I played a Drow aberrant mind sorcerer where we came across a cult operating in the back room of a tavern and it was guarded by two thugs.
Half our party went in unarmed under the guise of being townsfolk, myself and one other party member entered the tavern shortly after and sat at a table within sight of the thugs.
After a few moments my character looked at the rogue in front of me and said go get the guards. He was like “uhhhhh” I was like tell them there’s been a murder. He was like “what are you doing I don’t understand” I’m like just go. So he leaves. I wait a few more minutes then I telepathically implanted one of the thugs with Enemies abound. It causes the target to perceive everyone as enemies. The person directly in front of of him was the other thug.
He pulled out his sword the other thug was like “Billy? (Or some other name I can’t remember) and he proceeded to gank his buddy, and as the body was sliding off his blade my party member and the town guards burst through the door, and the guards screamed stop! The thug’s attention was drawn to them and he charged them and was subsequently cut down.
The rogue only then realizing what the game plan was screamed out “there’s more of them behind that door killing our friends!” The guards and the rogue burst through the doors and a massive brawl ensued between enthralled townsfolk, cultists and our party where we managed to defeat a significantly higher level encounter than what we should have been able to if we went at it alone and the cultists were forced to flee.
I think using the law to your own ends can be a good thing if it is something your character would do. My Drow Sorc would not have engaged the law unless it was to his benefit. And that’s exactly what he did.
After the session our DM was like wow that was unexpected but also the outcome was really fun. Unfortunately a few sessions later the campaign fell apart, so I never got to find out if the actions would catch up to me or not but it was fun as hell.
I did see that movie but at the time I wasn’t thinking of that. This cult had jumped us on the road incapped a few party members and took off with our loot. I was truly focused on not only winning a combat against them but turning as many people as I could in the process against them. My plan did work out much better than expected. I had assumed we would still be overwhelmed but our Druid used spike growth and was hidden as a spider in the room with them so combat became very difficult for them with the guards plus our party and the spike growth causing them damage.