What are some of the worst rulings you've had to deal with in games?


Gamer Life General Discussion

451 to 500 of 503 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | next > last >>
Shadow Lodge

GM Xabulba wrote:
Skill ranks are based off of hit dice, you need three ranks in intimidation to get boar strike, an ECL3 character can put 3 ranks into a skill thus allowing them to get the Boar style feat at class level 1.

Don't want to go to far off:
What you are saying is a bit confusing. If you had a Level Adjustment (and thus an ECL), and where also (ECL) level 3, that means you did not have 3 character levels, (and thus couldn't put 3 Ranks <or 5 Ranks in 3.E>), and the DM was correct. Your ECL is your Class Level/Racial HD + Level Adjustment.

-
If you mean that you where a 3rd level character (class level plus racial HD), then that's fine, assuming those all added up to 3rd level. But since there is no LA, there is no real reason to say ECL, because you don't have a different effective character level than your actual character level. Does that make sense? It's the + LA that makes the ECL important, and that LA does not allow you to increase Skill Ranks, it just treats you as a higher level for XP needed.


How about PC death due to the GM not knowing the Pathfinder dying/death rules (and how they are different from 3.0/3.5)?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Quark Blast wrote:

"4d6, drop lowest, in order" would almost certainly result in a party that was suboptimal.

Typically, each PCs primary stat would be 12. So, rolling my dice...

Paladin with a STR of 13 and a CHA of 8
Sorcerer with a DEX of 15 and a CHA of 9
Cleric with a WIS of 10 and a CON of 7
Rogue with a DEX of 11 and INT of 8
Wizard with a INT of 16 (hey, that's actually useful!) and a DEX of 12
Barbarian with a STR of 12, a DEX of 12 and an INT of 14

...you get some PCs that are playable (meaning at least potentially heroic) but as a party these guys suck.

I guess that if he let you pick your PCs class after rolling stats it would be slightly better but having everyone forced to play some incarnation of "Nodwick" is only fun if the group buys in to the concept first.

When you roll in order, the usual expectation is that you will be picking your class after your stats. It's not really a question of hoping the GM "lets" you do so. There is a reason, by the way, that the chapter on stats appears before the chapter on classes.


Quark Blast wrote:
ikarinokami wrote:

i didnt realize how hard core one my gaming group is.

we auto confirm crits and fumbles, we use both the crit hits (modified to be more deadly for weapon focus, they get to draw two cards) and crit fumbles deck and all combatants from the mooks to the bbeg gets to use the use deck.

i play in another game with no fumbles and it's just not as exciting, differnt strokes i guess.

Yep, Power Gaming vs Role Playing. Depends on what the group wants. As long as everyone is on the same page, it's all good.

not sure i would call it power gaming , I'm pretty sure some members of this board would throw up at how unoptimally built most of are, and it does help the mosters more than it helps us, becuase there are more of them. we had a few( it's probably more than a few) pcs die. the GM offered to lessen the lethality, but we all declined the offer.


Adjule wrote:
Unless the LA+2 came from racial hit dice. Though I can't remember a race with racial hit dice that has a +0 level adjustment.

Nope, (I would quote 3.5 FAQ but it's lost somewhere among my gaming files) but:

Effective Character Level - all of your racial hit dice, class levels and level adjustment. Example: minotaur barbarian 2, has ECL 8 (6 racial HD, 2 class lvls, and LA +2)

Level Adjustment - affects your ECL, serves to bring "powerful" races in line with standard ones. It does not affect number of HD, feats, attribute increases, but counts towards xp necessary for next lvl and your WBL.

Sorry for the derail, but had to clarify :)


The latest gem from one of the games I'm playing in: All heals have a gold requirement cost. You -MUST- have a focus worth 25g that essentially has charges built into it. It erodes 1g in value per heal. These focuses are extremely rare, and can often only be found in large cities (which there only seems to be 2 of in this persons homebrew world, and they're over a months travel apart.)

In most games this wouldn't really be a problem. But in this game, loot is something that is rarely to be had.

Then again this was also the game where we had 6 players, all floating around level 2-3 with a single 4 fight 8 Worgs. So a roughly APL 4 party had a CR10 fight. It was exciting, except for the whole multiple death thing.


The ability to put 3 spells on a single trap trigger (in this case 3 empowered fireballs)


Preface: This isn't about one (or more) bad rules during an entire campaign, but rather about a series of rulings that displayed an overt GM versus players attitude.

