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Consider Gandalf: Could he have unloaded implosion on the troll in the Mines of Moria? Undoubtedly. Then a meteor swarm for the rest and the encounter is over in two rounds.
But why doesn't he? Because he knows that Sam, Merry, Pippin and Frodo have a long way to go and they're going to need to gain a few levels before they get there. And the only way that's going to happen is with EXPERIENCE. So, in that encounter, Gandalf does very little. Oh, sure, he's swinging his sword and thumping with his staff. But let's be clear: He's a wizard in melee ! ! !
So you've optimized your character to thrash everything real quick with a sword. Stand back and shoot a crossbow instead. Delay a round. Ready an action to attack someone trying to flee. The reason? Your other friends need to learn how to handle themselves because you're not always going to be there for them.
And if things get too hairy for them? THEN you can swoop in and end it. Just because your character is optimized doesn't mean you need to play him optimally.
So your telling him to just not play the game because everyone else doesn't know how to play/refuse to actually learn... cool advice bro...
I like how people are complaining about 1 trick ponies being the problem...
1 trick ponies are some of the weakest of optimized characters because they are so easily countered.
A perfect example of this? Wizards.
Which wizard is seen as the strongest (short of abusing ambiguous rules like the Snow Cone Wish Factory)? The God Wizard (aka the control wizard) and the Conjurer. Why? Because they got a answer for everything. They are ALL about options. They have 1000 tricks to pull from. What is one of the weakest? The Blaster wizard. The Optimized blaster wizard is the very definition of One trick pony (FIREBALL!!!!).
You also can't hold martials to the same standard as casters... A 1 trick pony Magus (i.e. every magus ever) still have options liek fly if his shocking grasp isn't an option. A full martial though HAS to put everything they can into combat and, in particulair, their one schtick because they are so limited. In combat all they can really do is hit it with a stick or perform a Combat Maneuver (which is a whole different monster there...) and combat styles are so feat intensive that they need to burn half or more of their feats just to keep up (Two Weapon fighting and archery.. im looking at you)
he made a tower shield wielding bull rusher for Pete's sake.
He jsut knows how to take an idea and actually make it WORK. So, in other words, he isn't being a moron and grabbing "Cosmopolitan" on his Dwarf Fighter because "I IZ A RP MASTER!!!" He just makes characters that can actually stand up on their own without being hand held and babied by the DM.
Additionally, the bull rushing character was a perfect teamwork guy. He pushed bad guys against a wall so his teammates could hammer them down.
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...but it's just bad GMing if you cannot strategize around an optimized character.
It's bad playing, on either side of the screen, if you can't play a game that works with the rest of the group you're in. There's not "one right way" to play the game to which everybody else has to adapt. That means that, no, in fact, it's not bad GMing if you cannot, or don't wish to, strategize around an overly optimized character, or if you don't want to strategize around any sort of thing your players bring that doesn't fit with the game you're trying to run. It's just a case of people with different gaming styles playing together-- people who probably shouldn't be playing together.
Styles different from what you prefer aren't wrong or bad, necessarily; they're just different. It's only bad when they try to mix, especially if they do so when each player has the idea that his is the one true way, and those who fail to adapt to him are bad at GMing or whatever.
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Honestly, the people here who are vociferously pro-this GM should not GM games; it doesn't have to be an arms race, just smart officiating and good planning.
While I'm not vociferously pro-this GM -- in fact, I think in this thread we really don't know what this GM is doing. We have the player's view of it, but as many others have pointed out, this could be a distorted view. Certainly I've seen "one side" presentations in the past of these kinds of conflicts where the side presented was highly distorted (based on some actual knowledge of the situation). And, reading between the lines of what the OP has said (particularly in some replies), I would not be surprised if the OP did in fact (probably honestly) have a very distorted view of this conflict.
Those who are vociferously anti-this GM should be aware that they don't really have good evidence that the GM is as bad as he or she has been portrayed. (But nor do we have good evidence to be pro-this GM.)
I would say, though, that I have GMed a lot, and a lot of people have enjoyed it when I did, so, yes, I should be GMing games. But I assuredly should not be GMing games that you are playing in. Hopefully neither of us will ever have to be in a situation to test that.
