The instant-death-on-entry thing happens to me if I play multi. For example, Drasca and I played a game with our clvl 26 and 27 Paladins. We, for the heck of it, went to kill Andy. An easy kill, right? Yeah, for Drasca. When Andy's room was opened I met a lag screen for 2-3 minutes and when it unfroze I was a corpse and Andy was dead. I could, of course, hear everything that happened during that time, but I couldn't see it. The physicists are wrong: Sound can travel faster than light. They just never factored in lag. :o]
... And that's why I play single player... Worst thing that happens to me in SP (aside from out-of-memory crashes) is a frame rate slow down: no lag rushes or teleporting monsters.