in one of our first games we came upon these floating tourent decks. these things took 2 rounds to reload so to get around that he put it on a swivel and had 6 cannons meaning every round these things did a 10d10 cannon shot with a radius of 20 feet that dealt piercing and fire damage. the crappy thing is if you roll a 10 on one of your d10 then you get to roll teh d10 again andadd that as if ithad critically strike. our dm is notorious for high rolls. with 10d10 starting he managed to hit all of us for 168 damage. since he rolled lik 8 10s in that. the reflex save was like 21 at level 10 and we were all walking through a cooridor so we all got hit. 1/2 our party died from the first blast. after that we all bitchd and moaned. he said teh cr was equal for our party. i said one of those cannons on theground aimed at an open battle field might have been but that situation was BS
so what i hate most of all is improperly calculated CRS
Anyway, it was a party of three that night, since the other two players were late. The party consisted of a lvl 5 Samurai (my character), a lvl 1 half-dragon sorcerer (DM didn't let him buy off his +4 LA), and a lvl 3 Hulking Hurler cheese build (half ogre, of course). The first battle of the night was against two CR 9 spiked devils of some variety (got the CRs of the monsters from the DM after the session).
Luckily the three of us got the initiative, so between my initial Iajutsu attack and the hulking hurler's rock chucking (he wasn't high enough level to do rediculous damage ... only 5d6 per throw) the three of us managed to drop the first devil within a couple rounds, and a timely crit from the hulking hurler mashed the second one into paste just before the half-dragon was about to drop.
At that point the DM exlaimed that "the battle was way too easy", despite the fact that the hulking hurler and I were both below half hp and the sorcerer was at 0 hp. So, like any 'good' DM, we were ambushed by four more of the devils as the party was trying to bunker down in a ravine.
The battle went as well as could be expected. I whacked a demon with my katana, then they beat me down to -8. The half-dragon used his breath weapon and passed out, and the hulking hurler grabbed my body and ran.
We were lucky to handle a CR 11 battle the first go around. A CR 13 battle after we were already down for the count was just a blatant attempt to kill us.
I've had a DM pull off that kind of stuff too. Like sending a half-deity wizard20 after my cleric2/warlock1. I had a party member who had 35 AC at lvl3. The dm didn't show what his rolls were and he could only hit that player with a natural 20. Which he mysteriously rolled 7 times in a row, killing the PC. That DM lasted for 3 sessions. My advice when something like that happens, is to tell him as a group that you don't really enjoy his style of DMing and that he could be a player while someone else in the group takes up the role of the DM.
Tell him to read a bit about how to be a DM. Point out the various topics about it. The dungeon master guide 2 is also a great source for a new dm. Also, for a new dm it’s great to base your story upon existing adventures which you can easily use. There are some very enjoyable ones out there and it also saves the DM a lot of game preparation time. Make sure to give the DM pointers like that when you tell him you don’t want him to be a DM anymore and also tell him he can try again after someone else ran a campaign.
That said, when players complain about a DM f’ing up a challenge rating, you do have to keep in mind that when you use some hardcore optimization for your character, you are f’ing up the CR for all fights as well and in that case a DM should throw tougher monsters at you. With the example of the cannon in the first post, the DM optimized the cannon in a way that a lot of player on these forums optimize their characters. Can you really blame him for doing so?
That said, when players complain about a DM f’ing up a challenge rating, you do have to keep in mind that when you use some hardcore optimization for your character, you are f’ing up the CR for all fights as well and in that case a DM should throw tougher monsters at you. With the example of the cannon in the first post, the DM optimized the cannon in a way that a lot of player on these forums optimize their characters. Can you really blame him for doing so?
This is my philosophy. Don't dish it if you can't take it. Now, if you have one player who's optimizing to ridiculous levels and the rest of the group gunning solely for flavor, then it's unreasonable to ratchet things up to ridiculous levels for everyone. But if you're sitting at a table of power gamers, you would be doing a disservice to them not to give them the challenge their bulds demand.
