Agreed, but that doesn't mean I never go in by myself. I enjoyed taking out the Slavers by myself. =)

Usually no, but that's more 'cause a good number of games aren't really well designed when it comes to character death. It should be a set back and have consequences, but not lock you out massively or even make progression so difficult that ... well you have no chance but reload. Ideally it would be something that alters the game and opens different quests / options rather than just closing off some - which is of course beyond the scope of what is possible ... but it'd be nice.

That's one of the reasons I dislike the Disciple games, for example. You need to have high experience troops to complete most maps successfully, there's a limited number of enemies to gain xp from ... so if you loose some fairly experienced parts of your army you are stuck. There's no way to train them (unless there's a trainer present, but that takes far too unreasonably long, given how little gold you make, compared to training costs).

If characters can die permanently then I try to keep them alive. I reset if they die unless I can easily revive them. If I really hate them, then I use them as bait