Questions about low magic/ gold campaigns

[Vyanie]

I am in a pathfinder campaign right now that seems extremely low magic (as in the party just got our first masterwork weapon at level 5). If we all pool our gold together, 8 people, we have roughly 500-600 gold total. Since my DM likes us to fight quite a bit I am noticing that my brawler is not doing so hot in combat (DM does not seem to like combat maneuvers as if i grapple something everyone has a 50/50 shot of hitting me since to him it "makes sense". He also did not seem to like me tripping stuff, as it NEVER tried to stand up just attacked me from the floor and had to argue about its AC reduction vs melee.)
We seem to be consistently praying to the gods to save our sorry asses, our last fight had 5 people starting a fight with 2 helmed horrors 10 cultists (+6 attack humans with around 15 hp from what we could tell) and the big bad demon lady they were protecting. we are only level 5, I as the main melee started the fight with 14 hp the others were full hp the wizard only had 4 first level spells left. My questions are twofold, should I talk to my gm about wealth and such and if so how do i go about it. Second, since my character has been -9 more than once should i just let him die and roll up something better? Since we have absolutely no access to even halfway decent gear should i just go with a caster?

[Formless Entity]

Honestly to me it seems you are under a bad GM and should try to find another game.

[Geddy2112]

The low magic/poverty campaign is fine, but the DM does not seem to balance the encounters that assume players have access to wealth by level. That is not fine.

Brawlers can get by a bit lean on gear compared to other non casters or low magic classes. Being a caster would help, but that is not the big problem.

The DM having arbitrary rules against your build and poor encounter design is screwing you and the party over more than lack of items(although that is part of poor encounter design). Therefore

Honestly to me it seems you are under a bad GM and should try to find another game.
I second this. You could try to talk to the GM about it, but in my experience bad GM's won't take criticism.

[Vyanie]

Sadly finding a new dm isnt going to happen small area. He does a great job with the story telling it just feels like he is making it needlessly hard on us. My build is a dex brawler (bad i know but i only had a 17 and 16 the rest were 10ish.) I was allowed to take deadly agility but when i attack stuff like a door to break out of a room i need to now use my str instead of dex to damage that I had used a feat to do. you know how hard that is when you have a 10 str with a hardness 5 door. Does anyone have any way I should approach the dm? even during the argument with the damage to the door they took a im right your wrong stance.

[LTwerewolf]

It seems:

1) the dm just wants people to play casters.

2)the dm is terrible.

[Florian]

It seems that the GM has some scenes/set piece battle preplanned that he things will work fine and will be overall fitting to the storytelling as a whole.
It also seems that this particular GM has not understood that WBL is tied to how the system works and stuff will break down hard when that is ignored.
Yes, it´s the usual thing when imagination of how a scene should look and the game system reality clash. Magic Sword are pretty common and all that, but we don´t see this in the movies, yadda-yadda.

A working compromise could be pointing that GM towards the Automatic Bonus Progression table. That at least gives a bit of the needed boni but leaves out the items.

The other thing is plainly calling it out that it sucks to be the punching bag for regular mooks.

[Yahzi]

We seem to be consistently praying to the gods to save our sorry asses
You're not playing D&D, you're playing NetHack. :smallbiggrin:

Some options:

1) Run away from the next fight. "Nope, that's one too tough. Let's go back to town and find an easier job, where we can make some money to buy better equipment."

2) If people would die if you run away, then try asking them for some financial aid. "Hey, we're saving your bacon, maybe you wanna help out here?"

3) Roll up a caster, like a Sorcerer with Eschew Materials. Be prepared for your DM to start nerfing you, though. He clearly wants things to be hard so your characters will seem heroic and appreciate what they've done. That's why I prefer sandbox games; let the characters choose easy fights and low rewards or hard fights and fast advances.

[Satinavian]

In addition to the stuff already said (which is not wrong), maybe you could consider switching game systems. There are lots of others that handle low magic, low wealth far better or are better suited to story focused games instead of the tatcical combat stuff that is so prominent in D&D

[Honest Tiefling]

Sadly finding a new dm isnt going to happen small area. He does a great job with the story telling it just feels like he is making it needlessly hard on us. My build is a dex brawler (bad i know but i only had a 17 and 16 the rest were 10ish.) I was allowed to take deadly agility but when i attack stuff like a door to break out of a room i need to now use my str instead of dex to damage that I had used a feat to do. you know how hard that is when you have a 10 str with a hardness 5 door. Does anyone have any way I should approach the dm? even during the argument with the damage to the door they took a im right your wrong stance.

So...Have you tried DMing? It seems like he's great at the story-telling. I could excuse the harsh fights if he was upfront about that. He also seems to be changing the rules on the fly, and not for good reason. Sometimes DMs get into a corner and have to make something up or panic. It just seems he doesn't want things to be easy, ever. I suggest you talk to him that changing the rules mid-session is making it hard for you to enjoy the story as you don't know what your character is capable of and don't understand why your character would train in a combat style that doesn't work. Ask him bluntly what sort of characters he wants to see, becasue it is clear he's not fond of certain characters.

Failing that, we're here to help you run a game.