Quote Originally Posted by Silus View Post
I honestly fear that the extreme lethality present for low level characters will end up with me sulking and grumbling as I struggle to stat up a new character after the first of second session. I'm one of those people that get attached to their characters and don't like seeing bad thing happen to them once they're established...
It's not so much that combat "is extremely lethal at low levels" as combat "has a chance of being lethal at low levels"... This is true of any system with detailed critical and fumble rules, and not just for "low levels" though RM/MERP do have a reputation for killing low level characters unexpectedly (often by accident). Compare with Avalon Hill/Chaosium Runequest which killed characters of any power unexpectedly with lucky/unlucky crits and fumbles (my first character at Uni got all the way through a major questline the DM had written, then died to a speed-bump random encounter).

Also for new players if the DM is experienced they may well fudge some of the dice rolls (such as re-rolling any instant kill criticals). Fumbles are not so likely to be instant kills (iirc the worst one is "severe groin strain, -75 to all actions, opponent helpless 2 rounds with laughter" which if you have allies and your opponent doesn't will kill the opponent!)
Yes you don't have that many hit points, but most RM fights end of a kill critical anyway, not from hit point loss.

Note, I may be wrong about the fumbles - that's just the worst one I remember, probably because it is so funny.