Not sure quite how much is required for something to count as an an rpg, but I have seen a couple experimental games where the way the difficulty ramps up is th

Not sure quite how much is required for something to count as an an rpg, but I have seen a couple experimental games where the way the difficulty ramps up is that after each level, the player has to choose which skill to lose / level down. Didn’t have much of a plot though. Just “you are fleeing a deep cavern or something after stealing a great deal of arcane power (more than you have the mental capacity to hold onto)”. Never saw how it ended. I imagine it is either meant to inevitably end in defeat, or it ends with the character having lost all the power they stole , escaping with only their life, or perhaps, having lost all of it, being unable to continue to evade capture.