I did it again

Many years ago I was in a DnD campaign where I caused a lot of problems.  The GM had a fairly sedate pace for us much of the time with lots of travel, so characters with spells got many opportunities to use them.  DnD is unfortunately balanced around groups having many fights in a single day, so this ended up being a bit of a problem.  I was playing a cleric and so with the slow pace (which it should be noted, I quite like) I was able to always use all my best spells and be overly powerful in combat.  If we had done standard dungeon crawls with tons of pointless, contrived fights to drain away my spells things would have been more balanced, but that wasn't the sort of game we were playing.

We also had issues with me solving all the problems we encountered with some spell or other.  We were playing with all the expansions and extra books at the time, so whenever some difficult situation showed up I was free to peruse all the cleric spells ever printed to find the one that would trivialize it.  We got to the point where when we found a difficult situation the other characters would look at me expectantly, assuming I would suggest sleeping for the night so I could memorize the spell that would whisk us safely past the obstacle.  I busted us through a stone wall with Stone Shape, summoned creatures to scout or carry us, and made us immune to all kinds of other things.  It was frustrating for the GM I am sure, because it made so many of his creative works fall down flat.

This wasn't much fun for the other players, I think, and it felt kind of silly to me too.  I can't just look at the solution to a problem and do nothing just so somebody else can try something far inferior, so I decided to retire my cleric and take up a paladin instead.  I still could cover the healing role, but my spell list was much more restricted to simple bashing and healing so other problems could still pose a threat.

Recently I concluded that my crossbow specialist in my 5th edition DnD game was too good.  Other characters could do similar damage to me under ideal conditions, but I could do my damage to any target on the map, while they had to run about and struggle with rounds where they could do nothing at all.  I also had the ability to burst out huge chunks of damage on command which they did not.  Like before, I retired my character to let everyone else have a better chance to be the big hero.

I decided to start up a cleric instead, so I could take over the healing and buffing while other characters did the beatdown.  I settled on a Light cleric because the roleplaying stuff behind this seemed to fit.  The first fight we stepped into was against trolls, which regenerate like crazy until you apply fire damage to them.  Light clerics also get lots of fire spells so I used Wall of Fire, Flaming Sphere, and Scorching Ray to blast them with fire.  Our melee people got to deal a lot of damage, but nothing like the carnage I was laying out with my burnination.

The next fight was supposed to be a deadly confusing mess with our group and a pile of allies being ambushed in the dark by a bunch of gnolls with night vision.  A big part of the challenge was the vision disparity with our allies being overwhelmed by foes they could not see nor effectively fight.  Just before the gnoll attack hit, I used Daylight and filled the entire battle area with bright light, completely negating the surprise attack and giving all of my allies light to see by.  We brutally crushed the gnoll attack and sent them fleeing with their entire leadership wiped out.

Our next fight is for the following day, and I already have another spell lined up to completely trivialize it.  The enemy force we face is overwhelmingly powerful, and although we have allies with us we would be crushed if we fought them in open combat.  Thankfully I expect to be able to defeat all of them without any danger at all because I have a day to prepare just the perfect response.

For much of this campaign we have had barrages of fights every day and I wouldn't have been overpowered as a cleric.  Now we are back to 1 encounter per day, and my new cleric is dismantling them by employing the cleric spell list to its greatest possible effect.

I don't know if Naked Man, my GM, likes the creativity I bring to the problems he presents to us, or if he finds this all kinds of frustrating.  My fellow adventurers certainly love the way we stay alive, but they also surely grumble at the way I solve all the problems.  Now the only question is whether or not Naked Man will respond to my arrogance towards our latest problem by trying to kill me off once and for all.