Need a little help

[Grogtar]

Yup, this is about right.

I spoke to him, and he said "Yeah, Im surprised you survived, I did not want you going that way"

He was unapologetic about the class levels, "Story over Mechanics" he said. I gently suggested he try some of the pre-gen'd encounter groups (specificaly the EL7 Gnoll group on MM133) and he flat out refused, saying he would never use pre generated monster encounters.

In his defense, he did say we will probably find out why those guys were so hard.

I told him there might be better ways to discourage people from going one direction. A portcullis was what I suggested. Put 4 guys with spears behind it and done (You can tell from the sounds (Thiefcraft 20, Dungeoneering 15) that there is a heavy weighting mechanism on top. You'll need a seige ram to batter it down).

We did retreat back, but when his bad guys chased us we got confused. If we are meant to retreat then dont chase us! The chase signifies that they wont just let us leave. Which means its either stand and fight or run and fight, and standing was a better tactical option.

Hopefully it will get better, we'll see <sigh>.

I understand what you DM tried to do.
Looking at this it seems to me that you were meant to run. You guys seem to have tried, but maybe you didn't try enough? No 5 player party could have won this battle. Storywise, your party fell on a very solid bunch, much stronger than you guy were. Perhaps he just wanted to test your party's limit, which can be very frustrating for the PCs, but nothing forbids a DM put a nigh-impossible encounter. Seems like you guys did great afterall.

 

[MrMyth]

Yup, this is about right.

I spoke to him, and he said "Yeah, Im surprised you survived, I did not want you going that way"

He was unapologetic about the class levels, "Story over Mechanics" he said. I gently suggested he try some of the pre-gen'd encounter groups (specificaly the EL7 Gnoll group on MM133) and he flat out refused, saying he would never use pre generated monster encounters.

I'm going to recommend once again that you advise him to check out the DMG rules on pages 182-183. Regardless of 'story over mechanics', you really want to break him of this habit now, rather than have him continue to use this 3.5 method of advancing monsters that will make them absurdly powerful in 4E.

If he wants the encounter to be a hard one, all he needs to do is add more monsters or make them higher level. But he should be using the standard rules to do so, not the method he used here - or he will think it works fine, create a fight he expects you to win using it, and end up confused by how quickly they utterly destroy you.

He can make what encounters he wants, using whatever creatures he wants, but he really should check out the DMG rules for modifying monsters. If he still chooses to design in his current fashion, that is certainly his right as a DM - but at least he'll have actively made that choice, rather than simply doing so out of habit, and with full awareness of the consequence of such a method.