DMs, What's the dumbest move that you players tried that worked?

[@theswagunicorn1431]

I was playing a 15th level paladin that was a very short (1'10") homebrew race called Rodini (Rat man), I also had two homebrew weapons, a knife that latched on to any target I hit with a grapple check and a yo-yo that upon dealing 4 or more radiant damage (don't ask) would allow me to push an enemy 10 ft away or pull an enemy 10ft closer. My cheesy little trickster ran up to the military officer of this base whom he had caught alone, stabbed him with the grapple dagger at an upwards angle and used divine smite. One successful grapple check later, I used my extra attack to attack with my yo-yo and after hitting I said that because I was attacking at an upward angle that means my "push" could be 10 ft into the air. The DM allowed it and I slammed him into the ceiling, and made him fall back down. This all one hit KO'd him, the only down side was because I was grappled to him the military commander fell on me.

[@GamingMasterAnthony]

Be a drakewarden ranger, pick a drake that’s immune to acid damage. Every time a giant enemy (or any enemy big enough for my drake to jump down its throat) appears, I have the drake jump down its throat, into the stomach, and start attacking from the inside.

[@archellothewolf2083]

Someone liked an old comment that I felt is a valid story here: I once pulled off a "disguise yourself as yourself" bit to get away from the city guards after I'd been framed for murder. Because my character had a reputation for being a magical bullshitter, I knew procedure would dictate anti-magic be involved in the investigation. So i disguised myself as a beggar with a disguise kit, then used the Disguise Self spell to regain my original appearance. When the guards apprehended my character I shouted that I was innocent and they had the wrong person, which they didn't believe until I was taken to an interrogation room and some anti-magic wards were turned on, forcing the spell to end. After some quick deception rolls involving a story about how the "real" me had paid me (the beggar) and skipped town, I was let go and was free to investigate who had framed me since the guards were convinced I had already escaped justice. I then became Batman for a few sessions. It was a good time. Never underestimate a stupid idea in the hands of a chaotic player. lol

[@Spectral-Spiff]

That is a really cool move tbh

[@Godzillawolf1]

The Artificer in my Rime of the Frost Maiden campaign I was part of decided to launch herself at a headless golem to try and crawl into, shut it down, and TURN IT INTO A MECHA. Cue the rest of the party having to help subdue it without destroying it, or killing our own Artificer inside of it (who was a tiny kobold). Somehow this worked. We kinda...broke the DM. Oh, he recovered, and we continued, it was just hysterical.

[@chubbabubba9]

MY level 8 harengon bard barged into a room that happened to be barracks for the duergar stronghold. Realizing the predicament i was in, 10 vs 1 scenario, i just exclaimed "Health inspector go about your business!". DM asked what languages i spoke. I respond with "but I'm this cute little guy, wouldn't you say i speak the language of the heart?" They didn't understand me but the DM generously let me roll deception with disadvantage. This was the first and only time i have ever rolled x2 Nat 20's. The table erupted and my DM was so dumbfounded that she said they all shrugged their shoulders and let me leave without paying me any mind. DM also made it very clear that the combat would've dropped me WAY before my friends could catch up. Easily one of my greatest moments in DnD.

[@Lightning_King28]

The doppelganger one is the epitome of "task filed successfully"

[@Pausenmacher]

Wow, the Bit with the Water-Breathing is so damn smart. Respect for this!

[@JToaster]

Yeah that was awesome

[@NameIsDoc]

It’s an old trick but not well known

[@Crocogator]

Convinced Strahd that he forgot how to turn into gas/bats, then kicked him down a flight of stairs. I still got murdered, but it was funny that he took damage.

[@WorldWalker128]

I love dumb plans that work. Unrelated to D&D, but back when Halo 3 was new, me and an older cousin were trying to beat Halo 1 on Legendary. Was rough. We had gotten to that point in the game in the snow region where a group of Covies and a group of Flood charge at each other and past there were a few unattended Banshees on the ground. You're supposed to fight the baddies, then use the banshees to fly up to your next destination. That's easy enough to do on the lower difficulties. But when we'd gotten to that point on Legendary we were already low on ammo and didn't have enough to kill the aliens. So we tried letting them kill each other first. The Covenant kept winning out because shields, and we didn't have the ammo to kill them. So then we tried letting them clash a bit and picking off the Elites. If we did that, though, then The Flood would kill us. We tried several variations like targeting the Grunts but not the Elites, but after several failures we only had 'the stupid plan' left. Don't fire off a shot and run straight through them. Let them fight each other while we try to make an escape. It worked. The stupid plan worked while the smart-strategy ones failed. Yes, I got blown up on the way up, but Greg made our escape an eventually I just respawned.

[@dendrobium4831]

I was the GM of a fantasy one-shot (not dnd). One of the bosses was a war tank. On the first turn of the melee character, he said "I want to slide under the tank". That got me completely by surprise. I asked for an Athletics check, which he got a good roll. After sliding under the tank, he tried to open a hole under it so he could enter the tank. I asked for some checks, which worked and he was able to take out the pilot from the tank. Still surprised he had this idea.

[@-a2games-]

I had a player group that used inspiration and a bunch of spells and proficiencies, to make a suit of armor made of pure silver, for a RAT. It had an AC of 20, and i never managed to kill that thing, even when i sent it to the feywild.

[@mrinfinity5557]

Good, you shouldn't have tried to kill it anyways. Rat king forever

[@TheMasterGeese]

Playing Pathfinder, Sorcerer min-maxed Bluff so that they had something completely ridiculous like +40 at level 9. Plenty of highlights from them, but my personal favorite is pretty straightforward: PCs are stealthily infiltrating a heavily-guarded dungeon, but end up fumbling and knocking over a suit of armor. Guard yells out, "Who's there?". Sorcerer yells back "Nobody." "Oh, alright then."

[@brokeninkwell3818]

I'm playing a warforged druid. For flavor, I described myself as being made of wood. Because "more refined materials wouldn't be appropriate for my construction." At some point, we were in a dungeon where one room was a giant bathroom. Long story. Another player ended up in the bathtub, and they couldn't swim. I leaped into action. When the dm asked what i wanted to do to determine what check I needed to make, I described how I would use "my natural wooden buoyancy" to become a living floatation device. Everyone laughed at the absurdity of the phrases. The dm liked it so much, i didn't even need the skill check. The day was saved because I got creative with flavor.

