I don't know if this is an issue or not, but is there a way to burn luck to reduce the severity of an attack against a character? Perhaps add to their AC for a round (or as a penalty to the attack against the character, which works out to the same), or to soak up damage? Like, let's say a starting character has 4 hit points, but 10 luck. He gets hit for 5 damage--could he spend 2 points of luck to reduce the damage from "you're dead" to "you're horribly injured? Or, spend 5 to make the attack do no damage at all?Characters can burn off Luck to survive life-or-death situations. Any character can permanently burn Luck to give a one-time bonus to a roll. For example, you could burn 6 points to get a +6 modifier on a roll, but your Luck score is now 6 points lower.
Aside from saves, it seems like a lot of life and death situations are the result of passive defense, not active rolls.