Evaluating capabilities

[mehs]

The question for all of you Is in essence, how do you tell whether or not it is within the capabilities of the party to do something?

Coming out of a campaign where there seemed a large disconnect between what the dm expected us to be able to do, and what the at least my character was able to do.

Note:if someone can tell me how to collapse this next bit, as it is going to be a wall, that would be appreciated

Part basis for the question and part venting. Every gm might include various character creation rules that shift the power level, so here are the relevant ones:
Most of any Pathfinder content but only pathfinder
25 point buy
Bonus racial feat at 1 and every 5
Full elephant in the room
Pathfinder only
Background skill
2 traits (+1trait if drawback)
Most wbl hacks banned
Crafting allowed
Pathfinder only
Level 8 at the time
Technologist feat not required
Unchained (deadlier) poisons

I'm a school specialist (enchanter) arcanist.

Context: we were investigating a fallen star, it landed in supernaturally thick bramble forest. Previous session, we checked around, and upon finding an entrance to a cave dm quickly entered into a pre written (could see it pre written in text channel) speech, essentially speed running our characters through the cave system to a sci fi vault door made of 10m+ adamantine, magically enchanted, dc 40 before enchantments, the works. We tinker with it a bit, got chased out by two inhaled poison traps, but it is very much outside of our capabilities so we left the session at that.

In between sessions, one player left we got 3 new ones, and we leveled to 8.

Next session, we explore the forest map a bit, but there isn't anything to do, and dm says that he accidentally deleted his maps. The result is that dm says he can recreate it in 20 min, but asks us if we are going deeper into the forest or exploring the cave. We choose the cave, wait 20 min, and eventually see the map he made.

I personally was expecting him to have roughly recreated the dungeon crawl he was talking about was in the cave, but no, he ran us through again and it was the door. At this point I directly asked the dm if this is what we were doing, if we even could do this, and cast augury.

Attempting opening the door: weal
Opening the door: weal and woe.

First thing, we check out the room, 30 perception check, we only see the two gas poison traps. I'm the only person with ranks in disable device, so cast fly, delay poison, and heroism and go to disable the poison traps on the roof. (marvelous fear gas and smell of fear)

And that's when the two auto sentries, visual trigger, auto reset, +20 attack, 6d6 damage each, hit me.

That alone, (including a homebrew geas lowering my con from 14 to 11), does 55 and knocks me down to -7. At this point I will admit I cheated, said I was still conscious, and exited to be healed. Discuss with party, spend an hour to reshuffle spell slots, I am sent in again under invisibility. I send in familiar first to see if invisibility does evade the traps, and it does. So since share spells and ranks, me and familiar disable the traps.

The DC was 25. My base was 3 ranks +2dex, with some bonuses giving a +4.

Finally the door itself... even on a nat 20 knock, even with buffing caster level, I'm unable to do this, so again cheat and say I have the spell revelation on my character sheet, and even with it, it takes 8 2nd level spells slots (knock) plus everything else to open this door.

And at this point gm pulls, once again, the "the monster steps out from around the corner and grapples the squishiest party member" (first time was an annis hag that somehow avoided bird familiar flying around searching the deserted throp). It gets surprise round and initiative, no perception check, so it grapples and deals 2d4+24 to me first round. I have 48 hp.

It is some sort of android ?monk? And dm says it is twice our level. The only way we got out of that was it rolled a 3+11 vs a calm emotions spells. Afterwards gm says we should've totally left the forest and pursued some other plot hook, and also defended the augury results as "we did open the door and got some information from the android"
He seems to define "you can do this" as "you can always roll multiple nat 20's"

So honestly, what the hell? Why did the gm think this was appropriate? How could we have prevented this? The augury results? Anything else you can say?

[Elvensilver]

The short answer would be: Talk to your GM about the problem and tell them that such challenges aren't fun for you.

Also, there are CRs for traps, locks and monsters and GMs should look at them, at least as a rough guideline whether these are appropriate challenges for the group. Of course a DM should also tailor challenges to the specific capabilities of the group - like only including very difficult traps when there is a dedicated rogue in the party. There are sections in the Core rule book and the the GM guide (in the chapter: "running a game") how to design encounters.

From your story, to be totally honest, this seems like bad GMing to drop such a challenge.

It seems like you did everything in your power with the augury, the buff spells, and the knocking (apart from trying a creative solution such as attacking the floor or wall instead) -frankly, to a somewhat ridiculous degree with eight Knocks, and that only being barely enough is a warning sign.

I can understand the problem could have arisen due to the GM having to make up the challenge on the spot since his maps got deleted. If this was a singular occurence, move on, I guess.


If something like that happens more often, then you definitely have to talk to the GM.

Constantly presenting the players with challenges they can only clear on a natural twenty or throwing monsters twice their level at them seems to either be a the result of a GM vs. player-mindset where the GM has to "win" or of the GM having only a faint idea what a challenge is for the group.

Speak to the other players about your experience in the last session. Was it frustrating for everyone or do others think that the challenge was appropriate? Then, talk to your GM out of character and tell him your grievances and propose ways to have challenges that are fun for everyone. Maybe note sources where to find DCs and guidelines for creating encounters (Core rule book and the GM guide)

Encourage communication and communicate yourself (out of character) when there is a problem in the sessions, such as asking whether something is really intended as a challenge, or really more a background item meant for later levels and interacting with it only consumes precious playing time.

If it doesn't get better, maybe let someone else GM or leave the group if it isn't fun anymore.