[@DrCranium]

11:26 had a double take on this one, because that’s almost word for word what happened to my monk in the campaign I’m playing in. The order of statuses applied from the inside was the other way around, though: stunned the swimming froghemoth first, then tried the Flurry with 15 feet push in hopes that I’d get shot out of the mouth at least for 7.5 feet (after some head scratching it was decided that it wouldn’t be anatomically possible; the GM did allow though to “push” it in the opposite direction, so that the unconscious body of the monstrosity would get 7.5 feet closer to the shore)

[@jefthereaper]

I like the idea of shouting "counterspell" characteristically. Though as I DM I would only allow it to break concentration of spells, and only if throwing high enough, once every few sessions. As I can see how a enemy mage might react to it and "think" they are about to be hit by a counterspell, so they just drop their concentration just to realize nothing actually happened and they wasted their spell.

[@alexkuhn5188]

That is BRILLIANT!

[@koryh9802]

There was an elite Half Human half warforged (Cyborg i know but its fantasy so warforged damn it) sniper that when she looked down the scope of her rifle, it was under the effect of truesight, so no invisibility, shapeshifting or illusions were gonna hide us from her sights (She had a range of over 2 miles to take us out from) when she was posted at the top of a watchtower, I used Control weather to give us a heavy cover of a sandstorm since we were in the desert, that was good for the travel to the outpost, however the problem was once we were close enough for combat, even close range this woman was a real threat. So i got within 30ft of her and i asked the DM "There still a sandstorm still milling around right? My concentration for the storm hasn't ended?" DM: "Yeah there still sand whipping around the air, however her aim still seems unbeatable" Me: "She still looking through the scope to do that?" DM "Yeah" Me "I don't have dispel magic prepared so id like to cast Mold Earth to coat the end of her scope and harden the sand thats floating around the air." DM "....You know its insane what your asking right? like a cantrip beating a 6th level spell effect? Im gonna need a NAT20 Arcana roll." I. ROLL. THAT. NATTY 20 BABY DM was a good sport about it, and said for a few rounds she can't use the scope, her modifier to hit us was lowered and she'd have to use her whole turn to remove the crust, which bought our party the time needed to get in closer and beat her. ...Our bard then drove a tank into the outpost and blew the whole place up.

[@DragonKingZero]

IIRC, 4E called that "Self-Forged", and it was a Paragon Path for artificers.

[@FatZ1806]

I really wanted my level 2 players to fight this cool Giant Octopus from Dragon of Stormwreck Isles. They had other ideas to try and sneak by it. I knew it wouldn't work, but let them try. After 2 players rolled high stealth and high athletics they were all just so excited, I began to think they really might pull this off. After great ingenuity from one player due to another player rolling poorly, they were all able to sneak by the Octopus fight I had planned that was going to try and drown them..... oh well. The players still talk about this moment nearly a year later and it still puts a smile on my face every time because they all get so excited. As a lot of them were first time players, this was their first real agency and first time 'outsmarting' the DM.

[@adrianbrown3085]

During Waterdeep, our goblin rogue snuck up and jumped onto the back of the wizard we were fighting. The wizard flew up and hovered over a well, out of range for the rest of us. Next round, the wizard cast Lightning Bolt on the rogue, bringing them to 0 and causing them to fall into the well. I was playing a moon druid and went 2 turns after the wizard. On my turn, I ran to the well, ended my wildshape, and dove into the well after the rogue. Because I was the only druid main at the table, no one else understood why I just decided to "end it all". They were really amazed when I healed the rogue and turned into a spider in the same turn, saving us both.

[@Cyber_Moose]

My players were going into a cave that they knew had some bandits in it, and decided that they wanted to attempt to deceive the bandits into thinking that they were chickens. They all rolled pretty well, the lowest roll was 17, and I rolled for the bandits (Who had -1 to insight) all three of them, rolled nat ones, not even kidding. All for a grand total of 0. My players were chickens, always had been chickens, and would continue to be chickens for the rest of the session.

[@PoipoleADMyt]

Not the DM, but this story is too good to not tell. This was my first session in this campaign, and my second session overall. I was busy working on my character while the others were playing. I believe they were trying to enter an abandoned dungeon to search for an artifact that they needed to bring to a Necromancer. There were two guards there, refusing to let the players in. They wanted to avoid conflict, as the dungeon was close to a village with a castle, where the players had made their home. The Sorcerer (Lawful Evil Human) stepped up, and began talking to the guards. The person playing him had Charisma as his dump stat, and had apparently used it to acquire a large sum of gold. He flaunted this gold to the guards, claiming that he got it from being a paid magical tutor. After a successful deception roll, the guards became interested. The Sorcerer then cast Fireball into the air. The guards were impressed. He then asked them if they wanted to learn this magic for themselves. (Even though they’re physically unable to.) One successful persuasion check later, the Sorcerer told the guards to… “Stand completely still, and hold your hands out to the patch of grass in front of you. If you concentrate hard enough, it will catch on fire.” It somehow worked. The guards walked away (not until after the Sorcerer collected 5 GP as payment from each of them), and began to concentrate next to some grass. The distraction allowed the players to enter the dungeon. But it gets better. Once I was finished with my character (Chaotic Good Tempest Cleric Gnome), I was placed outside the dungeon. I saw the guards doing their thing, and Theodore looked up to the sky, and asked Stronmaus (the Storm Titan he worships) what to do. There was no response, but an unrelated boom of thunder was in the distance. Theodore took this as an instruction to cast Thunderwave. It happened to hit the guards. A couple of checks later, the guards believe that they were getting closer to creating fire, and the damage they took was because of their concentration. Theodore then went inside the dungeon, meeting the rest of the party. Eventually, everyone left. And the guards were STILL trying to make fire. The Sorcerer cast a stray Fireball their way to make them believe they were making progress, then we went on our merry way. TO THIS DAY, those guards are still there, trying to cast a spell they’re unable to use.

