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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ZSutherland" data-source="post: 3020875" data-attributes="member: 7638">I voted other because there's a lot of information not present in the hypothetical.  It sounds like it likely wasn't very fair (or more importantly fun), but it may have been fair.  You lay out in detail how the saving throw went, but the information on the original search for both traps and a means of opening the door is very vague.  Was the roll made in secret, in which case the result could have been abysmal, and other party members might have tried taking 20 on Search checks to find a way to open the door?  Did the door actually open when the lever was pulled?      If not, was there any reason to suspect that whatever BBEG controlled this dungeon and was guarding the McGuffin was the chaotic-crazy type that would go to the expense and trouble have having a very heightened disintegrate trap on a lever that served no other purpose than to insta-gib anyone who pulled it?  Where they players made aware at the outset that this would be a very lethal campaign and/or has their prior experience borne this out?On the whole, whether it's fair or not is irrelevant.  It is generally inadvisable to put an save or die effect in the game that requires a natural 20 to avoid by the character with some of the best saves because it's just not much fun.  The real question, assuming this really happened, is if the DM is relatively new (in which case it may just have been a bad decision/mistake on his part) or experienced enough to know better.  Regardless, you need to have a talk with the DM about why you game and what constitutes fun, but if it's the latter, you need to ask some probing questions to try and decide if this is an adversarial DM or if he just made mistaken assumption (he assumed you would read the BBEG's journal which included the password to open the secret door in the back room) and simply applied the rules when you didn't do what he expected, in which case he may just have made a bad call.  We all do it sometimes.</blockquote>

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