dying stat penalty mechanism

[glaurung78]

This might be a case of RTFM, but I haven't found it in there yet.
Sometimes when you die, the game lowers stats as well as taking away advancement points. But I've been watching and it doesn't always take away stats.

Has this system been explained anywhere?
Is it time based, or do you get 3 deaths or so between stat loss?

[eom]

I don't know how many character pts it takes --- I had always thought it just wiped out what you had.
just a complete guess, but maybe it cannabalizes your character for pts if you don't have sufficient unused pts available?