One more idea about sovereign death that I wanted to toss in the "pot", so to speak.
I like the idea of sovereigns dying and that being the end. But I do worry that it could force us to play excessively conservatively -- we might be able to send the sovereign off, but it might never be a good idea. After all, if I have an 0.1% chance of failure with an army, there's a chance of one in a thousand that I'll have to build a new army; the same chance with a sovereign means a chance of one in a thousand of instant Game Over.
I like the idea of borrowing a page from Nethack here, an infamously unforgiving game. Nethack has items you can acquire to improve your avatar's chances of survival, and the most powerful one is the Amulet of Life Saving. Its mechanics are simple: if you are wearing it and you would be killed, then two things happen: the amulet is destroyed, and you are restored instantly to full health (apparently it drains a constitution point too). Of course, there's a catch. In fact, there are several:
- The biggest drawback is that it's really, really hard to find one of these amulets. In fact, a random item has a chance of about 0.075% of spawning as an Amulet of Life Saving. (that's less than one every thousand items) I think I've never seen more than one spawn randomly in an entire game of Nethack (which can take dozens of hours to complete). There is a single amulet that always appears in the same place, and you can use a wish to get an amulet -- but you generally have fewer than ten wishes in a full game. The upshot of this is that you generally will have one Amulet of Life Saving to use, and possibly a backup. I think in one game I actually got as many as three.
- As I noted above, you don't get the benefit unless you're actually wearing the amulet. The amulet equipment slot is where some of the most powerful items in the game go, and it's not clear that getting a free resurrection is worth, say, not being able to wear an amulet of reflection (which bounces most ranged magic back at the caster). Also, some monsters can charm you into removing your equipment, or even steal the amulet and put it on themselves. There are also traps and spells that can destroy equipment you're wearing.
- The amulet only saves you from death and restores your health/mana. It doesn't teleport you out of danger, repair equipment that was destroyed in the fight that killed you, or banish nearby nasties. That means that it's good insurance against being killed by random bad luck, but not against taking dumb risks.
The Elemental equivalent would be a piece of equipment that your sovereign (or presumably any character) could wear, that would resurrect them if they were killed, at the cost of destroying the item -- presumably at the start of your next turn, or perhaps after a bit of a delay. If it can be created at will, I imagine that it would require a massive, time-and-mana-consuming spell, probably with a substantial essence cost on top of that. Maybe you could get lucky and find one in a dungeon, but it should be super-rare; one of those things you see only every few games. I think it would require an equipment slot, just like Nethack's does, and I *don't* think it should teleport you home -- my sense is that the developers want it to be important to keep the sovereign safe, and "death teleporting" means there's a lot less of a premium on staying out of situations where you're clearly outmatched.
In short: this would provide insurance against dumb luck in a battle that you should have won, but not against charging the enemy capital or taking on a dragon at level 1. Since it's equipment, you could also use it to safeguard your heroes ... and if there are ways to steal equipment, you'll have to worry about enemies stealing it and using it themselves. I think it would be useful this way without breaking the game.
