Humanoid Pretenders are too expensive

[Cainehill]

Something else that might help balance immortality would be to slightly diminish the death penalty for non-immortals. Instead of all paths being reduced by one, maybe _half_ the paths being reduced by one, randomly determined. Or restoring a path costs half what the normal empowerment does, or reducing a path to 0 takes 2 deaths (thus allowing someone to empower up to 2 and start the clock ticking again).

Alternatively: Make "real" death for immortals worse; it'd balance things _slightly_ if immortals dropped 2 magic levels for a real death. Wouldn't help much - actually it'd just make certain that no one ever took their pretender near hostile domain.