My DM is frustrating!

For the last 2-3 years we have been playing campaign after campaign.. We play FGR v3.5
He always runs a rather hard game, any screw ups and your character dies(pretty sure he gets a kick from killing someone.) . This isn't to much of a problem. Except.
As I make new characters I've started scaling my optimizations of characters making them more durable and survivable.
I'm at the point I created a Elan psi war, we are up to lvl 13. I started down the path to run him into a king of smack. He didnt like most of the build so I conceded and compromised with only using natural attack feat..coupled with rapid strike feat.
After game play he started in with thats to powerful..and he would have to look into that more to make sure it was legal...guess what..he decided it wasn't, over a matter of "claws of the beast might give you a natural attack, but it's not any different than using a spell of owls wisdom to gain extra bonus spells when u level" .. So I had to re optimize him...then he gets enslaved by a city of mindflayers and beholders ( my own stupidity), so I make a Beguiler mindbender to go rescue him. He completely nyxed this toon saying a pc shouldn't be able to have his own party via charm/dominate and limited it to only ONE.. It's too game breaking, he says..his idea of any caster not being game breaking is a pew pew caster....anyways..getting off topic.

So here I am.. Frustrated and out of ideas for characters that I can make...
We are limited to Core books and tsr supplimentals. No web. No mass charming... Melee characters can't out dps a wizard...no shape changing via polymorph or like abilities.. No racial LA above +2. The character cant be OP but I beed it to survive and be versatile. Any ideas?

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This is not a problem that is likely to be solved by having a character with a "better build". This is a problem of differing play styles and differing game play expectations. You should have a talk with your other players (including your DM) about what has made this experience so frustrating for you.

Hopefully you can come to some consensus as to what you find to be appropriate consequences of "mistakes" during game play and what are the stakes for everyone involved.

We are pretty much on the same page about the mistakes and consequences are..
My frustration is with his expectation or rather view of "balanced" is.

You can't run a high power campaign and expect characters equivalent to a 28pt buy build to survive with out full optimization if you as the DM don't pull punches.

So I came here hoping I could find my solution with a character build that would pass his criteria ...

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What is FGR v3.5

Sean Holmes said:

What is FGR v3.5

Click to expand...

Forgotten realms Version 3.5

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Hmm, seems to me that your DM doesn't want you all playing on the same level as npcs and monsters. This DM is likely to view anything as OP that would regularly defeat his encounters. I would suggest a discussion amongst the group to determine if the group finds the DMs style of running fun. If it isn't have him change his style or have someone else run. The DM is only a DM so long as he has a group that will play his game.

I would build something that's really good at running away. Contigency + teleport for example.

Go fighter, every time, just pick a fighter with the same stats. If you have to roll stats then reroll and assign them as close as possible to the previous incarnation. When your PC dies, his cousin Fighter #2 shows up. Or you could start by never taking it seriously. Create a wizard with Intelligence on the low side but crank his strength and constitution and have him charge into combat or create a fighter who has strength as his lowest stat so he can't hit or hurt anything.

Are you creating characters in line with the rest of the party?

Regardless if the DM is tough, you can still optimize above the level of the rest of the PCs and hog the spotlight. Or worse, keep raising the bar and the DM needs to either calibrate for you or calibrate for the rest of the PCs.

The first step in any DM/player conflict is talking to each other. It seems he talked to you about what he's looking for. Talk back to him about why you're trying to make characters tougher and tougher.

cbwjm said:

Go fighter, every time, just pick a fighter with the same stats. If you have to roll stats then reroll and assign them as close as possible to the previous incarnation. When your PC dies, his cousin Fighter #2 shows up. Or you could start by never taking it seriously. Create a wizard with Intelligence on the low side but crank his strength and constitution and have him charge into combat or create a fighter who has strength as his lowest stat so he can't hit or hurt anything.

Click to expand...

I've considered this was even doing this to a degree,however I get into playing the characters to much. I get invested in the toons and they die..

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