Of Creativity & Fire
I had one of those fantastic moments in our last gaming session. Â The stars aligned, the powers hadn’t been exhausted yet, and the dice rolled in my favor. Â And the rest of my party stood back in amazement that I managed a nearly-impossible feat.
The Story
Previously in our adventure, we encountered John, who has been working for the Drow because they took his wife hostage. Â We entered a deal with John that we would rescue his wife from the Underdark if he told the drow that he had a way to infiltrate the restricted section of the library (we needed more info about the Drow and their plans for items from the library). Â So after much wandering around in dark tunnels, taking those roads less traveled to avoid wandering parties of Drow, we found ourselves at a dead end: two Drow guarding the wife, Silvia.
For those of you who haven’t been following along, I’m currently playing Eaerenel, an Eladrin Wizard who specializes in fire spells.  And if you’re not familiar with the fire spells, they usually affect everyone in the area of effect, not just the bad guys.  So if Eaerenel cast a fire spell to affect the guards, she was going to be making life a little extra toasty for poor Silvia.  To make matters more urgent, the Drow decided to kill her instead of letting us try to rescue her and had cast a spell that enveloped her in web of spiders.
Things were looking desperate, and this is where I got creative. Â With the DM’s permission, I invoked my ability to Twist the Arcane Fabric to move Silvia to safety before casting one of my fiery spells. Â Twist the Arcane Fabric is a feat from Arcane Power (p 130), that allows an Eladrin to use her fey step ability to move an ally out of the way before casting an area or close arcane power. Â Dante allowed that since “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Silvia could be counted as an ally. Â It was a spectacular moment that made my whole night; I got to save the day!
Be Creative!
Creativity during game play is one of the cornerstones of roleplaying.  Without a touch of creativity, the game becomes mechanical.  To keep that spark of creativity burning,  you have to know your character’s capabilities; how can you plan an awesome course of action if you don’t know what you can do?