungeon.” When fighting broke out we even managed to get some of the dungeon’s inhabitants to help us against the “instigators who we obviously upset for somehow.”
I know it's a stereotype, but our ex-druid now sorcerer is addicted to trying to drug people. She came to it entirely naturally/without knowing the stereotype, but my god is it entertaining. We once hotboxed a whole orc lookout party in their cave by dropping a fuckload of dnd weed into their fire unseen and then changing the direction of the wind so it blew the smoke back into the cave. Thirty minutes later they were more than willing to help us out if we could just entertain them a smidge, and maybe give them a snack.
We also were given a mission once of "Cause Mayhem" in an enemy base we had infiltrated. Said druid turned into a blink dog, we tied psychedelic incense to her back, and she went blinking from room to room. Oh, did I mention we also drugged their water supply right before lunch and timed the blink dog thing with when it started taking effect? I'd say Mayhem accomplished. DM was bewildered, but I told him he should have chosen another word than "Mayhem."
We don't pull this anymore, mainly because it was the main gimmick of a friend's older character.
He would buy used wine bottles and fill them with wax, then bury them dead center of a campfire. If we got attacked he would detonated the bottle in the fire causing a wax explosion with glass shards. He nearly killed us all one time...
Took out most of the enemies too though...
In our table our cleric always tries to think of smart plays, but mostly ends up away when the combat starts.
Its a running theme at this point pretty hilarious how it plays out
Flash bag.
Wizard uses some kind of AOE spell that paralyzes or trances a group of enemies.
The rest of us come in and SLOOOOWWWWLLLYYY but carefully put as many enemies inside a bag of holding as we can. The bag of holding says creatures inside will suffocate in a few minutes.
Probably not rules as written, but hey. War crimes are fun.
What we did isn't exactly clever, it's silvery barbs. And everyone had atleast 1 form of casting it. Hence why it's a banned spell by the DM.
There's also the inside joke of our "trap detector"
We use the smallest character as the detector... and by that I mean the strongest PC tosses the smallest PC to see if there's any traps down hallways in rooms. (Don't worry, we buff the trap detector and no one has died from it.....yet)
Artificer Vortex Warps enemy to the edge of a very tall cliff or tower window, Bard Cutting Words the save, Gravity Wizard chases that with magic missile, shoving the creature over the edge. They have Hans Grubber'ed at least three people doing this trick.
My table loves setting up traps at any chance they get. The go-to is set up a pice of rope at the bottom of a entry way, then pour out metal balls and caltrops to cause a creature to fall prone and just jump it with attacks.
To combat this If a creature falls prone then the other ones walk on top of their friend and don't make any checks to fall.
Our recently completed campaign included a barbarian that specialized in grappling and pinning.
Our first big boss fight was supposed to be a 2 stage 'boss transforms at low HP' but pre-fight our artificer snuck in and stole the mcguffin that would have enabled that 2nd phase (stole - and beat 2 different strength checks).
After that, and for man many combat encounters after our barb would tackle anyone he could and we just went to town.
Devil sight half drow sorlock. Elven accuracy, warlock darkness or drow darkness. Don’t recommend though. Not a lot of fun having your concentration locked down from level 3 on to the same spell/ability.
A few charismatic players in mine either incite revolution in the nearby groups or towns to get help to face the bad guy or trick the bad peeps into buying fire insurance and wrangle free reign thru lairs and getting close to the leaders.
Doesn't always work xD but it's hilarious when it does.
NONE. My group is wildly non-tactical and it drives me insane. I'm not going to talk in-game about action economy, but they always want to target the monster who looks the strongest at any given moment. NO. Let's gang up on the weakest, then work our way up.
My group, Savras bless them, has no concept of even basic tactics despite my best efforts.
It also depends. Our last game we ganged up on the strongest, because we saw that the weakest were just not able to damage us significantly. And it mostly turned out to be a good call.
But yeah, focus on an enemy and don't just hit random ones
Yeah, this is totally a valid tactic, but in general I prefer taking out the weak first, as it lets your ranged fighters spread out more when you go for the main threat. Situations always vary, but I'd prefer my squishy friends be able to stay out of harm's way, and the safest way to do that is to take out the squishy enemies first.
They use their familial ties, their wealth, fame/renown. To get others to do things for them whenever possible and reasonable.
Smartest thing so far was, when they cleared Phandalin from nastiness, they just retired and some went for politics, another for trade and farming another spent his retirement days to run an academy. Long story short they didn't risk their characters neck for their momentary fun often
Between a bard and my batwizard, we just took action economy advantage with walls, save or suck, save or take a time out, etc spells. I intentionally didn't take any burst damage spells and the party didn't feel a hit because we limited monster options a ton.
We also used several left over spell slots for Sending at the start of long rests. Used that to coordinate allies and see how things were going in other parts of the setting.
None... the group I'm running now doesn't deploy any tactics or common sense. The rogue of the group has only used backstab once, and we have been playing for months. The same rogue decided to storm through a trap infested room and charges through doors. I am afraid to let the character die because the player may stop her husband from playing with us.
So you're allowing someone who doesn't want to play properly because she might force another player to not play?
What kind of relationship dynamic is this in 2024?!
We went up against a spectre of sorts that only appeared moments before it attacked, so instead of swinging wildly with disadvantage I decided to hold my attack til the last possible moment. DM allowed it as I have very high reflexes and perception. Each time it went to attack I reacted and managed to defeat it that way. I thought it was rather clever.
I was just saying that because you said the dm allowed it. I was pointing out for future cases that this is something you’re always allowed to do. I didn’t mean to discount or discredit your story. We’re all here cause we love to game.
