And has anyone ever just quit on the spot after a particularly outrageous DM move/decision?
The worst DM ruling I've ever had was my own :(
Long story short, I used a Circle of Death spell vs. a bunch of lvl 7 characters who had no defense against a spell like that and killed two of the PCs.
We talked it out and I ret-conned it so that they were alive but at -1 HP.
That was just a really dumb decision on my part but thankfully our group was very forgiving.
I've had GM rulings I disagreed with, and I've been in some bad games, but "the GM made the wrong call" was never the singular issue that made the game bad.
I mean, if you had a different assumption and now your character doesn't work properly, presumably you can talk things out and use a different character or retrain something.
Ok let me ask a slightly different question: have you ever had a DM so terrible you just quit mid campaign?
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Ok let me ask a slightly different question: have you ever had a DM so terrible you just quit mid campaign?
I have had that happen before, but only once, and it was back in like 2003. The DM was just making up rules and generally being a "no you can't do that" jackass. The group split up and two players came with me and we reformed the group.
Oh, on your second question yes, God yes. It wasn't in PF though but rather in a homebrew system he'd made up to support some of his pet peeves. It didn't do enough to support those pet peeves though so he cheated outrageously as well. Which besides the obvious problems also created a game where we could never achieve anything because the NPCs always won. The other players kept going for a while and reported that
because they couldn't beat NPCs without other NPCs on their side, they got further and further down a chain of quests, quests to achieve those quests etc. until they forgot what they were originally trying to achieve.
A decade or so earlier the same guy ran D&D 3.0 with a ton of houserules. He wasn't so bad then, but the game still fell apart eventually.
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I mean, one of the reasons I only play RPGs with people I already know pretty well is that I have a hair trigger for walking away for games for things like "promoting an unsafe or unwelcoming environment" or "not respecting people's boundaries."
Like if a player asks "hey can we back off on the gore and/or sexual violence" and the GM says "no", I walk.
I am much happier to tolerate "unskilled or underprepared GMs" (since those people can and do get better) than I am to tolerate jerks.
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I mean, one of the reasons I only play RPGs with people I already know pretty well is that I have a hair trigger for walking away for games for things like "promoting an unsafe or unwelcoming environment" or "not respecting people's boundaries."
Like if a player asks "hey can we back off on the gore and/or sexual violence" and the GM says "no", I walk.
Similarly, I don't like that stuff either. I have 3 general rules of things that won't ever be at my table:
1. No rape or sexual violence.
2. No prolonged torture scenes (i.e. no Ramsey/Theon Greyjoy stuff). If you attempt to beat information out of an NPC, you can smash the dwarf's toe or cut off his beard, but if you fail to intimidate him 3 times, that's all the information you're getting out of him and the interrogation is over.
3. In PvP, no mutilation of another PC's body after they're dead.
I do encourage gory descriptions of BBEG and end-of-encounter kills, similar to Matt Mercer "How do you want to do it?"
Other than that, I, or any PC becoming uncomfortable by something, reserve the right to stop anything on a case-by-case basis.
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So this one has a bit of set-up. Game's been going a couple months, new player joins right at the end of the previous arc. The DM loves this guy, he's playing a Rogue, and we just finished busting a Mythic samurai out of Vampire Jail (its like regular jail, but the cops are vampires). He reveals the location of the Mcguffin we're looking for to trade for information about our mother's murder (well, 3/4 of our mother's murder. My fighter and a friend's inquisitor were direct children while we had a wizard sister who was a step sibling after their parents died).
So, we're getting set up for new heist (really more like a Smash and Grab considering 3/4ths of our party were not subtle at all) on a vampire enclave when we're informed (having appearently not noticed before now) that the Rogue is missing. Surprise, surprise, the GM had done a private online session with the newbie and he'd gone in solo. Successfully gotten the Mcguffin, and ended the arc right there. Denied us all the fun of the dungeon, and stole all the satisfying RP potential.
Anyway, we're getting rewarded by the one vampires for pissing with the other vampires and we get offered the Deck of Many Things. Nothing could possibly go wrong here, right? Well, the new guy draws something like 6 cards from the Deck and has gains and losses from it including a castle, a ton of cash, but a huge wisdom drain. Not that it really matters, playing a Rogue right? Well, the guy loves his castle but hates the hell out of the Wisdom penalty and complains about it loudly up until my character draws 1 card and gets his Soul sucked out. (Keeps complaining about the Wisdom penalty after that too, guy was kinda a dick).
