Unkillable + Achilles' Heel

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by munin

Do you have a link for that? I'm not doubting you, I just want to see the explanation because it seems like you could say the same thing about anything that keeps you from dying -- HP, Enhanced Dodge, … every single combat advantage …

PK's houserule can be found here. I know I've read Kromm mention it before, but I can't find it at the moment.

What many combat advantages do is allow you to stay in the fight - that is, they keep you above 0 HP (and above 1/3 HP, for that matter). Once you're in Death Check territory, chances are very good that you've already fallen unconscious (or will do so shortly). Unkillable 1 makes you far less likely to die once you've been beaten down to that point, as you needn't make Death Checks and won't die until you hit -10xHP instead of dying automatically at -5xHP. Unkillable 2 and 3 make it so you won't die at all. Potentially "dying" at each Death Check threshold, and automatically dying at -5xHP, but then recovering just fine and eventually coming back, is far more useful than the effects of Unkillable 1, thus lacking the effects of Unkillable 1, but if we just subtracted out the cost of Unkillable 1, Unkillable 2 (No Unkillable 1) would cost the same as Unkillable 1.