I was wondering what experience everyone else has had with players using spells (or skills I suppose) in very creative and unusual ways.
A couple session ago my players were in a bind. They were breaking into a remote mountain fortress. Approaching the vault, the bard fumbled her surprise-action controlling song. As a result, one of the guards had the opportunity to draw the crystal hanging around his heck, and poised to throw it to the ground. The players surmised, correctly, that breaking the crystal would trigger an alarm. The paladin couldn't get there in time, there was just too much ground to cover in snap. The players all had a moment at the end of snap to ponder before I stated "The guard throws the crystal to the ground". The party mage pipes up. "Umm . . . would you consider that an attack?". I thought about it a second. "Sure, I'll give you that. The guard is attacking the stome floor with the crystal . . . why?" The mage states, "Well then, I Deflect the attack."
He pretty much saved the party from certain doom.
Later on in the next session, the player were fleeing the fortress guards with their stolen artifact. They made it to their boats, but one boat had trouble paddling out into the surf, and the guards had a chance to line up and begin to ready their muskets (the PC's found, and picked a fight with, one of the pockets of renaissance-era tech in my world). The Paladin worships the god of fire, and had had these weapons explained to her. She asked me "Would the charges they carry be considered light sources". I thought about this one a little longer. "Sure, in that they have fuses, and are designed to be lit. Functionally they're no different than a candle or lantern". "In that case, I use the last of my power points to cast Ignite". She collapses in the boat, and the charges the bad guys are tamping down into their guns, and carrying on their belts, go off. Pow! PowPowPow!