We've all played with Bad DMs, but what are some of your worst experience with DMs that are ~Not~ cause by DMs being Rookies.
My favorite was when I made a dedicated Fire Sorcerer in 3.5. Dedicating entirely to one element means the DM can very easily shut you down--sometimes by accident--but it also means that he can build encounters that allow the rest of the party to shine.
This DM decided that since the primary damage dealer was a fire mage that specializes in ONLY fire and utility spells that all of the enemies should be fire immune--even the enemies that normally are not fire immune had templates to make them as such. Go into a dungeon, encounter a fire elemental and think "Oh, cool, so he is showing the party that I'm not the god of death and destruction, and that they have to do things." Go into the next room, everything else is fire immune. "Oh, he is one of ~those~ DMs. Teleport character home, then go out to get a drink since I'm going to be as useful walking to the local gas station as I will be playing.
When I asked the PCs what the rest of the dungeon was like they did, in fact, inform me that everything was fire immune. EVERYTHING, even the DOORS!
That would be a bad GM move, yes, unless the quest was to the center of Mt. Flambé's volcanic crater. Have you tried working this out with him before or after the game?
I accidentally did something similar to a player last session.
The party had been exploring the ruins of a burnt shell of an Opera House, investigating a haunting. I had designed around a 6th level party with a ranger, rogue, inquisitor, wizard, and a tetori monk. The player with the rogue had been frustrated by the mechanics of his character* and wanted to roll up a different PC. He decided to go with sorcerer and all seemed well until I realized he selected fire based spells almost exclusively. Almost all of the encounters in this burnt out Opera House were fire immune (fire based undead and demons mostly) and the player had a miserable time. For next session I've done a significant amount of replanning (flexible design FTW) and am expecting a fairly balanced fight with the BBEG (now a Charnel Hound variant composed of the bodies of ancient Kellid cultists instead of a demon) where the sorcerer can play a meaningful role.
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GM and players have to work together for the fun of the group. A GM should never build encounters specifically to annoy one of the characters, but the players should also not catch avery occasion to break the game with their own build that does 123213128 damage per turn. It' s not a simple job, but of course it' very rewarding.
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Well, if the next three adventures were full of fire resistant creatures, then I would say yes, GMing fail. Nothing is worse than being "neutered" by a GM that dislikes your strengths and renders you basically useless all the time.
However, if a player chooses to make a one trick pony as a character, they run the risk that sometimes there are no nails for their hammer to hit. No different than an archer in a game where there is nothing but tight subterranean tunnels. This is the tradeoff for being better than normal vs most other challenges: sometimes you are going to be ineffective against specialized challenges.
The context socially out of game and storywise in game is not clear as to whether there were other indicators this was being done to "pick on" the fire sorcerer. I think it is completely fair game to throw some opposing challenges against characters, in particular powerful ones.
Question for the OP: Did you have any spells, powers, or magic items that would have let you support the party or do anything or did every single one of your spells have a fire component? Perhaps I don't understand the specifics of your character design, but that would seem a bit short-sighted to me. If you did have some other spells, perhaps you should have looked on it as a challenge to see how you could support your party while handicapped. Sometimes this can result in the coolest stories and the best encounters.
That would be a bad GM move, yes, unless the quest was to the center of Mt. Flambé's volcanic crater. Have you tried working this out with him before or after the game?
Except: we were nowhere near a volcano, probably in the middle of a continental plate with no mountains anywhere, with there being no reason for there to be fire immune anything.
The reason I say it is bad DMing is because I ~gave~ him my sheet, explained to how how the character worked in the hopes that he would then use said information to NOT have BBEGs that are fire immune but fire resistant (5 or 10) to make it so I would not insta-kill his BBEG and that I'd probably do around the same damage of the Barbarian.This was years ago, I'm just bringing it up mostly because of reading the choices that some DMs here talk about making. Mine is the DM VS PCs idea that so many beginning DMs have.
Tonight while I was DMing some people died in The Dragon's Demand (They went to the Wizard's Mannor at level 1, defeated the mannor and went to the cave with the monster that has +16 to hit and does 1d8+12 damage on hit. 4 of the 6 escaped with their lives, and the other 2 rolled up characters. Instead of pulling out the dungeon on map I just ran through it, averaged initiatives (take 10), read description, quickly cover everything, do the fight if there is one, do the skill checks if they are there, move on. In 1 hr of not taking the module seriously we got to where an entire 6 hour session got us normally. lol Everyone loved it.
To answer your question directly, he had my character sheet and decided to change/replace/template monsters to be fire immune. There is no reason for EVERY SINGLE MONSTER to be fire immune--EVEN THE DOORS--in an environment where there is no fire damage. There wasn't even magma in the dungeon.
A Good DM would have told me that everything is fire immune, and that I should probably take different elements. He just said, "Oh, ok. I'll give it back to you at game start" and proceeded to negate my character entirely, thereby losing my trust in him and not coming back. Later I found out that he started only sending enemies with high DR like DR 10, but enemies that require different materials thereby making it so penetrating the DR was impossible. There would be any combination of Lycanthropes, Fey, Undead (Skeletons and Zombies), and outsiders in any single encounter just to negate the DPR of the then melee heavy group.
He wasn't even the "poker" DM, he was just a Jerk. Throwing Instant Death traps as a party with no ability to find them, and other various crap.
When you look up BAD DM in the Dictionary, you would get a picture of his face, his name, his SSN, his finger prints, and probably his DNA just so you can avoid him at all costs. Later I learned that he used to burn through groups and wasn't welcome at the local game shops where we lived.
