My group found a flaming sword. They brought it into the tent, placed it in the ground, and used it to cook dinner.
le sigh! 
That doesn't sound like abuse to me, that's creative thinking. A lot of DMs would kill to have players who come up with clever uses for their items beyond their specifically listed abilities. You should encourage this kind of behavior.
Of course I approve of it, and I should've said "abuse" in the title. Let me rephrase it:
How does your player use magic items in ways you hadn't thought about?
I awarded my group with an immovable rod, the rogue atached fake weights to the egdes of the rod and started to show off how "strong" he was, he then challenged NPCs to try out their strengh against his, betting something of value, of course. The rogue used his sleight of hand to active the rod moments before his adversary tried to lift it. He made some good money out of that, but when the trick was revealed he almost got killed 
Cooking on a flaming sword? Sound great.
Insisting that you can create arrows that consist of miniature bag of holding tipped shafts with an attached aparatus that will hold a miniature portable hole just in front of the arrow tip and collapse on impact so that the mini bag enters the mini hole and sucks everything within 10 feet into the Astral plane... and that these miniature versions of these items should cost 1/100th what their normal-sized versions do. That is abuse.
Also, my group doesn't actually abuse anything anymore: we've shed the players from our group that were into trying to abuse things to get some kind of advantage (and constantly fail because I don't let players who are being jerks to everybody else at the table, like by trying to derail the campaign into a scheme to produce these arrows, get what they want).
Old school group - Stone to Flesh cast on a cave, then fireball. Instant Kebab.
Things like Wondrous Items were always my favorite to give to my PCs. Partially because they gave no inherent advantage, mechanically, and because they're just so chock full of potential! Sometimes it's just having fun RP opportunities outside of combat and social encounters. Other times it's them being so creative that I don't care too much about the rules or how much they just "skipped" and just let them have fun!
So Endless Decanters, Immovable Shafts, the picnic basket that had whatever food you want inside (a crowd favorite), never-breaking chalk, and my new buddy the Alchemy Jug, are all part of my repetoire to see just what people do with them! Heck, a simple bag of holding is FULL of shenanigans!
(and Aaron, if someone wanted to do your Arrow idea, I'd have it work. Just...not as expected. The "burst" that is created is super small, thanks to them using down-sized "ingredients," and causes a fun "tickling" sensation as it sends skin flakes and a few germs to the Astral Plane...1,000 gold an arrow well spent!)
NoNeedForNames wrote:
NoNeedForNames wrote:
My paladin has a plain old mundane whip. (Because he needed both finesse and reach.) I haven't decided yet if it's a cat'o'nine tails scourge, or an Indiana Jones style 10' rope.
If I ever get a chance to swashbuckle with it ... 