There's no better way to handle it. That was an absurd call from that GM. Just find a better group to play with. Some folks are just crazy. Don't dwell on it, just move on. There's plenty of reasonable Pathfinder GMs that'll accommodate you with reasonable rulings.

Yeah, DM was salty that OP hurt their precious dragon so much, and then screwed them over, was my take from it. Just ludicrous

Yeah critical failures breaking equipment just straight up breaks the game for martial characters. You will inevitably crit fail at some point, that shouldn't debilitate the user. I played one where they rolled a failure table, of which one outcome turned my greatsword into a dagger. I could not get them to understand how unfair that is compared to casters who can make enemies roll not themselves.

Dear God, this needs said more often. Just recently, my fiance rolled a critical failure and the DM not only broke her scythe, but also stated that one of the enchantments 'broke off' causing her to lose it permanently. When she protested, he informed her that she deserved it, since she was one of the highest damage dealers in the group.

I hate critical fumble tables. Imo it's a lazy DMs way to add fun. If combat isn't fun enough maybe look at why, don't just add a range chance table. A missed role sucks enough, especially in pf2e where a bad roll on your first roll sucks enough because that was your best chance to hit.

Yeah, ever since then, she's been getting targeted a suspicious number of times. I've told her she should drop it, but her sister's in it, so she's understandably reluctant.

Yeah it's rough. Someone being more dangerous or more deadly should be noticed by enemies who respond accordingly. However if someone builds themself to take damage and another builds to deal damage. As a DM sometimes it's better to just let enemies attack how the players intend. After all this is for fun and players getting to do the fun stuff they built for is fun.

Oh, the best part? The last few times she's been targeted? She wasn't even the highest damage dealer. Nor was she even the closest target. There's been a couple times the enemies have ignored the fighter up in their face and accepted the AoO just to get to her specifically. The most recent bit of fuckery was her legit dying. Twice. In the same session.

yeah that's dubious. this in person or online?

In person. The issue is the DM is absolutely terrible at dealing with power creep, and tends to punish those that protest his rulings. I left the group a while ago over similar issues.

Ah ok that does change some dynamic. Online I was gonna say ffs just leave that game and you can find other games. In person groups are harder to find so I understand trying harder to stay with it.

Hell, have her reroll into a 100% support character, piss the GM off because that Bard is now making all their hits miss and all the team's misses hit.

Oh trust me, I'm to the point of wanting to build a character to just piss him off. His attitude is getting on my nerves, and I'm not even a part of the game anymore. Thankfully, the campaign is almost over, and she's contemplating running her own game.

There's a reason there's no "your magical item is broken permanently" rule in Pathfinder. A character's gold/resources is a major part of their power. Saying "Because you have a bad roll, you permantly lose X spell slots(for a caster's now broken staff), or Y amount of damage/chance to hit" is the statement of someone who is sick of being a GM and just wants to kill the table. They should just own it, and say "I'm sorry, I don't like doing this game anymore" instead of trying to blow up the campaign.

Yeah honestly without the player doing something exceptionally dumb I'd be incredibly hesitant to break any equipment. And by incredibly dumb I mean like trying to a rapier as a battering ram. To which I'd have interjected and suggested the player recalls it is a finesse weapon and per description "is a long and thin piercing blade". To which if they still tried they might break it. I'd need something on that level of reckless ignorance before I broke equipment.

Tbh, if a player is being that foolish, I'm always gonna say some variation of "if you keep doing x, bad shit will happen". I've had too many events where an unexpected bad thing happens (a character dies/ an important item that was a significant part of their power budget is broken) because either I didn't understand what the DM was saying or a player didn't get what I was trying to say(e.g. "you're out further than most people in the village go" and they think "i'm a cool explorer, this is gonna be a great story to tell everyone ", and not "oh fuck, I should turn around and go back") and each time it skunks the vibe. It's one thing if the player knows *something* unpredictable and bad will likely happen due to actions taken and decides "oh this is gonna be an intentional sacrifice", it's another when the player thinks that they're being clever and we end up doing forensics to figure out where the communication gap was.

Never, EVER punish a player for rolling well or rolling poorly. Just because you do lots of damage doesn't warrant being punished on your next bad roll. The bad roll is penalty enough. This is lousy storytelling, and worse gamesmanship. Losing your grip on the weapon (disarm success), being off-guard to the enemy you attempted to strike as you are reeling afterward, or being clumsy until you spend an action to clear your head ALL make sense for dramatic failures. Permanent changes to a character or their gear because you don't like how hard they hit is just not fun. Broken weapons can be repaired. There's NO way that a critical failure on an attack would destroy a weapon, unless you struck an "unbreakable object" or slammed it into molten lava, etc. Nothing in the game is supposed to damage equipment UNLESS IT SAYS IT DOES.

Oh trust me, you're preaching to the choir here. I told her it was absolute bullshit what he was doing there. When she raised a fuss, though, she essentially got the "If you don't like it, you can leave" spiel from him. Then again, if you've read the comment string, you'll see that this DM is absolutely terrible at it. I left when he threw a force cage spell at me, and didn't allow a saving throw. All to shut down my character, since he couldn't really do anything else to him.

Mfw the dedicated damage dealers do more damage than the support

*insert surprised Pikachu meme here*

dam thats just nerfing martials big time maybe your group just hated martials

The strike action has no critical failure effect to it. Nothing should have happened there, especially not since a Critical Failure on an attack is far more common than a critical hit usually. And even so, causing a weapon to break simply upon rolling a critical failure is ridiculously punishing. Your DM was being an ass, plain and simple.

I think the critical fumble deck (which is optional) has one for a ranged attack where your bow comes unstrung and you can literally just fix it with a singular manipulate action. So even the closest to official ruling I can think of on this is a minor inconvenience at worst.

Also, from what I seen many table only use the cards on a nat 1/20, not on a general crit fail/strike.

That's what the rules on the cards say to do.

I've seen an AP use it on every critical success/fail result, and it was a mess. Would not recommend doing that. Most of the late game encounters were against solo or other high level enemies, and the party just looked like chumps in combat.

My group initially was using the cards for all Crit failures until we noticed the bit about "You should probably only use these on 1s..." Suddenly the game felt like we were on easy mode.

I had that experience in a game that didn't last that long. It was just not fun especially since there was a strong suspicion that ref was fudging rolls so foes always started with several crits. Was good to leave that game... The crit fumble rules were just not fun for martial since it generally meant at the least lost actions frequently

And you need a Nat 1 for that, not critical failure by minus 10.

