Not sure if this counts, but once in Pathfinder, my very non-optimized hobgoblin alchemist character tracked down his tribe's killer (in a subplot we like to run within larger campaigns) to a large mill the villain was using for his base of operations. My teammates followed, because you never split the party, and also because the villain was almost two times our level. In the party was a human rogue, ridiculously combat-oriented to make him "the best assassin evah!" We were all level 5 at that point, and his attack modifier with the enchanted dagger was something like +10.

So, my alchemist got past the villain's traps and confronted him in his small lair upstairs. The villain, a cunning but frail wizard was a knight templar style monster extreminator (who, as it later turned out, was part of an organization that we ran across on a regular basis), who didn't see anything wrong with wiping an entire hobgoblin tribe off the face of the earth. Granted, my tribe hadn't been the nicest bunch of monsters you could run across in our campaign world, but dammit, they were family. With a vengeful glare in his eyes, the alchemist prepared to drink the special mutagen that enhanced his strength and granted electricity resistance in order to battle the level 9 lightning bolt spamming wizard to the death. I fully expected the fight to be tough, as even though the wizard was squishy, he was level 9 and battle-hardened. My character didn't care though. One of us would die today. Oh, sweet, sweet revenge, you mass-murdering, self-righteous piece of tasty human flesh, you!

Then my party showed up, intitiative was rolled, the darned assassin went first with his darned dagger and one-hit sneak attacked the wizard to the death. He thought that was hilarious. I was pretty pissed off.

So, I recently joined an online game of Pathfinder. While I'm not exactly new to pen and paper games, this was only my second time using PF, and I still hadn't quite gotten used to just how important magic items were.

Anyway, we started at level 5, and I rolled a Dwarf Cavalier (whose mount was a kickass, moderately intelligent griffon). He was built pretty decently, and none of the other players had rolled super-powered characters, so the first couple sessions went pretty well.

However, a new player joined at level 7, after about 24 hours had passed in game and our characters had barely earned any extra cash. They ended up building an Oracle with Magic Item/Armor/Weapon making feats, allowing them to start off with several thousand more gold than the rest of us and buy their gear at half the cost, and it certainly didn't hurt that the player really knew how to choose their feats.

Needless to say, me and the rest of the party felt a little inadequate when we took a look at their character sheet, with both Charisma and AC approaching 30. Though no one directly complained, the new player actually ended up nerfing their Oracle to avoid inciting a riot. Though being fair, they were playing the game perfectly right; it was mostly a combination of the rest of the party's inexperience and the GM not giving us money that led to the power gap.

Luckily, things calmed down after a couple sessions went by, and we quickly got used to being able to get our magic gear at half price.