Quote Originally Posted by Koo Rehtorb View Post
Believe me. I understand, and I sympathise. I hate it when PCs die. People who aren't hardened to it usually get upset and it sucks and I usually miss the characters and it sucks more and it's misery all around.

But every time you give in to that and let a character live illegitimately it weakens the game as a whole. It taints all the PC accomplishments because they didn't win according to the rules, they won because you felt sorry for them and let them win. Sure you can get away with it now and then without damaging the game too much probably, if you're careful and subtle. But believe me, people get a feeling for it sooner or later.
Don't be silly, the PC's only win because the GM let's them. It's called level appropriate encounters. If the GM would just throw something random in the PC's path then they would die really, really quickly. There is no illegitimate living and even though you save a PC through GM Fiat it doesn't dirty the game or make it cheaper. Roleplaying doesn't even have to be about winning and the price for losing doesn't have to be death.

The Rules aren't all and everything, you can run a very fast and lose games with minimal of rules and just make things up as you go along. If you want to run and advesarial game with extra attention to rules then you can do so but it is not the only way to play the game.