Alright give me a second, I need to respond to this all. (There will probably be further issues to address by the time I finish) Your way of explaining how to create characters is entirely flawed, your reason for them requiring flaws is silly. I would say you enjoy that view from your condition. (Yes this is rather presumptuous of me.) A smart character is not necessarily a weak one. A strong one is not dumb. You create a character with depth, not by saying they must fit your preconceived notions of how people are gifted/cursed. And not by demanding they all have blatant weaknesses. If two characters engage in a fight to the death, it is up to the GM to moderate between the two if they cannot reach an agreement between themselves. Fairly. Much as you said it is ridiculous to believe a farm boy can kill a Trolloc, if a mundane character ends up in a situation where they fight someone completely out of their league, yes they should die, so long as there is agreement between the players, or if it seems entirely unavoidable, as you said in your opening post: There is no plot armor. If your character suffering bugs you, well clearly you should not participate in a RP that puts your character at risk. If someone chooses to follow the dumb heroic death trope, that is fully their choice, and the GM's choice to punish it. You did take issue with the farm boy. Rand has never struck me as a 'Nerdy kid', I welcome you to explain how he is. You phrased it the way you did for a specific reason. Canonically, Moraine, Siun Sanche, Nynaeve, Egwene Elayne and many others all attained the shawl well before turning 100, for Ezmeralda's character of a similar power to Nynaeve, it is fully reasonable that she would follow a similar progression. the woman who had been a novice for 40 years was the exception to the norm. You have repeatedly cherry picked statements and facts, while substituting your own interpretations of the WoT lore. Your evidence to the law of equivalent exchange in real life in regards to actual peoples character traits is laughable (Do you really think people work this way?), an equal amount of effort doesn't equate an equal gain in skill, if you don't understand why, I'm done with this conversation. This discussion is turning ridiculous. yep there was more.... second post incoming