I didn't understand what the term 'killer GM' really meant until I sat down at a PFS session with a pregen (I wanted to try out a new class). Before the game, the judge boasted about how hard the scenario was and how he was really looking forward to it. Halfway through the adventure, one of our party got ganged up on (a group of low-intelligence creatures used tactics that had half of them focusing on us one by one while the other half distracted the rest of the party) and critted to death.

In the next encounter, we faced a minotaur. The judge went directly against the encounter tactics (which you do not do in PFS unless the players have already invalidated them) to navigate its way through the entire party so it could get to my blaster caster (who was tucked in back), and warped my character away in a maze spell. Once the spell took effect, the minataur spent every round full attacking me with its greataxe. I was invisible but I received no concealment chance and there was no confusion about what square I was in- the minataur had a 20+ perception so it could always make the 20 DC to detect an invisible oponent in the room. The judge ruled that this meant that it could pin point my exact position, instead of just knowing there was an invisible creature in the room. I tried running away (haste, expeditious retreat) but no matter how fast I could run the minataur was "master of the maze" and always appeared next to me at the beginning of its turn. And it could still full attack, because.... yanno... no movement involved in chasing someone who can move 160+ feet per round. No flying allowed, because the minataur could control the height of the ceiling. I tried attacking it, but my character had been almost out of spells when sucked into the maze and I quickly exhausted the last two slots. The only way to escape was to make an intelligence check high enough that my sorcerer had to roll a natural 20 to succeed. My character had an unusually high AC, but that just made it a game of "let's see how many times I can roll 3 dice before one of them lands on an 18 or higher."

Needless to say, the judge got his natural 20 before I got mine. Then the monster somehow confirmed its crit (I don't remember if it had some auto confirm ability or if the judge got "amazingly lucky") and my poor caster went from full health to way below negative Con. The monster left the maze spell and promptly died upon being hit once. At that point the GM grinned hugely and told me how close to dead I'd had the monster, if only I'd cast a magic missile or something instead of trying to run away...

Two out of the five players at that table (myself included) avoid that judge like the plague now. A third player stopped showing up entirely.

(The deaths were later overruled by the VC of the area, and I'm told he spoke with the judge in private. The judge's games are still 'hardcore,' but I'm told they're not outright vicious now. I've heard that the judge still cheers up everytime he kills a PC though.)


Bill Dunn wrote:
When you roll in order, the usual expectation is that you will be picking your class after your stats. It's not really a question of hoping the GM "lets" you do so. There is a reason, by the way, that the chapter on stats appears before the chapter on classes.

Still, it nerfs the party as a whole unless the encounter CRs are built accordingly. With "4d6, drop lowest, in order" it is entirely possible to have a gimped party. If the group actually RPs then the dump-stats are going to be a real challenge.

Taking the party I rolled up for my example:
The Paladin's highest score was a 13, the Cleric's was a 12 and the Rogue's a 14. Swapping the classes around will get a better match but a Cleric with a 12 WIS, or a Paladin with a 13 CHA, is going to be gimped for life.

The others did better but if the group was just 4 PCs it's entirely possible to have every character rolled best suited to a martial class... or Sorcerers.

And what if my rolls make an awesome Wizard but I hate to play Wizards?

A 4d6-equivalent point buy is a much better way to go.

But "4d6, drop lowest, in order", well, it's a way to play the game and if everyone is on board then it works but it isn't prima facie Heroic and has notable side effects.


ikarinokami wrote:
not sure i would call it power gaming , I'm pretty sure some members of this board would throw up at how unoptimally built most of are, and it does help the mosters more than it helps us, becuase there are more of them. we had a few( it's probably more than a few) pcs die. the GM offered to lessen the lethality, but we all declined the offer.

I think it was the way you were phrasing things:

ikarinokami wrote:

...how hard core one my gaming group is.

i play in another game with no fumbles and rolling to confirm on crits and it's just not as exciting...

Makes it sound like you guys prefer power gaming. But whatever... as long as everyone likes the lethality :D


I'm the DM, but I did play with a guy who argued that cleave allowed him to take a single step, attack, step, attack, step attack, etc...
not in 3.5, not great cleave, the pathfinder cleave...

Grand Lodge

Lemme preface this by saying that the GM in question is otherwise one of the best GM's I know, and I always love playing in his game.

