Rampant Games - Combat and Kicking Your Butt

Jay Barnson writes an interesting piece about RPG Combat: Good Reasons Why Your Butt Got Kicked.  The intro:

I felt like rambling on today a little bit about CRPG combat, and my philosophy on how combat should work in CRPGs. Of course, all CRPG combat systems are different, so it’s very hard find a enough commonality to compare them all. But we can start with the basics. Like getting your butt kicked. So I’ll focus on that.

My belief is that, as a player, you should TOTALLY get your butt kicked in combat from time to time.