BDR wrote
I think the biggest deal-breaker IMO as far as random encounters are concerned is that in tandem with permadeath life becomes even harder for newer characters and players. The jRPGs with random encounters all have some kind of save system (not necessarily in the dungeon, but it's there all the same) so that you don't get *completely* screwed over if an encounter proves too much to handle.
ADOM (My personal favorite of the rougelikes) has permadeath and random overworld encounters that are handled very well. they have the difficutly scaled by location (how far you are into the wilderness from the stasrt of the game) and by game time, so early on in the game you get goblins/kobolds etc, but as the game clock runs the monsters get more difficult. it occaisonally causes an early charecter to get killed ,but in general adds a nice flavor to the game.