But there is one ruling he insists upon that is just irritating:

You cannot power attack with unarmed strike. His reasoning is that 3.5 (where he cut his teeth GMing) said you cannot power attack with light weapons, and unarmed strike is a light weapon. Pathfinder has no such rule and 3.5 specifically made an exception for natural attacks and unarmed strikes.

Talk about a game where you really, REALLY don't want to play a monk. (As opposed to the normal standard where you just really don't want to play a monk.)

Silver Crusade

EntrerisShadow wrote:

Lemme preface this by saying that the GM in question is otherwise one of the best GM's I know, and I always love playing in his game.

But there is one ruling he insists upon that is just irritating:

You cannot power attack with unarmed strike. His reasoning is that 3.5 (where he cut his teeth GMing) said you cannot power attack with light weapons, and unarmed strike is a light weapon. Pathfinder has no such rule and 3.5 specifically made an exception for natural attacks and unarmed strikes.

Talk about a game where you really, REALLY don't want to play a monk. (As opposed to the normal standard where you just really don't want to play a monk.)

Curious, how does Tiger Style work in his games then?

Grand Lodge

Rysky wrote:
EntrerisShadow wrote:

Lemme preface this by saying that the GM in question is otherwise one of the best GM's I know, and I always love playing in his game.

But there is one ruling he insists upon that is just irritating:

You cannot power attack with unarmed strike. His reasoning is that 3.5 (where he cut his teeth GMing) said you cannot power attack with light weapons, and unarmed strike is a light weapon. Pathfinder has no such rule and 3.5 specifically made an exception for natural attacks and unarmed strikes.

Talk about a game where you really, REALLY don't want to play a monk. (As opposed to the normal standard where you just really don't want to play a monk.)

Curious, how does Tiger Style work in his games then?

Honestly, it's never come up. He's had this ruling looooonnng before Ultimate Combat came out so those of us in the know gave up on monks long ago.

I can try to point him to it, but honestly after pointing out the actual exception and the fact that Pathfinder says nothing about power attacking with light weapons anyway, I doubt it'll make much of a difference.

Silver Crusade

EntrerisShadow wrote:
Rysky wrote:
EntrerisShadow wrote:

Lemme preface this by saying that the GM in question is otherwise one of the best GM's I know, and I always love playing in his game.

But there is one ruling he insists upon that is just irritating:

You cannot power attack with unarmed strike. His reasoning is that 3.5 (where he cut his teeth GMing) said you cannot power attack with light weapons, and unarmed strike is a light weapon. Pathfinder has no such rule and 3.5 specifically made an exception for natural attacks and unarmed strikes.

Talk about a game where you really, REALLY don't want to play a monk. (As opposed to the normal standard where you just really don't want to play a monk.)

Curious, how does Tiger Style work in his games then?

Honestly, it's never come up. He's had this ruling looooonnng before Ultimate Combat came out so those of us in the know gave up on monks long ago.

I can try to point him to it, but honestly after pointing out the actual exception and the fact that Pathfinder says nothing about power attacking with light weapons anyway, I doubt it'll make much of a difference.

Or he could remove the US requirements for style feats so everybody can use them!

Grand Lodge

11 people marked this as a favorite.

Not important:

Can I just say, that this thread is 1000% funnier when read through Gizoogle. Warning: Language may be NSFW. This thread Gizoogled.


Thewms wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

roflmao!

Silver Crusade

Thewms wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

Wow!

My brain exploded.

Shadow Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber
Thewms wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

YOU ARE A LIVING GOD.

Razmir's got nothin' on you.


Thewms wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

I can't stop gizziggling....


I know that site is addictive.
Try using it to read news sites.

Fox News wrote:
Dum diddy-dum, here I come biaaatch! Who tha f*#! standz behind Hamas n' why did they believe they could git away wit it?

Silver Crusade

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Aranna wrote:

I know that site is addictive.

Try using it to read news sites.

Fox News wrote:
Dum diddy-dum, here I come biaaatch! Who tha f+!~ standz behind Hamas n' why did they believe they could git away wit it?

Okay, but what does it say when the site has been Gizoogled ?

Liberty's Edge

Horrible things...beyond description.

Grand Lodge

To avoid derailing this thread any more...:
I'll make a thread about Gizoogle. Sorry for the hijack!

Scarab Sages

NobodysHome wrote:

Our "worst GM EVER" was Champions, not Pathfinder.

