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This seems like at least a plausible list. I suspect there'd be some arguing around the edges or over the number of axes or something. Probably because there are four things listed it reminds me of something an NPC said in a friend's campaign: "Anything that goes wrong in an operation will come...

I don't really disagree but there is a difference between "the thing you cannot fight" and "the thing that will kill you." You're absolutely correct that there's no reason to crank an encounter to the "Deadly+" or equivalent on every axis. That does seem like an indicator not to play the game...

@Lanefan didn't specify that death was an automatic outcome of interaction just that it was an automatic outcome of trying to fight it. If you presume that every relatively hostile encounter is one that must be fightable then @Remathilis is not wrong about a hostile encounter that will...

There are some warnings about encounters with sufficiently high-CR critters being deadlier than the XP budget might indicate IIRC. I agree that the boundaries of such encounters should be spelled out for DMs so they don't accidentally cross them. I'm deeply ambivalent on presenting any...

Because nothing else I've done will?

Heavens forbid the game be attractive to new players.

I think I agree. As DM I should be able to make the game as hard as I want to and the game should make it clear how to do that.

D&D 5e does not have a term for such an encounter.

The difficulty I see is that you wouldn't want the players to feel as though they were being punished for being more tactically competent. This isn't an inevitability of course but it seems like a thing to keep in mind as you prep the relevant encounters. "You" in that paragraph is general.

Nope. I am behaving entirely of my own free will. As much as anyone is anyway. Don't know if there's space combat there but if there is it'll be closely related to the system you're using.

No sorry. Wrong fiction came out of my brain. Ringworld. Titles an awful lot alike. The fiction not so much.

I don't know if it includes space combat but I believe there was a BRP Discworld game. If it includes space combat it seems that would be approximately your best case. Presuming of course you found that system adequate to your needs.

There has seemed to be some conflation of "easy vs. hard" and "simple vs. complex." There may be some correlation between how they're perceived but they're not the same thing.

It is possible to make high-level play challenging. I've killed at least one eighteenth-level character. Of course it wasn't perma-death because the only way to perma-kill a character that level is to kill the whole party. My point is that at some point the DM can more or less just throw stuff...

I mostly agree enthusiastically with you but I will point out there are reasons to start at first level that are neither facile nor circular. It is my preference because I want to give everyone a chance to grow into the PCs and I want there to be at least some opportunity to reconsider choices.

It probably should be as hard as the players consider after the fact to have been fun. And regardless of difficulty it should be fair.

I think I'd set the minimum to six because of D&D stats. Obviously there may be good reasons not to do that.

Would you suggest a DM is within their rights to flatly negate some otherwise unremarkable casting of fireball without there being some prior established reason to do so?

My feeling is that any such flat negation would need to be grounded in something already established. Turn the audience into a rat's nest of complications or make it a difficult situation or whatever but if the rules say the PC can arrange an audience I say let the PC arrange the flipping audience.

Nothing generates more fun at the table than a player looking at an absolute statement that "You can secure an audience with a local noble if you have to" and the DM saying "Nope."