With this talk about not wanting to kill players or not have them die kind of saddens me. I am the one who plays Overlord for all the games that we have played so far (we have only played a few times). Without the ability of being able to kill a player what will keep me interested in the game if I am not able to have small victories such as killing a player? Yay I get to spawn monsters, but that is not something I would have to work very hard to do. Yay I spring a trap, but those traps will not always work on hurting a player depending on the roll. But putting all of these together allowing me to see that my choices achieved something. I feel that with a lack of being able to kill someone I will just be playing card after card after card with no end in sight until we would be well into the game or I just don't care any more because everything I have played makes me feel like nothing has happened.

Not sure if I am explaining myself well for other people to understand.

I am not sure what you mean. Who exactly is talking about not wanting to kill players?

In some of the previous messages in this forum was people talking about how the death aspect of the original game was kind of lame and that there is a possible change in the new game of the possibility of not being able to kill players and have them respawn.

Dr ePhil said:

That's a change they want to see , it's not a change that has been promised. Personally, I don't see what's so illogical about dying and getting resurrected in a magical fantasy universe. I highly doubt they'll take away your ability to kill heroes as the OL in the official rules, although these things being discussed may well become popular house rules among those who prefer the RPG aspects of the game.

As if the "knockouts" and "healing surges" of the D&D boardgames were any better.
Permadeath I say ! This way, we're sure the gaming sessions won't exceed a couple hours at most

Seboss said:

That would certainly be an interesting variant, I think. =)

As a fan of roguelike video games, I could get behind the idea of permanent death. That would definitely make them use their **** healing potions. =P

As I sais in the mentioned thread, perma-death, combined with some way of maybe healing them back up if other heroes survive would be interesting (a la gears of war). I think that makes for much more tension in the game. If that happens though the OL still needs to kill the heroes, so I don't see the problem of getting bored if you're playing the Overlord...

I don't actually think hero elimination could work, except in the last stage of the adventure maybe. It's ok to be out from a short game like Dungeon Quest, but not from a 2hrs+ game like Descent v2 where a hero can be knocked out very early in the game.

I wouldn't mind however if the heroes had to do a small bit of work to bring back their fallen companions, and in that regard Gears of War works pretty well.
Under certain circumstances, dying is the best thing a hero could do in Descent v1, e.g to respawn from a better position thanks to glyphs, and as a whole death is not that scary. That always ticked me off.

I think a gun to the OL's head should keep him from being bored - "go ahead make my day"