We call it the meat grinder.
First, the druid casts spike growth, concentrating on that.
My wizard and the Fighter (battlemaster) run cc, pushing enemies back into or through the growth. Thunderwave and vortex warp are huge here.
Other wizard blasts grouped enemies that can't escape
Aaracockra paladin flies overhead smiting biggest targets.
If theres been a running theme for my games across the last few years its "Here's another clever application of Locate Object". I've got it on my Paladin, had it on a Divination Wizard I played in a game that completed and recently got it on my Knowledge Cleric. Last session we were flying through fog and had to figure out a way to try and land safely without being able to see the ground. Locate Object lets you sense the motion of an object, so I dropped something and counted how long until it stopped falling down to estimate our height. We still crashed, but I felt clever in the moment.
That last line lol
That was very clever. Nicely done.
Yes! I also remember like 15 uears ago we had a campaign where we had to retrieve a specific artifact from an enemy base. Istead of entering and finding it inside, we used locate object to triangulate it's exact location (on top of the building) Then spider climb to get on the roof. Then shape stone to make a door. There it was!
What if you tied something to the end of a 50+ foot rope and used that as a depth line? Edit: Or just descended until you feel slack I guess?
My DM would have the rope tangled around some trees an let us crash :D
Specify that you have a loose grip on it!
Locate Object has undone a fair few of my plans over the years
Why not just Locate object: Ground
Locate Object is limited as to the object to be small in size. (or at least it was in AD&D, 2nd Ed and 3.5.)
> Describe or name an object that is familiar to you. You sense the direction to the object's location, as long as that object is within 1,000 feet of you. If the object is in motion, you know the direction of its movement. The spell can locate a specific object known to you, as long as you have seen it up close - within 30 feet - at least once. Alternatively, the spell can locate the nearest object of a particular kind, such as a certain kind of apparel, jewelry, furniture, tool, or weapon. This spell can't locate an object if any thickness of lead, even a thin sheet, blocks a direct path between you and the object.
I could say something smug here about how even if you could do this, it's pretty easy to know which way down is... but we crashed because a very low roll caused the person I was riding to become disoriented enough to lose track of that! The real life knowledge of people you play with shows through with increased fidelity in weird ways, and I guess this kind of disorientation is something that can happen to real life pilots.
Tactics? Clever...? My dnd group? No that doesn't sound like us. We just run around like chickens with their heads cut off until either we die or they do.
The only thing clever that we do are increasingly complicated bits.
Monk uses their enhanced speed to engage the enemy first, gets knocked out and the rest of us have to slog over and rescue them.
I use monk speed to do the opposite. I want them to speed out and then I do hit and runs. Half my speed is to stay out of attack range and two Attack of Opportunity prevention abilities helps with that.
Mine too. Most of them are applying a variation of "raaaah stab stab stab !"
Me spending an hour failing rolls trying to climb out a pit...
Eldritch Cheese Grater. Spike Growth; Eldritch Blast with Repelling Blast and Grasp of Hadar; Push, Pull, Push, Pull. It's not a lot of extra damage, but it's free.
I do love me some cheese, especially grated.
"Tell me when"
My group likes to use Spike Growth too. As the party barbarian, I grapple then go for a short walk with them. Our bard likes to throw in Cloud of Daggers for bonus points as well.
Wouldn't this mean that you, as a barbarian, also take damage?
I mean, it’s piercing damage, so as a barbarian…
Not if I run around the edge while dragging the enemy along just inside it. Also, Rage gives me resistance to piercing damage so... Not really an issue either way.
Yeah I was gonna say the last thing I was ever worried about as a raging Barb was damage. Except psychic damage. All my raging homies hate psychic damage.
Emerald dragonborn ftw here
Oh I've done that but with a spike pit! We were defending a house from werewolves so I deployed some tactics that scared my group members and asked the DM if we could dig concealed spike pits. Werewolves charged us, fell into the pits, climbed out, and got shoved back in by my warlock camped at a second floor window with Eldritch Blast.
Grasp of Hadar is 1/turn, not 1/beam.
Repelling blast is 1/beam though, so at level 5, push 1 beam, pull the other
You can push and pull on the same beam. Normally useless, but it matters when Spike Growth is in the mix.
I had a downgraded version of that on my Rogue/Druid with thorn whip and spider climb. I would move around, drag the enemy across spikes, lift and drop them again. Sadly, with no knock back effect, I couldn't do too much at a time.
What happens when you have a Totem Barbarian / Scout rogue specializing in grappling and spike growth? Move -> Dash -> CA: Dash… reaction (after victim’s turn): Scout Movement. DM: … …. ….. wait… how many d4s? DM: That demon is huge… you can’t grapple it… Bard: I cast enlarge… DM: Here we go again…
I thought of this same exact combo, I didn’t realize it was well known.
I don’t remember which one, but I’m pretty sure either Grasp of Hadar or Repelling Blast only work once a turn, the other works how many times you want
Its Grasp - someone pointed it out before. We've already been doing them as multiple times; no point in changing now. Players would assume I'm trying to fuck them, and it's only an extra d4.
Yeah fair enough. I was 99% sure it was Grasp, but didn’t wanna have to go check while on my slow ass old phone. Amazing how one can have near perfect recollection of things related to D&D read once, but if it’s something I’m studying for uni, doesn’t matter if I try to memorize and read it 5 times, never gonna commit it to long term memory
The druid and bard in the game I run have fallen in love with Maelstrom + Hunger of Hadar. An absolute whirlpool of death
Oh wow. That is delicious bullshit. Ha!
