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Random encounters can be really boring, especially when those monsters who cannot even land a hit on you keep coming into your way.

I think it is almost impossible to make these small fights super interesting. What we can do is to make these fights as interesting as it can be. Hence, I am thinking about making these random encounters to give a more "serious" feeling. Do you think it will work?

I will probably try to achieve it by working on:

1. monsters' overall strength;

2. death penalty.

What I might do is to make the monsters stronger, maybe not as strong as those in the Shin Megami Tensei series (where small monsters may thrash your whole party if you make a single mistake), but, just, stronger, so you feel more tension in the fights. Of course, some balance will be done (like reducing encounter rate). Do you think it will make the random encounters slightly more enjoyable? Or will it just make you frustrate?

For the death penalty, I'm not so sure about it. I had once think about permadeath, but that will cause the change of the whole plot and most of the dialogues, which will require unimaginable amount of work to be done. So, what if the character's level decrease by 1 or something if he/she dies? When a party member dies, will the player almost certainly just undo his/her action (a.k.a. quit game & load game) instead of suffering the penalty? If so, will it only cause a lot of frustration and time-wasting?

Please post your opinion!