This is mirrored to a large degree by the pace at which an adventure (and the DM) dole out challenges. Just as the toughest battle doesn't occur 15 pages into the book, the first fight of an adventure should tend to be light work, not an epic nail-biter.The trouble is, fiction is not a game - whether a character lives or dies is not decided by a roll of a die, but by the author.
While there are many examples of a main character dying at the end of a novel (or at a relevant plot point), very rarely does it happen 15 pages into the book.
Indeed, in long running series of novels, the main character's ability to escape death is generally taken to ludicrous levels. Being raised from the death actually is more believable...
If you can have a sufficient buffer between dying and dead, then the DM is in the driver's seat in determining how lethal an encounter is going to be, and not so much the randomness of dice rolls. Having DM fiat exercised before a character dies seems to make much more sense to me than having to find a way to reverse an untimely death.
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