Conveniently, as part of the next step in our quest, we're heading towards the world's Mountain of Death. We've been given a Mcguffin to drop off at the top. So the party decides that they'll go and recover my PC's soul along the way before it escapes into the outer planes. I roll up a new character, as my current one is a drooling vegetable, a Barbarian instead of a fighter. Only thing worth noting is that my new character doesn't have the same motivation as my old character. Still has a reason to hang out with the party, so its all good.
A few weeks roll by, we've climbed this eastern religion inspired Mountain up a level with various Outsiders having entrances to their outer planes alongside there. We hang out in the Evil entrance for a while (again, party is fairly morally ambiguous at this point only our Wizard was still good aligned) and then pass by one of the Good Aligned entrances. Here, an Angel or an Archon or something (never did learn what) comes up. The Rogue, sensing opportunity, tries to beg a greater restoration off the Angel. The Angel said, basically, that Good deeds aren't cheap and that in order to earn a Greater Restoration and a return of his lost Wisdom he would need to slay a great evil or destroy and evil artifact.
Upon hearing this, the Rogue player goes nuts and tries to murder our Inquisitor. Turns on a dime, no warning, and full attacks him with both daggers. I think its worth talking more about that Inquisitor, they were played by a kid somewhere on the Autism spectrum who meant well but somehow managed to bungle just about anything he tried to do. I do mean a kid, by the way, still in his early teens and stumbling over himself all elbows and knees. He was a Dhampir, and the time spent with his dad (a real vampire we ran into back in vampire town at the beginning of the story) had him dropping in alignment from LN to LE. However, in public, all he'd manage to do so far was be a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain in front of the party. Not a good one either, I'm not talking Xanatos here I'm talking Plankton. Now, in private, he managed to do some evil things that would actually drop his alignment instead of simply moving him along the stupid/smart axis of the alignment chart. He'd apparently been drinking blood off unwilling people but that was not something ANYONE in the party other than the GM knew about.
Since no one else had this knowledge (except the GM who had probably slipped it the Rogue given what happens next); and, since both myself and the Wizard saw our Inquisitor as a lovable incompetent, we instantly started trying to defend them. I raged, the Wizard cast, the Inquisitor nearly fell unconscious since he took a crit from the Rogue, and all hell broke loose in game.
Out of game, all hell broke loose since neither myself, the inquisitor, nor the Wizard could believe that the Rogue would think he could get away with backstabbing us. The Rogue shot back that the Inquisitor was evil so what did we care. We responded that A: he wasn't very good at being evil, and B: We'd not seen him do anything else (here is where the GM, who looks like a kid in a candy shop, mentions that the Inquisitor had been doing Evil things behind the party's back). Still, the party didn't know the Inquisitor was Evil and the Rogue had no way to detect alignment. Then he argues that the Rogue has no reason to go along with the party or care about the Inquisitor. Where upon I tell him that my character also has no reason to care about the Inquisitor, is fricking Evil, but is also not trying to murder his allies on the say-so of a stranger.
Flummoxed, the Rogue turns to the GM and in game the Angel interferes with the combat by slapping us with a Holy Word (nearly killing my Barbarian, thank goodness I was raging) and pulling out the McGuffin from the Inquisitor's pockets. Turns out the Mcguffin was an evil magical item, and that by finding it for the Angel the Halfling Rogue got his Wisdom returned to normal.
Back out of game, we just about pitch a snit. The hell that Rogue was going to get rewarded for betraying us! The Rogue falls back on the "Kender Defense" of not knowing any better, and casually mentioning he'd been stealing from all of us too. The GM backed him up, mentioning that the party was all missing X amount of gold from each of their purses.
At this point, we'd just about had enough of this b$*+&~@#. Pitch the Rogue out of the party, and my Barbarian threatens to throw a rock at him whenever he approaches closer than 50ft. We're done with him, but the Rogue pitches a fit saying that its not fair and we can't exclude him. The GM says we have to let him back in and we tell him to go suck air, the Rogue's a traitor and we can't let him back in BECAUSE he's a rogue. He's got escape artist so we can't tie him up, and none of us have the ability to mentally dominate him for long enough to force him to help us. Outside of executing him on the spot, something I wanted to do, all we could do was kick him out. It was literally the only option for someone who could betray us on the drop of a hat and unwilling to accept the consequences of their actions.