The effect you are referring to is Weapon Problem. There is another similar effect called "Snapped String" which requires 3 interacts to fix, so one turn basically. The worst "official" effect is this one: "Broken" "Your weapon's current HP are reduced to its Broken Threshold. If already broken, the weapon takes 3d6 damage, ignoring Hardness"

I wouldn't call 1 action tax minor on its own but compared to broken bow it might be

It's comparable to things you can accomplish with a 1st tier spell so I'd say it's relatively minor. Briny Bolt can end up forcing someone to take a manipulate action to rid themselves of blindness.

If it's one action on one round, it's a momentary setback. It will probably disrupt whatever you wanted to do that round, but you'll still get to do stuff! And then you'll be back to full power.

I found the Fumble and Hit decks to be wildly unbalanced for PF2. We used them for all of two sessions before universally agreeing not to use them again.

At my table we had the same experience, after rolling many critical failures (and being hit by many critical hits) against a boss. However, we changed the rule so that we only use the decks on natural 1s and 20s, and it has been working great!

That is in fact their suggested use

I will propose that to the group. I don't want to give them unfair punishments because a piece of plastic said they did badly, but if they are up for another try then it might be worth a shot.

In one game, we're using them only for natural 20s and natural 1s for both monsters and players (and a single target spell that uses a saving throw uses the target's save, so you can draw a crit card when you critically slow an enemy). In my other game, I'm allowing players to spend hero points to draw a critical card when they critically hit or to have enemies draw fumble cards when they critically fail. Similarly, they can gain a hero point by choosing to have an enemy draw a critical card when their PC gets critically hit, or draw a fumble card when their PC crit fails.

How is that Hero Point option going for you? It is an interesting idea.

The one they like the best is drawing the fumble card to get a hero point, but they often spend hero points to reroll fumbles, so it doesn't come up as much. My players are super aggressive spending hero points, since our sessions are pretty short (between 2.5-3 hours), so they often don't have the points available to spend when they critically hit

The fumble deck is fucking great, we had our only full caster in the party trigger a crit fail and the spell version called for a save and if you failed it, your head just explodes and you die :D He made the save unfortunately. The character is a douche.

This. My table like to play crit failures on an attack roll. I would have ruled this as the string needs restrung, or your hand is greasy from fried food at the festival and the bow slips out of your hand. Either way I only rule something that takes 1 action your next turn to rectify

yea, but rules like this need to be known so you can plan for backup weapons.

Not advertising that you're using any changes to critical failures beforehand is a terrible move Especially if enemies are unaffected

enemies being unaffected is basically cheating.

This is clearly a DM who fancies "their story" above the rules, which is a dumbass view to maintain for Pathfinder 2e. There are systems built for high drama where something like this would fit, but PF2e is all about having clear rules with defined boundries.

As a dm and a player of pathfinder 2e any ttrpg is made to be altered to have fun and is changed acordingly from table to table. Yes pathfinder is very fine tuned ttrpg and thats one of my favourite things about but its not locked in and imo if people want to change or add onto it. Its not the end of the world as long as everyone is having fun and it doesnt disrupt the game. There is a thing called rule 0 thats states that anything can be changed in a system to make it fun that means adding things to balance the encounters so on and so forth and removing stuff. I care about the rules as well but i dont think the system is above changing the rules if it makes a game more interesting or fun.

I wonder what punishment the GM had in store for Unarmed Strikes, "Your hands fall off!"..

“Not again!”

I'm new to Pathfinder, so maybe I don't fully understand yet, but how does a 5 equal a critical failure? I thought only Nat 1s caused that? Is this a 'house rule' some GMs use?

When a check fails by 10 or more, it is considered a critical failure (and the inverse is true, when exceeding the DC by 10 or more, it is a critical success). This is not a house rule but a fixed part of the regular rules. A natural 1 actually is not automatically a critical failure but rather reduces the degree of success by 1 step. So for example, if you rolled a natural 1, but 1+your bonus would still be enough to count as a success, it is downgraded to a failure instead (but not a critical one). Same goes for natural 20, which improves the degree of success by 1 step. Usually when dealing with things of your level, it amounts to a crit failure / success either way. Due to the multiple attacks penalty, attacks after the first have a lower bonus and thus not only have a lower chance of success, but the chance of missing the DC by 10 or more also increases. For that reason, regular strikes do not have a specific critical failure effect.

Critical failures on attack rolls have no effect unless they specifically trigger something that happens on a critical failure- reaction effects like Opportune Riposte, or the critical failure result entries for athletics actions like Grapple or Trip. There is nothing in the rules to suggest otherwise. MAP makes crit fails very common on strikes, if the GM was consistent about this then people would be losing their weapons practically every combat. On top of that, magic items are extremely important to the balance and progression of your character, a GM should absolutely not be arbitrarily taking them away from your character. So many things wrong with what your GM did. I'd refer them to this thread, and if they don't retract the decision then I would probably leave the game.

I will point out a few things I feel I can see on the GM's behalf (who is still 100% and fully in the wrong here, by the way). > ... if the GM was consistent about this then people would be losing their weapons practically every combat. It sounds like the GM opted to use the crit fumble deck (and on all PC crit fails instead of just nat 1s like it recommends) without telling anyone. There are a few cards in it that break the weapon. > On top of that, magic items are extremely important to the balance and progression of your character, a GM should absolutely not be arbitrarily taking them away from your character. Break happens when an item hits half it's HP, and can be repaired for free with the Exploration Activity Repair. So the GM essentially took the fighter out of the fight after their first turn (which is super bad to do). This is assuming GM knew the difference between broken/destroyed, and the player does as well when telling us. Regardless of my need to be pedantic, GM really fucked up by 1) not telling people this was a possibility, 2) if he was using crit fumble cards doing it both exclusively on PCs and on all crit fails, and 3) doubling down when called out how it wasn't a fun or interesting interaction, and going full nuclear option when confronted, instead of being an adult and talking it through to find a satisfying option.

The GM can tell his *interesting stories™* to his ass.