Question for the OP: Did you have any spells, powers, or magic items that would have let you support the party or do anything or did every single one of your spells have a fire component? Perhaps I don't understand the specifics of your character design, but that would seem a bit short-sighted to me. If you did have some other spells, perhaps you should have looked on it as a challenge to see how you could support your party while handicapped. Sometimes this can result in the coolest stories and the best encounters.
The character was made to be a "fire mage" who burned everything to cinders, we went with the idea that a necromancer was trying to do something and accidentally summoned a fire elemental's soul into a fetus before the actual soul could come in. So the kid was all "FIRE FIRE FIRE!" The entire point of the character was to make something easily made less useful, and while there are metamagic feats I could have taken to swap things around it just wasn't as true to the character as burn everything.
We were not playing modules, scenarios, or anything official. It was all homebrew. I gave him my character 2 weeks ahead of time, and therefore there literally is no excuse. Either tell me that there are fire immune monsters or change the dungeon.The issue is that there was no reason for everything to be fire immune, none, nada, non-existent reasons. Remember: ~EVERYTHING~ that could be damaged was fire immune. The other players were holding torches against doors, piling flammable crap against them from outside to burn them down, and nothing.
That dungeon was specifically made to negate the offensive caster. Still though, the Barbarian would have more consistent damage than the caster. It is hard to just 1-shot monsters when all of your spells scale off of d6 and d8 damage/level if said monsters are supposed to be strong. The Barbarian did higher DPR than the Fire Mage of DOOM because the spells I took did a ton of damage, but had to be charged to do their stupid damage.
It was a boring campaign anyway.
This is why I always try to make stories where the outcome is important to the PCs. The Plot doesn't need to be "world changing" but the outcome for failure should influence something majorly.
I love having shadow wars going on, and while conspiracies can be hard to run I still love running them. I also love intelligent and prepared BBEGs. They do not need to be cheap, but they tend to know exactly what the PCs can do even if they never expect the PCs to make it to them they have a plan.Though my villains are not cackling evil, but instead they have big evil plans that, in a way, are really good in what they do in their own way...well...after the current established orders are annihilated by whatever their "goodness" rises to the "most fit" group. Armies are strong and everything, but what about if arcane casters suddenly all became 10 times more powerful in every way....
Once had a gm that cheated, and we all knew it. I had a paladin built for tanking, had an insane AC. We fought a few demons and we had figured out that they needed to crit me to even hit me. Only way we figured that out was I got critted 3 times in one round by the same demon. Coincidence? I think not. So I got fortification I saw his roll it was a 07, sweet I don't get crit this time, his response was "No I go from 100 down to 76." A little later in the night same situation, I'm getting hit with a crit, I have my fortification up and I see a 98. Sweet I'm not getting crit hitted. "It's from 01-25." Load of bs.
Once had a gm that cheated, and we all knew it. I had a paladin built for tanking, had an insane AC. We fought a few demons and we had figured out that they needed to crit me to even hit me. Only way we figured that out was I got critted 3 times in one round by the same demon. Coincidence? I think not. So I got fortification I saw his roll it was a 07, sweet I don't get crit this time, his response was "No I go from 100 down to 76." A little later in the night same situation, I'm getting hit with a crit, I have my fortification up and I see a 98. Sweet I'm not getting crit hitted. "It's from 01-25." Load of bs.
I don't cheat. I don't even cheat FOR my players because I realized something: death is vital in Pathfinder. You will die. You should die. YOU MUST DIE. It is part of the game.
People don't learn to take every monster seriously if they are invincible demi-gods. If they know that you will "go easy on them" so they can win then there is no triumph when they win.Ultimately arbitrariness is the death of the game. It is the knife that slides into your players' kidneys and twists. Adventuring is stupidly dangerous: it is the single reason that only around 1% of people are crazy enough to do it and of that most fail and seek a day job or die.
When I use random chance I'll roll the chance in front of the PCs. Enemies randomly pick people. IF there are 3 people, roll 1d6, 1-2 is Person A, 3-4 is Person B, 5-6 is Person C.
The important thing is to have fun. If you know the DM is cheating for you then nothing really feels like it was because you made it happen. If the DM is cheating against you then you just feel, well, cheated.
Oh I agree, I was a warrior of the holy light of Milani the Everbloom. I was a martyr, I expected to die. I was the parties bulwark of defense, expecting to save my comrades before I fell... and I never came close until I got critted 3 times in a row. Granted I like building tanky characters that give enemies a reason to hit me. But when you feel like the gm is against you it doesn't help you enjoy the game. I've been in situations where the gm built things to counter certain characters, or negate certain combos and that's fine until it becomes an entire dungeon of that. That is a jerk move indeed.
Then there is when the GM is playing a character too. That usually becomes the GM's PC show and the rest of the players are just there to watch how awesome the 'NPC' really is.
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Background, we were playing a "Shared World Campaign". Everyone in the group had a section of the same world that they dmed. We would get from section to section via gates (think Stargate). I was playing an illiterate sor.
The first time the group went to DM X's part of the world we were met by the servant of a God who gave us gifts (directly from said deity) to help us on our quest. Most of the group got rather generic magical armor. DM X's archer got cool Bracers of Archery. And my illiterate sor got ... a spellbook, a nonmagical, regular spellbook with several spells written in it.
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A GM should remember to not get too attached to his or her own creations.