The fight continues for a while, the GM takes the Rogue's side in everything with 3 other players opposed, but I think I hit the highlights.
Eventually, GM force-uses one of the Deck of Many things draws from the Wizard to undo everything that just happened and retcon the situation. We end there for the night, and everyone walks away unhappy. I don't know what happened next, because I never showed up for another session and I don't think the Wizard or the Inquisitor did either.
As a result, I started DMing my own games and have a regular group of swell folks who I meet with every week. So in the end, it worked out for the best. Plus, I had an excellent example of what NOT to do and its helped my DMing out a great deal. It also taught me that just because the DM has all the power, doesn't mean they get to use it without the consent of their players. While most people think a GM's power is unlimited, its infact a very fragile thing.
1. My character gets drugged, kidnapped and implied rape. The GM was 'thoughtful' enough itto declare that it was my decision on if the character was actually raped or not.
Lesson: Talk and think about the social license, consent, and theme of your game. A lot of conflicts and breaks of the implied social contract come from a break of theme. This was a break in theme because up until that session that campaign was a heroic power fantasy. Bad movies are a gold mine for breaks in theme examples; the Hobbit movies jumped back and forth between high fantasy and slapstick comedy. Figure out what your campaigns theme is, and don't deviate from it without a plan. (A good example for breaking theme well is Steins Gate, it starts light hearted and becomes a tragedy. However if you are going to do a major intentional theme change, you need to get your players consent to participate in that type of game.)
2. Declared that a raging barbarian can not withdrawal.
Lesson: No one wants their characters agency taken away. If a character is acting in a way you think is out of character first ask for that characters rationalization of it's actions. Just as everyone is the hero of their own story, most characters actions are in there own image of a reasonable action.
3. Something about we shouldn't be taking 20 to find traps in a mummies tomb because of some sort of time pressure. After we already found two traps and were not aware of any time pressure.
Lesson: Your players characters are not going to throw themselves into a meat grinder without motivation, over communicate those motivations (eg. If that dragon doesn't die TODAY, the village will burn).
I mean, one of the reasons I only play RPGs with people I already know pretty well is that I have a hair trigger for walking away for games for things like "promoting an unsafe or unwelcoming environment" or "not respecting people's boundaries."
Like if a player asks "hey can we back off on the gore and/or sexual violence" and the GM says "no", I walk.
Similarly, I don't like that stuff either. I have 3 general rules of things that won't ever be at my table:
1. No rape or sexual violence.
2. No prolonged torture scenes (i.e. no Ramsey/Theon Greyjoy stuff). If you attempt to beat information out of an NPC, you can smash the dwarf's toe or cut off his beard, but if you fail to intimidate him 3 times, that's all the information you're getting out of him and the interrogation is over.
3. In PvP, no mutilation of another PC's body after they're dead.I do encourage gory descriptions of BBEG and end-of-encounter kills, similar to Matt Mercer "How do you want to do it?"
Other than that, I, or any PC becoming uncomfortable by something, reserve the right to stop anything on a case-by-case basis.
Same. If there is any rape or the like I would keep it in the background such as maybe a brief mention in a half orc's backstory, or something like an ogre holding a human captive and saying something like "I've grown very fond of him" and leave the rest up to the imagination.
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I’m owner of a hobbyist store at the other end of the world, so a lot of different and sometimes weird people come to play here. There was this DM that at first seemed to be very knowledgeable about Pathfinder, but every now and then he seem to misinterpret rules — always in a way that would suit him best. For example; one of his NPCs had improved trip, very high CMB and was using whip with whirlwind attack. He ruled that he can trip people when they provoke AoO while they are standing from prone position (after being tripped). No argument could sway him and that fight was one of the longest and certainly on of the least interesting I’ve seen.
Whenever there was recruitment going on for someone else's campaign and that guy wished to join, his first question always was if he could buy animals (mostly dogs) while they are still cubs (he argued they would cost half price or something like this) and show up on the first session with fully growned, trained dogs or big cats (as if he bought them few years before and trained them all by himself - it might make some sense, but he didn’t account costs of training and upkeep, because he is one ugly munchkin).
