I disagree. The sims are your responsability to keep alive, it’s kind of the point of live mode. You either help your sim prosper and be successful, or watch them fail at life and yes, potentially die. The emotion system is one of the core gameplay features of TS4, and 100% manipulative. I would check out a couple of tutorials if you are struggling? I wouldn’t call it dumb to add challenging buffs, it is a game at the end of the day.
If you end up with up to +40 Worth of emotional buffs (I think that’s when your sim is in the danger zone), then stop what you’re doing and watch out for your sim. Same as if you have an elder who gets over-exhausted (similarly this is a danger zone for elders), you make them take a bath or have a nap; Or sims freezing outside, or swimming with sharks, or just sleeping on the new Murphy bed lol.. There are times when you need to step in and save your sim! Death by extreme emotion is easily avoidable, just saying ;) If you have multiple sims another tip is to give them all a death flower in their inventory, you can save dying sims by exchanging the flower with Grim.