My GM has created a Mary Sue NPC. What can I do to persuade the GM to make her less powerful?

Question

My GM has created a Mary-Sue-type NPC. She is a demigod with thousands of years of experience, and was once an enemy, but is now an ally of the party, though really of only a few favourite players. She is literally undefeatable, and I actually mean literally, not figuratively. Any attempts to defeat her will be vetoed.

To compound the problem, she is also pretty much a jerk, though to the GM's credit he has actually given some attempt to give her a heart of gold. The invulnerability and jerkishness don't combine well, e.g. a nother player character tried to become friends with her and make up for previous grudges—denied and his head is being used as a football.

This situation will only be worsened by the problem that our next game will be in the same setting, except that our new characters will be nerfed, due to the fact that our whole group agrees our last characters were too OP.

The Mary Sue, of course, will stay on the same power level.

This is making the game quite a bit less fun for me, though I don't know about the other players. It is quite seriously ruining it, due to the fact that she has an extremely short fuse and will kill anyone who annoys her.

What can I do to persuade the GM to make her less powerful/obnoxious? Please help!

Answer 1

First talk to the other players, determine how you would like to see this resolved, then talk to the GM one on one.

What this NPC is doing is taking control of the story and making it all about them, rather than the party. This is anathema to roleplaying, because players want to star in their own story rather than watch one unfold between them. And when faced with an NPC that will kill them on a whim is not fun. (Do note that dealing with an NPC who is severely more powerful than the party can work, Beerus from Dragon Ball Super comes to mind.)

What your GM has done is create a character that belongs in poorly written fanfiction, not a pen & paper RPG (don't tell the GM this though). This turned the game into a power trip for the GM rather than a story for the players to experience. First talk to the other players, one on one. Share your concerns, gauge if they share them and determine what you want your GM to do. If you've done this with all your players go have talk to the GM. Do this one on one, because if several people confront the GM it is quite possible they become defensive and completely shut down.

Make sure to offer a solution that works for the entire party!

1. Do you want the mary sue gone?
2. Do you want her to move to the background and stop killing the party?
3. Or perhaps you want to turn her into a myth, with her mary sue exploits being the stuff of legends?
4. Or do you want something else?

What you do next depends on what the GM says. It is possible that they didn't know it was so bad. They'll try to tone it down or comply with the solution you offer. Maybe it turns out that the GM does not like GMing or is not good at it, and would much rather play. Consider if it'd be possible to switch them out for one of the players. Perhaps your GM would prefer to play another game, or one of a different tone. See if people would be up for playing that instead. If the GM becomes defensive however and does not acknowledge that you do not enjoy what they are doing it's time to abandon ship: form a new group with the other players and start something new together.

Answer 2

There is nothing inherently wrong with extremely powerful and jerkass characters. Most scenarios actually have these in canon in form of deities or sentient high-level monsters. The question is how these characters are used.

They can be useful as:

• Villains (if not confronted directly)
• Questgivers (can't do everything on their own)
• Neutral NPCs which need to be persuaded to act in the interest of the players and solve some problems.

They should not be:

• The GMs personal player-character so they can have a share of the playing-experience. This is not what GMing is about and brings a whole heap of problems.
• The deus-ex-machina which ends up solving all the problems the players are supposed to solve themselves (sometimes a deus-ex-machina might be necessary to solve some serious screwups, but that should be an exception and not become a habit).
• The GM authority enforcement tool to bring divine punishment on every player who dares to act up.

The more they interact with the party directly the more problematic they become. Any combat encounter where they participate will be either unfair or boring (depending on which side they are) and serve no other purpose than to demonstrate their strength.

So you should try to persuade your GM to give their Uber-character more of an acting-from-the-background role in the campaign to avoid stealing the spotlight from the player-characters.