I have been very fortunate to have a lot of great GM's.
But the bad GM that sticks in my mind was a major cheapskate. We were running a 2nd edition D&D game and our characters were around 7th or 8th level. Many of us were grossly under geared. I had no magical weapon or armor and many of the creatures we were fighting often required at least a +1 weapon. I played a psionicist who's only job was to dimension door our party out when things got out of hand, and things always got out of hand. I had limited engagement in combat because I had to reserve a large chunk of my PSP's to get the party out of it's inevitable jam.
Anyway we came across our first and only artifact weapon in a storage locker with the brooms and mops. It was an odd monk weapon and the only monk in the party was his GMPC who just happened to be in the party for only a few game sessions.
Total d%^k move.
-MD
Rise, chicken.
Not Pathfinder...but in the spirit of the thread.
Warhammer Fantasy RP session. My dwarven warrior was crossing a bridge when a noble and his retinue came across. The noble insulted my dwarf and threatened him with bodily harm if he didn't get out of his way. When the dwarf didn't act suitably impressed, the noble's guards grabbed him by the beard and threw him off the bridge.
Why was that so bad? Well, because the dwarf failed to get revenge against the noble. That's bad because this was warhammer. There dwarves really can't let things like that go, and if they fail to get revenge it drives them crazy. Crazy as in their emotional pain never fading, so the embarassment/anger always stays fresh in their minds. So the only logical solution to this was when the character leveled up he switched careers to be a 'slayer.' That's a dishonored dwarf who seeks out a heroic death in combat. That meant selling all of his armor, making his hair into an orange mowhawk, tattooing his body and walking naked into combat.
That character did indeed end up dying. Yes, armor would have helped him. And the GM knew that this was going to happen...likely why there were no good options to getting revenge on said nobleman.
All that said though...I do have to admit that it was very warhammer. :)
Ogre encounter. Played as per the Bestiary write-up of how ogres act.
I don't believe I need say more. That GM later whited out that entire page, and has been known to rip the pages detailing ogres out of later Pathfinder books and simply burn them.
Mostly, I have had pretty good luck when it comes to tabletop gaming, though there are some times when the GM-of-the-moment pulled some rather ridiculous stunts.
Campaign 1: A "Stealth" game, where the premise was that "As rogues never get a chance to really be rogues due to their plate covered noise machine fellow PCs, I'd like to run a game where everyone is skilled in stealth, and go about the campaign as a special ops team". Cool concept.
First Problem: GM was an optimization focused power gamer, while none of the PCs were (though some of us learned to optimize as a consequence of the game), and given the focus on stealth and skills, combat ability was (already) substantially sub-par. And as a general rule most encounters got "spiced up".
Second Problem: When using pass without trace to exfiltrate from a target area, having raided an enemy base but not fought the boss (ranger 7) or his dragon mount, said ranger then fast tracked us from the back of his dragon having strafed back and forth across the region until he spotted out trail (after pass without trace ended several miles away from his base).
Third Problem: Said ranger gained 2 Barbarian levels so that the primary ranged character (a sniper rogue using material from swashbuckling adventures) couldn't sneak attack him.
Fourth Problem: Said ranger gained an elf bane bow and an unlimited supply of human bane arrows. Guess what 2/3rds of the party were one of.
Fifth Problem: Later in the campaign, when moving up a mountain pass towards the finale, a platoon of enemy troops walked down the road, all using Aid Another on spot so they had a bonus of over +40 and automatically saw us hiding with total cover.
Sixth Problem: We finally sneak into the final bosses' chamber, noting that we're a level lower than we should be (for various reasons) and the cleric we face not only has extra minions, but "activates a device that instantly casts all his buffs".
The campaign had a lot of (very) cool moments, but every so often the GM forced a failure on the group that really wasn't appreciated.
Campaign 2: Sci-fi game where the GM couldn't remember their own plot as well as his players. There were other issues along the way, but this was the crux of it. Memo to all prospective GMs: Write your plot down, and most of all read your notes before each session. Having the GM pull a dramatic reveal about one of the PCs background, only for it to fall completely flat because they had forgotten what they had previously revealed about the character and the entire aspect of the plot they were associated with. And so when the new revelation contradicted everything they had previously done, it became blatant that there was not actually a plot to the game, and it was being made up on the fly.
Same campaign, and a lesser point: The NPC who would not go away. The GM had an NPC they thought was cool. Problem was, none of us did. So even though none of us wanted anything to do with this NPC, they not only wound up as part of our unit, but constantly changed personality to try and be more likable, which only alienated the PCs further.
Campaign 3: The GM was running the game from a module, and frequently started dozing off at the table while doing so.
Same GM also believed that 3.5 CR system worked by determining the "Effective Encounter Level of the Party" (Hint: A party of four PCs would have an EL as their APL+4) and then using that to determine what an appropriate encounter would be, making us fight APL+5 to APL+7 encounters regularly, with the majority of the party being terrible at combat (either by character design or by what they did at the time). Ugh. We used 37 charges of wands of cure light wounds in one encounter...
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Unless you had accord beforehand, that's not really the GM's fault.The question didn't say it had to be the GM's fault.
Plus while it's the "worst" thing they've done I don't blame them for doing it. Considering the tales I hear of terrible GMs I'm fine with putting up with it (though I do try to let them know).
It's just a correct answer to the question.
It's kinda implied with the title "Worst things your GM has done to you?".
Just pointing out the oddity of "GM not holding your hand constantly" as "worst".