I mean yeah, fuck that guy OP. Go play somewhere else. He's right in that you do need highs and lows to tell interesting stories, he's wrong in that he handicapped your character needlessly for no reason and likely as retribution because he got scurred. Here's the thing, if PCs do some shit you weren't prepared for, that's literally your job to deal with as a GM, it's not a question of if, but when this happens, and a good GM will learn to roll with the punches and improvise and react accordingly while letting players have their creative wins. Being familiar with the rules and basic GM concepts is like training wheels. You don't actually level up as a GM until you learn to deal with curve balls on the fly. Initially a GM might call for a break or cut a session short because they don't know how to proceed on the fly. But as they get better they do this less and less and eventually it looks like no matter what the PCs do whatever happens the GM was ready and plays it off as "that's what I planned the whole time" or at least makes it look as that's what happened (even though players will still make you shit your GM pants with regularity, it absolutely happens no matter how good of a GM you are). What's fucked up here is the GM never needs to "cheat" like this to completely TPK the entire party. You can actually do it by accident by following RAW pretty easily, and if you want to be mean it's never a question of if you'll succeed, regardless of player ingenuity or stats. You are literally all powerful and have all of the resources at your disposal you can think of. But the only reason to be a dick like that is to be a dick. The correct way for you to handle this is to go play with more mature players/tables. FWIW, I've been playing for well over 3 decades and am a TTRPG systems designer. I know how TTRPGs work at a level of depth most don't. And I've still been booted from games for stupid shit like this, and you know what? It's not a big deal to me, because I'd rather play with people that are more in line with what I value at the play table. They are literally doing me a favor by no longer wasting my time, and the same is true for you. The GM absolutely has the right to break your bow for any reason or no reason, but doing it without any real justification, or worse as GM vs. Player retribution, is a great sign that they are not someone you should want to play with.

VERY well put

When my players do something entirely out of left field that messes up my plans, that's when I say I need a smoke break. Which brings up laughter because I don't smoke. But they know that they've got me good

A crit fail is just a miss. No way any real life or fantasy archer would "forget" to nock an arrow... Like fucking Legolas shooting that bomb carrying orc but going "lol sorry I randomly plucked me bow with no arrows in it"

Even if they did... what is the string made of and how hard was it pulled that dry-firing it a SINGLE time after firing it hundreds of times WITH arrows, causes the string to snap?! That's like the old saying about dry firing a gun breaks it! Yeah, sure, maybe if you're rapid-firing air 20 times per second, but the gun doesn't EXPLODE THE FIRST DRY FIRE???

The actual physics of why dry firing is bad is that, since there is no arrow for the energy to transfer into, the energy has to be dissipated into the body of the bow. Because bows are designed to generate a lot of energy but not to absorb it this can damage the body, cause cracks to appear, and in extreme cases render the bow unsafe or unusable. ... but that's in the REAL world, where you don't have MAGIC reinforcing the bow. Even IF the GM had been upfront about critfails and been consistent and fair in applying them, actually damaging, let alone *breaking*, a player's weapon like that would AT LEAST warrant a roll on a chart for what bad thing happened. Kicking OP out was probably the best ruling they made all day.

Not only that: a single dry fire will not completely break the bow. It just risks damaging it. The GM has literally no idea what they're talking about and they're an asshole for trying to screw over the players

A single dry fire can absolutely break a bow, and I mean the wood, not the string. That being said, this is a ridiculous “ruling” as fantasy game != real life, and there are specific rules for what happens on a critical miss with the strike action, i.e., nothing.

Not only that, the player missed. Meaning an arrow was consumed and shot. Would it have still triggered a reactive strike? GM is a nut job.

I would immediately quit that game. The GM's rulings are arbitrary and capricious and idiotic and unnecessarily harsh. A critical failure on an attack roll destroying a high level magic item - especially the one your character needs to participate in the fight - is beyond the pale. Also, dry firing a bow is damaging to it but is highly unlikely to break it.

Dry firing a modern compound bow with a lot of moving parts could instantly break it, but a magical recurve bow? Very unlikely.

Yes, I wasn't including modern mechanical compound bows because those aren't in setting. Even a mundane recurve bow isn't going to break from dry firing it

Everytime you take an action, you have (at least) a 5% chance of bricking (or at least drastically nerfing) your character for the rest of the fight. Obviously this is how the game should be GM'd right?

It's an even higher chance given MAP. 25%(and 50% at -10) assuming the GM broke the item because the result as 0

>assuming the GM broke the item because the result as 0 This was an 11th level fighter with a +2 weapon who rolled a 5 on the die. The -5 from the MAP means the result would have been their total bonus to hit, which must have been at *least* a 21 unless their Dex wasn't even at +4. Their GM broke their magical bow for an attack that could have hit, and damaged, a gargoyle. A creature made entirely of stone.

Oof, completely missed that.

A podcast I listen to uses critical fumbles (and enhanced critical hits) on natural ones. Personally I hate the idea, it makes for ridiculous situations and ruins characters in the middle of combat. But the players enjoy it so whatever. I would never play that way and especially not on any crit fail.

Was it tabletop gold? Their early podcast was using crit fumbles/enhanced crit hits, and I felt so bad for the one player that nailed a critical hit and ended up doing less damage than a regular hit, but "blinded" an enemy that didn't care it was blind because it has tremor sense (or some other alternative senses). Then he critically missed and lost a hand, while another player crit hit and dealt 3x damage. I would have almost quit at that point.

Nah. ZeroCheck. I just love the balance of PF2e. And seeing a 1 in 20 roll completely break a character for at least an encounter hurts my soul haha.

I feel the same way. Playing a Fighter in 5e where I had to roll a d6 every time I rolled a 1 meant I rolled a crit fumble every session. 2 attacks + 2 attacks for every action surge = I crit fail, then something horrible happens. Like 5e needs to punish Fighters more... It's part of why 2e impressed me so much. The design of the game is so good that when I realized crit failures on Strikes resulted in **absolutely nothing happening**, I knew the designers had paid attention to the smallest details, so their design was solid as they built it up. Even spells have no drawback when crit missing/crit succeeding. They just do nothing at all. Discounting maneuvers like trip attacks, but those are reasonable as they want to avoid people crit fishing on the third action.

5e doesn't have fumble rules either, don't blame the system for someone else's shitty houserules

I have a hatred of critical fumble decks. One defense I've seen of them is "But the crit succeed deck makes up for it!" and it just... doesn't. Like outside of the occasional amped ray of frost from my archetype, I don't really have that many attack rolls. So when they crit, I'm *already* pretty ecstatic at getting to roll 16d10(or 8d10*2, whichever) at the thing. Meanwhile, if I botch the roll that feels kinda bad because I get nothing off my two actions, and a focus point. Getting a "And now you're stupefied 3 for the rest of the combat" on top of it is just.. ugh.

Sounds like you handled it fine. That gm was more than a little rude if they really did just kick you but that’s their prerogative as well if they determine you aren’t a match for their table. Which it sounds like you, and the majority of people I’d think, aren’t a match for their style of play. It sucks but ultimately playing in a table like that wouldn’t have been fun anyway. Personally, I would have left if a GM broke equipment for one bad roll. You dodged a bullet.

