And if that iconic monster only has save or die rules, it should not be allowed in games that don't like save or die?
Look, we don't agree, but can we do so w/o being passive aggressively insulting in our posts?
If you fall into lava. You Die.
If you look at Medusa. You turn to stone.
You don't have to find those fun. I'm not arguing fun. Do what is fun for you.
But if you can't have "look at her == turn to stone" then truly, you are "not allowed" to have Medusa in your game. But only because you are not allowing it.
You may have a snake haired woman with all kinds of crazy effects and if you look at her enough you eventually turn to stone. And she may call herself Medusa. But she isn't a model of "Medusa".
You may even have a complicated system in which you get 10 saves to determine if you REALLY looked at her or not. I'd don't like that for myself, but you could do a Medusa that way. So long as in the end you either turn to stone or you did not look at her. Because there is no such thing as getting stunned for a moment by looking at Medusa and now having a potential for turning to stone. It is either didn't look at her: OK or did look: Stone.
Go ask people on the street. You won't be able to find anyone who isn't going out of their way to defend avoid SoD in RPGs who says differently. It is a fundamental iconic thing.
Also, getting a bit afield, a couple years ago I heard a comment on a History channel thing I thought was really cool. (One source from TV, take it or leave it...) It said that way back when the story was first being told, everyone understood it differently than we do now. Because anyone who looked at Medusa turned to stone, there was no one who had EVER seen her and live to tell about it. So no one knew that she was a snake haired woman. They just new that there was SOMETHING that was so bad just looking at it would kill you. Even more scary.
As far as the fun of SoD, I'll just say that, for me, getting turned to stone is vastly more fun than surviving looking at Medusa. Because if you survive then you know that there never really was a threat. It is a total anti-fun buzzkill. But what REALLY kicks ass if knowing that it was REALLY dangerous and you still won!!!