[@kotzpenner]

Running from the authorities (they did something stupid and illegal), crashing through a literal wall in a residential building where a bunch of kids were having a birthday party (no adults in that moment there). They convinced the children that they're the entertainment and clown troupe their parents promised lol. Was funny because every character could do his or her specific class for this, like magic tricks, music, shows of strength etc. And yeah, everyone passed except the half-orc, he wanted to eat a kid instead.

[@spartanhawk7637]

This happened just yesterday. Wasn't me, but another player. So we're fighting this undead wizard who starts to fly over a lake of boiling tar. None of us can reach him, the bridge is out, and it's roughly 30 feet to get to him. I started shooting at him with a bow, I'm the party's main archer, but he's undead and I'm a warpriest cleric, so not the best damage, talking maybe 5 hp per hit which in Pathfinder terms I may as well be chucking rocks. My buddy, the barbarian, decides to *jump* at this dude, again, over a LAKE OF BOILING TAR. Crits the athletics check, then nat 20s a grapple to grab this dude midair, proceeds to do a flying piledriver INTO THE TAR. Whole party is just watching in utter shock from across the lake as he gives this wizard a Hulk vs Loki level thrashing while utterly tanking all the damage from the tar and acing his reflex saves against getting stuck. Our party wizard eventually joins in by shapeshifting into a metal elemental which gave him a basic fly speed of 20 feet, and the whole epic confrontation turned into this brutal mud wrestling match with the rest of the party watching in stunned silence.

[@themetalone7739]

Had a homebrew campaign in which the party was drugged and captured by one of the BBEGs. They woke up in prison, and broke out of their cell. I had planned out their whole escape, and made it easy for them to go with a stealth approach. Unarmed and unarmored, they decide to walk up to the first guard they see and punch him in the face. Guard raises the alarm, and the shit hits the fan. They escaped out of the prison, after finding their gear, and managed to make it out of the city with like 20 archers shooting at them. Craziest thing I've ever seen.

[@DreamTiger5]

The villain of an arc related to a deceased PC accused the party of “murdering” his henchmen (it was self defense), and the character with the barrister background called him out on his phrasing. He did a roll with the Law skill and got a nat 20. I sat there dumbfounded as the players erupted with cheers and laughter. Not one to let such luck go unrewarded, the villain started combat with a debuff for a few rounds. They killed him before it wore off.

[@T3nch1]

Playing Pathfinder; I was rolling a Fighter/Monk with a focus on grappling and performance. Yes the "Shark of the Land" story inspired me to play a masked wrestler. The party ended up in conflict with a cult of gnomes, there was around 30 of them. I, as one of 2 frontliners; ran in, RKO'd the first one I could grapple then used said gnome as an improvised melee weapon. The shock tactics caused the majority of the agro to be on me while the rest of the party took potshots, meanwhile I was alone in a moshpit using a gnome to beat other gnomes to death. I got *very* lucky I survived that fight but it was fun as hell.

[@mithatbatur4645]

Played my first ever dnd campaign yesterday, we were stuck in a room and our aarakocra rogue had flew up in order to check out the place, I half jokingly said to be like my chaotic good character that I said DO A FLIP to him in game, after which he surprisingly agreed and rolled a nat 18 with a 5 modifier so he rolled a 23. The DM was surprised then followed along by describing the back flip as one of if not the best backflips we have ever seen.

[@Skullhawk13]

If it’s stupid but works, it isn’t stupid

[@FizzieWebb]

History never asks "How?" but instead "if?"

[@ericb3157]

"cups as improvised weapons" reminded me of an old webcomic (no longer available) one of the PCs makes the foolish mistake of telling the Goblin his backstory: he MUST use ONLY improvised weapons, because he's under a curse that would cause an avatar of a god to kill him if he ever touched a proper weapon. the goblin says, "here, catch!" and tosses a weapon at him hilt first! "sonova...AAGH!" also that "dragonscale dress" reminds me of something i read in an old gaming magazine: some MMO game, I forget the name, added a playable class called a "Dervish" who always did that!

[@diechecker2016]

Combining all the fire protection spells, with a fly spell, and dimension door, to get the mage into the lower levels of White Plume Mountain, carrying portable hole with the other players in it. Started at the bottom and worked our way back out.

[@amorencinteroph3428]

My werewolf game was FULL of these. The first, the party was doing their quest in the spirit world to get their pack totem, a fox spirit. It had settled on a teamwork quest to hunt rats for its children. The idea being that one would scare the rats out of their nest underneath a giant rock, the others would catch it. After doing this for a while, one of the party meat heads that had some bad luck on rolls said in playful frustration, "I'M GOING TO LIFT THIS F***ING ROCK!" Looking at him skeptically, I give him a DC of 10 (it's a D10 system, so he had to roll max on his die to get any successes, so 10 is the 'impossible' tier)... And he rolled 3+ successes. The entire pack, and the spirit they were courting, just watched in disbelief as this werewolf PRIED a car-sized boulder out of the ground, then SLAMMED it back on the rat nest, killing them all and making that fox family eat well for days. Later, the party was infiltrating an ancient koldunist vampire's lair to track their target. They found themselves in a short corridor, where an icy water spirit (described as a withered old hag) was trying to drown then. The other party meat head, who had so many ranks in Spirit Heritage he was practically a spirit, and was a Norse Viking lupus, said... "I roll to seduce!" High DC, but with his spirit heritage he had over 10 dice to roll, succeeded, and so the rest of the party moved on while he, uh, 'warmed her icy heart'.

[@donniejefferson9554]

Had a campaign years back where our primary strategy was call "Knock knock". For this ingenious strategy, we would wander up to the front door of wherever we were going, announce our presence, and then deal with the inevitable fallout. Never failed once.