The worst DM I ever had was known to kill characters randomly for laughs (mostly his, since it just annoyed pretty much everyone else) when the player wasn't at the table. If you missed a session, even if very rarely and for legitimate reasons, there'd be a 50/50 chance you'd show up the next week to find out you had to roll up a new character. Once in awhile it would even happen when someone got up to use the bathroom. He pulled that on me one too many times, and then their group had one less person. I ended up not having anyone to play with for a year after that, but investing in characters only to have them scrapped for no reason just wasn't worth it.
That said, when players complain about a DM f’ing up a challenge rating, you do have to keep in mind that when you use some hardcore optimization for your character, you are f’ing up the CR for all fights as well and in that case a DM should throw tougher monsters at you. With the example of the cannon in the first post, the DM optimized the cannon in a way that a lot of player on these forums optimize their characters. Can you really blame him for doing so?
I agree with this as well, however, one cheese build in a party of flavor characters does not equate to four chain devils.
That said, we've already scrapped his campaign, leaving me to DM. We decided this was the best course of action when it was session #5 and I was on character #4.
For instance, we had a cleric who was all about focusing on her turn undead ability, and while we fought many undead, every single one of them had too high HD/improved turn resistance/etc...
We had a warlock who had been blasting (I forget which energy type), then we had a bunch of enemies with high resistance or immunity to those...
We had one very strong melee type who was the primary damage dealer in the group, then the DM started sending swarms at us so the melee couldn't hurt them (or barely hurt them...)
It's one thing to make the game challenging against good players (add more enemies, give enemies more hit points, etc)... and another entirely to specifically hand pick enemies and tactics to counter abilities that the NPCs should have no direct idea that the PCs have.
I think the DM just got overwhelmed by our power and didn't know what else to do -- he was afraid to just modify the enemies we should have been fighting to live longer, which is what he probably should have done. Against parties who dish out a ton of damage, I have no problem with the DM increasing the HP above what any book says it should be for the bad guy.
After 9th level, the party started gaining power in leaps and bounds. Case in point... I had an NPC I wanted to be a recuring villian. Party was lvl 9, I made him lvl 18. Plan was that he was going to ride in and subdue the party. They won! I underestimated their ability to destroy his movement, and didn't bother to give him a ring of freedom of movement. As such, they were able to slow him to a crawl, and slowly chip away at his hp. But that's the kind of party I had. By the time they were near epic, they could take turns as an immediate action, and it was pretty much game over. They had a wizard/Psion theurge who had enourmous utility (who esentually focus on countering whatever I did), a beguiler/fate spinner (what, you passed your save? Roll it again! Oh, I failed mine? Re-roll), an Archer who could dish out well over 250 points of damage a turn, a warmage (the under achiever of the group. Main job was buffing the archer), and a dread Necromancer with the dragon magazine unseely fay template (take -15 to your saves just for standing next to me. I cast Destruction).
As a Dm, it evolved to a point where either way, it would be over in 2 turns. Either I would have wiped out most of the party, or they would have things well under control. That's where it stops being fun for me as a DM, as I start having to be utterly ruthless to make them break a sweat. Yes, I did throw in a few anti-magic fields. I had one or two encounters where the arrows could be thrown back at the archer. However I don't like to tailor encounters and try and keep things fair. So I started not to worry about combat, and tried to challenge them through other ways.
Long ramble short.... CR's are a razors edge. On one side is a challenging and enjoyable encounter, and the other is PC death.
Had a DM want to make a game that was based on real history 16th century. So, no magic whatsoever unless we can reskin it as martial skill. What does that include? Don't know. The DM won't specify the rules and stipulations, won't create an example character and has now stopped answering questions altogether saying "Just do it".
Just build a character using Tome of Battle. Those are all martial skills
I agreed to play in a game, emailed the DM outlines of a couple of character ideas, and a week later got a reply that just said “no.” I'm being literal; it was a one-word email.
I sent a new email asking what, specifically, was wrong with the characters, so I could avoid it when coming up with new ideas. I also included outlines of a several new characters, designed to be fairly different from the first ones, so they would probably not run afoul of whatever caused the first ones to be unacceptable. After another week, I got another email that just said “no.” Again, I'm being literal.
I eventually got him to explain why the characters were rejected. It tuned out to be because of social stigmas in his home-brew campaign setting that would have made NPCs unfriendly to the characters. Of course, he couldn't be bothered to explain to me what these stigmas were or how I would know if a potential character idea would be workable.
