faeriehunter

I don't think that's the case in Project Eternity. One of the lore updates from Kickstarter describes a phenomenon capable of shearing souls away from the bodies of their owners, the "biamhac". Those so affected are immediately reduced to a catatonic state. From that description I gather that a person's consciousness is part of their soul, meaning that when a soul is removed from the body the result is an empty shell. The body won't die straightaway because basic processes such as breathing are automatic, but eventually it will die from exposure or lack of water and food. Actually, "die" may not be the right word here; in my opinion the individual died as soon as their soul was severed from their body, the body just keeps functioning for a little while longer.

Encounters that are unwinnable until you come back later with a higher level party and better equipment are an interesting challenge, but an encounter that is unwinnable no matter what? That's very hard to do without ending up as a source for complaints. In my opinion a good unwinnable encounter was the Lady of Pain from Planescape Torment. You are given plenty of warning that she can kill anything she deems a threat (she even killed a god once) and you won't encounter her at all unless you go out of your way to provoke her. And even then she will only kill you if you provoke her twice, with you having no reason to do so other than wanting to see what fighting her is like. I should also point out that she kills you in a cutscene without giving you the time to act, so it's clear that there is no way to defeat her in combat. In contrast to that good unwinnable encounter I've seen many of them implemented badly. The first encounter with Malak from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is one. You can defeat him in fair combat, but the subsequent cutscene will still play out as if you lost to him. Another is Lothar (the skull man) from Planescape Torment. There is some talk that he is very powerful, but you're an immortal and when you encounter him he's holding one of your party members prisoner. It's only when you decide to fight him that you find out that he is powerful enough to kill even you. And how does he do it? I don't know; there is no cutscene or anything. When you attack him you get a message that you tested your immortality against the wrong being, immediately followed by the "game over" screen. I think that if you're given the choice to respond to an encounter with combat then you should have a chance to win. That chance may be low (especially if there are other, more sensible responses) but it must not be nonexistent.

If I'm reading this right then the player was more or less a regular person until the event. How special they are afterwards remains to be seen.

I voted no. By rewarding a player with experience for every combat you condition them to fight enemies as much as possible. It discourages other courses of action, such as sneaking past enemies or manipulating others into doing the fighting for you. This topic reminds me of Deus Ex Human Revolution, which was touted as a game where you could resolve situations in many different ways. That's technically true, but the game rewarded non-lethal takedowns and hacking so much that I was hard-pressed to do anything other than use a non-lethal takedown on every enemy I saw, and hack everything that could be hacked. Even Jennsen's own computer awarded 500 extra experience points for accessing it by hacking (instead of using the provided password)!

I saw this thread and liked the idea, so I added 8 dollars to my pledge. I'd like to be known as Purple Demon of the Obsidian Order. Edit: When I saw the term Obsidian Order I kept thinking that I'd heard the term before. I just remembered! There was a Cardassian organization in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" with that name.