One of my favorite moments in the previous (Pathfinder) campaign was when the party ran into a coven of hags, who identified the party oracle as the most immediate threat and hit her with Baleful Polymorph to turn her into a toad (as you do.) She passed the save to retain her mind and, looking over the rules, realized that she could still use a good number of her powers. Cue one flying toad putting the mental whammy on her foes. All glory to the Hypnotoad!

Oh, that pleases me no end.

We just had an epic battle in our D&D session tonight. Five 9th level characters leading an army trying to take back a demon-conquered city. Our goal was to secure the stone bridge over a fast-flowing river leading into town. We see the demon cultists have chained a bunch of huge fiendish aurochs to the bridge supports, which are trying to pull the bridge down. We rush into action to stop them, only to be confronted by a white dragon landing in the middle of the bridge with a crash. The warlock hits herself, the paladin (me) and the fighter with Fly while I throw up a Beacon of Hope (which comes in real handy when the dragon tries to use it's Frightening Presence). I end up focusing on the dragon with assists from the warlock while everyone else tries to take out the aurochs.

The ranger/rogue slides down one of the enormous chains and slips his immovable rod between the links, preventing it from pulling against the bridge, only to be attacked by a horde of giant spiders that were hiding under the bridge. He calls for help and the fighter flies down to his aid.

Meanwhile, the cleric has a bow that lets him teleport to where he shoots his arrows a certain number of times per day. He summons Spiritual Guardians (which does damage in an area around him) and starts shooting aurochs and then teleporting on top of them to burn them with his spell.

My paladin is in the sky trading blows with the dragon until the warlock wanders too close, getting us both caught in the breath weapon and causing her to lose her concentration and send us both plummeting to the top of the bridge and the poor fighter into the river. (He promptly saves himself by using the climbing pole option on his Rod of Lordly Might to project himself out of the river and back to land.)

We nearly lost the cleric to one of the aurochs (it managed to kick him and then critically bite him and drop him into negatives, but the ranger/rogue got close enough to heal him and allow him to use another arrow teleport to get to safety) and my paladin and the warlock were on their last legs when we finally brought the dragon down (and I burned through almost all of my spells smiting the dragon) but my paladin practically took it down himself (the warlock hit it twice with Eldritch Blast the entire fight and no one else touched it) though the cleric hitting me with Healing Word and using his Dampen Elements to keep the cold breath from completely murdering us kept my paladin (and the warlock) in the fight far longer than he would have managed on his own, so I have no illusions of what would have happened had I tried to truly solo it. And we also saved the bridge. (The DM said afterward he expected us to lose about half the bridge, which would have made getting the army into the city a lot more difficult.)

All in all a fun, dynamic fight with everyone getting to use a bunch of their abilities and have a moment or two to shine.

There's no silliness like D&D silliness.

Honestly, until last night. It never occurred to me to look inside the bodies I'm looting.

Yeah, I don't think I'd think to do that either unless there was some previous indication that creature in question had eaten treasure (Critical Role, for example, had the party hunting for an artifact that was known to be inside the belly of a specific demon.) or the DM dropped some kind of hint during the fight.

Gems are small and easily swallowed. That kind of search is kind of time consuming though and generally requires probably cause.

Or so I've heard.

Yeah, no. I'd rather not try to get into the mindset of someone who felt digging around their slain opponent's innards on the off-chance they swallowed something valuable was an acceptable use of their time.

Of course the very concept of looting in D&D in general is kind of disturbing. I mean grabbing the dead guy's nifty flaming sword is one thing. Stripping him of his magic boots and spending 30 minutes pulling off his plate armor is another.

I imagine Dorothy would have been much less sympathetic if her reaction to dropping the house on the witch was "Ooh, loot!" followed by an a couple minutes of her tearing the slippers off and then awkwardly replacing her own footwear.

One time I was in a group doing a Living Greyhawk adventure, where we had to escort a VIP that was being targeted by a local crime ring. When we come pick him up, just to set the tone, a crim shoots at him through the window.

And the GM rolls a crit. Triple damage. Our employer is dead on the floor in front of us and the adventure's done before it even started.

GM: "Soooo... What do you do now?"
Player: "We............ Loot the body?"

Nice.

That's something I learned as I got more experienced as a DM. You don't have to roll for everything. If something is directly affecting the PCs, by all means roll for it (no player likes things to happen to them by DM fiat) but if it's just to get/keep the story moving, just have it happen.