[@wyattjohnson5181]

Guardia Millennial Fair. From Chronotrigger. that is the song. I approve of the song choice

[@nipahholiday9302]

So this wasn't D&D but a german TTRPG system called Splittermond (roughly translates to Shattered Moon). The party caught wind of a member living in the city poisened the mayor, blamed it on the mayor's daughter and wanted to become mayor himself. The party was split into an infiltration group, searching for evidence in the villain's home and the distraction group, trying to cause a mess to prevent the public execution of the mayor's daughter from happening. The distraction group came up with the following plan: Summoning a living tree in the same place the barbarian was standing to missile launch him into the air trying to land on the stage, where the daughter would've been executed, crashing the stage while doing so and everyone would be focused on the tree angrily stomping around. The barbarian failed every role there was to fail which means he overshot the stage taking a decent amount of falling damage. BUT all of the guards now focused on the living tree that was standing in there marketplace. The fighter yelled out: "I fought one of these fowl creatures before! Only water can hurt them!" The head of the guards, who tasked the party with investigating on this entire scenario, nailed the insight check on it, turning around to his underlings and shouting: "WE NEED WATER!" So the guards scattered into every building collecting water in whatever they could find (buckets, bowls, cups, yada yada yada) storming the tree for one focused splash attack! The summoner stopped the spell, the tree was gone. And so was the mayor's daughter who had been escorted through the chaos by the very hurt barbarian. And now consider that we switched back and forth between those chaotic scenes and the infiltration group who executed everything perfectly. It was a blast.

[@peteralexandergraae2830]

I once did a "Buck" from ice age 3, on the Fenris wolf, in order to make him cough up my 2 friends. I was covered in wolf vomit and stuff, when i uttered the immortal words "you're welcome..."

[@kevinthomas4064]

I mentioned it before on a previous video, but challenging a god to a children's cardgame who then deleted me when i called him out for cheating. The reason WHY i challenged him cause he was about to catch us trying to pull a holy heist job and it was the 1st thing that came to mind to distract him

[@itwasaliens4291]

Sounds to me like you lost a duel to Yami Yugi and got banished to the shadow realm

[@kevinthomas4064]

@@itwasaliens4291 this was actually a yugioh themed campaign

[@jackmack4181]

Unexpectables ep 76 (Flame War) To fight a scary clergy man, the party devised a plan. Through the use of a wild mage player, he twin spelled polymorph on the ranger with anger issues and the DMPC rogue who also had some issue into…dinosaurs. They also jumped off a cliff to get into the enemies encampment. So imagine a 2 huge dinosaur falling from a cliff into the boss arena. One of them landed on fairly strong enemy wizard and crushed him, which both frustrated and impressed the DM (Monty)

[@jaydee-mf2kl]

I lived in Spain without the a before KILLING a mini boss by accident in a tavern. (he was going to ambush us) his skull FUCKING flew into my beer mug

[@pcalix17]

The party Paladin, a trend that I'm starting to notice among Charisma characters, tries to reason with a Red Dragon not to attack nearby villages. It was a rather fearsome, half-hour debate with the dragon emphasizing their age, wisdom, and strength while the Paladin emphasized life's value, an opportunity for diplomacy, and long-term sustainability. The Paladin looked like he was going to lose the debate but he instead chose a trump card. He offered himself, in the name of his god, as a living sacrifice to the dragon, even if it meant only a temporary cessation of conflict between the dragon and those it considered inferior. The dragon burnt him to ash but using ancient magic, brought the Paladin back to life. Then the Dragon did so several more times, emphasizing his power over life and death while asking the Paladin if he still wished to proceed. The Paladin, shaken but unbroken, agreed to continue. This went on for an in-game hour and the Paladin did not relent, suffering excruciating agony and psychological torture the entire time. The Red Dragon was impressed by his willingness to sacrifice in the name of people who would betray him and shockingly, accepted the offer under one condition. The Paladin would become the dragon's champion, acting as their voice to the people the Dragon once subjugated. But by accepting the offer, the former Paladin was now bound to obey the Red Dragon's every command and the first command given was to kill his former party. The party fled but did not get far, hunted as they were by the Red Dragon and his new champion. The remaining 3 members were slain but the Red Dragon already had other plans. Once all was said and done, the Red Dragon told the party, "Go forth, my new champions. Bring this world to its knees." So started a new villain campaign.

[@gmanbo]

7:40 yoink. Thanks for the tip.

[@nicolasv6031]

So, this was in Dungeon World, not DnD, but was pretty similar. I was playing a dragonborn, and had recently acquired a potion of flight from a dwarven community my party helped out. At the time, we were visiting our Rogue's hometown, which had been taken over by a cult of necromancers. The party included my Dragonborn fighter, the revanant rogue (he got iced by a giant insect queen, came back as a revanant), and a cleric and sorcerer. The cleric worshiped Jibbers, a fire lobster god that lives on Saturn (yes, this is relevant). Shit was going down in the city, as the necromancers had unleashed these giant monsters made up of corpses to raze the city, along with a small zombie horde. The party got split up in the chaos, with my dragonborn popping the flight potion and carrying an npc we had befriended. Seeing the chaos, and since my character didnt really have enough firepower to take on one of these zombie-pile-monsters, I came up with a last ditch effort. My fighter dropped the npc on a roof, flew up to one of the zombie-pile-monsters, and prayed to the cleric's god, Jibbers, for strength and flames. He then used his firebreath, which Jibbers decided to turn into an outright fireball, setting the damn thing ablaze! Unfortunately, in its dying moments, the zombie-pile-monster bitch-slapped my fighter, sending him flying out of the city and off the cliff's edge. Oh yeah, did I mention the city was built on the edge of a cliff above the ocean? My character got turned into a very squishy skipping stone.

[@kurisu7885]

My party was in a cave system with enemy patrols. We had come across a solid bridge over lava and a patrol was on the way. Our party's then one warlock had a staff of power, so we talked a bit, and our DM allowed her to used Wall of force to make a huge anvil, which she dropped on the enemies as they came across the bridge. SPLAT!

[@ConspiracyOpossum]

Rope bridge, when there was no rope use for the 1st time my group answered every problem with rope

[@k3ose45]

So i decided to host my own custom dnd where i made the rules as i went along (first mistake) then at some point in the session the party came across a wall and a spike field, the rogue climbed up, jumped, and landed SMACK into the spike field. So as the rogue was writhing in pain they realized, since there’s basically no rules, why can’t they just do whatever i want? So they asked if they could just randomly materialize a lasso, i didn’t know why but since it was funny, i decided to let them roll a d20 for it (second mistake) they then proceeded to get a perfect crit and lasso the healer STRAIGHT into hell

[@christopherwood1994]

As a player (rogue), used disguise self to disguise myself as a the barkeep, a member of a cult we were investigating/ stopping. I then tricked the cult leader back into the tavern into a trap we had set. That wasn’t the dumb part. The dumb part is that we tried it 3 more times on the cultists waiting outside for their leader. It worked, massively thinning down an ensuing encounter.

