Death Boons

Death Boons are a way of rewarding players for Character death. Usually this is a setback- having to create a new character, and as such, players will typically try to avoid having their characters die at all costs. This can lead to cowardly and overly-cautious actions on the part of the players (unless they're immune to death somehow), and teamwork starts to suffer.

Thus I've created the benefits below. A Death Boon is granted to the replacement character as a reward for the circumstances of the death of the first character.

Apply benefits (GM Discretion) based on the nature of the characters death (as seen on the chart below):

Death Was	Modifier
Mechanical- This just happened as a natural consequence of the dice rolling in battle.	+0
Unlucky- This happened as a result of a nat 1 on a saving throw	+1
Sacrificial- The PC purposefully sacrificed themselves to help the team succeed, holding off enemies, or shielding them from a blast, etc	+2
Cowardly- The death resulted from cowardly or evil actions by the player (trying to escape from a combat everyone else was involved in, betraying the team, etc)	-2
Fiat- The death resulted from a GM fiat or some story purpose where mechanical rolls could not save the character.	+2
Unprepared- The death happened when a character MIGHT have survived a situation but didn’t (such as drowning after a submarine was damaged or being ejected into space without a space suit)	+1
Retirement- The PC retired his character due to him no longer wanting to play the character (or he lost the sheet, etc)	+0
Forced Retirement- The PC gave up his character AFTER PLAY BEGAN due to the GM request- PC was overpowered or similar.	+1*
Betrayal- The PC died as a result of betrayal or negligence of the other party members	+2
Blaze of Glory- Death was a result of a blaze of glory or other play feature.	+1

*Only apply this bonus once in a campaign, don’t encourage players to make multiple BROKEN characters jut to get a death boon on replacements. Also, only use this if a character grows to powerful, don’t reward them for a character you outright ban. 

Total up the points and apply as follows:

Negative to Zero: No death boon

+1: Minor Boon

+2-+3 Major Boon

+4 or higher: Grand Boon

Then consult some possible boons below. Maybe you do random, let the player pick, or choose yourself. 

Death Boons
Minor	Major	Grand
+1 to one of your saving throws (fort/ref/will)	1 free feat (1 point)	+1 hero point per session
4 free skill points	+1 to attack or defense	1 free headquarters
5 free equipment points	+1 to toughness saves	+1 Power Level

The idea here is that if a player dies in a particularly heroic or story relevant way, he is rewarded by having his new character get some benefits. He still must sit out the rest of the session, since he died, and the GM needs time to review and approve a replacement character, but his new character has some benefit to offset the loss of the previous character and to encourage heroic role-playing.