1 - Random death happens. I see no problem with it in a game.
2 - You keep ignoring again what I said about protection
3 - What is the problem of starting from char level 7/8? IF the adventure is designed for that level, players who wanna play that adventure should start at that level. Same for video game adaptations. Dark Sun : Wake of the Ravager has you starting at lv 8. Baldur's Gate 2 too around lv 7~9 depending on the class. Hordes of the underdark on nwn1? Start at lv 15.
4 - If you throw a necromancer able to cast wail of the banshee against the a low level party(without expecting that they will find a way around)
5 - Disintegrate is a 6th level spell and can't one shot any creature in the existence. On 3e, the DC to resist that spell would be 10 + 6 + INT MOD, assuming greater spell focus transformation, and 22(superhuman) intelligence, the DC will gonna be 24. An mature red dragon only would need to roll 3 to not be OHKilled and it if happened, is a fun lucky situation in the table. This not considering the spell resistance. And note that contrary to 2e, disintegrate on 3e can't OHK sadly.
If random, ignoble, unfitting character loss actually *Enhances* your game experience and makes the game *More* fun for you, that's cool. You're in an EXTREME minority of D&D players if that is the case. Most don't like it; many think it's a part of the game sometimes, but few, if any, genuinely think it's something that increases their fun or enhances their game experience. Character loss should be significant when it happens... SoD and OHK spells are, quite simply, the opposite of that.
I'm not ignoring what you say about protectives; nothing 'protects' you from disintegrate, with the exception of Death Ward, and most parties aren't in a position to Death Ward everyone in the group just on the off chance that they run into a caster with disintegrate. It's also not a widely accessible spell - cleric and paladin only, in fact, so if your group doesn't have one of those at a high enough level to burn their limited spell resources on that high level protective for everyone (and at level 8 you won't), then it's pointless to bring it up. As I said, it also doesn't address the point or have any real bearing on it... Which is your contention that disintegrate should be a 6th level spell (i.e. a spell which a level 8 party might realistically face from major caster villains), which is simply a SoD, in a way that such a party would have literally no way to restore a character from the effects of, thus making it a cheap and largely unfair character destroyer in an edition where save failures can be guaranteed in other simpler ways.
The 'problem' which comes into play once the party reaches level 7-8 (more likely 9) or so is that that is the level where main villain caster bosses will start to have 5th and 6th level spells, such as disintegrate, and the party, at their level, will absolutely not have excess 4th level slots to burn on preemptive protectives, nor, more importantly, any hope of having the means to restore a character from disintegration.
Disintegrate is still perfectly powerful in 5e; it will never bounce of spell resistance, which doesn't exist, and there are ways to ensure a dex save failure quite easily, and at the point in the game where characters start having the chance of having to face it down, only the very *sturdiest* classes have much chance of not getting zeroed out by a failure... my level 8 bard, which I mentioned, certainly doesn't - she's only got 30 hit points at level 8; even at level 13, she's only likely to have approximately 50 hit points, if she rolls average, which is still guaranteed death from full hp. At level 20, she'll only have, if she gets average from here on out, 78 hit points. A base level 6 disintegrate would likely kill her even at level 20... if your theoretical barbarian example is good, then so is my actual character example. Disintegrate is plenty strong as it is.
Mentioning all the other limiting factors that Disintegrate had in earlier editions is actually reinforcing the point; suggesting that spells like disintegrate should be made back into OHKs/SoDs, in an edition that does NOT have spell resistance, or unbeatably high save modifiers, and also contains simple ways to guarantee save failures, both on players and on enemies is a ridiculous suggestion.
That is the game which you are playing. Very low level, very low lethality. Guess what. Only a sadistic dm would ever throw a necromancer capable of casting finger of death against a low or mid level adventure. Raise dead is a 5th level spell.
Level 8 is not 'very low level', it's approaching mid bracket. The campaign is likely to go to about 12 at most, and onto a new adventure after that if we make it. It's also not low lethality at all. We've had a lot of very close calls and a lot of near saves and almost-losses. Raise Dead is indeed a 5th level spell, which is a lovely piece of academic knowledge for a party that doesn't actually contain a cleric and who are currently only level 8. We did have a major caster boss to deal with recently - she had up to 8th level spells; head on was not the way we handled it, in the end, but handle it we did, and it was terrifying, exciting and very nearly cost all four of us our lives. End of the day, you don't need SoD spells to create that excitement and that danger - and the danger feels more legitimate and fair when it's not contingent upon single roll SoDs, and I'll say it again - if your DM thinks they DO need SoD and OHK spells and abilities to keep things interesting or exciting for your party, then they, as a DM, have failed.