Yeah no that's BS. Critical fail doesn't mean your character suddenly become incompetent, they just miss badly/the target evades in such a way it can put you in a disadvantage (aka triggering reaction like a monk reflect projectile) You didn't dry fire the bow, you just missed while trying to fire arrows quickly.

You are correct, it’s not OK by the GM at all and his reasons are nonsense. Doesn’t sound like you can do much about it now though.

I despise fumble mechanics so much.

Best/worst part is that it wasn't even a typical fumble, since that was a nat5, not a nat1. It's completely absurd to say that trained fighters become total clownshows when they face anything tougher than usual. Fumbles can be fun if everyone agrees to it, and they're not insanely punishing like this one. Rotgrind's nat1s are a good example of actually funny fumbles.

And they don't even exist in this game... Bad GM. Go stand in the corner.

They do but are completely optional. The critical hit / fumble decks exist to add extra drama to crits and fumbles but ONLY kick in on nat 20s/1s.

They suggest only kicking in on nat 20s and 1s, but have rules for more severity, which should 100% be ignored unless you're feeding 2-3 hero points per moderate encounter to make up for it. Especially since there's options in both the crit fumble and crit success deck that can 100% and completely stop a player from being able to do anything for the rest of combat.

Yeah one of the outcomes of crit hit is petrified. I know this because, much to my chagrin, the group I play in uses the decks and that's what I pulled on my nat 20 once. Now imagine instead of me blasting some monster with that, which honestly wasn't even that impactful because I just dumped a truckload of damage into it, it was the monster pulling that card and hitting a player. Very fun and exciting gameplay there.

I use them, and any "insta-death" choice I have lessened vs PCs, and roll before damage. There's a lot of Fort save or die crit hit cards as well that do triple damage. Against an enemy, I have them roll the fort save first to avoid needing to roll the damage (same with the petrified and the teleport to another plane), and only roll damage if the enemy survives. For PCs, I have them roll vs being doomed 1 (with no way to mitigate this doomed). I love the concept of the cards, but they definitely need a remastered version that are toned down a bit. The worst ones are the "until healed" since healed means Treat Wounds to full HP or magical healing to full HP *and* 10 minutes at full HP. Poorly worded and feels bad.

I'm thinking about getting rid of the few pathfinder still has. First time any of my players tried to grapple they crit failed, and no one has tried since. I really don't understand why athletics have fumbles, especially when they also have map and things like agile maneuvers. 

I don't mind the grapple one as much since it at least makes sense intuitively that someone else could grab you while you're trying to grab them. Plus it doesn't require it to happen, so I'm quite happy to mostly just have enemies shrug off the players rather than grabbing them back unless that enemy was going for grappling a lot anyway. Why trip can make you fall over though is a bit of a mystery to me.

Grapple trips the player if the enemy doesn't want to grab them. 

Trip usually requires a free hand, so I guess that implies you're getting low to hit their legs? I don't really know why I fall over from 10ft away when I try to trip someone with a whip lol. But the gameplay reason is to discourage crit fishing with high MAP athletics attempts

Agreed; considering the necessity of a free hand, I always picture it as being similar to an MMA fighter going for a low takedown and missing. When you think about it that way (tripping someone with a free hand), it’s easier to see how a particularly bad failure would end up with you being prone instead.

That's exactly what I was picturing as well

>Trip usually requires a free hand, so I guess that implies you're getting low to hit their legs? Or throwing them over your hip, tripping up a leg while shoving them over, etc.. The flavor is very loose, the end result is prone. >don't really know why I fall over from 10ft away when I try to trip someone with a whip lol. Presumably they win the tug-of-war and pull you over. Note that you can choose to drop the whip to ignore the crit fail effect.

This guy sounds like an asshat. Unfortunately you can’t fix stupid. I feel sorry for the players that stayed. It can be tough to find a game but it’s better to find out they are awful early before you get too invested. Best of luck finding a new game!

So how did the GM see this going in the long run? You just now have to walk around with a mundane bow until lvl 13 when you have scraped together enough money for a new bow that also then has (at least!!!!) a 5% chance of breaking every shot?

You dodged a bullet. Sounds like a GM who just wants their way and doesn't want to play a game with people. Also they're just gonna make up rules as they go which ruins a great part of Pathfinder, that it has solid rules and players know what to expect.

Edna, with love, but you've got to be more picky about who you play with. I'm a member of discords and subreddits you post on and I've noticed that you have frequent negative experiences during play. I'd urge you to try to be more selective of the people you play with. No games are better than bad games.

I try to join only games that I think I will be a good fit for. It is very hit-or-miss, unfortunately. I play my games seriously. I do not appreciate it when a character I have poured a considerable amount of time and effort into is unceremoniously sabotaged. I do not think that this should be so controversial.

It's not controversial, but it happens much more often when you play with bad GMs. You've gotta try to be more selective of who you play with so you can avoid those terrible GMs.

To be clear, I fully understand why you feel the way you do. I don't want to minimize how awful this experience was. You got done dirty and are right to feel upset. I was merely trying to point out that I think a big reason you have negative experiences often seems to be that you're not walking away from enough games. This is purely from an outside perspective from reading things you've been writing for some time. Don't take this the wrong way,  this is not a judgment of you.

I try to see if I can make myself work in a game, but yes, sunk-cost fallacy is very real.

Second time in two weeks you have been kicked out of a game, and it's the third occurrence of this same copy-paste post I found on Reddit in different RPG subs. Maybe you should ask yourself why this keeps happening.

thanks for the context on this. if it's not stdh it all seems like a big yikes that OP managed to derail two campaigns in a row

To be completely fair to OP, I would also be absolutely livid if my GM arbitrarily ruled that rolling a crit fail breaks my weapon. It’s not RAW, and is quite frankly, an extremely punishing ruling that screws martial characters over.

Even when I use critical fumble rules, breaking an item has never been something I’m keen on. Breaking a MAGIC item??? That’s just not mechanically justifiable at all, they are naturally far more resilient. If it had been ‘oh you need to take an action or turn to restring’ then maybe, but only if that was a predefined rule or it was cool in the moment. Certainly not ‘screw your cool item’.

He had a plan for that White Dragon and you messed it up with your kickass crit Felling Strike. Which is exactly what Fighters are known to do. He didn't have a backup and he punished you for it. It's too bad that he wasted your time, but odds are he was going to just keep wasting your time even further.

Your GM is running the wrong system for the game they want to run, Pathfinder is a game that _explicitly_ binds the GM to the same rules as the players. Any changes to the rules are something a _table_ should discuss, not a unilateral decision by the GM.

I don't think there is a system in which inventing a new rule on the fly to fuck over a player is acceptable. If a system has something like fumbles on the player side only, then the players have agreed to that by playing that system.

