sorry about no examples, but i'm glad that a bunch of you posted a few on your own.
i'll use pendragon's excellent example. our campaign is for the most part "realistic", but that can be debated, for good and bad. it's the type of campaign where the villains always look cool and the PCs sometimes are made to look like bumbling fools by said villains.
in my opinion, if anyone in our group would attempt something like that, the DM would probably state that, something like that isn't covered in the rules, so he would give some really high DC (anywhere from the 30 to 40 range or where only a natural 20 would succeed). he would follow the rules for the Jump check because they are in the book, but probably add a bunch of minuses. and pulling the tapestries, i'm not sure what skill he would use, but he would probably pull the DC 30 or 40 do. for the tapestries to even hit the guards, you would probably need a naturally 20 to hit. this is assuming if he even lets you attempt it. sometimes he says that it's possible, but hints that it is going to fail if you attempt, since it isn't covered in the books. now if this took place during combat, he would probably make it not worth doing, making it take 3 rounds, one to jump, one to drop the tapestries, then one to hit (probably because the tapestries takes a "while" to fall).
i guess my gripe
i'm not sure what standard practice is, but our DM never tells us what DC we need. he just states that it is a "very" high check, that we most likely will fail, and that there are going to be minuses. he hardly says what the minuses are, but i believe the lowest one he ever said was -4.
a more personal example is when my cleric had a few ranks in perform. we were killing sometime at an elven village. my total bonus to perform was 7. i thought, not bad, because if i take a 10, it is 17, which is an average performance in the book. majority of the elves worshipped no deity, so i thought i could probably try to preach to them using perform to tells stories. i knew it wouldn't convert them overnight, but my main goal was to entertain while at the same time make them aware of my deity, in otherwords just roleplaying. i even got the wizard in the group to add to it by using prestidigitation. my DM, said you can try but this is what he did
minuses because the wizard and i were human and the audience were elves
minuses because i did not know the society and cultures of the elves
i had to make a perform check for each part of the story, which i told (around 5)
the outcome was that i rolled under 10 for many of my rolls, with the result being the elves thought i was some kind of fool and my deity was the same. whenever i dealt with them afterwards, they would always snicker behind their back.
i believe my DM has the idea that you can try something that isn't covered in the book, but since it isn't covered in the book, it deserves astronomical DCs or a roll of a natural 20 to succeed. the DM makes it so difficult to try something new, that it's to the point that we are at, why bother because we are going to fail anyway.
that is, if he doesn't snap at us and give us a lecture on how the rules "really" work. like a parent scolding their child. when we try to stop him and say we understand, he gets upset that we would interrupt him and says that he is trying to make sure that we understand the rules.
however, god forbid that we do the same to him. he states that he doesn't need the players telling him how to run his game. there were times where he was clearly wrong about a ruling, but we all just let it go, because it wasn't worth him getting mad at us by pointing it out in the book.
in regards to storminator, our DM is pretty much the same way. the ironic thing is that come of our best ideas come up right at the table during the session. personally, i don't like the idea of having to ask the DM if every little thing i think of or do is OK, especially outside the game. during the game, i know it can't be helped because he is the DM after all and he determines the outcome. however, outside the game, in my opinion, it makes me feel like i don't understand the rules well enough that i have to check with the DM on every little thing. plus, while he likes to call us on the rules often enough, he gets irritable when the players do that to him, even to the point where he snaps at us when we bring to his attention.
