I really want to love this game, the concept got me hooked in immediately even if the graphics are a bit rough. I've been retrying it for 30 minutes now and I think it boils down to the death spiral you mention, a single mistake makes you loose the game with very little possibility to recover which, to me, is a bit too frustrating.
I was thinking, maybe add the number of each dice on the screen could make it somewhat easier to guestimate if I'm making a mistake and make the stats nerd in me happy?
Nice game nevertheless, I'm happy I landed on it :-)