[@Lightning_King28]

I was the player. Doing a homebrew space dnd thing (still ongoing). Basically we had to go from planet to planet looking for a golden idol of Cthulu. We landed on a planet that was covered in ash clouds. Upon landing, we scared away giant rabbits that one of the inhabitants of a nearby village was hunting. She got mad at us, so we agreed to help her hunt them. I was playing a human druid named who knew mainly utility spells like Goodberry, Find Traps, Create Food and Water, and Speak With Animals. I had forgotten that I had the food and water spell for reference. I used speak with animals and accidentally seduced the giant RABBITS. Cue like 10 of them racing toward me. We killed them and the inhabitant agreed to help us.

[@zakstorm5171]

My one player, a Kobold Hexblade who’s patron was his grandfather, a blue ancient dragon, was trying to help uncover proof that a kebab salesman was actually working for a group of rouge pirates. While the fighter used his telepathic ability to control Rats (long story) to steal documents, the kobold ordered food as a distraction, pretending to choke on the meat, but he failed and the guy was about to walk I tot he back, when he decided the best course of action was to throw his cup full of water, which had lots of ice, into the fryer. A natural 2 of a d100 on the severity die means half the shop was covered in burning hot oil. His bullshit plan to avoid getting in trouble? It was to point at the fryer and blame the ice. I told him he better roll a natural 20 or else he’s doomed. Needless to say he got a natural 20 deception check. I had to leave the table for a few minutes to comprehend what to even do.

[@robertpowell1464]

Well my party has done a few stupid things that didnt work, but one that did was when they managed to convince a giant orc warrior who had previously hunted them for breaking into the prison of which he was the warden... into joinging the party. The whole reunion was not planned at all and so the improv and dice ruled that he was cool with it.

[@lovroxyz3119]

here's mine, bleeding on a puzzle, that's it the story: had a puzzle where they had to put objects relating to each type of dragon on 3 pedestals to open a door and match thair elements(had some changes for gem dragons) but tldr they matched gem and metal to the fire element and then one of em was like "ima slice my hand and put my blood on it"

[@NameIsDoc]

So this requires a bit of rule bending and home brew but a steel pirate ship was barreling down upon the small skipper of the party and we (battle master archer fighter, diviner wizard, artificer, bard-barion) all 2 turns to act . We decided to bust out the immovable rod. Artifacer used a tool to slap stabilizing fletching and notch onto his immovable rod and tossed it to the fighter, wizard used mage hand to lay the hand on the arrow on the button, bard gives wizard haste, fighter fires the arrow at the bow of the of the oncoming ship just above the water, wizard uses enlarge on the arrow and his reaction to push the button just before the rod hit. This results in a large rod appearing frozen right above the sandline(homebrew world a desert of boiling sand acts much like a body of water. The rod takes a hit from the ship and deactivates from the force, however not before considerably slowing their ram before it shuts off tearing a sizable hole in the ship. Allowing us to escape the pirates for a short time. The dm was both annoyed that his plot got derailed but loved our solution to the problem.

[@connormitchelmore8341]

My players, in their first ever game, and my first game as DM, used stonemason’s tools to make a basketball hoop in a dungeon sso they could do a 1v1 and decide on their desicion.

[@ericb3157]

that reminds me of a silly old cartoon i watched as a kid "the Super Globetrotters". at the end of EVERY episode, they would challenge the villains to a Basketball game, play in their Normal forms for the first half, and get their butts kicked, then switch to their Super forms, and trounce the villains easily.

[@MildWilliam]

They killed a Demigod using only heckling and a pineapple.

[@Gadebalran]

This was back in 1989 so I don't remember all the details, but a group of friends and I would play short sessions on our lunch break in high school. We were fairly low level and in a dungeon. Somehow, we ended up in a room with many barrels of oil, fire got to them and we got blasted by the explosion and sent flying through a door into the next room, which was occupied by a group of goblins. The impact was going to knock us out so I decided to try taking a swing at one as we flew past. DM gave me a stack of penalties so I need to roll a 19 or 20, which I managed to do. Damage bonus for being propelled by the explosion, killed the target. Rest of my party decided to follow suit and also somehow managed to make all their rolls and wiped out the goblins before we hit the far wall and were knocked out cold.

[@Saiaix]

Once did the "water breathing in bag of holding" thing to get past some guards without weapons before introducing the big bad to my armed (and very wet) dwarven fighter. Long time ago, now obviously door checks include bags of holding. Don't know how I got away with it back then, thinking back. But it's a generally accepted rule in our games that only the weight of the head counts toward the weight limit of flying characters anymore; the party will just hand in all of their bags of holding to prevent an explotion, the wizard will put them on his belt, the party will get in. He'll cast fly or overland flight and we'll keep our heads out of the bag, barely a light load to him. Wizard has to invest in the "Fly" skill but travels low and we're always ready to get out as soon as he lands in a panic if we roll an airborne encounter.

[@RevanReborn3950BBY]

The bard one shot the bbeg with true polymorph, because the DM forgot to give it legendary resistance

[@HeatherTurnblade]

Our high charisma character had the bard buff him then walked into the bandit camp and told them he was a new member and there was a huge fight in town at their favorite tavern. They all belived him and left to go help...even the bandit leader bought it.

[@TheDuelManiacs]

I've had my fair share of stupid ideas, but my favorite was in a dwarfshot. We had myself (an artificer), a fighter, and a ranger. All dwarves. We were fighting a giant amalgam golem when I turned to our fighter and said "Throw me." He gets a natural 20 to hit the golem with me, then I get a natural 20 on my Shocking Grasp. I run out of reach, laughing all the way to safety.

[@ynedd]

Ripper... the way you said "more" gave me similar vibes to the "Dune Popcorn Bucket" skit by @TheWarpZone... I tried so hard to forget...