Whenever there was a recruitment rule that players can spend XYZ amount of gold coins on equipment (that was highlighted so it was hard to misinterpret) - he kept coming with self made magic equipment at 50% price reduction. He rarely did pass any recruitment process, but whenever he did, his character was starting overly equipped and with half a dozen of trained dogs and other beasts that he would use to disarm traps (yes, through killing his own pets) and do other silly things with them.
But the most disturbing thing about him was his “fascination” over young girls. There was a slave lord in one of his campaign adventures which had his own harem of little girls, and the talk between them was in very sugestive manner. He also went into very detailed description of the whole scene... I was so appalled when I first heard about it, that I was wondering if I should report this somewhere. In the end I just confronted him and told him that this kind of content is disallowed in our local RPG group. He of course denied it all, but he did change after this little talk.
I have few more stories about this guy as he is a walking D&D meme, but I already made a wall of text, so maybe some other time I’ll post more...
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1e, playing Vault of the Drow at school as a one-shot with a soi-disant experienced DM. Citing lack of time, the DM gave us pregenerated PCs. I had a 14th level wizard. My spells were rolled randomly from the PHB, I wasn't allowed to look them up to see what they did (I was still rather new) and my PC didn't have the intelligence to cast anything over 4th level. I don't think there was anything very good. My only magic item was a +1 Dagger of Venom with no venom. The other PCs had similar levels of b@!@%@%&.
While shopping for 10' poles, iron spikes and so on (role-played), we meet a Nycadaemon in town (it's on the DMG urban random encounters list!) but nothing much happens.
We flounder about in the dungeon for a while with no clear idea of what's going on until we meet some spiders. We kill them, suffering a couple of PC deaths in the process. Which was unsurprising for 1e, especially as the thief was wearing non-magic leather armour and probably had an AC around 6. So I decide to harvest some spider venom for my dagger. DM kicks up a fuss and we argue for a while. I forget exactly what the outcome was, but I never got to use it, because a bazillion Drow turn up and shoot us all with sleep crossbow bolts.
So we wake up in prison, stripped of our equipment (what there was of it). We escape somehow but are rapidly recaptured with sleep bolts and sacrificed to Asmodeus. End.
We did not let him DM again.
Rolling initiative every round. I ended up just delaying to the end of the round.
Oh god... I would kill myself
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This was circa 2008...
A friend of mine is an EXCELLENT role-player who's been playing TTRPGs since the 1970s. I'd played in a long-standing AD&D game he ran back in the '90s, and also in a more-recent Amber Diceless RPG campaign, and both were a lot of fun!
He wanted to go back to running a D&D game, which he had advertised as being "D&D 3.5". I had been playing in another 3.5 group, and that campaign ended, so I was happy to join this one.
Well... It turns out that he had never played D&D 3.5 before, and only had a passing familiarity with the rules. He kept defaulting to old AD&D rules in his head, like regularly calling for ability checks instead of skill checks when skills would apply... and forgetting that on ability checks, you needed to set a DC. (He was using the old AD&D rule where you need to roll under your ability score to succeed... so you want to roll low.) He had no concept of CR, frequently referred to "zero-level characters", and often threw "save-or-die" effects at us... as if were 1985 and we were playing AD&D 1e.
Basically, he took the least fun parts of AD&D and 3.5, mashed them together, and that's what we played.
The players lost interest in the game after about six sessions and the campaign fell apart. Which is too bad: If the players and GM had been in agreement on a ruleset, the adventure could have been a lot of fun!
Had an Battle Oracle/Rage Prophet for RotRL who was the main tank for the party. I chose to focus on Intimidate/Dazzling Display build that got up to the 50's in his Intimidate skill, but my GM determined that all of the giants that we encountered throughout the campaign were immune to mind-affecting effects due to being controlled by the BBE, so the secondary focus of my character ended up being unuseable against most of the mobs we fought.
Really frustrating as I didn't find this out until we assaulted a giant controlled fortress in the mountains around lvl 10 or so. Complete waste of at least 4 feats, a ton of skill points, and ended up being mostly unused.
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After my wizard killed the DM's favorite NPC, a new rule was implemented that everything had 90% magic resistance.
Same DM different campaign. Uber big bad demands everyone give up their most valuable item or he will kill the entire party (not the first time he's used this tactic). My low INT fighter declares the big bad can have his sword when it is pried from his dead hands. 30 minutes later the fighter is standing over the bodies of the uber big bad and the rest of the party. The DM was more than willing to TPK the group just to prove he was the DM, but miscalculated.