Since I'd already spent a month just getting this much out of him, I decided not to play in his game after all.
Had a DM want to make a game that was based on real history 16th century. So, no magic whatsoever unless we can reskin it as martial skill. What does that include? Don't know. The DM won't specify the rules and stipulations, won't create an example character and has now stopped answering questions altogether saying "Just do it".
Just build a character using Tome of Battle. Those are all martial skills
Too Magical.
Had a DM want to make a game that was based on real history 16th century. So, no magic whatsoever unless we can reskin it as martial skill. What does that include? Don't know. The DM won't specify the rules and stipulations, won't create an example character and has now stopped answering questions altogether saying "Just do it".
Just build a character using Tome of Battle. Those are all martial skills
Too Magical.
If he's allowing you to chalk certain spells up to martial prowess, I'm pretty sure you'd be able to do so with most ToB stuff. Especially if you go warblade.
Changeling. Except to read the power "backwards". Rather than changing things like eye color, hair length, skin tone, etc, I wanted to change clothes. Too Magical.
Duskling. As long as I stay within a reasonable speed there shouldn't be an issue here. Too Magical.
So, changing clothes and running are too magical. What are the chances you thinking using "magic" with swords is going to be ok?
Give you an idea of what I've tried already:
Changeling. Except to read the power "backwards". Rather than changing things like eye color, hair length, skin tone, etc, I wanted to change clothes. Too Magical.
Duskling. As long as I stay within a reasonable speed there shouldn't be an issue here. Too Magical.
So, changing clothes and running are too magical. What are the chances you thinking using "magic" with swords is going to be ok?
Just play a monk. More crazy kung-fu powers than you can shake a nunchaku at, and they are all psuedo-mystical abilities anyway.
If you're DM is being really hardcore about that sort of thing, just play a Charger Cheese. Run roughsod over his campaign until he relents and lets you have a little more leeway in the "magical" vein.
Getting back to the topic at hand, the DM for the group just before I took over (again) had banned positive energy. Initially, he only banned healing magic, but he quickly broadened it to all positive energy after someone asked if they could play a paladin.
When we asked him why, he said, "I don't like paladins, and I never liked the idea of characters always relying on a healer in the party."
Of course, I brought up the fact that his own personal bias was effecting the game as a whole. He argued by saying, "Well, you guys are in Hell, so positive energy doesn't work."
Now, I know that magic functions differently on different planes, but I don't remember ever reading about positive energy being totally non-functional. Perhaps I am mistaken, but the DM would not tell me where he was getting his 'information'.
If it was a home-brew plane, it's well within the bounds of the limited magic planar trait (Dungeon Master's guide 150). Actually, “positive and negative energy can't be channeled” is one of the listed functions of the limited magic trait of the Outlands.
If it was a home-brew plane, it's well within the bounds of the limited magic planar trait (Dungeon Master's guide 150). Actually, “positive and negative energy can't be channeled” is one of the listed functions of the limited magic trait of the Outlands.
Yeah, but it was not a homebrewed plane. It was standard Hell. As for the second bit, Negative energy could still be channeled without issue. If both energy types did not function, I'd actually be a happier camper than I am. The party cleric was essentially nerfed down to a fighter with a bad BAB (No healing, bless, protection from evil, divine power, etc.), while the enemy clerics were functioning without restriction, and often seemed to be casting with DMM well above what they should have been.
Of course, evil divine PC casters were just as limited as the good ones. Apparently you had to be an NPC if you wanted to be a cleric/druid/favored soul/what-have-you.
