Does anyone have experience playing the game with no reloading and permanent death of party-members? Is it doable? How many random events in the game can kill you guaranteed? We got pretty messed up when we ran into a tatzelwurm just now, but I dunno if whe'd survivded if everyone had had full stamina.

Nevermind, I was wrong

Problem with creatures is they outrun humans. Against fellow humans, you can retreat the party to the edge and hit X. These are creatures that have random encounters, and move faster than you. So it's like you either win or die. In order of how hard I think they are :

wolves - penetrate boiled/studded
spiders - penetrate boiled/studded, have thick armor
boars - very common, penetrate brig/chain
tatzelwurms - penetrate boiled/studded, have high melee skill
schrats - large group, penetrate plate
gargoyles - super fast, very large group, penetrate scale

Swamps have an encounter than can arbitrarily kill characters and it's fairly common. Avoid swamps!!! I recommend getting to a city on the rhine / danube / elbe network so that you can travel between cities in boats. You can build up strength with alchemy, and not have to fight at all while in the cities.

"ain't no special dead. There's just dead".
I say go for it I'm doing the same but even more so. no religion unless I absolutely have to, at least anything that gives an advantage to reputation and such. and definitely no alchemy profiteering. I have a group of 20 year old's except for one 35 year old alchemist healer to open the door for the youngster. I will exploit healing and alchemy to 30. and as mentioned by others animals are fast. I think my only exception would be an early schrat encounter. or if you lose everyone. as long as there is a survivor you must carry on. rescuing prisoners, maybe you have to kill a raubritter to rescue some party member that was captured. it does have it's allure death being permanent but you have to make new players often. and that can be a process.
I think this will entail a lot of stunning or slowing potions for escape battles. and I see a lot of Back ally fights in my future but
what the heck

just remember a rural commoner starts with 10 more point's than a noble to spend in strength endurance etc. things you cant really improve. you will never get max benefits from starting at 30 years old.

your total starting points including what is pre-allocated is as follows:

noble 167
Wealthy urban trader 168
town trades 172
country crafts 174
urban commoner 176
rural commoner 178

You can always make new characters in Inns when your characters die. So this is a good game for iron man. Sadly any character made in an Inn will have an avatar color bug that I can not find a fix for. If this does not bother you then by all means this game is built for Ironman.

Im trying to remember the bug and how to get around it. You can change your colors and there was something you could do that would mess it all up, so you would have ot do something to fix it or not do that thing... I dont remember, its been a while.