Sorry. I was just referring to 5E. I've been playing D&D almost monthly since 1984. 5E is easy mode compared to Basic, AD&D, and 2E. And it's about on par with 4E, though it's about 3x harder to die in 5E than 4E. In 4E your death saves didn't reset until after a short rest. So if you dropped three times in one combat, you were dead. I mean, infinite over-night healing vs healing 1 hp per full day of rest. Dying at zero hit points instead of zero and then failing three 55% or better checks. Come on.
Sure.
We must be defining challenging differently then.
How many characters actually died for real? Like dead, dead. Not just dropped to zero then were fine the next day or easily resurrected or raised.