always made me laugh. they tried everything and i was the nicest dm ever. they were all new players so i threw out stuff like feat books and wild shape clasps that a sorc could use in polymorph and "legacy heritage items" that were redonkulously powerful. so i figured new players would not be optimizing that much. well it became aparent that theyd need help building so they started asking me a ton of questions as i am a notorious power gamer and infamous optimizer. what they came up with was so ridiculous that i was pretty much screweed as a dm. i allowed a vop monk because its not too broken at heigher levels what i didnt consider was a vop monk that so happened to be thrikeen and have a **** ton of attacks could be a problem with a chargin stunning build at level 9. hmm wisdom of like 30 saves of nearly impossible and an ac over 40, a polymorph specialist that transformed into a huge hydra and decimated everything also wielding a ridiculously high ac and good att due to his legacy item and clasps, a favored soul who was the light race from mm3 that is immune to neg energy whose soul job was to heal and boost everyone in the party. after a bit 10 dex to the monk was a real bitch for me and everyone always having +5 to all saves was killing me. any undead that did neg levels or stat drain were now tanked by someone they couldnt do **** against. bringing up the rear wsa the most flavor but least optimized character a dwarven defender. nothing special just an ac of 44 when standing still and a s hield he could make bullrush attempts by throwing. i see that my giving nature and desire to see them have fun with some powerful items led to my own demise. i upped my crs and made fights specifically to challenge them. stat drained ghosts with shadow step and such. but when everyones got an ac over 30 and 2 toons over 40 there just isnt alot you can do. also saves were a big issue everyone made every save they came against. especially fort and will. theyd fail a ref every once in awhile big whoopy doo. being a dm is a balancing act i like the "razors edge" analogy. its so true. this goes for character creation just as much as the creation of the encounters.
i play a powered game right now im a player in it our dm is pretty notorious for homebrew still so i have been building characters to optimized levels to push him and see what happens. using his home brew power races i have concocted a sorc/pally,monk,abjurant champ that has an ac over 40 constantly and he can get it up to 65 in one round. a malconvoker that at level 10 can summon 2 huge earth elementals with about 400hp each and ridiculous defensive abilities, an arcane archer that does good damage and has a flavor the player loves, and newly created as of lasat night a rogue monk that uses wands and the minor/major spell like ability rogue talents to treat opponents as flat footed and a feat selection pushing his fort save on stunnign fist up to 26. i offered the other players a chance to play these toons or asked them what they wanted and i built them and we are all looking forward to tomorrow when we get to unleash a couple of them onto him.
I agreed to play in a game, emailed the DM outlines of a couple of character ideas, and a week later got a reply that just said “no.” I'm being literal; it was a one-word email.
I sent a new email asking what, specifically, was wrong with the characters, so I could avoid it when coming up with new ideas. I also included outlines of a several new characters, designed to be fairly different from the first ones, so they would probably not run afoul of whatever caused the first ones to be unacceptable. After another week, I got another email that just said “no.” Again, I'm being literal.
I eventually got him to explain why the characters were rejected. It tuned out to be because of social stigmas in his home-brew campaign setting that would have made NPCs unfriendly to the characters. Of course, he couldn't be bothered to explain to me what these stigmas were or how I would know if a potential character idea would be workable.
Since I'd already spent a month just getting this much out of him, I decided not to play in his game after all.
It always seems to me that a few of the most important traits you must have to be any good at being a DM is empathy and communication skills. I find it quite unbelievable to read that some DM out there have none of that and are, as a matter of fact, quite socially inept.
It just makes no sense at all to me.
The DM for the game told us to create characters without giving us a context. So I created a Force Missle Mage (That I actually put some work into) and instantly was turned down. I asked for more guidelines and was told "Nothing Magic" so I made my second favorite class, a Ninja. Again, I was declined, being told Ninja's have too many "magical" properties..
Later, we were told about being able to have magical abilities if they could be reskinned as martial skills, so I re-tried Ninja, explaining Ghost Step as smoke pellets and misdirection, still no... I created an NPC class character and they told me it would do fine >.< I was then told that my character was going to be useless, which I was well aware of, but it is still frustrating that we have no information to base any decisions on.
I eventually got the ok on my Ninja, I'm told it will be useless, still waiting for the game to start >.<
Our DM is making us keep track of provisions, arrows, etc. It's not all that annoying, however it will slow the game down a little.
That DM was a really cool kid. His older brother however, while a great storyteller, HATED every character that I ever built, and killed me off constantly. When we got to lvl 18 my swanmay used polymorph to change into a huge-ass demon of some sort (balor I think) and the big bad boss JUST HAPPENED to be able to controll all demons with no save.
Oh damn. I find myself laughing at some of these posts. 
I have been DM'ing for about 8 years pretty much non-stop - and yes I have made many of the bad mistakes in my past.
