Maybe the champion should be unavailable for x number of turns as well, healing up in a medical tent or something.  It would be annoying to defeat a tough champion just to fight him again the next turn possibly healed up with some potions and just a negative trait as punishment.

Jeez people, you sure jump on the suggestion bandwagon quickly. Remember what Derek said: Simple systems that cooperate.

First thing I thought of was the WarCraft III system: When the hero die you pay and wait a while for him to resurrect. That may not be a great enough sacrifice though (especially in lategame) but time definetly is. The higher the lvl of the hero the more time until he's resurrected.

Now, we can have a complicated system with negative traits and stuff but you have to make sure it works. And considering they're close to BETA I doubt there's time to think out and implement such a system.

Ah yes, the original topic was about rallypoints (funny that all the Sneak Peak discussions drift of into something else by page 2 and 3....).

Whatever works and doesn't cheat.

"I'd like to add that the way the Champion dies should have some degree of impact on which trait he/she receives upon death.
If they're killed with Fire Magic, perhaps they gain a weakness to Fire Magic?  If they are killed by a normal unit, perhaps their healing rate drops?  Something along those lines, to make it more predictable."

I really like this, it really would tell a story, 'you see an enemy general comin at ya, he's only got one eye & walks with a limp, & looks like Vader after the lava incident, but glowing from head to toe with magic items leading an army of battle hardened elite soldiers right towards your capitol'

Yes.

Inventive ideas everyone but shouldn't the hero resurrection mechanics be reserved only for the Adventure tech path?  Couldn't the negative scar traits lead to XP farming the AI for the player?  Every time you kill him he gets weaker but you still get the same XP because the level has not changed.  So if a hero has 20 scars then he essentially becomes a level one in strength who's giving the XP reward of a level 10.

So instead I propose we could replace the dead hero with a new level 1 replacement that he had inspired with his act of heroic martyrdom.  The replacement would need to be preset to the slain hero's levelup tree to prevent any cheese.

What about champions that hate each other, so that if some champion is allied to you, some other champions will refuse to join you.

I differ here, I do not want a 'set' number of champions, this limits the game too much without some way to make our own (I am not good at making mods but quite fair at making maps)

When they bring back dynasties it would possibly cause an overload of heros having them never die, & perhaps dynasties is where the ability to 'build' your own heros could come in.

I don't like immortality. Limited mortality for important characters is a positive thing, but if a champion can never die, that's silly and robs us of a goodly portion of the thrill of combat.

They should be free agents after the defeat of their empire, sure. Champions should also be able to defect, but that should be very rare, only a couple times in a long game. That way when it does happen it's more compelling. This could also be related to a captive system; captivated champions could be given an opportunity to defect in addition to things like interrogation, ransoming, and execution.

I like Romance of the Three Kingdoms stuff. That is probably a post-FE thing though, since relationship frameworks are essentially a more broad form of dynasties, and making dynasties interesting is a post-FE goal. But yeah, personal friendships and rivalries would be great. Personality traits could probably work passable-fine in the current framework, though of course I don't know enough about it to say definitively.

New rulers aren't chosen in FE, but there's still interesting gameplay that could exist regarding that. If Stardock does choose to go down that road (which I think they ought to, turning champions into interesting characters should be a priority in my opinion), then they could have us appointing a champion as governor of a city. Masters of Orion did this well, but in FE's case the governor would be a character who can move about on the main map and fight, and who is a part of other friend/rival and dynasty systems. Potentially there could be penalties (or lessened bonuses, rather) associated with keeping a city's governor away for too long.

Bringing any dead champion back to life could require a sizeable offering. Enough materials / gold / population that making the sacrifice really stings. So much that if your kingdom is already on the ropes, there's no way that you could bring champions back, so they are essentially "dead for good". But if you have a strong enough kingdom, your champions are essentially immortal.

imo set amount of champions with the option to bring back champions from the dead using a spell and start them at lvl 1 again..