Just throwing this out for discussion. Do you feel your Dungeon Master is just or unjust with the way he treats your character or maybe even the characters of others? I guess I'm asking if you think there is fair play on the part of the Dungeon Master since he can basically just kill your character if he wanted to.
I have not experienced many Dungeon Masters to make a good judgement on if its the norm or not but from what I have played it I never felt my character was being unfairly treated. Its all the opposite really, I think I got boosts to do better.
I have experienced many different kinds of Dungeon/Game masters many try to be fair but some were down right cruel and loved to kill the characters in some interesting ways. I learned to be a lot more careful in some of my actions.