Successors would be good, and why not a disciple? When you grow strong enough you can take a disciple and train him (that would drain an amount of mana to teach him). If you die he takes the succession.

Or a Sauron kind of ring. When you're strong enough you creates artefact with some of your essence. then you would gain great magic power but lose some of your humanity (and then it should have some drawbacks like having hard time to keep your cities at rest, or you come closer to your dusk - like in Ars Magica - And each spell cast has a slight chance of aging you. When you're too old.. bye bye)

Not that it has much to do with the topic, but this is a splendid idea. Sauron lost much of his power to make the One Ring, but while he possessed it, his powers over the physical world were greatly enhanced. I would like to see a similiar mechanic here, though perhaps you would permantently lose essence(whatever that means in the game) and gain other positive things in it's place. You shouldn't be able to cancel the trade, though. A permant choice. Rather nice.

The idea of succession does not stick in my opinion.

Since you have a unique ability to channel magic you just can't just transfer that ability. I prefer that my character be Unique. It give it a more grandiose aura.

I like the idea that the other towns just end up neutral. Depending on your fame some might ask to join you and so forth.

You can always try and short circuit the game and try to get to the AI directly. It's been attempted before. Kill the soverigh and hope that the empire crubles. Give you encentive to protect your chaneller. Think twice before you use him in battle. Then again I might bait the ennemy in order to trap him.

The possibility are endless.

With 'Personal Magic Power' as your main limiting factor in the game the 'you die and it's over' mechanic is the only one that makes sense.  Every time you found a new city, create an artifact, empower a hero you make yourself that much weaker.  If you could come back as your self or an apprentice the choice of weather or not to weaken yourself to empower a hero isn't as meaningfull.

Sammual

Another idea that comes to mind is that the death of a channeler should have consequences for the world beyond their assets going neutral.  Like if a really powerful fire channeler dies the final death, volcanos and stuff erupt across the map and make the world feel the pain.  I'm not sure if it's worth the coding time (essentially triggering a minor world-wrecker spell on death) but it would add some tradeoffs on whether it's best to eliminate the guy or just marginalize him.

On that note, perhaps loosing your troops and cities should release magical assets back to you?

Then the Channeller with his back against the wall could release his last, world changing, spell as his last gambit. Either it will put him back in the game or it will be going out with a big explosion

Another idea was brought up that I should have included in the OP:

- normally, avatar death = player loses

- however, the player can eventually research a high level item creation spell that allows them to create one (and only one) very special and powerful item; one of its powers would be to "revive" the avatar once.  The creation of this item would consume a lot of "essence", and the "revive" would cost a lot more.  So it would only be available to reasonably powerful players, it would have to be done before hand, and it would really hurt.

I think this idea has more "cool factor" than my straight up essence-for-revive idea in that it could allow some really nice items for those willing to make the tradeoff.

Of course, you then get into the issue of what happens if someone manages to separate you from your ring, er, really-cool-item, or what happens if it is destroyed.  The game wouldn't really have to model that though.

If the general idea is to have some trade off of base essence for a revival I would like to see the "cost" going to the faction leader that killed the other. Maybe 50% to the leader directly and the rest to his units or something like that. It would surely go a long way in cementing rivalries.

Perhaps that idea might make sense for the 'evil' version of The One Ring, but what about a good guys version?  (Or a nuetral guy's version)

Or maybe that retaliation would be some spell researched .. or mana used to raise the retaliation level.

Ron, if you think of retaliation, then it makes sens for whatever side you're on.

ROFL. We are talking about different things brother. We were talking about the effects of the death to the person that killed the wizard. You are talking about, making an item for the dead wizard. Well something like that can easily be dont for the other alignments. For example a "challis grace" for the good player and an "onyx heart" for the neutral player.

Wasn't that the point of my entire post?