Yes, and have 0 players in your server.

Anyways, 7.3 is out with these var commands and other stuff, so you can try and tell me if you were able to make your mod with this.
Also, I made this assists-as-hp thing and works fine:

init.txt:
var_add health 2
(As a global variable, since it's only used as temporary, no need one for every player)

events.txt:
event_alive 'var_set health $hp;var_set health *100;var_conv health;cevent hpassists $n;var_conv health'
event_custom $ename:hpassists 'assists $n $health'
event_die 'assists $n 0'