I keep stumbling into CR issues because I see some nifty mob I like to use, and I have even built several encounters just to counter what the PC's where good at (mostly that was to test if they something else to offer). And yes, more than once divine spellcasters have been nerfed beyond recoqnition with some kind of "plane-wide-anti-divine debuff"
Even one time, I killed off a character, that was tearing my challenges apart without any trouble, by making a grappling monster come out of the sea and dive underwater with him. Eventually drowning him.... That move was ever since talked about as the worst DM-move ever! And truthfully it was 
I have gotten smarter since tho. I have learned what it really is to be DM-ing a grp of players, and come up with the ultimate rule of them all: as a DM you must NEVER think of this game as a DM vs. PC's.
It's truly about telling a good story, and giving the PC's a hard enough challenge to make them feel like heroes. Don't be sad when they break your mad encounter - encourage them to do so next time aswell, by giving nice magic artifacts and in-game perks. Make them powerfull, if you as a DM are making your players powerfull (over many lvls ofcause) it stops being a problem if a player is powergaming, because that's what you wanted to do anyways.
And so whenever a "crappy DM-move" is approaching, make it a part of the plot. And give the players a chance to see it comming. If there's no divine spellcasting in, say, 3 weeks in game, then have some NPC casters complain about loosing some of their powers. Have the PC's hear stories about this Demon-/Dragon-/Undead-/Elemental- controlling BBEG before the fight starts. That makes the players think about new strategies without it being a sudden hatecrime. 
As a rule, pretty much always, it's important to know the players you are playing with. What they are trying to do with their characters. Talk to them. IRL. Let them know that if one char breaks the game (not talking pun-pun, but maybe a super-charger) then have the other players do that aswell or there willl be some mayor power differences in the grp.
Power differences in a grp results in 1 of two things:
1) The DM raises the challenges to face the super-charger! A clash of titans! truly epic fight which Bards will tell stories about for centuries. The super-charger survives all the time. The "puny" normal players will fell like they bent over for the soap in prison. yeah..
2) The DM stays with the normal challenge ratings, and the normal charecters only get to draw their weapon before the "super-charger" is hacking up the last Bugbear. Hardly a fight any bards will know of. Hardly a fight any grp will be happy with. 
To sum it all up. Bad DM'ing happens when DM's start taking things personal.
I think I got all of you beat. A few years ago, we were playing a 3.5 based dragonriding campaign, and we had just recently gotten back from a side quest from left field (aka plot device). We then find ourselves facing down a literal ARMY of THOUSANDS of undead, and the head bad guy was riding an undead DRAGON. The DM's reasoning, and I'm quoting him directly here, "Its not a challenge for you guys at Lv. 11 if you're not facing down armies." ...We were Lv. 8 at the time. Take that how you will.
Dude!That sounds like loads of fun! Then again, I'm a big fan of zombie movies and the Evil Dead series ...
Anyway, the other DM wanted to run his Hell adventure last night, so we let him. The party consisted of an ogre Crusader, a gnome Fighter, a half-dragon Monk, a human Dervish, and an elf Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil. I had two characters, an elf Favored Soul/Hospitaler, and an arctic elf Arcane Trickster. I ended up with both after one died, the new one got introduced to the party, and then the party resurrected the dead one. Average party level of 11.
Alright, so with that in mind ... the party was progressing through the 4th layer of Hell, when suddenly three demons gate in. We had a round to prepare, so we were thinking "No big deal" until we saw what we were up against: the Avatars of Tiamat, Demogorgon, and Orcus.
Long story short, after we (barely) take them down, the DM says, "Well, that was too easy!"
So demonic locust swarms all come out of the body and level drain half the party to death. Luckily, they could not make the saves against the IotSV veils, so we three casters were unharmed by them. The melee characters, however, were not so lucky.
My DM's annoying habit of telling us that he's ad-libbing every time he ad-libs, even if it's just setting a DC and skill check to accomplish something, is annoying.
Killing off the party for the hell of it is stupid, failure to play, and deserving of (depending on the degree) a response of either 'Let someone else DM please' or 'Get out of my house/gameshop/hangout/gamegroup'.
though i will admit its easier to find a new player than a new dm.
the group im currently playing with has actually scared off 2 of my friends from playing due to the playstyle.
all to often dms see themselves as gods in the game world.
