I also think that death rates are too low, although yesterday my main got a bolt into the guts and died, annoying. Companions or so never died since release in my playthroughs.
You could try this mod perhaps, I'm not sure what "heroes" mean and wether lords are included:
Player death and select a heir to play on as (you can disable in MCM). Get better death notifications for heroes with vanilla death enabled. Instead of the small text, you will get the banner that sho
www.nexusmods.com