I can understand the wanting to avoid suiciding to save weapons, but it's pretty annoying when very low levels are constantly swinging and missing on you and preventing you from farming gold.
Would be nice if you could still attack animals that won't kill you. Like if you're at very close to death, you can attack nothing. If you have perfect health, you can attack rat through elephant. As long as the animal would leave you with 1 or perhaps 2 health, it should be attackable.