I'm familiar with Drizzt. A non-evil, dark elf ranger who left the caves to flee the Drow who want to kill him because of his compassion, and to make a life for himself in the daylight - which he spent several days getting used to before he actually stepped into it.
The S.O. and I loved everything with Drizzt in it, (the S.O. loved the Kender for comic relief), but she came to realize that Salvatore will kill a character apparently at the drop of a boot, high, soft.
As long as it isn't a main character, because that'd get him in trouble with his bosses again. Remember Wulfgar? ^____^
Even well-established and well-loved ones. A dwarf (Ragnar?) died of heart attack (I think), a fighter (Caramon? Might have been Wulfgar) got buried under tons of rock (you'll forgive me, I've forgotten names - it's been a while.)
Yup, that was Wulfgar. But, mostly owing to a rather loud argument with the Wizards people and the threat of giving Drizzt to other authors, Salvatore brought Wulfgar back (and recovered nicely from the violation of his storytelling by turning the revival into a nice, long, and fairly interesting story arc.
Essentially, Wulfgar didn't actually die--the yochlol he was fighting carted him off to the Abyss, where he was held prisoner by the Spider Queen, Lolth, and later handed over to the demon Errtu for a little bit of assistance during a particularly chaotic time for the pantheon. When Errtu attempted revenge on Drizzt for his defeat in
The Crystal Shard, the plan backfires, Wulfgar is freed after six years of barely-imaginable torment, and a whole story arc (told in
The Silent Blade,
The Spine of the World, and
Sea of Swords) begins, in which Wulfgar, too caught up in memories of Errtu's tortures, breaks off from the group, wanders off to Luskan, and becomes a drunken tavern bouncer.
Others (for instance, Kitiara and the skinny, unhealthy magic-user, whose name I forget) go to the dark side, turn evil and attack their former partners (not just bed-mates with whom they had some kind of disagreement, which I can sort of understand.) 
There are other problems with Salvatore's books, particularly in game terms. I think I recall the party spent days in the marsh fighting trolls - and the party were using edged weapons, apparently not knowing (or they were unable to do anything about it) that trolls regenerate from damage caused by edged weapons, and so when they cut a troll in two, both parts would stand up and rejoin the fight.
But that was the problem for them! In the end they had to use what fire they could scrape up to get rid of 'em, and what trolls they couldn't burn (water trolls, mostly), they simply left too mutilated to immediately regenerate, so that when they finally DID get back up, Drizzt & Co. were long gone. They used their basic melee talents, to be sure, but only to ensure that the trolls didn't rip their heads off.
Salvatore has never skimped on trolls' regeneration talents. They were doing that as early as
The Crystal Shard. (Akar Kessel kept trolls as bodyguards. When Drizzt severed a limb, the limb kept fighting!)
Humans and elves and dwarves get tired, but the trolls get more plentiful, yet the party keeps doing what they know, rather than trying something that might work. How's that believable? I don't think the magic-user ever tried fireball spells or magic missiles, but he might not have been there.
There's no magic-user in Drizzt's basic party. Harkle Harpell and Robillard are some major good-guy magic users, but both are supporting characters and spend more time away from Drizzt than with him.
Trolls don't regenerate from fire damage, but they might not have known that.
They
did. Moreover, they
used it. *Thwacks Goy on the head* Go back and read
Streams of Silver, NOW!
I do because I've fought them before, including in the NES game, Pool of Radience, which I really like. I kept the game system just so I can re-play that one game.
I've also read The Cleric Quintet, and I think that's one of the ones where a (perhaps 'the') central character dies.
The early cpu games were too tough - my characters kept dying, so I gave up on those early on. They supposedly get harder as you go, and I never made out of the first game - so what's the point in spending money on a game series that's not fun?
Heh heh heh. Impossibility is a blast for me...