- All villains MUST recur, no matter how badly you defeated them/killed them/desecrated their bodies. He MADE them come back. Presumably so he didn't have to create new ones.
- Every villain must be able to penetrate the most powerful brick's defenses (hence one-shotting anyone who didn't dedicate a lot of points to defense) and must resist the most powerful attacker's assaults (rendering people who built anything other than raw DPR useless).
- If the fight went poorly, the bad guy got to rewrite the rules on the fly.

I think that's a common theme: The GM is SO insistent on the "story" that he or she abandons the rules to make things come out the way he/she wants them to.

That's a common theme among all bad GM's I've had the misfortune to play under.

Do you play with my Champions GM?

Actually, my GM's not quite that bad. But he does have a penchant for always bringing back villains so he doesn't have to create new ones. We used to have a running joke that Tuesday was Prison Escape Day, because no matter how many times we put the bad guys in jail, they would always escape or be released to come back and fight our team again.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Worst ruling I ever saw was someone who insisted that all female characters must get a -1 penalty to Strength and Constitution.

Even weirder, he insisted that it applied to all species and not just humans. When I pointed out that there are real species of animals for which females are usually bigger and stronger, he responded that "those don't really count."

I stopped playing with that person.


Had a GM that thought evasion was "cartwheeling" out of the way. Basically, it only worked in wide open spaces which in that particular campaign was about 10% of the time.


kyrt-ryder wrote:

Having a GM dictate to me who my character supposedly was based on my stats, trying to overrule my backstory and redirect the course of my RP from that point forward.

Haven't been back since.

A DM did this in an old D&D campaign. Said play evil, no problem. Play a cleric again no problem love the class. Play a Cleric serving Tiamat, essentially an evil dragon queen. Again no problem. My concept was a Morning Star wielding scale mail wearing damage dealer. His concept bikini wearing super model with no actual stats. No spells only dagger and even worse BAB of an NPC commoner. He insisted I play her. So I did. The end of the first session we were about to be captured I told him I was committing suicide. He asked why actually whining. I told him I hated what he did. He said things would get better. I asked how he never answered so I killed myself. Told him never do that again. He did in another game. I created a CIA spook with several cover identities he said you stay aboard the ship and twiddle your thumbs. Stopped playing with him after that.

Vigilant Seal

1 person marked this as a favorite.
MagusJanus wrote:
Chengar Qordath wrote:
MrSin wrote:
Here's another one, if you roll too high you do too well and fail. That one drives me a little nuts.

Ugh, that one. It's especially annoying since it usually seems to stem from GMs getting pissy over players doing too well.

Roll too high on Intimidate? The target faints in terror or runs away screaming at the top of his lungs.

Roll too high on Diplomacy to gather information? Instead of getting useful information, you get one useful thing buried in dozens of irrelevant facts.

Roll too well on your attack? You hit the monster so hard your weapon gets stuck in it's hide.

That would get beyond tiring in a hurry. The GM would have to be replaced after doing that enough times.

I will admit to being guilty of one shining example of this, and my girlfriend (who was the victim of this example) has never let me live it down. She (a paladin of Sarenrae) was attempting to proselytize an annoying but generally non-threatening tribe of goblins. Nat 20 Diplomacy. I ruled that the goblins were so moved by her words that anyone other than a believer in Sarenrae (including their compatriots) were heretics and infidels and needed to be purged. It turns out that critically succeeding on a skill check and having it (literally) blow up in your face is not a fun experience.

It's... actually kind of sad that my worst GM story is about myself.


Tabletop Crusader wrote:

I will admit to being guilty of one shining example of this, and my girlfriend (who was the victim of this example) has never let me live it down. She (a paladin of Sarenrae) was attempting to proselytize an annoying but generally non-threatening tribe of goblins. Nat 20 Diplomacy. I ruled that the goblins were so moved by her words that anyone other than a believer in Sarenrae (including their compatriots) were heretics and infidels and needed to be purged. It turns out that critically succeeding on a skill check and having it (literally) blow up in your face is not a fun experience.

It's... actually kind of sad that my worst GM story is about myself.

I wouldn't say that this is sad. You made what you thought was the best call and recognized that it probably wasn't. Learning from something like that is a good.

To toss one onto the pile, basic railroading. It just stinks when it feels like nothing you're doing matters in the campaign, because the GM's just going to make the plot happen, dangit!

