Someone asked on TrekRPG.net how do you deal with killing a character. Most people replied either (1) don't kill characters, (2) kill them only if it's dramatically appropriate or they're monumentally stupid. This is my reply, which is very much in the (1) camp...

I've run 33 episodes and none of the characters have died. Not that it would be a big problem with my group since we usually play campaigns where on average every player will lose a character.

What I've done is kept to these rules:

1. Don't emphasize combat. Most of the prepub adventures are more problem solving and diplomacy than combat, so I average about one fight an episode, whether it's a brief skirmish or a climatic battle. I count starship combat too, though with starships it's even harder to kill characters.

2. Everybody uses stun, Klingons, Romulans, Federation, and with those puny disruptors it takes a couple of stun hits to take down a character (I play it that stun has to knock someone to unconscious to stun them). Bad guys only shoot to kill if it's specific to the plot or if the characters do it first -- I've only had 3 or 4 fights where the bad guys were trying the kill the characters.

3. Numbers, not quality. Instead of making it bad guys == number of players and about the same skill, up the number of bad guys and lower their skill. Don't give them Courage. If characters mow them down too quickly up their skill or have them take more cover. I find that even if the characters significantly outmatch the opposition, the players will still be somewhat apprehensive because a lucky hit can still kill your character.

4. Cheat. Occassionally I foul it up and a character is going to die. In which case I change the numbers on the fly. This requires you (a) not roll in front of the players, (b) know the characters capabilities, (c) keep at least an estimate of wound levels and know the expected damage of weapons, (d) be able to do it smoothly so they don't suspect.

Every Game Master has their own style and you have to take the players into account. If in doubt, you can always ask the players if they mind their characters dying, though take those answers with a grain of salt. Most of all you can't get too hung up if you make a mistake. Learn from them and be a better GM.

Contrast this with the way I ran BattleTech. In that game the bad guys played full out, I never had to fudge any rolls, and we had combats just about every week. And the difference is that it's really hard to kill a MechWarrior. Pretty much you need to destroy the head or cockpit or do a couple of head hits and an ammunition explosion (MechWarriors take so many dice of damage, which for weak MechWarriors could kill them). Without Edge everybody probably would have died at least once.

But with Edge it's really hard to kill someone. Especially since I allowed people using Edge to save other people. Therefore I could just try to kill characters, knowing that it would be truly special if I did so. Where I did fudge a bit is in BattleMech strategy. Many times the bad guys had less than stellar tactics or broke and ran or had goals that didn't involve wiping out the characters' 'Mechs. It's easier to overmatch the characters and then tone back than to throw in a bunch of patsies and make it challenging, at least in my opinion.

I'm not sure what I'll do for the next campaign. Admittedly super-hero RPGs are designed not to kill characters. DC Heroes has Hero Points that can be used to modify die rolls, though those Hero Points are also used to make your character better, which I'm not fond of. I don't want people to use their experience to have to save themselves and win the day. If I recall correctly, it's pretty hard to kill someone in DC Heroes.

Again, contrast with Champions, where the base attacks do very little BODY damage. But in that game you can create heroes and villains that can kill, by giving them Killing Attacks. A normal attack does an average of 1 BODY damage per 5 points, a killing attack does an average of 3.5 BODY damage per 15 points. Not much difference I suppose, but normal attacks have a very flat curve. You do 0 BODY if you roll a 1, 2 BODY if you roll a 6, 1 BODY otherwise, so the chance of a 9d6 attack doing 18 BODY is very very low. Killing attacks do d6 BODY per 15 points, so the chance of a 3d6 Killing Attack doing 18 BODY is much better, even if it's still low. And that's why Killing Attacks are so dangerous.