[@ILikeCats_285]

Shark with legs

[@Tonypony-db5lu]

Not a dm, but it's still funny. Me and my party were in the middle of a kingdom being captured by a dragon. 30 guards had turned to the dragons side, leaving us with 4 loyal guards. What was suposed to happen was the four guards were ment to draw off the 30 guards because a demon of some type was hidden and we were meant to fight that.(dragon was in the keep we were in the courtyard) what we decided instead was that the sorcerer would fireball the barricades allowing my full orc paladin to ride his warg in through the front. While my character was the distraction my other party memebers scaled the walls and attacked the archers. I had 15 veteren guards on me all at once and only my freakishly high ac saved me. The demon was two shot because our freakishly lucky fighter managed to get at it while our bard used hold person on it.

[@audiblerangerdms6616]

Made the GM preemptively end a campaign by remotely casting on/off on the semi bbeg clockwork dragon. Another PC had an anti-dragon rifle that had bullets that stored spells, i casted on/off into one of them, then the GM fiated that it wouldn't work (never got a reason why). I also microwaved one of the other BBEGs by using arcane abeyance with my familiar. Arcane abeyance allows you to store spells in beads of magical force that anyone can cast, and we waited at the teleportation circle that we knew this npc was going to use. I casted wall of force as a sphere around her and my familiar, and my familiar casted sickening radiance. It didn't matter how good her rolls were, she had to make 60 rolls or gain levels of exhaustion on fails, which wouldve killed her if i didn't decide to have mercy on the GM and release her. I used to have a reputation for only playing dps martial characters, and i tried wizard this one time and broke the campaign. The gm ended it early because I solved problems too easily.

[@pjirp]

Was in a game where all the PCs were bards and our goal was to become the most famous band ever. This was with a DM who had decided bards are allowed to break the 4th wall, so the game was silly nonsense right from the start. At one point we needed to recruit the best manager ever for us, and to make us go away (because he was a grumpy old dude obviously) he said we needed to get the endorsement of the lords of hell, of which there were 7, representing the deadly sins. When we got to greed we convinced him that we were gonna be the biggest thing ever and gave him what was essentially rookie cards, promising their explosive growth in value when we "arrived"

[@themadvirus613]

Imagine tricking the devil because the he overlooked one minor detail.

[@ForeverDegenerate]

I don't know about dumb, but I did something that probably shouldn't have worked, but did... spectacularly. Had a session where it was just me and my friend. Everyone else couldn't make the session so the DM sent us on a short side quest. He was a Rogue and I was a Ranger. Quest was in a shop that sold Magic Clothing. Turned out a Dire Moth had taken up residence inside the shop and had begun to eat through the Shop Keeper's stock. Problem: Neither of us had Magic Weapons and neither of us had the foresight to actually go to the Smithy to purchase some before walking into this. So here we are, two Martial Classes (I hadn't taken any offensive spells) with no Magic Weapons trapped in a basement with a Dire Moth. So I got the bright idea of running back upstairs and letting the Dire Moth out of the basement in an effort to herd him out the door. I told my friend to go open the door because, as the Rogue, he was faster than I. He did so. Thing is, I forgot that that the upstairs was the actual shop and, thus, covered in Magic Cloth. Dire Moth had no intention of going anywhere. Instead, he ran my friend over (literally) and downed him in one shot. I, then, remembered I was wearing Boots of Spider-Climbing. So I grabbed a garment off the rack and ran out the door, yelling back, "Sorry about this!" Oh and, yes the Dire Moth got his Attack of Opportunity and, yes, he hit me on the way out. Luckily I had a pretty chunky Health Pool for my level so it didn't kill me. It just hurt. A lot. On hindsight, I probably should have just teleported out to the street instead of trying to run past the Dire Moth (I had Misty Step), but oh well. With the door open, I ran up the front face of the shop, stopping above the door frame, then hung the garment down over the doorway. I was hoping the Magic Garment would act like a Red Cape in front of a Bull. It worked. The Dire Moth charged at the garment, trying to eat it. I pulled the garment up at the last minute and it skidded out the door onto the street. My DM made me roll a Dex check to see if I could pull the garment up in time. I had a Dex of 20 (Elf ftw), so that wasn't an issue. I was far faster than that Dire Moth. While it recovered, I dropped off the door hang, stepped into the shop, and closed the door behind me as I shoved my one and only healing potion into my friend's mouth, who was at 2 Death Saves (I wasn't high enough level to have Cure Wounds, unfortunately). Then my DM did something I did not expect. She was like, "The door has a glass window in it and the Dire Moth can see." I was like, "Oh Crap..." Then she said, "I'm going to roll a Perception Check for the Dire Moth to see if he can see well enough to see the garments in the shop." That's right. My DM rolled a "Does The Dire Moth Give A Shit?" Check. She rolled poorly and the Dire Moth flew away. So, apparently, the answer was no, the Dire Moth did not, in fact, give a shit. Oh and, yes, I gave the garment back to the Shop Keep. Actually, I just hung it back up on the rack for her. Let that be a lesson, kids! If you're playing a Martial Class, get Magic Weapons at you're earliest opportunity! You'll regret it if you don't! Also, always carry potions on you!

[@andreagrossi7656]

Not d&d, but Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e. Party was having some downtime. Two of the pc decide to go scout a nearby location, while the others rest at their base. The two scouts (an elf on his elk mount, and a bear tamer on his... well, bear) decide to split up to cover more ground. The Bear Tamer reaches this ancient looking boulder, covered in runes, crude painting and literal shit. The ground all around it is littered with bones, not all of which belonging to animals. It's a Herdstone, a place of power for beastmen. The guy goes fully insane. Takes out from his backpack a waterskin he had previously filled with the blood of a giant mutant beast, and drinks the blood. He sprays a bunch of it on the Herdstone and chants a random prayer. I go: "Alright." I hand him a bunch of Insanity points, because who in their sane mind would do something like that and make him roll on the mutations table. He gets his face turned into a bat's face. He had previously gottena mutaton that made him super attractive, so he's now a very beautiful bat-faced dude. I go like "Surely one of the dark powers would look kindly on this guy." I roll on a random table and the result is a fucking suit of Chaos Armor. This is like, peak armor in the game, worthy of the greatest Chaos Champions! During the night, the Dark Gods manifest the armor around the Bear Tamer's body, and when he wakes up he discovers he has this black unnatural full armor that he CANNOT REMOVE that marks him as a follower of the Ruinous Powers. Mfw motherfucker's full of joy. He later admitted that up to that point, he was feeling a little weak compared to the other pcs, and that he said that prayer hoping for a mutation or somethig that'd make him a little stronger. The armor turned him in the ultimate tank. I think he got what he wanted. Did i mention he also already had a fucking bear? Btw, he got very VERY lucky on his rolls. Among the mutations there are results that simply end the game for that character, turning him into a mindless being akin to a beast, or straight up leading to potential death.