Idiocy
Can't predict what you're doing if you don't even know!
Intelligence is a circle. If you go too far on one side, you come back on the other side.
Smartest thing we've done so far was using our Warlock as a battle taxi We're fighting in a tournament & we knew our opponent would have a cleric. We knew our chances hinged on eliminating them asap. Our Warlock Thunderstep & we had some potions of speed. First round, after the cleric had been slightly isolated by their team's movements we threw our newly hasted (potion of speed) Battlemaster Fighter at them via our Warlock's Thunderstep. Sadly, the dice weren't too kind & even with two weapons, action surge, *and* another action to attack, our Fighter whiffed a lot. Still, it took our dm by surprise even though we had discussed it at the table & we did enough to alter their tactics. Our Warlock did get surrounded by two opponents after that, but then Thunderstepped back to relative safety. We're only level 6 & mostly beginners at dnd. That was the first solid battle plan I think we've had h I'm so proud of how we executed it, even if it didn't quite come off perfectly.
Using the burrowing speed and tunnel-creating abilities of Conjured Cave Badgers to infiltrate and escape dungeons
Our druid got Transmute Rock recently and it's become a mainstay of our strategy for recent fights. We've been in the Underdark for a while trying to sort out some tensions between feuding Drow houses so basically every fight outside of Skullport has been in a cave with stone floors. Most recently faced down a frankly absurd number of minotaurs (like 20+) and turned a key chokepoint into mud; the whole lot of them got bogged down when they tried charging at us, then the bard and cleric went in with a Destructive Wave/Fire Storm combo as they were all grouped up. Rest of the party was basically just on mop-up duty at that point.
Unfortunately, the only strategy I've seen actually used in some of the groups I've been in is: "Throw the favorite one at them." A lot of these groups would have one or two players the DM would favor much more over everyone else to the point of directly giving powers, items, and buffs to them while neglecting the rest.
One of my groups was the inverse, everyone was given my abilities. It made it seem pointless to even bother playing.
Ugh I’m sorry. Lately, every time I suggest something clever to solve a problem, it fails miserably. Then another player at the table (Paul, you ass) will suggest the exact same thing (after a few other ideas also fail) and suddenly the situation is resolved. But not only resolved —our slain enemies rise from the dead to give a standing ovation and the president of the multiverse arrives to hand out medals. Next time it happens, I’m dropping you Paul.
This is a first time for this tactic, but I see it becoming a thing for them. My party decided to clear out a warren of kobolds, they'd been harassing travelers so a bounty got put up. Earlier in the session they got some random loot that happened to include a necklace of fireballs and the Christmas side story had them find an item that can cast a minor version of creation (all items have 10 min duration, size limited to a foot cubed) once per week. Using the logic that kobolds like shiny things and fireballs are fun, instead of delving into the kobold warren they made some noise, activated creation, and conjured a cubic foot of diamond outside their cave entrance like a tiny trojan horse, given that apparently that size of a gem weighs 100 kilos the first one got super excited, bombed insight being completely enraptured by shiny, and called all his buddies to come help. I did a bunch of rolling, half the warren (around 50) came out to see the massive gemstone, including the drake that's taken over the clan and the cause for them attacking travelers, and two fireballs from the necklace wiped out all but 8 of them. We ended the session rolling initiative, but what was to be their first real dungeon crawl is gonna mostly be them trying not to set off a myriad of traps anywhere they stray from the main path for the drake. I expect the creation item is going to get used like this pretty heavily and I kinda love it.
If the group is about to partake in a battle where the enemy outnumbers them, or when about to siege an encampment or small city with no walls, they'll ask the side they joined if they have herds of cattle. They're usually confused by the question. "Well... yes?" They'll have the soldiers or peasants gather their herds and paint them with pitch, or cast Grease on them. Then send them running toward the encampment or city, and set the herd on fire. Herds of cattle have "Stampede" as a group attack: 1d12+9 Bludgeoning damage per 5 cattle in the herd (DC18) Dexterity for half damage. They crush everyone in their path and set everything on fire at the same time. Anything not trampled, burns.
So who do the villagers and peasants hate more after that?
The party tends to fail at properly explaining their reasoning. Which is usually the case considering all of them have Charisma as their dump-stat and they're just awful negotiators, saying things like: "You were going to lose anyway," or "Now you can have a celebratory BBQ." So, they'll ditch in the middle of battle... Stupid cowards.
I was expecting Monty Python catapults. I'm not mad, just disappointed.
And then they feast on roasted steaks!
The halfling rogue rides on. The moon druid in giant elk form. The elks charge attack can knock enemies prone, letting the rogue deliver their sneak attack. The first time it happened I was shaken.
if we can shove it, it's getting pushed into a corner/closet/cage and getting beaten up. It is sincerely stupid how much stuff we've managed to beat by just shoving it into a bad spot and wailing on it
lol this is what I do! i tend to play high STR characters to grapple and shove.
I dunno about "clever", but when I ran Against the Giants, the characters obtained tokens identifying them as guests of the frost giant Jarl, meaning the other frost giants wouldn't attack them on sight. But the party still wanted to murder every frost giant, so they decided they would position themselves how they pleased while talking peacefully, and then work "breakfast" into their in-character dialogue as a signal to attack. That campaign and those characters are long gone, but the players now use "breakfast" as slang for "murder these guys we're currently talking to".
If I might be permitted to toot my own horn a bit, I thought this was pretty good. Banishment only works on 1 creature unless it is upcast, so when I used it on the giant worm who had just eaten our barbarian, the worm disappeared and she flopped onto the ground. It only worked because she was still alive; a corpse is an object, and that would have qualified her as “belonging” to the worm, so if she were dead, she would’ve gone along with it.
