You’ll probably note pretty quickly that all the items on this list are psychological/emotional. Well, yes. I think scenes of physical
pain, especially torture, are overused in fantasy, especially because authors have a tendency to forget about wounds whenever they would get in the way and just send their characters pelting off as if they’d never suffered. Also, psychological/emotional methods of putting people through hell mean that you get to use characters’ faults against them, and readers’ expectations for fantasy heroes against them. This is much fun.
Rant on putting your characters through absolute hell