(Apologies if whining about games you're in belongs in another forum. This seemed like the best match.)
"Well, in the game Frank Mencer's been running..."
I hear that phrase fifteen times a game night. My DM hauls this out as a justification for whining about how "X is overpowered" and "Y is a broken feat." He complains bitterly and constantly about things that party members want to do. Just so you know, here's the party (at sixth level, with no alternate class features):
A Vow of Poverty Monk
A Half-Orc Fighter
A Scout
A Human Drd1/Brb5 building towards the Occult Slayer PrC
A Cleric building towards Radiant Servant of Pelor
A Conj3/Master Specialist 3 (me)
So far, we fought a swarm of low level undead... (I shut them all down with Web and Grease while the cleric incinerated them)
A swarm of goblins... (I shut them down with Stinking Cloud and the DPSers mopped up)
A troll... (I shut it down with Glitterdust and the DPSers mopped up)
Another swarm of undead... (see above)
A swarm of giant ants... (Cast Web. Fill Web with Fiendish Monstrous Spiders.)
So, clearly, my frustration must come from the DM whining about how over-powered my Conjurer is and how I should really tone things down since I'm in a heavily Tier 4-5 party. Nope.
He nearly had a psychotic meltdown when being told about the Half-Orc Fighter's Close Quarters Combat feat. He declared that it "completely broke the system" and crabbed that it couldn't work since it contradicted the wording of Improved Grab/Grapple, which states "it does not provoke an AoO."
He cries about how he'll never defeat the Armor Class of the VoP monk, who will soon be massively overpowered thanks to the stat bonuses he'll start receiving next level.
He has direly warned us for not having a front-line fighter go sword-and-board to act as a tank. (He thinks Knights are over-powered, by the way.)
He berated every single ability of the Scout as broken and stupid, bewailed the horridly overpowered nature of Skirmish, and brought the game to a screeching halt to read and reread Scout special abilities relating to Spot and Listen checks, before declaring that the Scout could only Spot or Listen in the same turn without burning actions. He also apparently decided that the Scout could not see or hear multiple hiding/sneaking creatures in the same action. The Scout has since left the game.
When the Cleric mentioned getting Divine Power next level, he sneered that the Cleric would probably never get to cast it, since the importance of in-combat healing drastically increases as you get to higher levels.
He's against Radiant Servant of Pelor. He's not sure why, but he's against it.
He's keeping us poor, stating that he's reluctant to give out money in a system where you don't have to pay for training to level. He cited as his perfect example "Frank Mencer's game" where you have to pay 1000gp x new level to level up.
He doesn't allow Cleave on AoO's. He also forbid the use of Cleave against various enemies for... ummm... thematic reasons? (A group of stirges were ineligible for Cleave attacks because they were loosely scattered about their 5' squares and you wouldn't be able to hit two of them with a single swing.)
In a different game, he declared that using Feint to set up a Sneak Attack was horribly broken and imbalancing.
When I pointed out that the overall effect of the non-Core books was to make a slightly more interesting world for non-Tier 1 classes, he stated that you don't determine balance by comparing classes to each other, but by comparing Core-only characters to what they can do with the additional options in the non-Core books. Yeah... figure that one out.
So far, he has sorta nerfed me ONCE. The main line fighters wanted to strike enemies that I had webbed. The DM asked what the rules said about the possibility of their weapons getting stuck in the webbing. "Per the rules as written," I replied, "There is no chance." So the DM made up a rule about weapons getting stuck when you attack webbed targets.
"Really," I said, "You're not hurting me with a rule like that. You're reducing the functionality of the melee fighters, who are already massively behind the power curve."
"Well," he replied, "In Frank Mencer's game..."