a purely pragmatic case that ability to kill kids would attract the kind of controversy that could hurt the game
To this, I point back to the aforementioned inane society: people getting in a tizzy over the killing of monsters.
If you're going to argue it's a societal problem then I have to point out...how are other people that don't play D&D supposed to know that they're monsters that can be killed without remorse? It's one thing to complain about people who know the setting, but for everyone else, they're just gonna see sapient, self-aware beings. They're not human, but they're as humanoid as Turians in Mass Effect. And they're closer to human than the Geth, also from Mass Effect. I don't really believe that being able to kill children will hurt the game's sales in any measurable way, but your stance here feels...less than firm.