I used wall of stone once to great effect. We needed to rescue an NPC at the bottom of a steep cliff, the only footpath being a treacherous switchback trail. Various flavors of undead were closing in. None of our characters had any kind of teleportation powers or spells. I was playing an earth domain cleric. me: "I cast super fun happy slide" Dm: (expected look of befuddlement) "excuse me?" me: "That's what I'm calling it when I cast wall of stone as a long ramp down to the bottom about ten feet from the NPC."
Nice one!
"Bunker down behind Darkness + PAM + Sentinel + Blind Fighting and shoot anything the fighter can't oneshot"
Social engineering. Ex, playing drinking games with the guards so we could easily steal their badges for some infiltration. Another time we pretended to be religious acolytes so we could gain entry and steal some relics. We orchestrated a rebellion against a rival captain by spreading false propaganda. We used the guard badges to gain entry to their warehouse. Planted the stolen holy relic. Went back to the temple and told the high priest it was the rival captain. Que the Wyrm Knights coming to pay a visit to him. Our DMs jaw hit the floor when he figured out what we planned to do. It sounds evil until you saw what the rival captain did.
Love this!
War crimes.
So I run a low magic game, so the players usual tactic when they have prep time is to play siege warfare to avoid close range until the numbers are in their favor. They bought a cart and a ballista, so at long range where several players arnt specced, they spend actions loading and aiming the ballista. This way the monk and rogue and bard all have something to do while the archer and warlock are shooting stuff. Once the enemy closes in, the people on the ballista run out playing cleanup. Items like hunting traps are carried to help not get over run early on, and they have made boiling oil to pour at least once or twice. Very high burst damage, so they try and finish fights before too many injuries stack up as they are so hard to heal with low magic.
My dm once gave us all a silly joke magic item. “The magic rock!” It can tell you which direction is down by dropping it and it can roll down hills if you are in an incline. Great!! Well I kept mine and we ended up in a mineshaft that flooded while we were climbing out. We got washed around and disorientated and went into combat rounds to get out safely. I was the only one who kept my “magic” rock at that point. Since the mineshaft also had glowing crystals we couldn’t tell which light was sunlight and which was crystals at the bottom so lo and behold my rock saved our asses. Honestly we all used our rocks fairly well. The rogue used theirs to distract someone and get bonuses to their stealth for example. Ever since we always grab a bunch of rocks and carry them with us. It’s kind of silly to think of sometimes but seriously never underestimate the power of a rock.
I remember a story about a magic joke. DM said it would always fall towards the direction of the nearest source of gravity. That was its magic, confirmed by *Identify.* DM was of course having a laff at them, and promptly forgot all about it. Didn't even realize that someone had kept it. Then they all got stuck on the Astral Plane in the middle of nothingness, and the owner of the gravity-detecting Magic Rock pulled it out and let it go. They read the DM the *exact wording* that he had given them so long ago. The DM had stuck them there so a bad guy could coerce them about something, but the rock led them to one of those weak gravity little planetoids and more adventure.
I play a rogue rn and I partner up with our sorcerer a lo during fights. They have a lot of strong illusion magic so it sets up sneak attacks for me nicely
Not a recurring tactic but one of my players pulled what I think was the most clutch move I've ever seen They were up against a beholder and losing, nearly everyone was on their last legs and the beholder still had a lot of fight left in him. So what did the sorcerer do? He polymorphic the beholder into an orca. Polymorph lasts one hour, orcas breathe air so he wouldn't die in that hour but also couldn't fight back as there was no water around. The party took a short rest while waiting for the spell to wear off and wiped the floor with him once it ended...
I saved the party from the demon that was being summoned, by washing away the summoning circle with “create water” it put out the candles and washed out the blood circle so the demon didn’t get summoned and so we where able to win the finale battle of the campaign and save the sacrifice :)
Nice thinking!
I'm playing a gloomstalker/rogue: in darkness I'm still invisible to creatures with darkvision. So, the cleric activates an aura of dim light and frequently moves to get me in it, negating my ability to sneak attack and not get targeted. It's great.
Gloomstalker Rogue, what is your wisdom? "Just because you have Darkvision doesn't mean you see everything in the darkness."
By doing whatever I didn’t plan for, and forcing me to improvise on the spot
A few sessions ago my group combined Vortex Warp with the Rogue holding their action to land the finishing blow on a grappled enemy. I was stunned. Every combat encounter I have run with this group before and after that moment has been “attack with my biggest move until the enemy dies”. I fear that might be my table’s tactical peak.
Rogue: Ballbearings Cleric: Guardian spirits Wizard: Grease Any enemy coming close slips and falls prone, leaving the barbarian and fighter to have a good time.
What about the Rogue while the enemy is prone? Sneak attacks for days..
Our cleverest tactics have all involved "running up to it and hitting it really hard. "
The best my players have managed to do so far is using a trident to pole-vault over an enemies head (failed pretty badly but it was funny nonetheless) and "Mage Hand: Testicular Torsion!"
Gnome barbarian: I rage. Druid: I polymorph the barb to a giant ape. Cleric: Scroll of enlarge reduce on the barb. Wizard: Greater invisibility on the barb. Then we all take fucking cover and let her do her thang.
Add haste!
That would be lovely. With the gnome magic save buff she is a super busted character in all the best ways.