In a recent game, it became very clear to us as a group that our enemy was herding us to a specific location. We utilized water-walk on the ocean to get away from our enemy and head in the opposite direction. Lo and behold, as the spell was nearing it's end and we decided to head onto land to fight the enemy where we wanted to fight them, a nearly identical location pops up, and we're hit with the impression that we'd be safer in there. Not the worst, but it still stinks to get the feeling that your choices don't really have a huge effect on the game.


Fumbles

Spell Perfection can't be used with a spell modified by metamagic because "it's not on your natural spell list".

Magus has to take spellstrike as an arcana at level 3.


3.5 game

Flying creatures need to be summoned onto a perch because RAW says they can only be summoned into an environment that "supports" them.


Tabletop Crusader wrote:

Nat 20 Diplomacy. ..... It turns out that critically succeeding on a skill check and having it (literally) blow up in your face is not a fun experience.

except of course, on skill checks, there are no criticals. A "nat 20" is just a check one better than a "nat 19".


1. Featherfall acted as protection from arrows.
2. You could only full attack one target without TWF or cleave.
3. Natural armor applied to touch AC.
4. Paladins had to fight "honorably" no flanking, no sneak attack if you got it, had to hold initative until the enemy they wanted to attack had acted.

Silver Crusade

Talonhawke wrote:

1. Featherfall acted as protection from arrows.

I'm curious for the reasoning behind this one.

Slowed gravitational field or something?


In a nutshell yes so as an immediate action you could stop incoming arrows. However at least the logic was consistent had an assassin try to death from above the party only for the wizard to feather fall him and negate his bonus damage from the fall.

Silver Crusade

Hehehe, as long as it f**~s with everyone equally.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Fight breaks out on a ship. The PCs, the mooks, and the traps/hazards are all on the middle part of the deck, while the BBEG is happily standing atop whatever that raised part of the deck in the back is called. My tablemate's turn comes up, and he correctly assesses that the BBEG really needs to be interfered with. So he says, "Okay, I withdraw and move this way..." and moves his mini along a path away from the main melee, up the stairs and into threatening range of the BBEG.

The GM says no, he can't get there in one turn, there's stairs.

Someone (don't remember who) points out that that's not a problem.

They suddenly become really steep stairs.

The original player points out that although steep stairs are difficult terrain and will cost extra movement, he still has enough movement to get there.

Suddenly the stairs are more like a ladder, requiring the climbing rules to come into effect, meaning you move at one quarter speed. And they suddenly expanded from one square to two.

-----------------------------

Different game, different GM. I'm playing a high level (well, high for PFS) character who uses lots of buffs, especially when expecting trouble. Honest player that I am, I diligently and conservatively track the time spent since buffing up, right down to knowing the order in which my buffs went up, always rounding partial minutes up to full minutes, and keeping careful tabs on the actions announced by all my tablemates.

Eventually, we're about to open a significant door, and a fellow player (likely also mindful of a buff or two), asks the GM how long we've been in the dungeon so far. Figuring that the GM has enough to track already, I decide to speak up and say that it's been about nine minutes, so folks will probably want to re-cast their minute-per-level buffs if possible. I'm just about to open my mouth, when the GM announces in total confidence, "You guys have been here about an hour."

-_-'


Jiggy wrote:

Different game, different GM. I'm playing a high level (well, high for PFS) character who uses lots of buffs, especially when expecting trouble. Honest player that I am, I diligently and conservatively track the time spent since buffing up, right down to knowing the order in which my buffs went up, always rounding partial minutes up to full minutes, and keeping careful tabs on the actions announced by all my tablemates.

Eventually, we're about to open a significant door, and a fellow player (likely also mindful of a buff or two), asks the GM how long we've been in the dungeon so far. Figuring that the GM has enough to track already, I decide to speak up and say that it's been about nine minutes, so folks will probably want to re-cast their minute-per-level buffs if possible. I'm just about to open my mouth, when the GM announces in total confidence, "You guys have been here about an hour."

-_-'

I had one DM time us once out of combat and the amount of real time it took to enter another combat was the amount it took- which was always longer than the game would have it. He also had a timer during combat and you only had so much time to do your turn.

And then he complained because we were always rushing and never did any roleplaying!


Jiggy wrote:

Different game, different GM. I'm playing a high level (well, high for PFS) character who uses lots of buffs, especially when expecting trouble. Honest player that I am, I diligently and conservatively track the time spent since buffing up, right down to knowing the order in which my buffs went up, always rounding partial minutes up to full minutes, and keeping careful tabs on the actions announced by all my tablemates.

