Fun with D&D arcane magic, what's the wildest thing you have done using a spell?

[Amaril]

I once used gust of wind to blow fire from a burning building onto a group of trolls. Fight didn't last much longer

[Mith]

I was in a group playing D&D 5e once and my party got into some shenanigans with our group's familiars. This player was a cleric/wizard multiclass who had a crab as his familiar (basically a magic animal companion). One of the features that you can do with a familiar in 5e is that you can cast a spell with a range of touch through your familiar remotely as if the familiar had casted it. So suddenly mundane looking animals can cast spells, seemingly out of nowhere if they couldn't see the caster. After our wizard/cleric buddy used it to cast Shocking Grasp on an enemy, we asked ourselves why we couldn't do more.

And thus brought the rise of the Demon Crab of Chult. Said player casted Enlarge/Reduce on the crab, and commanded it to attack some patrolling gobling troops while the PC hid 100 ft. away, sometimes under the effects of Greater Invisibility . The goblins thought they could easily take the giant crab down, but realized they were wrong once the giant crab started casting Shocking Grasp, Inflict Wounds, Bestow Curse and Blight . Eventually the goblins won, but it was all for null, because approximately an hour and ten minutes later the Death Crab reappeared as the PC summoned it again with another casting of Find Familiar .

And then the rest of the group, who luckily all had Find Familiar, summoned crabs and repeated this plan with four different crab and people pairs. Soon this settlement of goblins was under constant siege by a pack of Giant Crustacean Guerillas hitting them with necromancy and lightning. And worst of all, they would not die, and would come back only about an hour within dying.

Eventually the four of us contacted the goblin leader and proclaimed that we had summoned Demon Crabs which revived in the Abyss once you killed them. We then preceded to threaten them with summoning an army of these Demon Crabs and commanding them to strike the goblins if they didn't stop ambushing travelers.

I am amazed that our DM let us get away with that.

Why are you surprised? Extortion is a valid tactic.

[Requilac]

Why are you surprised? Extortion is a valid tactic.

But does this extortion typically involve pretending that your magical pets are Demon Crabs which cast spells and revive in the Abyss?

[Spore]

I beat a guy to death with a motorcycle one time. That was Shadowrun magic, not D&D, though.

That was one of the feats I was looking forward too in Vampire the Masquerade (motorcycle is one object used as an example for my Brujah (example to throw with Strength + Potence = 6). Sadly AJ, the bike masher never came to be =/ But that is basically "fistomancy" and besides the point of this thread anyway.

But we had a murder mystery plot and I cast Detect Poison on the victim's pillow. The poison trail led to the killer. Rather than finding more clues and puzzle pieces, my wizard used prestidigitation to color the poison trail and use that as incriminating evidence. I mean it certainly helped that the rogue convinced the giants that I was right but....technically I solved a plot point with two cantrips.

[Seclora]

I used prestidigitation to create a stirling engine using mercury in an adamantine piston. It was a bit of a stretch, but it's definitely the coolest thing I've ever pulled off in game using a spell.

[Spore]

I used prestidigitation to create a stirling engine using mercury in an adamantine piston. It was a bit of a stretch, but it's definitely the coolest thing I've ever pulled off in game using a spell.

Putting that Knowledge (engineering) to good use I see.

[RedMage125]

I once ran a 3.5e game at GenCon where the party was transported through a portal to a snowy landscape, and had to fight a Frost Giant Hexblade in waist-deep snow. One particularly clever party paralyzed the giant and then dropped a Wall Of Fire on him, while the melee individuals continued to beat on him. The Bard's turn comes up and he decides to cast Grease on the giant.

Now I know by RAW that Grease is not explicitly flammable, but it doesn't say it isn't, so I went to the RPGA rep and asked what I should do. he asked what the situation was, and I told him that even if I didn't allow the spell to do any more harm, the giant was not going to live to see another turn in initiative (he was below 1/4 hp). He shrugged, and told me to allow it.

And that's how they deep-fried a Frost Giant.

[DMThac0]

Showing a bunch of new players the ropes in what it means to be able to pull off anything you can imagine. I was in Sunless Citadel, we had gotten to an area swarmed with goblins. I asked one of the party to bring me a dead goblin, I cast animate dead, then had another party member cast minor illusion on it's face to help it look like a kobold, we then set it on fire and I made it run at the goblins.

Time Stop + Force Cage + Delayed Blast Fireball was always a good one too.

[solidork]

We chased some Duergar slavers into the underdark after they kidnapped some villagers, killing off the old and weak that couldn't keep up the pace. They made it to their fortress before we caught up with them, so we decided to at least talk to them before alpha striking. When the guy shouting from the battletops said that we should buy the villagers back because the Duergar leaders would kill them for losing a shipment, my War Cleric burned both his Channel Divinities for a +20 and chucked a single copper piece a hundred feet and hit him square between the eyes.

[MagneticKitty]

Last game we dropped a flying dragon using hypnotic pattern, then caught her using feather fall so it didn't snap her out of it.

The same wizard also reduced a door (enlarge reduce) to get through it.

Nothing too special I suppose.

[Malimar]

The same wizard also reduced a door (enlarge reduce) to get through it.

My favorite use of time hop (send something a few rounds into the future) is to get through a door.

[Jay R]

But does this extortion typically involve pretending that your magical pets are Demon Crabs which cast spells and revive in the Abyss?

Not that specific, no, but an extortion plot that involves enough power to destroy many of your enemies is a reasonably effective scenario.

Yes, a giant magic-wielding crab is a higher caliber weapon than an Uzi, but the principle is the same.