Random number generator. Every attack is a roll of the dice. Most of the time, it all evens out and your fights are pretty predictable. But every once in a while a single NPC gets really lucky with their attacks and slams you for major damage and sends you skittering back to the Bashas! It's the nature of the beast. It's doubly true at levels below 10, because you have low HP but relatively high damage vs. your HP/mobs HP. So a couple of bad rolls can be really devastating to either party in combat.
I'm sure there are some fights against relatively tough mobs where you just wreck the crap out of them in abnormally quick fashion... you just don't notice it!
For me, this is what makes EQ fun... if we knew how every fight was going to play out, and didn't have death penalties, it wouldn't be as exciting. Having things go sideways in EQ is fun, just like in D&D.
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