I'm curious of the details of these encounters. Mind, I'm a 3.5 player, but I think I can get the gist of it from description.
That aside, yeah, I personally think there's a certain cutoff point for first-level challenge. You shouldn't be running into anything the fighter can't hit at least a third of the time(with the exception of tailor-made things for party dynamics) when you first walk in, and you sure as hell shouldn't need to blow that much healing right in the door.
Well the entrance to the dungeon was vertical, so when we entered, we were in a large 5 x 5 room. The minute we set down, we were ambushed by Kobold spearmen and Kobold slingers that had glue shots. It was a really tough fight, especially when the co-DM was making amazing rolls for the Kobolds. We managed to defeat them but burned through 80% of our healing surges just to stablize at half health
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Holy hell. Yeeeah, that's just a little too intense. A DM with skill in designing really challenging dungeons is a wonderful thing... until he gets too carried away and makes one far too challenging for the beginning group of adventurers involved. You need to bring this up with him, preferably as a group, not just one person. Don't lie back and count on him to see sense. Flat-out tell him, politely but directly, that his dungeons are too harsh for a first-level group and he needs to dial it back a bit unless he wants a bunch of very dead adventurers.
Sounds like a case of a DM getting fixated on his own cleverness in creating a deathtrap and not taking the players' fun into account. I've run a lot of games over the years, and I don't mind running them through miserable encounters once in a while. But even I've never had an ambush with siege crossbows you could reload and once every turn. That's ludicrous.
I'd wait until third level in 3.5 to throw that kind of stuff in the mix. Still mildly ridiculous, but much more doable. Especially with a creative Wizard.
A few things, though, don't quite add up. The reloading, you should really address, and the dwarven trap seems perhaps a bit too specific to screwing someone over. The damage for said trap makes that even more suspicious.
talk about killer DM. At first level those challenges are way too challenging. You and your group needs to sit down and talk to the DM about the problems.
Ahuh, joining everyone here and saying that, yeah, this way over the capacity of a first level group. I think your GM forgot that the challenge of encounters can easily be cranked up with such designing. That's without counting the trap sounds way deadlier than a first level trap there; both high DC and high damage? I'm really hoping he realizes the problem there, for ya. D:
That aside, yeah, I personally think there's a certain cutoff point for first-level challenge. You shouldn't be running into anything the fighter can't hit at least a third of the time(with the exception of tailor-made things for party dynamics) when you first walk in, and you sure as hell shouldn't need to blow that much healing right in the door.
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A few things, though, don't quite add up. The reloading, you should really address, and the dwarven trap seems perhaps a bit too specific to screwing someone over. The damage for said trap makes that even more suspicious.
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I'm really hoping he realizes the problem there, for ya. D:
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