Consequences of death at lv 1?
Ran a couple of sessions of this game and I'm absolutely loving it! There's only one thing that doesn't click with me yet.
The manual says that, if a PC dies, the corresponding player rolls a new one, and the DM tries to introduce it as quickly as possible. I can see this being a reasonable punishment if your character has already acummulated some XP, but what if they're lv 1 at 0 XP? Why would someone try to avoid dying, instead of just doing risky shit, getting killed and having a new mouse loot their previous PC's body to no loss whatsoever? Couldn't a clever player also "death-farm" characters until they get the stats they want?
I understand the rationale behind getting players back into the game ASAP. But I feel that, without further effects, it leaves only narrative incentives to avoid death, as mechanically there are none. And if players pick up on this after enough deaths, they may start to exploit it.
And just to be clear, my problem isn't that the game isn't "harsh" enough, I think the overall lethality is just right. But, is there really a point to making a deadly game where dying doesn't matter? It feels like the mechanics aren't enforcing the theme. Like there's a, if I may be forgiven... dissonance between both.
I haven't had a player die, so it hasn't been relevant yet, but I'm preocuppied about it. Should I apply a houserule on this? What do you think?