Eventually, we're about to open a significant door, and a fellow player (likely also mindful of a buff or two), asks the GM how long we've been in the dungeon so far. Figuring that the GM has enough to track already, I decide to speak up and say that it's been about nine minutes, so folks will probably want to re-cast their minute-per-level buffs if possible. I'm just about to open my mouth, when the GM announces in total confidence, "You guys have been here about an hour."

-_-'

Did you query it? (Or was he the kind that takes questions as challenges?)

I've certainly screwed that sort of bookkeeping up before as a DM, but if a player told me I'd got it way wrong and it was only ten minutes tops I'd be relieved someone else was tracking it.


This is an old story, illustrating the bad side of "old school gaming"...

It was probably 1984 or '85. I was playing in my high school D&D club. New guy joins the club and volunteers to DM. We're short on DMs and I was getting a little burnt out, so we let him take over.

He turns out to be one of those DMs that never volunteers any information: You have to ask for details on everything. He basically ran his game kind of like those riddle/puzzle games where you're give a weird situation and have to ask yes/no questions to figure out what happened.

Anyway, we're traveling through a forest and our way is blocked by a river.

GM: What do you do?
Player: How wide is the river?
GM: About 1000 feet.
Player: How deep is the river?
GM: Well, near the shore it's only a few inches, but it's probably no more than 3 or 4 feet feet deep at the deepest.
Player: Okay, we cross the river.
GM: Okay, everyone make a Dex check.
Players: <several failures>
GM: Okay, anyone who failed the Dex check is swept over the waterfall and takes *rolls dice* 87 hp damage!
Players: WHAT WATERFALL?!
GM: The waterfall that's only about fifty feet downstream.
Players: YOU DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT A WATERFALL!!
GM: *smirks* You didn't ask!

We stopped letting him DM after that.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Steve Geddes wrote:
Jiggy wrote:

Different game, different GM. I'm playing a high level (well, high for PFS) character who uses lots of buffs, especially when expecting trouble. Honest player that I am, I diligently and conservatively track the time spent since buffing up, right down to knowing the order in which my buffs went up, always rounding partial minutes up to full minutes, and keeping careful tabs on the actions announced by all my tablemates.

Eventually, we're about to open a significant door, and a fellow player (likely also mindful of a buff or two), asks the GM how long we've been in the dungeon so far. Figuring that the GM has enough to track already, I decide to speak up and say that it's been about nine minutes, so folks will probably want to re-cast their minute-per-level buffs if possible. I'm just about to open my mouth, when the GM announces in total confidence, "You guys have been here about an hour."

-_-'

Did you query it? (Or was he the kind that takes questions as challenges?)

Taking questions as challenges (or taking challenges, even in clear black-and-white, as mutinous insubordination; and so forth) is fairly common among the leadership culture of PFS, in my experience. So I just declared my re-casting of certain buffs (the ones that were actually about to expire) and moved on, quietly moving forward with a correct game state, relying on my knowledge that the GM wouldn't bother to verify anything.

The weird feelings that resulted from repeatedly needing to use devious methods in order to play honest and ethical games were part of why I quit PFS. :/


Jiggy wrote:


Taking questions as challenges (or taking challenges, even in clear black-and-white, as mutinous insubordination; and so forth) is fairly common among the leadership culture of PFS, in my experience.

By no means limited to PFS. Nor does it seem, in my experience, to be any more common there. YMMV.

And, I am not a PFS fan, either.

Dark Archive

Isn't that more a universal thing anyway.

Sczarni

1 person marked this as a favorite.

So I played with Gary Gygax's nephew or some other distant relative. So this guy is thinking we are so lucky to be playing with him, his high horse is already set and well fed and ready to trot.

Which is all fine and dandy, just the normal stuff of my past characters are godlike and blah blah blah. So after the third week, I believe our third game, he gets the idea that he needs to end the campaign. And what better way to end the campaign then the anti party that never dies permanently?

They come back to life after a certain amount of rounds once defeated. No problem, actually, since being a vampire, you don't need to kill anyone. Sounds weird, but dominate humanoid works wonders on humanoid enemies.

So we kick the trash out of this anti party through teamwork and whatnot until the my vampire tries to grapple a paladin. I needed to drain him to make him stop his nonsense of resurrecting over and over, and raise him as a vampire spawn for the funnies.

