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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 5562364" data-attributes="member: 463">This has not been my experience.  It would take far more than sticking to the encounter budget for me to avoid killing PCs.  I'd have to stick to EL+0 encounters, and even then there'd be situations like when the party dangled one PC at the end of a 50' rope down a gargoyle-infested 150' cliff... the result of the lone hanging PC being attacked by the gargoyles would have been fatal for him no matter what.  It would have taken exceedingly kind DMing to keep the PC alive, rewriting the published encounter along the lines of:"You see sleeping gargoyles on the cliffs... Looks like they're starting to wake up... You better climb back up the rope quickly!"I suspect no-fatality DMs must do that kind of thing a lot, adapting the game-reality in order to not kill PCs. Or when PCs rush into the end-boss fight either without stopping to rest after the penultimate fight, or with PCs starting on 0 healing surges, it would take some DMing kindness to ensure survival, albeit that the frequent PC fatalities I see are partly due to the end-boss fight being the toughest one of the adventure.</blockquote>