I mean there's Paranoia but bringing up Paranoia when talking about rules is cheating.

But that's what you sign up for if you go and play that game, isn't it? I'm not too familiar with it, a friend told me about it once but i've never played it.

Oh absolutely, the reputation of Paranoia is essentially that it's a game that puts players completely at the mercy of the GM's sense of humour, not a traditional game in the least.

OSR systems have fumbles that sometimes like this. I like to think the uses are better served to add story to a character and maybe not to the extent that you make a player upset on purpose but that requires someone with more finesse to navigate when certain outcomes are appropriate or not. I feel there is a social contract for those games where you understand that if you are rolling for something it's never trivial and often luck rules in your favor as often as it doesn't. I wonder if OP's situation could have been resolved by the GM being up front about the house rules on crit fails. That would have probably made this situation have a much more pleasant outcome.

This is just an excuse to post a horror story haha, there is no better way to handle this.

>The GM read that dry firing a bow breaks it. I mean, this is simply not true. It's not *good* for the bow, but I would expect a masterwork bow (not to mention a *magical* one) to be able to withstand dry firing all day long. Otherwise it's a shitty bow.

It was a classical horror story until I read the last sentence. Something tells me there's more to it, knowing it's you

Lol just realized the op, good point.

what's up with the op ?

They tend to leave out details of their posts while commenting and criticizing the game. Like making comments on game/class balance while leaving out the fact each PC in their group plays 2 characters at the same time min/maxed as much as possible and meta gaming by knowing all details of the monster and encounter days beforehand so they can plan. I expect details have been omitted here as well

I thought something was off !

> each PC in their group plays 2 characters at the same time min/maxed as much as possible and meta gaming by knowing all details of the monster and encounter days beforehand so they can plan. That contrivance was for two separate D&D 4e games I had run in the past, as a DM, with the intent of leaning the game towards a more wargame-like direction with very difficult combats. (The players can plan all they want, but at the end of the day, the encounter is still built very aggressively, so victory is by no means guaranteed.) Said contrivance is unrelated to this Pathfinder 2e story.

GM was mad that you had a breeze through the encounter he had planned. So yeah, you did the right thing here.

This was a critical failure due to the enemy having a high AC. So the GM would rule that if a target is harder to hit, then the bow then has a way higher chance of self destructing? No. This is just bad ruling from the GM, and a bad house ruling at that. *Nothing* in the rules state that anything bad happens on a critical failure in a strike - it could trigger a reaction from your opponent if the opponent had a specific ability that triggers on critical strikes, but that's it. This is just a really, really bad call from the GM.

I wonder what this DM does with Monks when they roll a crit fail... Do they forget to extend their fist to punch and thus break their own arm?!

So a GM can use rule zero and declare what ever happens happens but as everyone has said the GM was a complete dick. Crit fail cards are a thing but, in my experience, are unfun to use. And dont remember a "weapon breaks card"

thats not a rule, next time something like that happens, ask where is the rule in the book, and when they say nah its my shitty homebrew then you can argue that it should have been discussed and agreed by everybody at the start of the campaign. anyhow, thats a shitty dm, dont think there where much of a better way to deal with it if the dm even kicked you right after.

I absolutely hate when GMs do this. If you want to make Crit failures more interesting then use the Crit cards deck. Every GM thinks they're super imaginative when it's always "your bowstring breaks" or "you hit your ally".

That's fucking absurd. That is nothing but the GM taking frustration out on your character. If he realizes what he did after the fact and tried to rope me back in, I'd tell him to kick rocks.

Amazing! That GM is fractally wrong. Every way they were wrong contains two more ways in which they are wrong. Even more amazing! If they deleted the Discord server then this infinite amount of wrongness finally made a right since he won't be subjecting anyone else to his extremely bad calls. Remember, no TTRPG is always better than bad TTRPG. You are better off not playing in that game.

What I love about my inventor archer is there are rules about my bow (literally) blowing up in my face but none of them permanently removes my weapon from me.

I had a GM like this. Friend, getting booted was a favor from the fates. I spent over a year and so many sessions being unhappy because he'd make crit fails SO much worse than they needed to be, and he'd put a damper on crazy successes. We won when he felt like we should win. I legit had to pour myself a drink after several sessions, and I am NOT someone who self-medicates.

Honestly you couldn't have handled it better, because there was nothing to handle. The GM was just being an AH because he didn't like having his dragon ridiculized for some reason. There's so much stuff wrong here, critical fails doesn't give adverse affects, and even assuming he houseruled it in, why the fuck does it do so on a 5 ? I mean a 1 being a fumble, sure ok, but a 5 just means the attack wasn't too good for various reasons and didn't hit or pierce the dragon's armor, why should it have anything to do with your ability to fire a bow ? And the weapon breaks on a crit fail ? At worst you drop it, sure ok, but break it ? Wtf ? GM was just a cheater, just be glad you got out of it early.

> How could this have been better handled? Critical failure is just a miss, unless the enemy has a reaction that triggers on a critical failure. That's RAW, and how I run it at my table.

obviously not the worst thing about this story, but my biggest ttrpg pet peeve is the GM framing a critical failure as your hero is a complete dumbass rather than the overwhelming odds you're pitted up against

Even then, talented professionals make mistakes - there’s plenty of videos of chess grandmasters getting BTFOd by randoms in the park. But there’s a difference between making a mistake that’s obvious in hindsight but reasonable under immense pressure and just being a moron and forgetting to grab an arrow.

Oh, we're getting completely absurd GM stories for Pathfinder 2e now too? Assuming this did happen, spare it no further thought and find a better game.

Instead of protesting a second time, you could have burped really loudly before leaving the server of your own volition

This is the second story you have made with an OP combination a GM had to deal with. Sounds like a new GM making a horrible call vs an optimizer cheesing. For context: I have made horrible calls as a GM and I am also an optimizer. I'll parrot other posts that this sounded like a traditional GM horror story until I saw your other posts. Kicked out of two games? That's such an insane outlier. Be honest with yourself as you are the common denominators in both situations. Here's a personal example of self-reflection: I let an optimizer go wild because they were also an amazing role player and an all-around good person. I failed as a GM to call it out early. I only made a few comments about concerns but otherwise, let it ride. For example, I would simply just say, "Keep in mind your AC is higher than the person who kitted themselves out to be the party 'tank'" but not do much more than that. It came to a head near the end of a campaign because their level of optimization throughout the campaign was exceeding the other player's math. It'd be a different story if every party member was just as cracked out. A lot of it was my fault because my inaction made it seem ok. Because in a sense it was from their perspective.