Actually, this is exactly what they should see themselves as. Of course, you have to take into account that what a lot of them seem to forget- the god/gods of a world or mythos are -responsible- for events and things, not just able to act on their whims (though many of them do that).
It's safe to say that in that regard, the DM/GM is the greatest god in the sense of the Native American, Norse, Hindu, or many African deities- yes, they get to do what they want, but that doesn't prevent it from having repurcussions, and they have a responsibility to keep things functioning.
If you have a character whose AC is so high (like the 35AC at lvl 3 example), then you deserve to be dismantled in ways that bypass your AC. If your party can use tactics X, Y & Z to dish out massive damage, then (assuming they're against intelligent bad guys), of course they're going to start tailoring loadouts to deal with your strengths.
Case in point, in my game I have a Hellfire warlock capable of dealing ~500 points of damage in a round, using the acid eldrich blast to bypass SR. Therefore, any bad guy who knows about this is going to go into the battle with Energy Immunity: Acid pre-cast.
Yes there's a fine line between specifically tailoring encounters to be immune to the PCs, and the enemies just using their brains rather than existing in a vacuum, but it happens.
More players need to remember that the "It's not GM vs Players" thing goes both ways. If you've twinked a character out the wazoo such that he's unhittable and near impossible to take down, you're destroying the GM's fun as well as the other players, and deserve to be taken down a few pegs.
Similarly if you've got a highly intelligent, solid wisdom, high-level spellcasting NPC that knows the PCs are coming, it's quite fair to say "He's got XYZ spells and contingencies active, and if the PCs use an easily known spell that will take him out of the fight instantly, he has contingencies for it". Case in point, any dragon in my games who knows anything about spellcasting doesn't survive until old age without having immunity to Shivering Touch.
That said, arbitrarily offing characters for no reason or blatantly ignoring the rules so you can kill a PC is just a dick move.
Then we reach the BBEG and the I get in flanking postion I succsed on my Attack Roll and as I started to roll SA the DM informs me that I can't. I asked why? His response was along the lines that he still aware of you and you can't sneak attack him. So I open the PhB go ro rogues and quote the passage that allowes rogues to SA on any FF target. He says "Sorry, consider it a house rule."
I never came back to that group.
Speaking as GM, I really have to disagree with a lot that is said here.
If you have a character whose AC is so high (like the 35AC at lvl 3 example), then you deserve to be dismantled in ways that bypass your AC. If your party can use tactics X, Y & Z to dish out massive damage, then (assuming they're against intelligent bad guys), of course they're going to start tailoring loadouts to deal with your strengths.
Case in point, in my game I have a Hellfire warlock capable of dealing ~500 points of damage in a round, using the acid eldrich blast to bypass SR. Therefore, any bad guy who knows about this is going to go into the battle with Energy Immunity: Acid pre-cast.
Yes there's a fine line between specifically tailoring encounters to be immune to the PCs, and the enemies just using their brains rather than existing in a vacuum, but it happens.
More players need to remember that the "It's not GM vs Players" thing goes both ways. If you've twinked a character out the wazoo such that he's unhittable and near impossible to take down, you're destroying the GM's fun as well as the other players, and deserve to be taken down a few pegs.
Similarly if you've got a highly intelligent, solid wisdom, high-level spellcasting NPC that knows the PCs are coming, it's quite fair to say "He's got XYZ spells and contingencies active, and if the PCs use an easily known spell that will take him out of the fight instantly, he has contingencies for it". Case in point, any dragon in my games who knows anything about spellcasting doesn't survive until old age without having immunity to Shivering Touch.
That said, arbitrarily offing characters for no reason or blatantly ignoring the rules so you can kill a PC is just a dick move.
@Neo: If the enemies really could have knowledge that you're coming and your tactics, I have no problem with them buffing up their defenses in the areas where you have previously shown you are dangerous. Immunities, contingencies, etc, are all fine as long as they're capable of casting such things and had advance warning the PCs were coming.
I have a problem with the NPCs who wouldn't have known you were coming, or the really off-the-wall NPCs that don't fit in a campaign but are there because it is what would challenge you. I don't mind facing challenging opponents, but come on, make it fit in the story somehow...