You asked me to define soft. I think you know perfectly well what soft means, but I'll give you an example: thinking every death must be noble and carefully scripted to not occur simply because of dice rolls or thinking that every challenge should be within a tightly controlled framework that allows for a relatively easy victory or thinking it's "unfair" that you might not "win."
Ah, very good. In that case, you're mistaken; most D&D players are not what you would define as 'soft' at all, modern day or old school.
No-one has said anything about death not being a present threat and a danger (and most in this discussion have indicated quite the opposite - that it should be). No-one has said anything at all about character deaths needing to be scripted (you're the very first person to mention anything of the sort). No-one has said anything at all about constraining challenge within a framework that makes the challenges relatively easy (No-one has said this, and most in this discussion have indicated the opposite), and no-one has said anything at all about the danger of character loss being 'unfair' (Again, no-one has said that, and most have indicated the inverse). No-one has said any of that at all, except you. You put that there.
You wrote: "If random, ignoble, unfitting character loss actually..."
So not random? Scripted. Planned. Fitting? Deaths must be, after all, noble. Right? How does one ensure a death is noble if not through some measurable level of scripting? Some level of making sure the death isn't accidental or random, yes?
You advocated not having one shot kills. I would say not having one shot kills is *relatively* easier than having one shot kills. Which affirms the comment about a framework that makes challenges *relatively* easy.
Regarding "fairness," you wrote: "...will absolutely not have excess 4th level slots to burn on preemptive protectives, nor, more importantly, any hope of having the means to restore a character from disintegration." <---that sounds an awful lot like it's not fair.
I suggest that if you examine and parse through the things you've said, you'll begin to realize that you've put forward more of these ideas than you realize.
But thank you for your opinion about what I put where.
