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This is just me grumbling about a session from a while back.
I'm playing in a long running game. We are all friends. The players are all fun and the GM is usually pretty good, but he can get a bit heavy handed when something happens he is not prepared for.
We were in an encounter against a group of soldiers. They were pretty much an overwhelming force and our party had been instructed not to engage in open combat with them anyway. Basically they were blocking the road and we were going to have to find another way around.
The GM was playing the leader of the guards as especially antagonistic. He is hurling insults, accusations and generally derisive comments at us. I'm playing a knight like character that is obsessed with honor and image. On top of that, in the previous session we all had to deal with some negative consequences after someone impugned the honor of our party. I figure there is no way my character would just let it go, so he challenges the leader of the guards to an honor duel. I figure this could go bad, but didn't see another way I could play it.
The GM has the guard instantly attack. The GM tells me how the Guard Captain launches his attack and I tell the GM how I plan to counter. It was a pretty good counter.
The GM stops and says that the guard didn't really attack me that way.
After a few moments the GM says the Guard Captain attacks my character with a different tactic. I say OK, and tell him my response to that attack. Once again, it was a decent counter.
The GM stops again and says that the Guard captain didn't really attack that way either.
He calls a five minute halt to the game and pages through a couple books and picks out the most powerful magic item he can find. When we start the game back up, the Guard Captain is now armed with a weapon capable of incapacitating a character with nonlethal damage in a single blow.
Coincidentally, my character is immune to that particular magic item. When I inform the GM of this, the GM declares that this is a different version of the item that will bypass my character's immunity. In addition, he has the item do lethal damage instead and kills my character.
Now, we were able to raise the character from the dead, but there are repercussions. There is a permanent loss of stats and some system specific penalties that will put my character behind the curve for probably a few months of gaming.
Am I wrong to consider this a rather egregious abuse of GM power?
I didn't want to make a big deal about it during the game, but I talked to him about it outside of the game. He didn't think it was a big deal. He said he just didn't have anything planned so it was a "spur of the moment decision".
Now, during games, he regularly says he has to make encounters easy because "Some people get upset when characters get killed."
I finally called him out last session and informed him that there is a big difference between having a difficult scenario where a character might die, and intentionally killing a character.
Am I wrong to be annoyed by this? I know it's not a bid deal, but it irritates the heck out of me.
If he did indeed purposely killing a character off then you were right to call him out. Sure, it can be argued that any time a PC dies it's because of the GM, through the protagonist, kills a character that it could have been designed to happen, but generally, that's just taken as the normal thing that happens in games.
Easily 75% of each of my sessions is made up on the spot because I have to keep up with the PCs and their unpredictable natures. But I've never killed anyone because it was the "spur of the moment".
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Egregious use of GM power? Absolutely. Also, childish petulance for retconning his melee attack move multiple times, then trying to smash you with a metaphorical big magic hammer.
"Spur of the moment" my @$$. He hit the reset button three times to get what he wanted.
You are not wrong to be annoyed. That you can even ask that question demonstrates the patience of a saint. Any GM that pulled that crap on me, changing reality multiple times in order to kill me character, would find himself with one ripped up character sheet and one less player at his table, permanently.
And it wouldn't be "Waaaah! You killed my fav'rit character!" It would be "Okay, clearly your style of play and mine are inherently incompatible; I have no further use for this character sheet or this campaign." (I'll grant that doesn't sound very different.)
Thanks for the feedback. I think it's just one of those things. Humans sometimes do unfathomable things.
I'm not going to leave the group. I mean, it's my place. One of the other players is having some concerns with the GM too. I think we will talk to the other players to see what their feelings are. Then probably another talk with the GM is in order.
*offers emotional support*
There it is again. That odd chill, as if an alternate universe version of myself had walked over my grave.
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There it is again. That odd chill, as if an alternate universe version of myself had walked over my grave.
You have good taste in screen names.
Counter? How do you counter in PF?
But yeah, your DM is a Dick.
Now, having the Captain have a weapon that stuns you , to get around the combats yous should not be in anyway, is OK. But not to kill you.