Have you ever had a decent plan arbitrarily screwed over by a GM?

Have you ever had a decent plan arbitrarily screwed over by a GM?

1. This was session #50. 16 of the sessions were with another player, but beyond that, it was one-on-one. This was the climactic final battle.
2. Upon researching a certain enemy, I learned that it would self-revive twice. This could be circumvented by a killing it with "a blade of cold iron," on a critical hit.
3. I procured cold iron arrows and scrolls of a certain spell to force a critical. I showed the GM the spell. They were fine with it.
4. Several sessions later, I pointed out the preparations. The GM approved.
5. A linchpin in my battle plan was to fell this enemy immediately. I was under the impression that the GM had taken this weakness into account, and that the other four enemies were statted to give a challenge even with the early defeat of one enemy.

6. I executed the plan. After whittling it down, the enemy was killed with a forced critical hit from a cold iron arrow. I pointed this out, and the GM admitted that they had completely forgotten about the weakness. They had designed the battle without this in mind. On the spot, they applied a slap-on-the-wrist debuff on the enemy that did very little.

7. My battle plan disintegrated, not because of competent enemies, but because the GM forgot their own plot point. We still won, but my character was knocked out early on and made to look like an idiot without foresight. Due to the turn order worked and which NPCs had healing, allied NPCs had to win the final battle for my PC.

8. After the fact, the GM justified it as "It said a blade of cold iron, and an arrow contains less metal than in a blade." (Despite my character being statted out to be a great linguist and lawyer.) In-game, whenever my character brought up the blunder, NPCs simply ignored it and switched topics. Out-of-game, the GM said that they were content with it, because there were bound to be mistakes during a complex final battle.

How would you have handled this as a GM?

Owned my mistake, poured three fingers of something strong, and moved on with my life.

"A blade of cold iron." An arrowhead may be sharp, but a blade it is not.

Bear in mind that "It said a blade of cold iron, and an arrow contains less metal than in a blade" was purely an after-the-fact justification, and that the real reason was the GM forgetting their own plot point.

If "a blade specifically" was planned out from the start, then it would have been fair for the GM to point out such a thing to my character as they were gathering preparations. Certainly, the GM has done as much previously. Otherwise, what does my character have resources sunk into for linguistic and lawyering abilities in the first place?

If anything, such an after-the-fact justification is terribly degrading, because it means that the character specialized in linguistics and lawyering is mysteriously bereft of such an ability during the final battle for... essentially no reason at all.

What's the linguistics and lawyering bit got to do with anything regarding the enemy's weaknesses to cold iron blades? Smart talking can't change the physical properties of something.

1. Once again, "It said a blade of cold iron, and an arrow contains less metal than in a blade" was purely an after-the-fact justification, and the real reason was the GM forgetting their own plot point and coming up with a shoddy solution on the spot.

2. A highly skilled linguist and/or lawyer would probably be able to discern the importance of specifying "a blade" while undertaking preparations. Certainly, the GM has pointed out such insights to my character in previous situations. Otherwise, what would be the point in investing in such skills?

The DM monkey-pawed OP out of a winning strategy by saying "oh but the specific words the specific words" when the character OP os plaiying at would never fall for that shit, on account of their experience with linguistics and lawyering.

But it wasn't a winning strategy if it had a big hole in it.

Not the brightest star in the sky, are ya buddy? That's ok. Someone has to make everyone else feel smart.

Well, the argument could be made that the weakness is cold iron not cold-iron and your arrows were a few kelvins over but if I was the GM I would have corrected the mistake when it was pointed out, fluffed it that it would need some time to take effect and pulled a second encounter out of my ass just to bump the challenge a bit

i.e.have the designated enemy drop dead when the mistake is mentioned then send in deus ex hidden mooks

Look, I get it...

You're pissed off because your brilliant plan didn't exactly go off without a hitch because the DAM veto'd it. Yeah, it sucks. But at least the encounter was still in your favor.

