I'm all for the systemic approach, which means putting the boundaries inside the limitations of the rules: you should be free to ATTEMPT to kill anyone. Which doesn't mean you are also entitle to the right of having a fair chance to succeed.
I'd be perfectly fine with certain fights being virtually impossible for the players and their parties.
If you attack citizens on the streets, law enforcers should spawn and kick your ass. If you attempt to murder a high caliber/powerful NPCS, they should be well protected, by their own set of abilities, by over-leveling your party and by having bodyguards, etc.
Yeah but you are going to run head-first into typical gamer entitlement.
-Even if you clearly show that there is no reason to attack this person
-And that they are MUCH more powerful than you
-And the entire encounter is optional
-And they have powerful friends and the result will be a negative reputation hit and making lots more powerful enemies.
You are going to get - "if it's in the game I should be able to kill it" As well as calls of it being "unfair".
Sounds like a fictional hypothetical problem, frankly.
People have been dealing with "gatekeepers" in CRPGs since the dawn of the genre. I also don't see how the "impossible to attack/kill" is any better than "Fine, have your shot, but you are going to get your ass handed to you".
But I want us to be able to have completely optional encounters that are extremely challenging. As well as possible entities that are so beyond us in power that having a go at them is going to probably result in a messy death regardless of how min/max you are.
Yet people complain about the Spectator Beholder fight as if you are forced to deal with it.
Maybe we are mixing things here? The Spectator fight is perfectly manageable (BOTH of them, in fact). If anything most people (myself included) complained that its repertory of moves does NOT match the rules and the setting (see Larian giving to him a whole bunch of extra actions for no reason and a buttload of extra HP over its theoretical maximum).
Which has nothing to do with making the encounter challenging and more with making it arbitrary bullshit.
There's a reason if I specifically pointed that things should be challenging (or even impossible, if the context calls for it) INSIDE the boundaries of the rules.
