It's amazingly nerve-wracking and I love it. The dying process feels less mechanistic and far scarier, leads to players respecting the threat it poses.

Then he needs to seriously uptune combat for that party. If combat is rare, it should always be impactful.

It makes a sorta-caster able to pretend to be an archer, more or less. It's great, but it's no more horrifying than a fighter with a bow of some kind.