A guard sees a rat and screams, alerting the other guards. They help look for the rat.

Make no mistake, the Rogue is on the offense.

“I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me.”

The correct way to hide as a bard is to convince the guards that you’re one of them and that the rogue knocked you out and stole your uniform to impersonate you

So your new tactic is the same as the Acrobat from AD&D? Congrats on rediscovering what existed thirty years ago.

If the guards coming in aren’t just backup for me, they had better have class levels or they’re gonna have issues with the traps.

It drives me nuts when bad DMs metagame and have the guards just decide to spend arrows on wild shape animals. I ended up just always playing rogues with that guy by the end because then I could just roll, and he never let us rest.

And I was a bit pissy when my DM collapsed a cave on me in wolf form because I was using wild shape forms more than I was humanoid.

It’d be the perfect moment honestly.

A guard sees the rat and screams. He’s terrified of rats… the other guards write off the room as-is and leave, making fun of their fearful comrade on the way down the hall.

No, the correct way tohide as thr bard is to play a pro-cop ballad wiyh your instrument case in front if you, or be humming it and ask which way to the ballroom before they notice you.

Barbarian: Ignore me, I’m a normal lamp

Guards: Y-yup, nothing to see here.

About a decade ago, I rolled a druid/rogue hybrid, almost entirely so I could scoot around, as a rat, scout things out, give a layout of what we’re getting into back to the party, act as a surprise flank when the rest of the party engages, take out numbskulls too busy fighting to notice the rat behind them and around a corner, animorphing into an elf/human halfling, with daggers.

That was the same run that I somehow got 2 nat 20s in a manuever that required passing I think 3 different skill checks.

Some kind of fairly large monster. The boss of our first actual proper dungeon, all low level, new characters.

Situation looking dire, one party member is gonna be dead dead if the only real healer dies, and the healer is almost dead. Every one is out of items, running low on everything.

(Much of this was due to them barging in while I was still trying to scout as rat. They got bored. They ran straight into a trap that rat me saw, but could not tell them about, due to being a rat, still inside the dungeon.)

So, after hastily finding a ssfe place to transmogrify, taking out as many henchmen type things as possible, as I move back toward the main room, I find my crew getting utterly wrecked by this thing, and despite being a glass cannon, I have the most health of any one in the party.

I tell the DM that I want to jump on this 15ish foot tall monster’s back, and garrote it to death.

He says… uh… well… you can try…

You need to pass an agility and dexterity check, and that thing has pretty decent armor via its skin.

Nat 20 the agility check, basically Legolas over here, jump, twist flip, land, straddle.

Don’t nat 20 the dex check, but it is high enough to pass, so I get the garrote around the beast’s neck.

Nat 20 the damage roll.

The DM couldn’t believe it, checks the stat sheet for the monster, checks my character’s sheet, … says I decapitate it, after about 10-20 seconds of getting my grip and basically sawing through the outer layers of its skin, eventually all the way through its vertebrae.

So anyway, hybrid builds can be fun, lol.

Don’t forget to deflate while doing so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jofn_9rPbzo

What new knowledge have YOU contributed to humanity?

I was using wild shape forms more than I was humanoid.

Where I’m from that’s called “being a Druid”. You were right to be pissy.

Not too far into my first campaign, I was playing a Hexblade warlock with a level of sorcerer for some extra spell slots / CC spells. We get ambushed by some bad guy guards trying to rob us. As they’re stalking us in the bazaar we were shopping in, the initiative rolls begin out of nowhere.

Roll a nat 20 for initiative, and end up going first. I cast grease and catch them all in it. 4/5 guards fail the save and fall prone. The 5th guard goes second and shoots an arrow at me, does a few damage. I react with hellish rebuke. It ends up engulfing all of the guards, the hay cart next to them, and half the bazaar into a raging grease fire inferno.

I learned to be more aware of my surroundings after that day.

Holy shit, that’s hilarious, hahah!

“Local bandit gang tries to rob wandering mercenary group, public market burned to the ground.”

Ahem, returning to my old character:

This is why I prefer to stay out of mouths of gossipmongers.

… that and… an intimate death is a more respectable death… and a bit more precise…

Not nearly as much as my wife, admittedly - she’s a scientist and I’m not. But there’s been a few small things.