Seriously? I'd always assumed it was an important feature in not dying, hence my annoyance at it being seemingly removed from the player without this being advertised as part of Ao100. And AoH, as it turns out.
I'd probably be less annoyed if this was throwing you in the deep end on later levels, when you might conceivably have enough firepower to deal with what you've been thrown into, or maybe even a homing phase device to ka-port out of it. But being mauled by a lost soul before you can even do a thing, in the words of the Nightmare difficulty, isn't even remotely fair.