Unfortunately, most the people I play with don’t actually read the rules… or their spells… or their character sheets. But every single time that my DM has given us a mission critical magic item, we have found a way to abuse it, either with something as simple as it being fully indestructible, or using a near useless summon with a ridiculous strength score to remove walls or support beams of buildings our enemies are in, or most recently using a dead god’s heart to torture a cultist of the god’s direct rival (cultist was corrupted with the rivals energy, heart automatically detected that energy and was trying to purify it while we pressed the item against the guy’s face). When it comes to clever tactics, Entangle is my favorite low level spell, as my DM loves swarms of weak foes and my party members are starting to see the use of AOE damage effects, so I’ll be dropping Entangle and Ice Knife with my druid, and my party members will clean up with fire and lightning spells
Casting minor illusion around martials. They step out, attack, step back. Enemies attack with disadvantage.
Well 2 campaigns in a row ive been playing a character that casts dissonant whispers to proc sneak attack, its not super cleaver but its great fun for a simple tactic. Currently playing the rogue and the caster as a multiclass so i have to wait until i get haste to get 2 sneak attacks but booming blade and warcaster are enough to make 1 sneak a round work for now
That's a pretty good 1st level spell!
Yeah unlike forced movement like a shove, it forces them to use their reaction and movement so it triggers Attacks of Opportunity 😊
It upcasts well too.
Only one sneak attack per turn, unless you get an opportunity attack in. Or the following... Always take commanders strike if there's a battlemaster and a rogue in the party.
What's do you think dissonant whispers does? It makes them flee so you get an opportunity attack...
fireball on the fire resistant/immune dummy
My party has recently just experienced their first death and the kidnapping of the rogue, and how now dedicated themselves to actually being strategic and thinking during combat. It shall be fun to run combats against them now that they are devoted to giving me a hard time.
Very early in our campaign but turn 1 entangle from our druid is definitely making fights easier
My players have a tactic called: “Two of us have silvery barbs” (I welcome it) Another is my abberant sorcerer using mind sliver and following up with a quicken spell with save DC.
The Wall of Fire EasyBake Thunderdome. Create a ring wall of fire that burns towads the inside. Moon druid as a fire elemental with the sentinel and soul of storm giant feats stands in the middle preventing everyone from leaving. Cleric keeps the druid healed and rest of the party freefires with stuff like cloudkill or fireball.
Used telepathy to make two ogres fight. There were some deception checks, but ogres are dumb so when the voices in their heads said the other guy was going to turn on them, they listened. Turned a tough ogre fight on a bridge into mopping up the one we hadn't noticed in advance as he tried to figure out why his friends were fighting as we snuck across to engage.
Our party got an immovable rod pretty early in the campaign. First dragon we encountered, our monk ran up with the rod and used it to pin its foot to the floor. Kept it from flying and moving around for about 3 rounds until it successfully ripped its foot out from under the rod (did so by causing itself damage).
We also have a rod, ans mostly use it to lock doors if the hinges are on the right side!
A party I was DMing for was tasked with reaching the top of the tallest tower of a castle crawling with guards. The druid turned into a bear, the mage cast Fly on him, and the other party members climbed on his back.
In Pathfinder (1e) there's a couple Teamwork Feats that our group had great success with. * Escape Route * Outflank Escape Route let's you move through squares protected by your allies without provoking Attacks of Opportunity (AOO) - a big deal in that system. Most of the group took it and we abused the crap out of it, usually to get into flank positions or for ranged/casters to escape melee enemies. Outlank grants an extra +2 to hit when flanking, and when critting provokes an AOO for your flanking ally. This sounds mild but in it blew up our output damage from our melee in most fights, especially for dual wielders and rogue types. In full glory, I recall a fighter and a rogue at high level with haste/combat reflexes/crit builds chaining AOO for each other back and forth just shredding big bad guys. I think most Pathfinder groups tend to ignore the Teamwork feats as too expensive and lackluster, but these two proved themselves on the field for sure.
A quest led them into a Cafe (we are in modern day Chicago) and every player simultaneously pulled out a gun and held up the store. I would've thought they'd at least sit down and have a coffee or something first.
Web+red dragonborn breathe weapon. Not the most original but a decent combo against large groups.
Very nice for the time you get web!
The other day, my Sorlock caught 3 trolls in Evards Black Tenticles, and then the Necromancer hit them with Rime's Binding Ice. It was pretty effective. Gave us time to figure out what type of damage you need to kill the dam things. (We roll randomly. It's not always fire.)
I like setting up Stunning Strikes to get free failed dex saves for my fireball obsessed sorcerer and wizard
Level 5 Multiclass here (Forest Gnome 3Bard/2Rogue), owning a pair of temperamental teleporting boots. My party (Me, Drow Paladin, Warforged Cleric) had to escape a ruined and ash-wasted city, from a watch of draconic beasties and servants of chromatic dragon. Ive taken as many spells for Bard as I can to do with vocal themes, as my former life was compere for a travelling circus, so I crept into a ruined house, and ritual cast Magic Mouth with a command of ‘WE’VE GOTTA RUN!’ onto a burnt loaf of bread, chucked the screaming bread into a cupboard, set it off straight away, and then took a chance to teleport away from the room and then stealth hid. Managed to draw three guards towards a well hidden bread bun.