In 3.5, the grapple rules are so easy to use, that it's just a touch attack and whatnot. Easy peasy strength of lemon squeazy. Right when I grab him, the DM says, "Okay guys, let's meet up again at next time, because I have to plan this stuff out."

Okay, no problem. Next game, he comes in, we start up. Right when we get back to my turn, he lays in with, "By the by, since your a vampire, your alignment shifted to chaotic evil, how many alignment shifts is that?" But the template only shifts me towards evil, not chaoti--"How many is that?" Fine. It's Lawful Neutral to Chaotic Evil. That's three. "Great, you now have 3 temporary negative levels."

What? Seriously, what? Well, I still have him grappled and I'm going to drain him. "No, he grabs your arm and he lays on hands you." But it's my turn. "Well that's what he does in response to you doing that." So on my turn, I was defeated and turned into a cloud of mist by the hitpoints that I lost with temporary levels and the paladin's counter attack. But we're not done here, not yet...

Sczarni

A few rounds later, the paladin dies, is disarmed, and the party members laugh and have a good time high fiving each other about taking out this so called anti-party.

Then, the DM guy starts up with, "Then this portal to another dimension opens and this big ol' blue giant guy steps in." The DM's friend, who was a terrible player who stacked unstackable things, starts to smile. I can already feel that this is going to be just as bad.

So, this giant guy is using Pathfinder stuff. That's right, we just crossed systems. "It's a hybrid character!" Says DM's friend, obviously proud. So we roll init, we get to it.

This giant guy is getting attacked and he just laughs, his AC obviously too high for us to hit. Okay, fine. The party members start to switch to his touch AC for things and start doing 100+ damage on turns. Which the giant responds with, "Does a 42 hit? Well, since he crits on a 3+, he just crits." Seriously, 3-20 crit. No joke.

DM's friend pipes up with, "Yeah, he's a mythic character, rank 10, something another. The mythic crit stuff and the regular crit stuff and all this crit gear stack." Wanted to tell that man he's an idiot.

So one by one, the party members are crit-deaded, and this stupid giant prevents escapes by a vorpal warp-something or another that just returns you to the same spot, that he didn't need to spend a turn to do.

Without further a do, all party members are killed by this giant who had 400+ hitpoints, the magi and cleric and other characters throwing everything they have until they had nothing left. And the DM says, "Wasn't that a fun session? Now you can use your characters for a different adventure, isn't that cool?" It's like striving to fight an impossible fight, that we weren't supposed to win, winning, and then being curb-stomped flat by stupidity from a different system.

The players, myself included, we're not smiling. Until one player, who was told about this, was spared...to be the giant's b--. Which has happened to him before, and then we laughed, because that was funny.


Golly, this thread's been fun (in a sick, can't-look-away-from-the-train-wreck kind of way). On the plus side, while there have been occasional errors, rule misreadings, etc., in my games, I have to say I don't really have any horror stories to tell about bad rulings -- no malice, no adamant positions.

Closest thing to offer are some PFS rules (which, rather than terrible GMs and/or players, are why I don't PFS).

Anyway, I look forward to more awful rulings.

:)


Jiggy wrote:
Taking questions as challenges (or taking challenges, even in clear black-and-white, as mutinous insubordination; and so forth) is fairly common among the leadership culture of PFS, in my experience.

Cheers. It seems to me that if one signs up to be a PFS DM (with it's multiple subjective positions on how things are "meant" to be played, coupled with its goal of being as universal and objective as possiblie) one should be ready to encounter people with radically different approaches and to brace oneself to meet someone who knows the rules better than you do.

Being open to being questioned (and actually listening to see if they've got a point) is a really important skill in life, I think. But also quite rare. It seems to me we generally find it hard not to jump to defending our pre-existing position, often before the other person has even finished speaking.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thread necromancy! I want in on this.

All in one game, some version of Night Below using 2e:

1. DMPC party informs us that we're going to take a quest, or else. Are they forcing us? No, other than tying our characters up and gagging them when they protest. But they're really nice DMPCs, we should love them and do as they say. And they can kick our asses, so we'd better do it. That's one kind of character hook, I guess...

2. DM rules that something our characters tried and failed at (bribing a supposedly friendly NPC with pie, which it's been established that this NPC will do anything for said pie - and the NPC is the only one that can help us out of our prison, but currently "doesn't feel like it") - with no rolls - is automatically successful when their DMPC does it, immediately after our failure ("Do you want pie, NPC?" "Pie, yay!" *fetches the key to our cells for the DMPC*).