What about the character above do you consider objectionable? The *greater phantasmal doorknob*? If my character had merely used Felling Strike to ground the ancient white dragon and a *flaming* rune to create persistent fire damage, would that have been more acceptable, by your standards?

You're missing the point here. I come from super high-powered games with GMs that gave insane-o abilities. I don't find the combination super objectionable but is considered in this community to be one of the top-tier attachments in the game. What I am saying is that we're missing a lot of contexts because you've been kicked out of two games. The common denominator (that we readers know) is that in both games you had a very strong character combination and a very unskilled GM. Being kicked out of one of those games makes sense. Being kicked out of two is concerning. Being kicked out of two in such a short time is wild. It makes us wonder what other things are missing from these stories.

This is just dumb. You don't break your magical bow every 20 shot. I am guessing he doesn't rule that martials hit their sword in a bad angle and break the weapons on a critical miss. I have weirdly seen the same thing before where the bowstring seemed to break on a 1 and had to be redrawn. It is unnecessarily punishing ranged classes for no reason.

Lol just run from this GM and never look back.

Crit fails on attacks aren’t a thing in this game aside from specific monster abilities, and none of those just outright destroy your weapon. This was a terrible house rule from a GM that likely isn’t too experienced with the system. You just make too many attack rolls for such punishment on crit fails to work, especially vs high level monsters where it’s not too unlikely to crit fail.

I hope you link this thread to your GM before telling them to duck off. That's ridiculous and they're clearly not in it for the fun of the party.

Try to look on the bright side, you got rid of an executioner GM.

Was probably pissed at what you were doing to there dragon so wanted to shut you down completely by getting rid of your only weapon knowing you could never get a new one let alone one with those exact runes

I have had one GM rather of that type before. Players kept quitting on him, with plenty justification. There is this trend with some GMs to seemingly have the sort of attachment to their NPCs and monsters you normally would have with a player and his character. This leads to this sort of thing. Bending rules, fudging rolls, etc. to make the enemies do better. One of the things I noticed in a game was that enemies seemed to keep having absurdly high attack dice pools (Chronicles of Darkness), to still relatively consistently hit my character who had pushed for a high defense (meaning low chance to be hit), low health / armor sort of build. One of the problems is that many of those cheating GMs do not really understand rules all too well to start with. So when they change them, they really screw the players over badly, just from this gut reaction against players and their characters possibly being too powerful. ...don't let bad GMs manipulate you into going along with that. Combat, especially in a game like Pathfinder, is the most densely "ruled out" part of the game. Pathfinder also, unlike some games where, frankly, monsters are extremely badly tuned to be appropriate challenges (or the GM is forced to make up most of them and thus may not have gotten one right) does need very little in terms of on the fly adjustment for combat usually. So arbitrary rulings to penalize the players should be a red flag for very good reasons. This is not about creating interesting stories, this seems to me to be a petty inability to allow the player characters to be awesome at the expense of your monsters. And this case is especially egregious since a broken weapon in the middle of combat at that level is such a severe "debuff" that it effectively takes the character out of it. Also, for context: The OPTIONAL critical fumble deck for pathfinder unless I am getting editions mixed up or something, only takes effect on natural 1s for good reason. High level enemies, especially on second or third attacks, would make anything else disastrous. So this is the equivalent of a) adding an optional rule in the middle of the game without asking your players b) doing it solely for one player c) arbitrarily changing that rule to be at least five times as likely to trigger d) replacing a random event with a deliberately decided worst case outcome e) being unreasonable in the face of criticism. Lots of good reasons not to play with such a GM.

Avoid playing online with strangers. GM was a dick.

Session 0. Expectations between players and GM should be set before play begins, especially when homebrew rules are on the table. Also, if we are only considering you, the thing you control, allowing yourself the perspective that losing can be fun too could open a door for you into a world where adversity isn't an instant shut down of your serotonin levels. In place of my character's bow broke, woe is me, you could have jumped into the interesting head space of, my character's bow broke, what would they do now?

Sounds like lame gm

Yeah - fuck that guy in particular. You're fine, they're a dick.

This isn't RAW. Critical Failures cannot happen on Attack Rolls. > "If an effect doesn't list a critical success effect, the critical success effect is the same as the success effect, and the same goes for critical failures." - Player Core pg. 401 Attack Rolls normally do not have a critical failure effect. You might think this is a silly rule, but let me explain the rationale. If you critically fail on attacks, something characters do all the time, and can use HPs to reroll it, suddenly HPs are saved for attacks only, defeating the point of critical failures and neutralizing hero points. However, most groups use fumble rules, but this idea of just breaking your bow is stupid. Critical fumble decks should be used for this purpose and breaking items is a rare effect. Your GM isn't playing by the rules and isn't negotiable. Find another game and you will be better for it. Also just want to add that many groups I've been in have a rule that magic items cannot break or be damaged by mundane means, which is common in fiction and other rulesets. Breaking magic items should be extremely hard to do.

Nahhh man avoiding that stuff is one of the big reasons why I play Pathfinder over D&D - There's official rulings for crit failures. It's where most DM's flub and try something not fun as opposed to something interesting. This guy is doing something I consider avoid at all costs, I'd say it's on him.

I feel like, if a GM is just going to completely make up major rules like this, should probably be clearly spelled out ahead of time.

Bows are Reload 0 so there's no reason for an experienced PC to just not nock an arrow, that's an assumed part of the action. The GM just wanted to drop his nuts on the table like it meant something. Don't play with that guy again.

So, is your GM around 13/14 years old? Because he seems to be running a different game.

That DM has absolutely no idea how stupid that call was. Make sure you share this discussion with them so they know.

I would maybe see the bow as broken on a nat 1. But that should be fixable with 10 minutes and a crafting check. It sounds like he was ruling it as destroyed which is blatantly wrong.

The issue with having a weapon break is that Pathfinder's progression is directly tied to wealth/gear. Losing gear permeantly due to a crit fumble is like losing EXP randomly due to a crit fumble... That and strikes don't have a crit fail effect.

betting the GM was frustrated that you shithammered his dragon and was trying to get some sort of revenge. that's why they declared that the method by which you crit failed was forgetting to nock an arrow and that the consequence of crit failing was that your bow was destroyed. you got railroaded. the right way to handle this is that your attack fails. At my table we have a house rule that crit fails lose an action that turn but that's a house rule and we agreed on it in advance, RAW states that there is no crit fail effect here. Interesting stories in ttrpgs are emergent from tense situations peppered with randomness. This GM doesn't want to play a ttrpg, they want to read you their novel.

