Soo embarrassingly enough when I started playing deadman mode I died... a LOT. Like enough to basically say that I had to start over.
With that said I want to share this with potential new members. If you want to get to where you don't get all inned or killed as easily follow this checklist:
Protect HP and Range or Mage for your combat
Protect 2 money making skills and AGILITY
If you train Range or Mage train WITH defense experience. Yes it is slower but you need the defense for survivavility
DESPITE protecting range or mage train your melee stats to 40each (including defence)
You can do this with the tutorial weapons and it is fine exp and goes by pretty quick.
Try to upgrade your sword or ask any of us for simple upgrades like getting a mith scimi for example
After doing this get to 40-50 range and wear the highest possible dragonhide armor, as well as at least a mith kite shield.
Try to get one or two money making skills to 70+
I did wc and fletch which are both great but mining, thieving, and others are good too.
The results of this:
Better survivability
A character that can (after you train agility) regen stamina a bit faster.
A character that should be able to rebuild a decent cash stack an hour or two after dying.
After this your combat should be near 40-50 and it is amazing how much less you will get randomly PK'd as a result. It still happens but WAY less. For example at Yews there are other characters at level 20-30. They are WAY more likely to be targeted first so you can get away while they get rocked.
If you have any recommendations to add let me know and I can throw some bullets in! =D
As a final note you may need to know some good places to train. Starting out my biggest form of advice is try NOT to train in Lumbridge or near Lumbridge unless you are going to use only the tutorial sword and shield.
With that said if you do use only the Training Gear fight goblins and graduate to cows relatively quick (around 20 in each stat which is FAST).
After that for range and mage there is a nice thread over here: http://www.rs-ac.com/index.php?/topic/7255-good-places-to-train-safemoneyefficient-etc/
That thread should be updated soon for some melee places to train, but more importantly it gives some solid choices for where to train the "expensive" skills like mage and range.