3. We come upon a canyon full of evil fire giants who plan to destroy us and the outside world. For some reason their canyon is dry, despite being a few yards from a huge underground lake. My character wants to use the Dig spell to dig a furrow that will lead the lake into the canyon, flooding it. No "it can't flood it fast enough." No "that's not a good idea, for these reasons." No "the stone floor is too hard," or anything of that nature. Just, "you can't do that." Apparently the spell can't even be cast. So we all are forced into melee with the fire giants, during which we're captured and (of course) our bacon is saved by the DMPC party.

4. The DM informs us that we're actually NPCs in a game she's playing with some other people, who are the DMPCs. That's why we couldn't be allowed to have any effect on the campaign, NPCs or surroundings. She believes this information should make us proud to have been allowed to play with these characters.

Yeah, I had to ragequit after that.

Another DM, this from a solo game that went from pretending to use 2e rules to flat-out freeform (thus not so much rulings as general idiocy):

1. His main favorite move was "you lose control of your character, he does terrible things. Now you're back in control." Used sparingly, this might not have been annoying. As a regular event, it left me wondering why, when he had the ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD to play, he felt compelled to control my character, too. My "favorite" example of this was when he said that due to being infected somehow with some kind of seed of evil/demonic possession, my character turned into a horrible demon and raped his girlfriend. And enjoyed it. That last detail is pretty much the final straw.

2. His second favorite move was "it was all a dream." Again, used sparingly, it wouldn't have been so frustrating. Used so often that basically half of everything my character did was annulled, though, it was... aggravating. (Note: the event above was not one of those times. Not that it would have been okay if it was.)

3. I actually really liked his NPCs... back when that's what they were. They were living, thinking beings reacting to their world in an interesting way, with interesting personalities. Then they became DMPCs. The difference, to me, is that NPCs are there to make the game interesting for the player. DMPCs are there to show off how cool the DM thinks he is, usually via nerfing, belittling, and/or beating up the PC(s). Towards the end, it seemed like he'd have been happier writing a book about his DMPCs - and, it seemed, casting my PC as a rather unpleasant sidekick.

4. Finally, this DM loooved to make short statements, then make you fish for more information or try to play off the complete lack of information he'd given you (we played online). He would post a short sentence someone had said, without mentioning who. He would have his characters mock plans I made based on what he had told me, because the truth was something else - which my character should have known, but didn't. Because... actually, I have no idea why. I think he was just a prick. This got really old, really fast, but he didn't seem to know what I was talking about when I asked him, politely, to tell me what my character would know about any given situation. From the environment, to which of the NPCs he knew well was talking to him, to basic knowledge about the world that anyone should know, to specific knowledge that only my character COULD know, and absolutely should... either getting more info was like pulling out teeth, or I got smacked down in-game for acting on incomplete information.

5. OK, bonus round: Towards the end, my character couldn't do anything right, despite being (supposedly) high-level. He could just about handle what an 8th level fighter could (he was a gish-type character); everything else either failed, was made irrelevant, or was impossible for whatever reason. I couldn't affect the world or the story at all, which I'd be less annoyed with if it were some railroad module game. But it was a freeform game. Turned me off them, for sure. At least if you're following a ruleset, the DM has to make an effort/explanation to nerf you, rather than waving his hand and doing it by fiat.

Non-directly-game-related rant related to the second story:

I actually really wanted to give this guy a chance to redeem himself, because his early games were a lot of fun, and he was one of my oldest friends (we're talking 1st grade)... but finally he just didn't show up at the agreed time for a meeting. And then the next, and the next... I even wrote him a physical letter asking him what was up, and he never answered. That was 6 years ago. I know he's okay, because he's on social media. He's apparently just more of a jackhole than I thought.

I guess he wouldn't have changed, anyway. He was, self-declared, proud that he'd never played in a game. Not one, in any system OR freeform. I'm not sure how ignorance of half the table experience is a virtue, but to him it is, I guess. It sure explains his DM faults (at least, they're faults in my eyes). I'll always wonder how that game's story would have ended, though. It was pretty entertaining, despite everything.

Whew, that got long. Thanks for letting me rant, it's cathartic.

Edit: Threw things under spoilers to not eat the whole page.

451 to 500 of 503 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Gamer Life / General Discussion / What are some of the worst rulings you've had to deal with in games? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.