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Are you planning a heist for your next DnD campaign or one shot?
Maybe you want to relieve a dragon of its hoard of riches, plunder a King’s coffers,
or steal an ancient magical item from the vaults of a cursed city.
If you’re looking for some inspiration I recommend listening to “The Lies of Locke
Lamora'' for FREE by visiting audible dot com slash allthingsdnd or text allthingsdnd
to five hundred five hundred.
And now, what you’re here for!
The Single Best Use Of The Spell 'Darkness' I Have Ever Seen
Hi everyone.
All Things DnD is back with another story.
A brilliant use of a spell, a character’s redemption arc, and some generous interpretation
of the rules.
What more could you ask from a DND story?
Tell us about the brilliant way you used a spell in one of your games after listening
to this one:
It was the end of the campaign and the party was facing off against the boss.
A deceitful general Blackguard Paladin disguised as an Oath of Devotion Paladin and his personal
guard in the ruins of a city they had attacked.
The General had tricked our Paladin's former order to attack a city he had convinced them
was evil.
One army and the enemy’s army had all but wiped each other out.
Out of our party of four, two of us were dead.
The Paladin-Warlock-Bard was fighting in close quarters against the general's lieutenant.
The general himself was firing from a distance, and our Cleric was hiding behind some stairs.
Things were looking very bleak.
While fighting the lieutenant, our Paladin was being bombarded with spell after spell
from the general.
But there was no way to engage the general while fighting with the lieutenant....So here's
what this clever bastard does.
Attached to the chest of our Paladin is his trusty knife.
Now, he has cleverly used this knife a number of times throughout the campaign.
He would cast Darkness on the hilt of the blade.
For anyone that doesn’t know, darkness creates a fifteen foot sphere of magical darkness
from the location it was cast.
Even creatures with darkvision cannot see through the magical inky blackness.
So, while everything inside the bubble of darkness was essentially blinded the paladin
was able to see through it with his Warlock given Devil Sight.
So he could keep his trusty knife around his neck and fight inside the darkness or throw
it to blind enemies and then attack them.
Honestly, it was a pretty brilliant maneuver.
Now, back at the final fight.
Our Paladin has once again cast darkness on his knife’s hilt, but it's not helping as
much as he would like because the general has a necklace of fireball, and he keeps throwing
them at the sphere of darkness because he knows the paladin is still inside.
The fireballs are also damaging his own lieutenant as the two are often close together.
After each recklessly cast fireball the lieutenant would shout out to the general, "Stop!
You're hitting me too!".
How many big bad evil guys care about collateral damage?
But I digress.
Due to the constant fireball damage, the Paladin has to roll concentration saves to maintain
darkness, like...a lot of them.
He succeeds on every one of them.
Here's all I'll say about that: Warcaster is a freaking godsend.
But still, the general's doing very good damage to our Paladin, he's low on spell slots, and
he won't last long.
So here's how it happens.
Our Paladin knows all of this, and he's running out of options.
So.
He takes the knife out of its holster, and attempts to stab it into the general's lieutenant.
He succeeds, and he adds a divine smite just to spite the guy.
He then uses his movement to reach just inside the edge of the Darkness sphere, and then
uses Misty Step to teleport out of sight of the general.
The Darkness is still stuck to the knife, which is stuck to the lieutenant, running
around like a chicken with its head cut off.
And also on fire.
For the next 2 turns, the general just firebombs the living hell out of the sphere of darkness,
and during that time, our Paladin does two things.
First, he casts Disguise Self, and makes himself look like the lieutenant, albeit quite charred.
And second, he uses his Lay on Hands to heal himself as much as he can.
He can see the Cleric from his position farther back, and he gives her the 'shh' sign with
his fingers.
They both lay low, and she also heals up a bit.
On the third turn, the general throws a fireball and kills his lieutenant.
The darkness is still there though.
Our Paladin comes limping over out of the wreckage towards the general, who's only moderately
hurt after this encounter, though he used nearly all of his spells.
Out of breath and clutching his multitude of fake wounds the paladin said, "Sir, we
must retreat back into the forest,” he coughs a few times to really sell it.
He rolls a 25 on deception.
The general sighs.
"Come then."
Our Cleric stays behind, and the general and our disguised Paladin ride off into the forest
behind the city.
The ride takes almost an hour and by this point, the paladin has to burn a 3rd level
spell slot to stay disguised.
They arrive at a small cave as the sun goes down.
They make camp there, and he watches as the general goes to sleep.
At this point, he tells us he has no spell slots left.
While our general friend needs a long rest to get his strength back, our Paladin-Warlock-Bard,
only needs a short rest to get his Warlock slots back.
That leaves two level 2 spell slots left.
Before he does anything, he successfully sneaks away from their camp.
He gives himself Bardic Inspiration before he does anything.
Then, from a fair distance away out of earshot of the general, he casts Darkness on his armor.
The general, exhausted from the battle doesn’t stir from his slumber.
Standing over the sleeping general the paladin smirks and casts Hexblade’s Curse on the
general.
And then, he lays into him.
Advantage and autocrit.
Both hit, and he divine smites the first one.
The general wakes up flailing defensively lashing out blindly in the darkness.
He jumps up and tries to make a run for it.
Our DM rolls a D8 to see what direction he goes in each turn.
He keeps bumping into the cave walls.
The Paladin just Eldritch Blasts him from a distance now, and the general has no spells
left to counter this.
After five turns of constant bombardment, he’s done.
The DM tells us he is lying prone on the cave floor, barely breathing.
Our Paladin walks up to him, still cloaked in the darkness, and pushes his blade into
the general’s chest.
He waves his hand and allows the darkness to dissipate.
The Paladin, the one who the general himself had exiled from his ranks years before for
his "impurity", would be his end.
And the last thing the general ever saw was the Paladin raise his foot, press it to his
face, and push him off his blade.
And that was the end of our campaign.
Thank you for listening!
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The best thing about this story is that the DM allowed this to happen.
Because...darkness can’t be cast on something worn and you can’t use bardic inspiration
on yourself.
If you were the DM would you have allowed it?
How important is the “rule of cool” at your table.
Personally I’m torn.
On one hand it's really cool and worked out great but on the other hand if you let things
like this through what else do you let work that shouldn’t?
Help me decide, and please let us know what you think and comment below!
Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel, All Things DnD.
Our next video will be posted in 3 days, so stay tuned for more amazing Dungeons & Dragons
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