I tend to enjoy rolling with oddball decisions, so I don't know about suffering. But I did have one DM rule that my wizard was helpless due to being unaware of an assassin. Couched in that ruling was a second ruling that you automatically fail fort checks if you are helpless.
I've had several more difficult rulings to play with, but these were made deliberately and openly as ways to change the realism or lethality of a game. So while removing all healing and food creation spells is a bigger problem, it wasn't a surprise.
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Not really sure if it counts as a ruling, but I was at a table where the GM's partner was one of the players. We were playing Shattered Star, and I mentioned that I had found the Player's Guide for it, to which I was called out that if I read any of the AP I would be kicked from the table. To which I had to explain what the Players Guide was.
Her partner on the other hand, could get away with murder. His original character was a Drow Noble who was basically anti-party and allowed because of the homebrew tweak "well I gave up the Spell-Like Abilities, so it's balanced" however they still had the SLA they wanted in permanent Detect Magic which they used to scoop magic gear from the rest of the party. When complaints hit an all time high about this character, he was told yo change the character, but refused unless I did as well purely out of spite. His new character then dipped into 3PP which no one else was allowed to. So I left on blatant favoritism.
One bad ruling though that I didn't leave a table over, what is now an in joke of "I wasn't in the cone!" I was persistently careful with my positioning so that I couldn't be hit by this particular enemy's weapon. After about 3 shots of missing me due to positioning, and my staying out of the area of effect the GM just said "move him to where he can hit everyone", something he couldn't do with his move speed and weapon range. I was always out of the range by 5 ft.
He damaged me with it anyway. It wasn't a lot of damage (like 1d6+3 or so), just more the pride of the matter. That I could play smart but it didn't matter cause the GM would bend rules to hurt me anyway.
Had a ruling that I think broke the game but other things could have also been going on.
GM mishandled a Gibbering Mouther's damage on grapple. Causing far more damage and Con loss than should have been possible but he ruled it as working that way. Paladin ended up dying in 2 rounds and left a bad taste in that player's mouth. And really all of us because the GM wasn't willing to slow the game down to listen.
Log off for the night get back up. Discord and roll20 rooms are straight up deleted. GM must have gotten some push back when I was away or didn't like us complaining and canceled it.
Didn't even get a message just "Derp this is done".
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Shadowrun - playing first time. Wanted to play a street samurai. Gm cuts our gold 90% so I couldn't even get one implant. Ten minutes into the game he gives every character 100% of the street samurai's gold so they can "buy stuff." Even the characters who aren't money based. I crinkled up my character and threw it at him. Never played Shadowrun RPG again (loved to computer games). Pretty sure I used some cuss words too.
Have survived some pretty ugly gm fiats in my day. Can't teleport, dig, shadow step, dimension door, portable hole through a wall... Have to find the secret door. Really? Wtf is it made of? "Magic stuff."
Have survived some pretty ugly gm fiats in my day. Can't teleport, dig, shadow step, dimension door, portable hole through a wall... Have to find the secret door. Really? Wtf is it made of? "Magic stuff."
Barredentrium? Shallnotpassite?
Straight up being told 'no' to character ideas for blatantly stupid reasons, such as:
"There's too much stuff the character can do, I don't have time to read it all, so you should play something easier to read." (Response to a kineticist.)
Just "No." to characters inspired by pop-culture/video games (such as characters from final fantasy), despite not keeping the same personalities (not really any justification here for the judgement.)
Told no for power/meta-gaming on a character who happened to be optimized for 'that one fight' that hasn't happened yet, with no information on anything about said fight.
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On skill checks, I've been told I fail without any explanation (told I fail before I even reveal), because a Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate skill monkey focused exclusively on these skills, rolling with a +20 to even one of these skills @ lvl 5 is more munchkin than a two weapon fighter with two keen scimitars who can't fail to hit with power attack always on (questionable die rolls hidden by a box, which never was asked to be removed.)
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On encounters: DM using a heavily modified Giant Emperor Scorpion (Reduced to small size, keeping all base stats + dex bonus from moving categories to small from gargantuan (without str or attack die reduction), modified poison to deal 2d6 con damage for 10 rounds with a ridiculous save that needed to be made twice, keeping gargantuan sized reach as well (idk why...)) on a party of level 6 characters (there were around 6 of us, but we were prone to spontaneous death due to blatant stupidity and in-fighting.)