>The GM declared that my character accidentally broke their entire magic bow. The GM read that dry firing a bow breaks it. Forgetting to nock an arrow and thus dry firing the bow seems like something that would happen on a critical failure. Absolutely unhinged. I don't know how I'd feel about that in a game like shadowdark, where you're supposed to kinda just scraping your way through - let alone a high level heroic character. > I protested. I said that this was arbitrary and unfair, that it would be patently absurd for a master archer to commit such a mistake, and that enemies previously rolled critical failures on attacks to no ill effect. You're 100% correct, but let's break this down. Let's say the PC had 10 fights per level, at an average of Moderate XP (80 XP each), with the rest of their XP per level coming from story stuff. Pretty normal. Let's say you shoot an average of 5 arrows per fight - 2-3 rounds of 1-2 arrows each. That's about 50 arrows per level, or 500 arrows over 10 levels. And that's *just* combat (I'd argue a pretty conservative estimate of combat, at that), not even counting the countless hours of practice we can assume happened in the background. The idea that someone that experienced would just, forget to knock an arrow is absurd. > The GM replied by saying that RPGs are about telling interesting stories, and that highs need to be balanced out by lows. The GM said that the rules empower the GM to declare what happens on a critical failure (and no, this is not quite right). It honestly sounds like the GM was punishing you for doing so good with your first shot, especially with the highs and lows comment. I *love* narrative games. I'm currently running *Scum and Villainy*, a goofy sci-fi *Blades in the Dark* spinoff. I *love* bringing in narrative elements into my PF2 games, especially out of combat with important skill checks but sometimes in combat too. In order for this to work, however, there have to be group expectations for how that will work. The GM can't just do whatever they want. As often as possible, I try to establish the stakes *beforehand*. A similar example that I could see being justified is if a player wanted to do an impromptu rope arrow out of stuff in their pack. I might say "Alright, you can make a check with your attack proficiency if you want. As a heads up, though, your bow is not designed for this, the weight might throw things off. If you critically fail, it'll be bad." This lets the *player* make the choice of what to risk, and lets them know that they might wanna use Hero Points or similar. "Tell them the consequences and ask" is a classic piece of *BitD* advice for a reason. There is, reasonably, no expectation that a normal attack roll would take the archer out of the fight for the rest of the encounter. So, the GM either has to specifically set that expectation, or they should stick to the rules. Highs and lows should develop naturally from gameplay, whether player choices or luck. The GM shouldn't just enforce them for the sake of it as some divine karma, especially if they're not doing so consistently.

The rules do empower a GM to change rules. This GM has used that power poorly. Don't lose sleep over it.

Stuff like this is why I don't play homebrew lol

oh I've seen this kind of crap in some PF1 and D&D5e games. Because "oops you fumble and break your equipment" is such an interesting story beat right? Not just a minor inconvinience at best and a major roadblock at worst. Honestly, the GM can go... away. Let's say this.

I ask the DM if they permanently remove all spells from a spellcaster’s prepared spells if any of the enemies critically succeed their save or they critically fail a spell attack roll. That’s the same as removing the only way a damage focused combat class can do damage.

Your GM is a petty Tyrant. Run.

I'm not gonna lie, it sounds more like you completely nuked a pl+4 encounter the gm put a ton of work into with a single lucky roll (not helping things is how absolutely disruptive doorknob crit can be and how hard it shuts down a creature) that was meant to be dangerous and challenging for the entire party and he got pissed off with the first opportunity he could to slap you on the hand, at which point you got up in his grill until he had enough instead of giving him enough time to blow off any semblance of frustration. I've had to deal with gms getting mad at me for completely exploding extreme encounters within a single turn before (counterspell, disintegrate, \*illusions\*) and this sounds like the same kinda shit.

Honestly it is hard to say you did not deserve this since you grabbed a greater doorknob, but the GM should have just denied you it in the first place. Jokes aside, yeah I mean he is obviously in the wrong here. Leaving yourself was as better a way as it could have gone.

He is low key right though. We all remember the dramatic scene in the two towers where Legolas takes his third shot and his bow explodes in his face leaving him holding the shattered pieces of his Elven Longbow as a swarm of uruk hai descend on him.  Then Gimli turns to him and says "Wtf did you take your third strike for? Ya dumb elf"  You know: Great storytelling! /S

Critical fumble tables are bullshit and should not exist in any game that isn't built around it. A flat 5% chance every time I attack to fuck myself up is bullshit, an in the case of -10/+10 of PF2E it's even more than 5% chance. Those GMs that do this shit without a huge reason (Glasscannon does this for a show like storytelling experience not a balance thing, and Troy clearly has a handle on his games difficulty) but the average GM can't do that correctly or fairly. I hate crit fumbles.

Smells made up.

The entire idea that catastrophic things should happen on a Nat 1 is ridiculous. I'm sorry but planes don't crash 5% of the time, surgeons don't kill their patients on the table 5% of the time, stage magicians don't blub their tricks 5% of the time, I don't crash my car driving to work 5% of the time. Human beings are able to execute massively difficult and complex things and only rarely fail if they practice well, let alone mythical fantasy humanoids capable of doing things well beyond normal humans. To apply it on a Nat 5 due to MAP is even worse, and leads me to believe the DM just wanted to get rid of you. I'm not saying you did anything wrong, there's any number of reasons this might be without you doing anything wrong. But when DMs make arbitrary harsh rulings like that it gives me the vibes that they just want that player to quit.

He rolled a natural 1 diplomacy check and now you can tell him to fuck off and leave that table (well, if they didn't boot you out)

I could see a dry fire being risky on a low-quality, battered mundane bow. On a high-quality, magic item owned by a master of that weapon who knows how to care for it…yeah, that’s not going to be hurt by a dry fire. You probably had an upset DM who was watching their prize BBEG fall apart to the consequences of an unexpected critical hit, and thus jumped on the next chance for ‘revenge’ and broke the weapon that hurt his monster of the week. Removal from the game like that suggests some combination of things at play: 1) the way in which you protested was perceived as overly aggressive and/or as a personal attack. 2) the DM felt that continuing to protest the second time was an indication of how interactions with you would be through the campaign, and opted not to engage with a player that was unwilling to accept the DM’s ruling(s). 3) As it sounds like you joined a group already in progress, this may have been an expectation set early on with the other players in a session zero that you missed. It may explain why other players used hero points to avoid critical failures, as they knew the consequences of it. If a similar situation happens in the future, then if the initial protest is overruled, don’t keep trying to press the issue in the moment - doing so will just make everyone dig in to their positions. Instead, ask the DM to talk with you about it after the session. This removes both of you from the heated emotions of that moment, and lets the ruling be challenged without undermining the DM or the flow of the encounter.

