Ego would be me being worried about getting bested by other players. This is an issue of getting bested by *powers* and RNG. It falls into the same realm as cleave and PWK killing you. Poor mechanics for a game that has harsh penalties for dying - such as spending hours and hours regathering preps if they're a #### and loot your containers and permanent con loss. And before someone chimes in and says preps don't take long to regather, let's just say some of the preps I use require some element of farming.

RBW's are common place. Deathblow is a common skill. If cleave was so common that people were routinely dying to it, you'd see people complaining about that too, because we want a skill oriented game not a dice roll.

Sleep is also a skill similar to this, but over the last 10+ years I've learned how to completely counter sleep using tracking NPCs and wilderness rooms and things of that nature. There's no equivalent for countering deathblow other than playing a hyper-defensive character with stupid amounts of damage reduction. Maybe you're ok playing that way but I'd rather be *playing the game* than gathering preps.