No we had a homebrewed campaign which at low levels was based on B10 Night's Dark Terror. We had a TPK around 5th level were we got caught up in overlapping auras or blasts from from some undead and went down quickly.
OK, I had noticed you said something about auras, and now that definitely reminds me of an encounter in, IIRC, PoS, with Chillborn Zombies. In 4e, virtually all auras didn't stack when overlapping, but - wonders of exception-based design - a few explicitly did...
...and illustrated why they shouldn't've.
We also used to also get really strung out in terms of long rests in 4e. We once went a whole level/ 8-9 encounters (when we were about 26th level) on one long rest, we had no daily abilities and about 3 healing surges left in whole party by the end. Good times.
I can't recall exactly where, but I heard that 8 encounters was the original intended pacing of 4e, but it turned out to be more like 3-5 (or 1) out in the wild, which contributed to the MM3 monster math update.
Ironic that 5e has once again set the theoretical-balance-point target at 6-8.
Here's the thing - the death's door rule isn't presented as optional in 1e, whereas it is in 2e. So this really isn't a case of cherry picking or including the optional rule in 1e but ditching it in 2e.
As was pointed out, up-thread, the standard version of that rule was /exactly/ 0. So if you were knocked from positive to -1 or lower , you were dead. That 1 point difference should have no meaningful impact on comparative lethality. And, while it may not have been presented as an optional rule (really, all rules in the DMG were optional in a sense, as they were the DM's province, and he could choose when or whether to introduce a given rule), if it wasn't optional, it was a contradiction or rule change from the PH1 (one of many, and the DMG also contradicted itself here & there).
Turn on the 'optional' versions, and in 2e, you could be knocked from positive to -9 and still survive a round, while in 1e, the lower bound to be at death's door was -3. That 6-pt difference, though, would /surely/ have been overwhelmed by the damage boosts on the monster side in 2e. So it doesn't help, by itself, even if you go with the widely used options. (And, IMX, 1e DMs often - always, IIRC, but, it's a limited sample from almost 40 years ago, so I'll go with the weaselly 'often' - ran death's door the way 2e would later present it.)
No, idea how anyone can say 3e is more deadly. Maybe if you played the lowly Fighter. But play a Wizard, Cleric, or Druid and your effectiveness is much higher.
Your enemies could have Tier 1 class levels, too. How much more deadly do you need?
Once again, because how people play is subjective, in order to have an objective analysis, you have to evaluate based on how it was designed, and what the rules were as written.
Which is a special challenge when the rules had both explicit alternate options /and/ outright contradictory or vague sections that required interpretations that could be as or more different from eachother than actual variants!
And, 'once again,' the RaW in the TSR era had no encounter guidelines, so there's no comparing the lethality of a 3e encounter of CR = level to the equivalent in earlier editions, as there simply was no equivalent. (and, no the HD/levels equivalence used in a few specific rules does not even approach that)
Besides, that's a moot point anyway, because 2e was designed for people to use all of those same modules in 2e. It's why 2e didn't have nearly as many modules but focused on campaign settings. And why 2e had THAC0 instead of ascending AC. Steve Winter himself admitted in an interview why they didn't use ascending AC was because their design goal was to allow people who had all this 1e stuff to keep using it.
Makes sense.