That's awesome! To be fair, I'd be an alcoholic, too, if I'd gone through what your PCs are going through. We often joke that "cure light wounds" must have a serotonin effect that helps prevent the post-traumatic stress disorder that the PCs would otherwise all be enduring.
In general, I think watching the slow physical and mental transformation of the adventurers as they take wounds is one of my favorite parts of an ACKS campaign. It's a lot more subtle than "you lose a level" or "-1 CON" but the randomness and permanence of the "Tampering" table ends up being really scary.
In the campaign I just completed, the group early on was too non-chalant about the effects of death, and by level 3 the characters were so f**ked up that several of them committed suicide in despair. (The players re-rolled). The new adventurers were more circumspect.
Just started another game with my other group, but the first session killed them all off! They too used to new school ways of playing. Starting again next time.
Tested my alcoholic house-rules, which were ok, but the dwarf found a way around it, and could well avoid too many side effects; we’ll see how it goes next week.
Exciting stuff! I love gameplay at that level range. Not so fragile as level 1, not quite epic enough to be true heroes, but certainly tough and ready for action.
Your pie-chart of "kills" is hilarious. My 3.5 group was the same way, but in ACKS their encounters are usually so deadly that the players cheer when ANYBODY gets a kill. It's a classic case of the need to work together or die...
My lot are quite good at killing, so long as it’s low level critters. Last night another character killed three in a row thanks to some cleaving, which Ungrid did last week; albeit against lowly goblins. It was a harder fight last night though, chopping down some exploding head goblins that sprayed confusion gas and had Ungrid attacking Idni for a round, almost downing him.
Monday’s game (session 25) saw Idni finally fall to below 0 hit points, but some good rolling meant he survives to fight another day. They are now in the dungeon of an ancient dwarf ruin, fighting robots.