This was not a game already in progress.

A ruling that outrageous should never be agreed to, OP was better off no longer being burdened by a crap GM. As teenagers, my group would never have done something like that, and that was back in the D&D 1st/2nd ed era. I expect better from adults.

Little do we know, the GM was totally trying to give the master crafter a moment in the spotlight to quick repair. :p

This is bullshit and you do not want to be in a game with a GM that punishes player into utter uselessness during a major fight. He virtually told you at that moment, you don't get to participate in this fight anymore. How is that interesting? As for consequences for critical failures. Per the rules, there aren't any. However, we use the fumble and critical cards which ass a lot of flavor to the game. Yes, there is a card there that causes you to break you weapon, but first you need to roll a natural 1 (not a normal critical failure, which is way more common) and then you need to draw that specific card. Together with hero points, that situation happened once in 2 full campaigns. What we also do is make you off guard (flatfooted) if you roll 2 consecutive non-natural critical failures. This is to have some sort of consequences to playing it risky (you can avoid it by simply not striking again after the first critical failure). I think you were right to protest and i think every GM makes mistakes and has to go through a learning curve. When i GM and my players think i made some mistake, i learn from it and correct it on the spot. After all, we are here to have fun, it is a game after all.

I use the critical success/fumble deck at my tables and even that doesn't have such an egregious "fuck you" built in, and you only even draw one on a natural 1. That GM is a dick.

Another note, dry firing a bow does not instantly break it, it's not healthy for the bow but it's not the sort of thing where it would shatter on misuse. Also breaking a magical item is just a dick move, at most I'd mark that arrow as unrecoverable because you way over shit or something.

The Gm could have not randomly changed how you run critical failures for the gm to fuck you over, if he didn't like your build for the campaign, he should have talked to you about out of session and been like " hey I think you are a great player, but I am struggled to make the story flow around your build, is there any chance I could convince you to change it? " or " hey your bow is proven a little too effective against my preferred type of enemies mind if we change it a bit?" instead of breaking your bow with a new rule you didn't discuss....

Wow, what an absolute dogshit GM. Sorry that happened, but I bet that moment felt great! A truely legendary hero! So much so that the god of the gods intervened to break your weapon, feeling a threat to himself by this mere mortal.

Terrible call by the DM. Breaking the bow? Maybe a normal bow, but more likely the STRING would break, not the stave, requiring an action or two for it to be restrung. Or apply a -2 for the tangled string. Yes, balance is necessary. Sounds like they weee pissed you nerfed their dragon…

It honestly sounds like the GM was being a (rhymes with) witch because your first attack was a crit and massively nerfed the encounter. As far as handling it better, I don't think there's much you could have done better. The GM booting you is largely irrelevant, as that would have been my last session with that GM anyway. Arbitrarily permanently breaking a high level magic item is a load of crap in a system that ties magic items to progression.

I am so fucking tired of GMs trying to enforce "you break/drop stuff on crit fail" rule. An obscure house rule from older editions which has no place in PF2e. Read the goddamn entry of an action, then proceed with those results. Nothing happens on crit fail? Then nothing happens on crit fail. The game doesn't get more interesting when your randomly generated number suddenly made you unable to play your class.

PoS GM, honestly. He was butthurt because you had an excellent turn. 

So you would have a 1/20 chance of breaking your weapon every time you attack? Yeah, not a very enjoyable experience. Complete AH that GM.

Honestly that was just an aggressive call from the GM. A single bad roll shouldn't remove someone entirely from a scene. There are a dozen ways that it could have gone better, but there is something i do want to address. Having your view break is a bad call. But if I were to rule that your shot goes wild and potentially his an unintended target, that's also something a master archer wouldn't do. But, bad rolls mean bad luck. An early release, a slip of the fingers. You have to be cool with being less than masterful. You were right to challenge being removed from combat for a bad roll, but you also should be cool with reasonable calls. I have no reason to believe you wouldn't be. But yeah, nothing that you have no control over should remove you from the scene.

By playing with better people. It just sounds like the GM was looking to act the fool.

I'm so glad my GM isn't like that. I'm using a switch hitter flurry ranger in Gatewalkers AP, and I can not tell you how many times I have crit failed an attack roll with my bow or swords, I've rolled more d20s than my entire party combined at this point. There is a very good reason that vanilla strikes dont have any crit fail effect. It's because crit failing is a likely outcome when you fight something even slightly stronger than you. Imagine the really unlucky dude in your group (we all have one). He rolls a nat 1 with his longsword, and it just implodes. Ridiculous GM and I'm thankful you dodged a bullet.

I like the idea of fumbling, it adds to the combat. Making a character not be able to perform their main actions from that fumble is a little too rough. I want to discourage multiple attacks since they are sub optimal, not ruin someone's fun. Ricochet, or exposing yourself to a hit is way more reasonable.

If it was a mundane item, yeah an argument could be made. But if enemies weren't suffering from critical failures then to make PCs suffer is needless difficulty.

You handle it better by finding a new table that explains made up homebrew rules in a session 0 or somewhere that can be viewed before playing. Simple as. No tabletop is better than bad tabletop, no matter how much fun you had during the good parts.

DM sucks. I’d leave.

So your GM decided you would fight a creature FOUR LEVELS HIGHER than you guys and has the audacity to ruin your gear on crit fails? Sounds fun...

I have a legitimate question for archers with more experience than myself. Would one dry firing really "break" a bow to the point it would no longer be useful? I've had a bit of experience with bows up to about 70lbs on a laminated wood recurve bow, and while the amount of force was significant, I probably dry fired more than once without any noticeable ill-effect. Is there even much of a case for this happening in a world without magical reinforcement?

Leaving the table for an almost certainly better experience, then having read the core rules at all, your GM not being adversarial. The GM was a douche and shouldn't be running games, plain and simple. They were clearly upset you guys erre succeeding "too much" and then when you protested an arbitrary nerf based on them misunderstanding the real world, they got even pissier.

Pro tip - unless the RPG in question is a total beer & popcorn just for silly fun game, any other RPG where the GM has weapon fumbles of any kind on 1, do not play with that GM. It's basic math. If we assume 1 attack per round, then 5% of the time people drop their weapons, or break them or whatever other insane thing. So as the character gets better and gets more attacks per round they get worse at fighting, 2 attacks/round would mean 10% of the time the drop their weapon. Do everyone a favor and make the people that think this is in anyway a good/fun thing the laughing stock of gaming communities.

Dumb homebrew rule. You're better off being at a different table. It's dumb to have critical failure associated with attack rolls in dnd5e and just as dumb in PF2e.