Honestly I’d be okay with cloning in a one-off “Amulet of Lifesaving” kind of way. Special cloning centric lab bottoms contain prototype cloning machines with a neural link headset. You can interact with the device and try to succeed at a complex series of skill rolls - Cooking, Computers, First Aid, various chemicals, blob globs, and a Vacutainer with your blood in it. You won’t know how well you did until “the big day”, so it’s quite possibly you die regardless. It also takes at least a month to be ready.
You wear the headset, when you die, so long as the link-up is in perfect condition, all the checks went well, and your clone has matured, then your mind is uploaded to your clone. The neural link headset only works to a single cloning machine (found together) and each cloning machine is effectively one-use, since the player will never have the ability to “reload it”.
Your clone respawns with no equipment, has a high chance of developing a bunch of random mutations from the cloning process unless you performed all the checks very well, and has a risk for each skill to immediately lose a full skill level. The player decides to grab their gear or die forever.
Well, either that or a soul gem. Create a soul gem through [hideous dark arts], when a hapless New Character finds it and foolishly uses it, it overwrites them, replacing their skills, mind, and name with those of the revived character. Soul gem atomises, you move on with your inherited stuff.