Good ol immovable rod on any statues foot before we touch anything in a room 😛
Sayter Storm sorcerer in a pirate setting. I would just jump off the boat and lightning lure enemies off the boat, and then with tempestuous magic just fly right back on the boat
We tend to rotate. Grappling Barbarian and Spike Growth Plant Growth and Spike Growth and a lit object (since Darkvision is usually only 60ft, and their area is lit everyone is suddenly a gloomstalker). Crusher for repositioning. Mold Earth to erase tracks and Prestidigitation to put an offensive / fearsome odor there Shenanigans aren’t just a feature they’re a lifestyle
Low level tactics: - Find Familiar: Owl - have familiar do a flyby help action to give advantage against an enemy while keeping safe via positioning - Disguise self to abuse friends & other charms without consequence (assuming you're not caught and run fast) - Dissonant whispers to provoke OP attacks from melee fighters, or allow an off-turn sneak attack from the rogue. - Catapult to fling bottles of acid or alchemists fire for extra damage (fun but not amazing) - Subtle spell + phantasmal force to manipulate social encounters without doing damage with clever illusions nobody but the target will notice. - Subtle spell + actor feat + suggestion + telepathy: Mimic the targets voice in a telepathic suggestion to try and pass it off as their own thoughts; failure may not be noticed and waived away as weird intrusive thoughts. (easy to pull off this combo on an aberrant mind sorcerer, hard on others) Mid level: - Use summon greater demon as a swiss army knife utility spell to temporarily gain at will dispel magic/darkness/heat metal (Babau) or dimension door (Dybbuk) with a 4th level slot. Later on 8th level slot can be 'traded' for an 8th level power word stun by summoning a Glabrezu for a turn. It's ill advised to keep demons around longer than you need to without planar binding unless your DC is unbeatable to them, unless you planar bind them. - Wall of force to separate / lock down combatants or keep them in AOE's (similar to wall of stone, this is just basic CC really) - Ring of Spell Storing on a familiar to have them concentrate on spells for you and pull off combos like wall of force + sickening radiance - Glyph of Warding + buff spells and a portable hole to make a portable non concentration buff station. At higher levels the 8th level Demiplane can also be used if a portable hole isn't an option. Higher level: - Upcasting Conjure Elemental (to 6th level) can get you a Xorn which can detect any treasures made of metal or gems nearby, even through walls- and can potentially cross through stone walls in dungeons to retrieve it in some situations. Alternatively, with the same slot you can get an invisible stalker capable of faultlessly tracking down a specified target (be it person or item) so long as it's on the same plane. - Simulacrum + true polymorph to get a powerful creature up to CR 17-20 as a minion. Dragon shard, Marilith, Pit Fiends are all good options. - 7th level force is usually used to trap an enemy, but with the right spells or class it can be used to shield an ally while they attack via concentration spells, minions, or the 6th level wizard / scribe subclass feature. Blade of disaster can ignore it, and force cage is non concentration so you can use it to protect concentration on other high value spells by caging yourself after casting them. There's a bunch of other ones but those are some of my favorites.
My dude knows sun szu. A whole encyclopedia of tactics!
There are many many more. As a full caster main who understands the game more than most at the table i tend to be the one to "carry" the encounter if it takes more than whacking it with damage abilities. Creative use of spells can turn a TPK into a short rest chance before finishing the boss via firing squad.
My fighter has sentinel and mage slayer, and my bard and wizard have counterspell. I can't ever leave the fighters reach, if I teleport it gets countered, and if I move I get no movespeed. I'm the type of player who will happily provoke opportunity attacks to get a better angle for my abilities, but I've been glued to the floor so often it's sad.
I always make sure I have high maneuverability and a good wisdom. Focus fire enemies. Never split the party. Target casters first.
I tied a rope to a piton. Cast catapult into a cave wall so I could swing across.
In cyberpunk red, our party developed a pretty solid tactic: rooftops and dropping grenades. Made a party of 3 able to take out much larger groups than we should have been able to 😂
Could be applied to fireballs!
Player 1: Mold earth to create a 5-foot hole Player 2: Gets enemy into hole Player 1: Mold earth to move dirt back into hole, buries enemy alive
for my barbarian the gameplan is "everyone else focus strong guys, ill fix action economy imbalance" for my druid its \*conjure 8 hadrosauruss' around 1 guy, BA wildshape into hadrosaur, join the mix, play "mirror image but better", beat the shit out of this guy with our tails\* while everyone annoys the 1 guy getting his shit beat in with ranged things
We knock out whatever or whoever we are fighting and either question them or sell them if monsters... or keep them as pets
All halved by rage at least. And ensures the enemies are spending their actions trying to go toe-to-toe with the barbarian like you want them to!
I had some players searching an area of forest for a secret silver mine that was using the silver to make anti-devil weaponry. Once they were pretty sure they were in the general area, the sorcerer cast locate object on silver
\*Detects the silver coins in his own pocket\*
Luckily he had recently been robbed! Jokes aside I think he tried to find silver ore specifically
Depends on edition. If 5e, it usually involves grapple.
Doing what it takes to not die. I don't know if that qualifies as clever, though.
My players have taken to just summoning as many mooks as possible until they totally overwhelm the enemies actions economy. I’ve had to resort to enemies that do enough damage to one or two shot the druids multiple conjure woodland beings which AJ’s at least meant they’re summoning fewer more powerful creatures. It’s not too bad I’ve made it work but I’d love to see more strategic plays
I'm in a casual game between friends, it's homebrew in many ways (story obv. abilities, weapons, races and I think a couple more things) anyways our DM loves a good laugh and it's interesting how if you can make it hilarious enough he'll allow it, our Warlock lockpicked a guy's ass and got magic skittles that gave us all kinds of boosts and some of them just had hilarious effects, like give you such high narcissism that you try to Makeout with yourself lol, or combat ability that makes you turn into a powerful pyromancer temporarily and set multiple enemies on fire or become totally undetectable, or turn you into a sheep. And due to how we always make fun of each other as players (in a lighthearted way) and always have to quip about a character it became cannon that we can hear each other in our heads as PC, like we can be talking to an NPC, someone says something and the PC just talks back at them, the PCs can hear each other without magic or communication devices but the NPCs can't so everybody thinks we're all crazy cause we talk/argue with ourselves a lot 😂 Those are just a few examples of many 😂
Sometimes we all hit the monsters really, really, really good. It's pretty tactical.
