>Thematically, risking permanent death for the sake of
>immortality (and being enough of an expert in necromancy to
>succeed) is more an old man's wager than a young man's.

That's true, but risking losing 2/3 con per death looks a lot better if you still have a bunch of con. Why bother mummying if you're down to say, 6 con? You'd be dead in a week and have wasted your time? Unless you want mummy as a rich-get-richer scheme, you have to look at it from the perspective of a 50% PK ratio, since that's (obviously) the average. And if you have a 50% PK ratio and do a lot of PKing, you're going to be low on con at the same time you're exposing yourself to needing a 66% PK ratio just to stay on par.

Either that or you're talking about being super conservative so that your 50% PK ratio reflects a 5-5 record or something. So I suppose the alternative is that mummying is a very conservative old man's wager.