It sounds like, to me, the DM planned on having the melee combatant of the group square off with the thing in a dramatic fashion. Maybe he wanted to give someone else the spotlight for a bit, or try to make a challenging encounter, I don't know. The question I have to ask is if you cook up these plans frequently.

Hear me out; if you're always coming up with the plans, especially ones that don't follow the letter of the information given ( some DMs can be dicks when it comes to specifics) I can see why he might have screwed you over slightly.

Or he thought that the fight was too easy and made you want to work for it.

Whether the GM forgot or not is irrelevant, because he's duty bound to retain your plan to not work in either case. If you specifically work against the stated wincon then your character should fail.

How's your autism OP?

My character was not actually the archer of the group. Another character, an NPC, was. (This was because the spell to force critical hits worked only on ranged attacks.)

My character, as the sole PC of the party, was melee-oriented. The plan revolved around coordinating the party to take down a specific enemy and then have the archer NPC finish off the enemy with a forced critical hit from a cold iron arrow.

That plan failed, mostly because the GM forgot about the weakness in the first place. This resulted in my character, the melee PC (not the archer NPC) getting knocked out early on, and the other NPCs having to win the final battle on behalf of my PC.

>The question I have to ask is if you cook up these plans frequently.

Given that this has been a one-on-one game for 34 sessions, the answer is "Yes."

"It has to be a blade specifically" was purely an after-the-fact justification. The GM did not even bring it up until I pressed the GM afterwards.

Furthermore, if it was truly so important a condition, then my character would have been entitled to realize it during the preparation phase given the skills that they have invested character resources into.

Go to bed Edna.

>the spell to force critical hits worked only on ranged attacks
Now I'm curious as to what the GMs original plan was. Keep killing the thing until you got lucky and got a crit on the killing blow ?

Kill it until it ran out of lives and hope that you didn't crit the killing blow ?

Ignore the weakness and focus on killing through raw power ?

What does the information that a crit is required even look like in-character ?

The GM had a good plan, OP was the one who fucked it up by using an arrow and not a blade.

OP should have paid attention to words, he's a retard and the DM is right.

But it didn't have a big hole in it. A big hole would have been "your ability to force a crit failed because you missed," or "you misjudged its health and it survived." Not "you did everything right but I'm changing the rules because you're doing too well."

All the fucking OP had to do was use a BLADE like the DM said, you tard.

Thr GM clarified before hand that an arrow would work.

Arrows are blades, dumbass. At least broadheads are, and they're the iconic fantasy arrow.

Broadheads are points, not blades.

An icepick isn't a blade.

>Broadheads are points, not blades.
Broadhead arrows look like this. What, are swords points, not blades? Because you can stab with them?

If you were the GM would you adjudicate that if the hero stabbed the bad guy with a cold iron sword it would do nothing because it was done with the point not the blade?

So it's cool to lie to Players?
>the monster is weak to fire user
>yes a burning torch will work
>Oh shit I forgot about that- erm..the torch won't work...because it's..not a proper fire, yeah

>1. This was session #50. 16 of the sessions were with another player, but beyond that, it was one-on-one
stopped reading there

"one on one", lol wtf

You got a problem with one on one?

The distinction between the blade and the arrow is irrelevant. It was made after the fact because the GM forgot about the weakness he created.

Had the GM remembered and always intended a blade to be different from an arrow, that's another matter.

But it doesn't apply here. It was a pretextual justification. GM sucks.

Sounds like OP and the GM are both the bad guys in this scenario. The GM for the blunder of a final encounter, potentially feeding false information to the player and not owning up to his mistake.

OP just sounds like a whiny autist. I get it, you're sad your plan for a game of pretend didn't work out. Move on, baby-boy.

Different user, but 1 on 1 is pretty stupid.

I had a gm place an off map sniper to shoot my street sam in the skull for using grenades liberally against retarded gangers using human wave tactics. Sniper only shot my pc, with the biggest sniper rifle in the game at the time, and then left the rest of the party alone.

Final battle should have plans work.

No, bootlicker, final battles should be challenging, not auto-success. Please die.

>challenging
>DM vetos plan just because