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Also a couple of big ones: Using initiative order to determine who gets to loot first; and 'improvising' rules for obscure situations (ex. being run over by a boat.)
I don't have anything super exciting, but here's some bad GM rulings that I've been through:
- Attacking a grappling or grappled creature has a 50% to hit either the grappler or grapplee. (Because big creatures grappling allies need to be even more dangerous to fight)
- Riding a wildshaped ally removes your wildshaped ally's ability to attack or cast spells. (GM didn't like the druid serving as a mount.)
- Ranged attacks into melee have a % chance to hit an ally. (Because it makes sense guys!)
- If a PC fails a Will save against an illusion, the GM lies to the player about the combat situation to not allow them to metagame (ie. if there's an illusory wall a PC is standing next to, and an enemy behind it attacking the PC, but the PC fails the Will save against the illusion, the GM will say something like 'you take 20 points of damage but you don't know why' rather than provide any details that could be used to metagame).
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Being told at GenCon during a special PFS Game that because I didn't bring my laptop to the table and wasn't able to load 4G to pull up my Paizo account that I wasn't allowed to play my Halfling Jinx Witch. (Preface: I literally work in the PFS room at the Character Creation Station every year, I know the rules)
I had to explain what the Halfling Jinx does to him and I handed him my Hero Lab Character Sheet with the full rules and he throws them on the table in front of him irritated. He says "Not good enough, I need the encoded PDF with your name on it or the physical book."
I was LIVID
I had to sit through the last 2/3rds of the game as a Halfling with 4hp, no BAB, Spells, Class Abilities, and only limited equipment. The entire table TURNED on the GM so fast it made my head spin because he wouldn't back down even with the fully printed rules in front of him on my own Character Sheet and 2 copies of the APG held by other players.
Terrible call, the restrictions on PFS play are there to ensure that Paizo is being fairly compensated for their work but there HAS to be fudge room in circumstances like this. This AUTOMATON pissy GM could have simply spent 10 seconds reading a paragraph and moving on but instead it stopped the whole table for 15 minutes in the middle of combat as we all tried appealing to him to just chill.
I wonder what ever happened to that guy.
- Ranged attacks into melee have a % chance to hit an ally. (Because it makes sense guys!)
I wanted to address this one in particular, because Pathfinder already has not 1, but 2 different rules to simulate this already.
The first is a -4 to ranged attack into melee if one of your allies in in said melee. A massive tax penalty that requires Precise Shot, and has no "can I take the risk?" option.
The second is the face your allies can offer partial or better cover to your enemies if they're in the way, granting the enemy +2-+4 to their AC.
I know D&D 5e has it, because I used it in one of my games, optional rules for "hitting cover", where if you miss the target with a value more than their normal AC, but less than their AC with the cover, that you hit the cover. It's not a bad rule, makes players need to think tactically and provides between about a 10-20%* ally hit chance depending on investment (and is better than the critical fumble deck's one card that turns a nat 1 ranged attack into an automatic crit against an ally). However if it's just random on top of Pathfinder's current ranged taxes then yeah... Bad ruling, random non-fun.
*You can only hit an ally if they're providing the enemy cover, meaning between you and the target, which is minimum +2 AC for 10%. Technically the -4 from not having Precise Shot doesn't increase your chances of hitting your ally, just decreases your overall chance to hit the enemy, so it's effectively a 20% reduction of your d20 roll but technically the hit your ally range isn't modified by it, remaining 10% with partial cover, 20% for soft cover.
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I wonder what ever happened to that guy.
Betcha he's in a shallow, unmarked grave by now.
Being told at GenCon during a special PFS Game that because I didn't bring my laptop to the table and wasn't able to load 4G to pull up my Paizo account that I wasn't allowed to play my Halfling Jinx Witch. (Preface: I literally work in the PFS room at the Character Creation Station every year, I know the rules)
I had to explain what the Halfling Jinx does to him and I handed him my Hero Lab Character Sheet with the full rules and he throws them on the table in front of him irritated. He says "Not good enough, I need the encoded PDF with your name on it or the physical book."
I was LIVID
I had to sit through the last 2/3rds of the game as a Halfling with 4hp, no BAB, Spells, Class Abilities, and only limited equipment. The entire table TURNED on the GM so fast it made my head spin because he wouldn't back down even with the fully printed rules in front of him on my own Character Sheet and 2 copies of the APG held by other players.
