Yeah, exactly. "What chance is battle?"
But isn't that how it should be? Inexperienced characters should FEAR combat. Its freaking dangerous. Experienced characters should fear battle as well - but often they need not due to overwhelming magical healing, spells, magic items and skill. If party of adventurers has to face EVEN odds - they should die in average of two fights. Even if the party has a 90% chance of winning a fight, after just an average of 10 combat encounters, they'll die. So as GMs, if we want a large number of combat encounters, we have to stack the odds SIGNIFICANTLY in favor of the players - no matter what the game system.
But isn't the idea fantasy role-playing not just combat simulation? I can play Total War or other computer game for hours on end to simulate combat. Mind you, combat situations can be grand fun especially if the players do inventive things to survive and win. But often the memorable combats are the ones where the mighty wizard fumbled the mass kill spell and electrified herself into unconsciousness and the mighty frontline fighter fumbled the first three rounds but recovered just in time to save the day.
I am veteran of Call of Cthulthu, Warhammer Fantasy, and Stormbringer campaigns where combat was something to avoid like the PLAGUE. In those games, if the adventurers ended up in a "stand-up fight" - things had gone really wrong because the usual outcome was dead PCs. So, it was all about the role-playing, investigating, thinking things out, carefully planning any combats, and fleeing from unexpected fights with best possible speed.
So? So I think it might be a good idea to make players learn to avoid stupid fights and reward them for NOT fighting. HARP is particularly nice in that regard, just "winning fights" is meaningless experience pointwise unless it accomplishes a bonafide adventure goal.
Anyway, probably more rambling than I am entitled for my two cents.
Robin