I guess this is the thing I'm not seeing. The S&S stories I know do* have some sudden shocking protagonist deaths, but they are at the hands of something like Chun the Unavoidable or a bad-weather-bringing soul-drinking demon sword - never the random mook.S&S genre is a broad church so to speak, and there’s room for alternative approaches as Xoth has thoughtfully catered for.
Of course you can have a game where you play the random mooks in an S&S world - arguably WHFRP itself is that, since it's based on the much less gritty, & heavily S&S-influenced, Warhammer Fantasy Battle. But I didn't think that's what Xoth was going for.
*I'd go so far as to say that the sudden death of a powerful protagonist or protagonist's rival/peer/companion at the hands of an Out of Context Event is so common as to be an established S&S trope. But in game terms that is what "Save or Die" is for - and you don't give Save or Die power to every town guard in S&S. When Corum or Elric meet their end, it's not because some mook stabbed their ankle like in GoT.