Terrible call, the restrictions on PFS play are there to ensure that Paizo is being fairly compensated for their work but there HAS to be fudge room in circumstances like this. This AUTOMATON pissy GM could have simply spent 10 seconds reading a paragraph and moving on but instead it stopped the whole table for 15 minutes in the middle of combat as we all tried appealing to him to just chill.
I wonder what ever happened to that guy.
Are the personalized watermarks on your rulebook PDFs not enough to satisfy the "proof of ownership" requirement? Sheesh. What was stopping another player from simply saying "I hereby gift you this copy of APG" with the gentleperson's understanding that you'd "gift" it back after the game?
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I had a similar issue when trying to design a set of giant-sized adamantine doors...
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I had a similar issue when trying to design a set of giant-sized adamantine doors...
I've been a player with that issue.
Long-ago GM casually tossed in an 'adamantine door' (maybe it was mithril, I forget) thinking of it as a 'barrier' to stop PCs bashing down the door. All the players immediately saw the door as a huge treasure, requiring only stone-working tools to get the door out of the dungeon.
MISTAKES WERE MADE.
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I had a similar issue with a giant solid gold sarcophagus. I politely used it as my leomund's secret chest so as not to upset the economy while also being able to haul out a massive gold sarcophagus when I needed to remind the DM that some things should only be plated in expensive metals. And also to pull out loot after haggling for the best price of course.
After thinking about this more, the worst DM ruling I've had to suffer through was "yeah, your character looks fine" when it certainly wasn't and they hadn't really read it.
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8 trolls with 3 levels of monk each (yes, CE trolls with levels in 3.0 ed. monk) and one troll with fire immunity and 5 levels of monk for an APL 4 party. The GM's argument was that the trolls were CR 3 and 5 respectively because of the 3-5 levels of monk.
One of the most pointless evenings I've spent trying to game. And he didn't understand why I never came back to his home game.
Div Wizards are the best. You always act in the surprise round and your initiative is redonk, and you have enough time to cast Fly, Greater Invis, Dimension Door, Greater Teleport, Time Stop, w/e you want.
After my wizard killed the DM's favorite NPC, a new rule was implemented that everything had 90% magic resistance.
Same DM different campaign. Uber big bad demands everyone give up their most valuable item or he will kill the entire party (not the first time he's used this tactic). My low INT fighter declares the big bad can have his sword when it is pried from his dead hands. 30 minutes later the fighter is standing over the bodies of the uber big bad and the rest of the party. The DM was more than willing to TPK the group just to prove he was the DM, but miscalculated.
That's hilarious! (I love watching it slowly sink it to the power-crazed how much more important being able to manage attrition is.) --What level, and what was your build and important gear?
Kind of a reversal of the direction of suffering, but I had one DM running a 3.5 adventure where we were Caravan guards. Around level 7 or so we ran into a bunch of slavers who had a Celestial trapped in a solid Platnium cage. We killed off the slavers and released the Celestial, who thanked us and gave us a sack of gold. We immediately gave the sack to the caravan master for room on one of the cargo wagons and started to load up the cage.
DM: Wait, why are you taking the cage with you?
Us: Because you said it's made of solid platinum. This thing is worth a fortune!
DM: MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE!The poor ruling was letting us get away with this instead of figuring out a way to get most of the platinum out of our hands. We shattered wealth by level.
How did your group carry the cage? (just for reference, solid platinum is about 1300 pounds per cubic foot)
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GMs calling for initiative rolls at the wrong time. It plays out like this:
* GM has some bad guys waiting to burst in on us or some such. Calls for inititive rolls, and rolls for the bad guys.
* Through invested resources, "lucky" dice rolls, or both, I get a high inititive score (often several other PCs too).
* My turn comes up before the bad guys. The GM was planning on having the bad guys burst in on their turn, which has yet to occur. Therefore I have no targets and no information about what we are facing so cannot even buff with any confidence. I essetially have to skip my turn
If the bad guys are aware of you and you aren't aware of them, they ought to be getting a surprise round, so you shouldn't be acting at all.
But if you can act before the enemies appear, and you don't have a useful general-purpose 'Haste'-type spell to cast, you can either Delay until you see an enemy, or ready an action to attack any enemy who appears.