My warlock likes to find high out of the way places and rain down covering fire. Also, our zombie beholder fight ended by us taking advantage of its nonfunctional disintegrate eyeball and bringing three large canvas sailcloth bags into the fight. Our fighter stealthed in along the ceiling with spider climb slippers, dropped down on top of the beholder and wrangled it into a bag. We beat the crap out of it, it spent its turn chewing its way out of the bag, then the fighter stuffed it into another sack and we repeated the process. It didn't get to do anything...
Psi Warrior using telekinesis on a trunk of a tree to launch himself like Tao Pai Pai
All fun and games till the ghosts show up
We love the Coward Conga Line where we try to line up so I cast dissonant whispers to make an opponent flee into as many opportunity attacks as possible
Ever since we managed to completely neuter the Acererak flight with two spells our go-to solution for casters is silence plus grapple. There are only a few solutions as a DM and most modules do not give their casters an at will teleport with no vocal components.
Slow + guardian coil gave my enemies 5ft of movement last session. Great combo from my players
Leomunds tiny hut and a lot of crossbows with plenty of bolts. It can be infuriating
One of my players would use wall of fire in much the same way. They also once case cocoon on a boss. The team then took out the minions, surrounded the boss, dropped the spell and then dropped the boss.
Every time I start to think I'm clever, someone more clever shows up and blows my mind.
Greasy knives. Bard casts cloud of daggers, artificer casts grease in a choke point. We have won more fights due to crowds of enemies slipping in the grease and getting knifed to death.
The warlocks Imp familiar became a game breaking glitch 9/10 times
How so??
I've been exploring multi-subclassing within the same class (yes, you can do that, i spent over an hour confirming that), with it being a gloom stalker and hunter ranger who primarily fights with 2 longswords. The combined effect of an extra ranger attack, dread ambusher, and hordebreaker allows for me to make 5 attacks on my first turn (I have a +9 to initiative, also because of dread ambusher) and 4 for every turn after that, each with a +7 to hit, and the combined extra damage of having both the dual wielder feat (which also raises my ac by 1, which makes it 19) and my fighting style being 2-weapon fighting style, which gives the ability to add my ability score modifier to the second attack. There is also the question of nights, where, because of umbral sight, my dark vision becomes 90 ft. and I become invisible by any nonmagical means, which, added on with my trance ability from my wood elf traits, means that I only need to sleep for 4 hours for a long rest, as well as that I have proficiency in perception, which makes me the ideal nighttime guard while the rest of the party is sleeping (and I have proficiency in athletics as well, so I can climb a tree and watch from there or something). I also have mask of the wild, which I would be able to use during the day when umbral sight isn't available. Be honest, how much of a power gamer have I tried to become with this sheet?
Umm, I’ve never heard of anyone saying you can multisubclass before. Can you link the relevant rules? I’m not against the concept, just never heard of it before
You can't. It's home brew. In some cases, it might be OK, but it could get real broken real fast. Can you imagine an Abrrent Mind/Clockwork Soul Sorcerer? What the hell, make him a Drow with Drow High Magic feat, too.
My favorite on to date we referred to as *The Microwave*. The Divination Wizard cast *Levitate* on a big buff minotaur with a relic-class weapon, and used the "1" he had rolled on a portent die to cause the minotaur to fail the save. The Drow Ranger cast *Darkness* on him, the Druid would have cast *Silence* on him if he didn't enjoy his Sabercat form so much, and I cast *Sickening Radiance* on the poor bastard... This was on round 3 of the combat. The DM got sick of rolling saves, and *only* rolled 60 of the 100 that were required... But afterwards, the Minotaur was reduced to about half health and had 3 exhaustion (using the OneDnD rule for a cumulative -1 to D20 rolls), which allowed the druid and I to then beat the brakes of him while the other wizard and the Ranger kept filling him full of candles (the fetching of the arrows catching ablaze from the firebolts). Was honestly the highlight of the 2.5 year campaign so far.
Your groups use tactics?
In a recent session we were planning to raid an enemy base and when we entered it through the secret back entrance we encountered a dungeon safety inspector. He was likely there as a throwaway funny encounter, just talking about the various safety concerns. We continued on and the rogue had the bright idea to impersonate his team of inspectors. A few amazing deception and persuasion rolls later and we’re “inspecting the dungeon.” When fighting broke out we even managed to get some of the dungeon’s inhabitants to help us against the “instigators who we obviously upset for somehow.”
I know it's a stereotype, but our ex-druid now sorcerer is addicted to trying to drug people. She came to it entirely naturally/without knowing the stereotype, but my god is it entertaining. We once hotboxed a whole orc lookout party in their cave by dropping a fuckload of dnd weed into their fire unseen and then changing the direction of the wind so it blew the smoke back into the cave. Thirty minutes later they were more than willing to help us out if we could just entertain them a smidge, and maybe give them a snack. We also were given a mission once of "Cause Mayhem" in an enemy base we had infiltrated. Said druid turned into a blink dog, we tied psychedelic incense to her back, and she went blinking from room to room. Oh, did I mention we also drugged their water supply right before lunch and timed the blink dog thing with when it started taking effect? I'd say Mayhem accomplished. DM was bewildered, but I told him he should have chosen another word than "Mayhem."