[@Lyrebird.Rainwing]

Ive only played DnD once and I was a catfolk knight called Sir Meowsalot and I had a size changing bearded dragon as a pet lmao

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

PANR has tuned in.

[@Lord_Numpty]

6:01 Psirens. That is all.

[@MikeD56034]

the story about Mephistopheles is funnier to me, by chance my DM created a dwarf with that exact name to be our guild master. it is now cannon in our world that he is exactly what is described in the story @706. but instead of being evil he took a new lease on life and is so far working for good. but sticks to his own devices. and hes now an Artificer with major attitude problem xD.

[@TheSandChris]

I played a dwarven fighter and we had just met the BBEG, a mindflayer, for the first time. He taunts us and steps through a portal behind him, mist spilling out of it. "I go in after him, he's not getting away!", the DM looks a little perplexed "it's full of mist in there, you can't see anything", "doesn't matter, I'm going in, I'll listen for him if I have to". DM: "uh sure, the mist is muffling any sounds and he's not actually saying anything, perception with disadvantage" 18 and a nat 20, which is enough "Right so I have a direction, I'm not attacking him, I throw my arms out and charge the general direction attempting to grapple him" DM: "You don't know his exact location so roll a d100, the higher the better" "96 and nat 20 on my athletic to grapple him, I assume that's enough, so I'll begin dragging him back to the portal" DM: "You still can't see anything and kind of lost your sense of direction when grappling the mindflayer, give me another d100 to see if you can find the portal by sheer luck and another athletics to drag the mindflayer with you" "78 and a 21 on the athletics" DM: "Right so the rest of you see Boendahl step through the portal into the thick mist. You lose sight of him almost instantly, hear a shout and the clatter of his armor. Then a few seconds pass before you hear Boendahl again, cursing and grumbling as he comes back through the portal dragging the struggling mindflayer behind him" One of the other players: "We beat it dead"

[@alexbirdwell3807]

I joined a cult in order to figure out what they were planning, sure i may be a sleeper agent now but atleast we actually know what were fighting against

[@GibMoarRam]

Love the chrono trigger music in the background

[@Roadkill3333]

Dropped an armoured vehichle on an eldrich monster, using telekinisis, instakill

[@syncringe1885]

O:NH is a fun strat. Until you fail to recognize the bbeg... As your boss.

[@necroarcanistxiii]

DM of a now-dead experimental Epic Level campaign, Lv30 Kenku Bardlock was Polymorphed into a rat by a trap and decided to use it to squeeze through a narrow tunnel into the lair of a Vampire and her cronies. Can't remember what caused it exactly, but he lost Polymorph and despite being high level, was given the possibility of being instantly crushed into a pulp inside the tunnel upon turning back into his normal self. Critical success on his saving throws, the force of squeezing catapulted him out of the tunnel at high velocity, and trapped by himself in a room full of vampires, decided to use Maddening Darkness on himself, the vampires, and the party, to distract and bamboozle them. This left the head vampire exposed to the Barbarian-Cleric, who was using Etherealness to walk through the wall, and dropped on her with a Greatsword from 50ft up. I thought for sure someone would've gotten killed in all that. But this wasn't the first time the Kenku used Maddenning Darkness like that. Literally Session 0, he used it to wipe out an invasion on a port village.... wiped out half the village, and almost the party as well. That Kenku also realized due to the rules of True Polymorph he could turn into the Avatar of Tiamat and use it to bully the deacon of the Bard's College to let him throw frat parties there. When we found him, his familiars had spiked the punch and he was passed out in the chandelier in a Hatsune Miku costume, I am not making this up.

[@Jack-el3kz]

I had one player pretend to be a fuzzy hat, like The queens guards in England wear. She rolled well and was successful in her deception, damn muppet-born… Another collected a sack full of hands taken as trophies from her kills (not all of them she killed, she knocked them out, and took their hands anyway) and worst part about my murderhobo nieces antics was when she later used them to defeat my BBEG at a distance. Can you imagine the emotional damage of being pelted to death by the severed hands of your friends and family?

[@saychaysarchive7065]

Definitely when Shockwave got RKO'd by one the player's pet plant monster

[@БурутинаАня]

We were fighting some living plants, sorry, don't remember the name. Previously we had seen that they don't rely on sight or sound, and ooc I knew that they had blindsight. The party was trying to escape through a narrow tunnel dug by druid's badgers, and I was the last one to go through. I feared that the plants would follow us, plus I was rather far away from the tunnel, and the way was blocked by a magical patch of difficult terrain. I was a rogue so I could dash twice in a turn, but it would not solve the problem of the plants following us through the tunnel. So I had an idea. I dashed using a bonus action, jumped over the magical terrain and, in mid-air, took off my Cloak of Protection. My aim was to throw it over the tunnel entrance to cover it (since blindsight doesn't go through full cover). I knew I would likely die, but I was willing to try. One successful acrobatics check later, I fell into the tunnel and spread the cloak behind me. The plants did not pass :)

[@hissignaturestudios6869]

So we infiltrated the Cult of Dragons wearing cultist robes. We entered into a room with a large pit in the center that we weren't supposed to be in. They asked us what we were doing there. I rolled a deception check and got a Nat20. I told them we were pit inspectors.🤣

[@charlieb.6172]

Our Warlock and Druid both failed rolls to get a magic sword to activate. My hobgoblin rogue got it on the first try 😆

[@axinhedgelion8417]

Didn’t do this, but someone in my group turned the Ranger into a rock. I was that Ranger. (It was prior to me switching to the fighter class)

[@Thelnir]

Operation New Hire be like: "Eh, bio always works."

