Using Notepad++ 8.4.4 x64 and PythonScript_Full_3.0.14.0_x64.zip:
editor.getWordChars() triggers this error message:
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte
In PythonScript 2.0.0 (using the same Notepad++ binary), the method returns a string containing the bytes/chars 0xFF-0x80, followed by z-a, _, Z-A, and 9-0 (in that order). That doesn't look like an UTF-8 string...