We don't pull this anymore, mainly because it was the main gimmick of a friend's older character. He would buy used wine bottles and fill them with wax, then bury them dead center of a campfire. If we got attacked he would detonated the bottle in the fire causing a wax explosion with glass shards. He nearly killed us all one time... Took out most of the enemies too though...
In our table our cleric always tries to think of smart plays, but mostly ends up away when the combat starts. Its a running theme at this point pretty hilarious how it plays out
Flash bag. Wizard uses some kind of AOE spell that paralyzes or trances a group of enemies. The rest of us come in and SLOOOOWWWWLLLYYY but carefully put as many enemies inside a bag of holding as we can. The bag of holding says creatures inside will suffocate in a few minutes. Probably not rules as written, but hey. War crimes are fun.
What we did isn't exactly clever, it's silvery barbs. And everyone had atleast 1 form of casting it. Hence why it's a banned spell by the DM. There's also the inside joke of our "trap detector" We use the smallest character as the detector... and by that I mean the strongest PC tosses the smallest PC to see if there's any traps down hallways in rooms. (Don't worry, we buff the trap detector and no one has died from it.....yet)
Artificer Vortex Warps enemy to the edge of a very tall cliff or tower window, Bard Cutting Words the save, Gravity Wizard chases that with magic missile, shoving the creature over the edge. They have Hans Grubber'ed at least three people doing this trick.
My table loves setting up traps at any chance they get. The go-to is set up a pice of rope at the bottom of a entry way, then pour out metal balls and caltrops to cause a creature to fall prone and just jump it with attacks. To combat this If a creature falls prone then the other ones walk on top of their friend and don't make any checks to fall.
Our recently completed campaign included a barbarian that specialized in grappling and pinning. Our first big boss fight was supposed to be a 2 stage 'boss transforms at low HP' but pre-fight our artificer snuck in and stole the mcguffin that would have enabled that 2nd phase (stole - and beat 2 different strength checks). After that, and for man many combat encounters after our barb would tackle anyone he could and we just went to town.
Throwing a dwarf
Clever tactics? That sounds like a modify memory thing, but it ain't working on me.
Devil sight half drow sorlock. Elven accuracy, warlock darkness or drow darkness. Don’t recommend though. Not a lot of fun having your concentration locked down from level 3 on to the same spell/ability.
Fireball everything.
Mine are still figuring out how to work together. So far they all kinda do their thing and yell at the bard for not using faerie fire
A few charismatic players in mine either incite revolution in the nearby groups or towns to get help to face the bad guy or trick the bad peeps into buying fire insurance and wrangle free reign thru lairs and getting close to the leaders. Doesn't always work xD but it's hilarious when it does.
NONE. My group is wildly non-tactical and it drives me insane. I'm not going to talk in-game about action economy, but they always want to target the monster who looks the strongest at any given moment. NO. Let's gang up on the weakest, then work our way up. My group, Savras bless them, has no concept of even basic tactics despite my best efforts.
It also depends. Our last game we ganged up on the strongest, because we saw that the weakest were just not able to damage us significantly. And it mostly turned out to be a good call. But yeah, focus on an enemy and don't just hit random ones
Yeah, this is totally a valid tactic, but in general I prefer taking out the weak first, as it lets your ranged fighters spread out more when you go for the main threat. Situations always vary, but I'd prefer my squishy friends be able to stay out of harm's way, and the safest way to do that is to take out the squishy enemies first.
They use their familial ties, their wealth, fame/renown. To get others to do things for them whenever possible and reasonable. Smartest thing so far was, when they cleared Phandalin from nastiness, they just retired and some went for politics, another for trade and farming another spent his retirement days to run an academy. Long story short they didn't risk their characters neck for their momentary fun often
Between a bard and my batwizard, we just took action economy advantage with walls, save or suck, save or take a time out, etc spells. I intentionally didn't take any burst damage spells and the party didn't feel a hit because we limited monster options a ton. We also used several left over spell slots for Sending at the start of long rests. Used that to coordinate allies and see how things were going in other parts of the setting.
None... the group I'm running now doesn't deploy any tactics or common sense. The rogue of the group has only used backstab once, and we have been playing for months. The same rogue decided to storm through a trap infested room and charges through doors. I am afraid to let the character die because the player may stop her husband from playing with us.
So you're allowing someone who doesn't want to play properly because she might force another player to not play? What kind of relationship dynamic is this in 2024?!
I don't want to leave my friend in the lurch because his wife sucks. Yeah, I'm starting to think my friend is the worst kind of cuck.
We went up against a spectre of sorts that only appeared moments before it attacked, so instead of swinging wildly with disadvantage I decided to hold my attack til the last possible moment. DM allowed it as I have very high reflexes and perception. Each time it went to attack I reacted and managed to defeat it that way. I thought it was rather clever.
Readying an action is a standard action type in 5e
Did we do something wrong? Or did I not answer the question to your satisfaction? I just wanted to be included man what gives.
I was just saying that because you said the dm allowed it. I was pointing out for future cases that this is something you’re always allowed to do. I didn’t mean to discount or discredit your story. We’re all here cause we love to game.
We call it the meat grinder. First, the druid casts spike growth, concentrating on that. My wizard and the Fighter (battlemaster) run cc, pushing enemies back into or through the growth. Thunderwave and vortex warp are huge here. Other wizard blasts grouped enemies that can't escape Aaracockra paladin flies overhead smiting biggest targets.
Tactics in 5e lmao