[@JP-eh4ee]

I was playing a tortle wizard/cleric who was too interested in monsters. I don't know why but I always rolled high when rolling to tame convince them.

[@Quintzal]

A level 9 Fighter jumped on the back of an undead dragon that was climbing on the edge of the wall of a cloud giant's castle, 500 feet in the sky. He destroyed the dragon but then fell with its remains towards the ground. He asks to look for a body of water. Perception check - he gets a natural 20. I had him make an athletics check to adjust his body as he fell into a skydiving & then water diving form. Nat 20. I ask for a Dex check to aim himself towards the water. 19 on the die. Then I ask for a Con Save to survive impact. Another nat 20. The calculated damage, halved, was still enough to insta-kill him. Given the epic rolls, I reduced him to 1 Hit Point and let him start to figure out how to get back to the castle.

[@nathan714]

gotta love chrono trigger music

[@artemiserket4521]

Chrono Trigger music?! Yess

[@Becvar80]

I was playing a Palladium Fantasy necromancer, held in place midair by a levitate spell by BBEG, a near demigod. DM says BBEG is directly below me. I turned my scimitar point down, let go, and rolled nat 20. Fight over, skewered through his brain.

[@WishGranted130]

I'm just here for the background music. 🎶 (Millennium Faire from Chronotrigger)

[@LordSerion]

Incidentally, my group is playing DotMM as well.

[@Kokuyous3ki]

Yeah, with all the garbage going on people tend to forget that them actually has a proper meaning you can't just change willy-nilly.

[@artyd42]

Summon the ancient god of cats. *sings the meow mix song*

[@darcraven01]

ok this was not dumb as in "omg why would you ever do that" but more like "huh... well that was dumb.." and it was nothing flashy but in the start of wild beyond the witchlight (no spoilers) playing one of the small game booths i had won the trinket "Glossy mushroom with a red, bell-shaped cap that jingles when shook". well later on in the day we had gotten to a point (again, no spoilers) we decided to steal something from someone's pocket and our rogue and i both passed stealth checks to get close. the rogue goes to pick pocket and i decide to throw the mushroom away from us so the target would be destracted and look away. the mushroom jingling as it bounced gave our rogue advantage, which was good because one of the rolls failed while the other succeeded.. we got away clean by sneaking off a little ways and then taking flight (rogue was an owlen and i was a winged tiefling heritaged hexblood.. our dm let us override race with linages at character creation as long as it was justifiable)

[@jacksono6565]

If it looks dumb but its working its not dumb

[@skylerbreeze3063]

A bag of holding ihat is made of gold that Spews gold from it would would as intended

[@thanhtrungnguyenhuu6672]

My cousin demand a motivation speak in front of the elf villages we saved from the orc army. He successfully convince the elf that they need to get stronger more disipline to deal with future if same thing happened. He... Turn them into fascist elf under his lead. That where all his charisma points go.

[@gam3army]

XD heheh funny i know for silgar only because of puffin forest's one XD

[@darkphoenix539]

How our Bard „Saved” village form werewolf We were investigating village trying to identify werewolf, we suspected that it was one of barmaids. Our Bard asked whether contraception exist in this realm explaining that for centuries human used animal intestine, DM allowed, Bard proceeded to seduce aforementioned barmaid and after succeeding he said -I would like to put silver flakes and bearings inside contraception and made it so it will burst during climax. DM allowed it (rule of cool) and the next day village was safe.

[@litalunasol9347]

I have a few stories from a Dark Souls campaign my buddy is running. I try to play normally and nothing works, I decide hey let's do something utterly stupid and it always works(dice rolls cooperate only on the stupid stuff). It's so upsetting...

[@litalunasol9347]

One instance we were fighting a zombie-like creature. I tried grappling it after a failed melee attack and also failed that. I ended up directly under it between it's legs. I had fire bombs and there was literal crap around. I decided to mix the two and just lodge the concoction forcefully into it's torso from below........ It died.

[@litalunasol9347]

In our last session we fought a dragon....... I had a staff and a spell called force. The way I used force wasn't as described in the book but the DM thought it was funny so he let it happen. I left to go somewhere for a little bit before we started so they started without me(I told them if they wanted to they could). When I returned the fight against the dragon had just started. Dm had me make a roll. I succeeded and jumped from above onto it. I slid down it's neck and belly and used my staff/force combo to stab it in a dragon's only weakness...... I did so successfully. The DM made me roll a d6 for exhaustion, I cut it's speed in half. The next turn I unstabbed it, another d6 for exhaustion. I cut the HP it currently had in half..... It still had about two-thirds of it's Health..... We soon killed it due to our ONLY offensive magic user bringing it down to literally 1 HP and our Rogue-ish character of the group dealing a critical final blow after not hitting any other attacks the entire fight when he started his turn with a single Disadvantage for attack rolls to Triple advantage(can't remember how he got it). He did 164 dmg when it only had 1 HP. Afterwards I collected it's weakness and the DM gave me a ring since I wanted to turn it into jewelry to wear of some sort and it now makes my critical hits 3x dmg instead of 2x. (Also if I flip someone off I'm also mooning them)

[@BlackWolfessUSCM]

Our party was pinned down by pirates with cannons and sho i aimed an arrow and told my warlock to llight it on fire when i gave the command. He said "are you sure" and i nodded and let that arrow fly. just before it hit the powder keg baffels i said "LIGHT IT" which he did and blew the pirates from life and lib as my cleric scamled to put up a shield on the party i ntire which our cleric said to me "Warn me nest tiem you do that." we did so much damage to the pirates with that strunt we wiped the m all out.

[@inukithesavage828]

That much water would not have an hours wprth of oxegen in it

[@120gerruhepuls]

I let my Players in a homebrew world fight the Leviathan. I had a few Players which couldn't fight on range, so i send them under deck to tie up some craits to stop the ship from kieling over. They found drugs in one of the craits. Yes They though the drugs in the maul of the Leviathan and the thing sunk down to the oceanfloor high as a kite