[whswhs]

On one hand, I've never quite liked hit points. Rather than have N blows kill you, I would rather have each blow have a 1/N chance of killing you, so that getting into a fight always has an element of danger.

But on the other hand, as this may suggest, I share Fred's dislike of having whether a character dies be determined by "story." If your character is going into a fight, I don't want you to feel, "I'm playing the hero, so nothing bad will happen to me." I want every fight to have an aspect of risk. What makes you the hero is that, knowing that that risk is there, you've decided that the fight is important enough to justify taking the risk.