Fallout Tactics had this fun thing called Tough Guy mode. You could save only between missions, as opposed to being able to save at any time, but you gained double XP(!). Sounds like a balancebreaker but it really wasn’t, not in that game. Something like that might be fun for Cata. Not XP, but maybe unique locations and gear. After you defeat or conquer the unique locations, you get the option to turn off the permadeath, but you could only do it once. That would still give an incentive for the cowa… puss… lily-liv… ehhh, the more careful adventurers to boldly go where they haven’t really gone before, just to get the damn permadeath turned off. True hardcore FUNdamentalist roguelikers would still of course keep their setting after cleaning the locations with a rotten wooden sword, blindfolded. So basically everyone starts out with permadeath, but later you’d have the option to enable a form of immortality aka respawning.
The subsequent respawn location would be the initial starting location at game start, and the location could be changed later by the player.
So there could be like 3 unique locations, each containing a unique component, and by assembling an item out of them you’d enable respawning, be that item a quantum wi-fi cloning pod, or an automated emergency teleport hooked to a portable bio-monitor, or whatever. Of course there could be a cost to respawning such as losing skills (memories) and the item carried in hands, and maybe few other random items from the inventory, dropped on the death site… together with certain hats or eyeglasses that just won’t stay on, goddamnit.
A potentially fun thing about the respawner might be that it too could be a limited-use item, such as having an increasing chance to fail after each successful use. So its fail chances would start out like 0%, 0%, 0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 10%, 15%… 100%
