[ericbsmith]

Generally, Characters dying is a bad thing. It can **** people off and takes time to rectify by creating a new character. It can throw party balance off or result in replacements with cookie-cutter look-a-likes (my Cleric died... guess I need to make another Cleric or else the party won't have a healer).

I'm not saying that character deaths should never happen - especially when a party or player does something extremely stupid or heroically sacrificial - but changing the rules specifically to increase PC deaths just seems utterly counter-productive to me.