[thejeff]

Decay is also not likely to kill anything with a lot of hit points. They may come out of the battle old, diseased and crippled, but alive. In fact, does decay kill at all? You're likely to be diseased, which will kill you eventually, or afflicted, which may weaken you in the fight, but age doesn't actually do damage or kill outright.

In a recent SP game I had a lot of elephants get hit by decay. Annoying since they didn't die, it was hard to get them killed off and they were a lot less useful with 4-5 afflictions, but still expensive.