How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Otaku

I noticed this bit, though, and it too seemed like good, general advice. I'll risk proving myself a fool by suggesting the real first step is "If you get near 1/3 Max HP range, you need to call it quits and get out of there." Meaning, before your Move is halved from injury. However, I also have to acknowledge this could be a meaningless distinction. Injury can accumulate so quickly, that you go from full HP to under 1/3 HP in a single hit.

And yet, if the GM runs monsters by this logic, many a good hack and slash game becomes frustrating.

That's not necessarily a bad thing if you view frustrating = challenging and use enough monsters that it's still difficult to force them all to flee, and make pursuit and finishing routed foes off permanently so they cannot recover and eventually counterattack an important part of the game.

But it's certainly different than the common default behavior.