Lastly, here's your tradeoff. Are you more likely to want 12 megapixels with 16 beautiful bits per pixel, or would you prefer 36 megapixels with 12 beautiful bits per pixel? The former gives you glorious HDR. The latter gives you outrageous high resolution, if your lens supports it, and can be downsampled to give you 14 beautiful bits per pixel at resolutions you actually care about.
Actually, I need both. I've primarily been shooting live theatre productions. Due to the stage lighting, I get an extremely wide dynamic range. When there's anything shiny (think sweaty actor's skin), or white on stage, the shadows disappear. Sometimes, that's good. Sometimes, it's not. HDR for the win. Except that when we print photos for lobby display, we're pushing the limits on resolution, particularly with low-light shots that are much noisier. And then there's the trick of finding photos that still hold up when printed on a 7' banner. Resolution for the win.