I had a dm a couple weeks ago who told us a couple hours before the start of session one we'd have no equipment right at the start, which i was fine with because i was a monk. Others agreed because he made it seem like we'd get them pretty quickly, from the way he phrased it.(he said: "You won't have it right at the start..")

We didn't.

We wake up in a battlefield of dead bodies, all in armour and weapons. We get a couple middling perception rolls and find a bunch of broken weapons, and no armour, despite the DM having told us there were piles of corpses in chain and plate mail all around us. We hear noises, so we run away. We come to a town in a state of disarray and ask the mayor if we can help, and he says he he'll give us some hammers and axes if we can take down some boars in the farms.

First combat rolled around, and we were at level 1, fighting boars with broken weapons that did half damage, so i threw mine away and started punching pigs. The barbarian had to grow around with a shitty battle axe while the cleric and wizard had to cower in the back and spam cantrips. I was mvp that fight because i was the only one fighting with a good AC and good offense.

Oh and it urns out those hammers and axes were for rebuilding the their dilapidated walls, and were useless in combat. So we were rewarded by being given extra work, with the possibility of actual payment.

Then he makes us talk to shihead npcs who wont lend us weapons or armour to help with their bandit problems. We kill the bandits, barely, the barbarian mnaged to wrestle a longsword off of one of them and joined me at somewhat decent strength. The cleric grabbed some leather armour and did what he could with a 13 AC. The fighter, who had been late to the session joined and promptly died to a crit from a buffed bandit captain that did 2d8 mod and had multiattack (why???) his subordinates even got to mullttiattack after we killed their captain, downing the wizard and barb, but thankfully the cleric healed them, since he was a nature cleric and was using a branch he picked up as a focus. And we finished the fight as he rolled up a bard. The bandits had the entire town's gold.

We then leveled up to level 2, but the wizard couldn't have any spells, since he didn't have his spellbook. He was stuck with his cantrips, basically.

Next week we came back, and had to repair the towns outer walls, for some reason. They didnt reward us, so we kept the gold we got back from the bandits and left.

Oh yeah, one of the things we got off those bandits were some pristine scimitars, which were a god send for me and the barbarian.

We went to the nearest city, and were arrested since scimiars were illegal, and none of the townsfolk told us after we sauntered in.

Then, we got told that any weapon larger than a dagger had to be confiscated from us, since they were apparently illegal in the city. There were also crystals on the gate and walls of the city.

Luckily i didnt tell them my fists were lethal weapons, otherwise im sure the DM would have had them disarm me.

After a really shoddy quest where a guy refused to tell us he was robbed, we run into a gang in an alleyway, and we have to fight barehanded again.

Oh and you know those crystals on the city gates, those are antimagic, so the cleric, bard and wizard have to succeed flat checks of DC15 to cast spells, otherwise they waste their turns.

The bard dies. His player leaves silently and then drops out of the discord server.

Then we fight tooth and nail unarmed against the knife wielding gang members. The barbarian got tired of it and left like the bard. Then the cleric did. Then i did and I'm not sure what the wizard did but he most likely left.

TL;DR - DM gives us no equipment then watches us flounder in combat. Then when we get something useful, he makes it illegal.