If you are going to implement timing in games that would eventually kill the character of old age then you are going to have to think of a method for a player to live on. Even if you want a way for your character to be recreated, you should come up with a scheme that is believable and is explanatory and does not leave the player thinking how sudden everything is. In group-oriented games, you could bring one of the dead parties using summoning spells or at a healer. This is more believable (using game laws and rules) and more interesting than games where your character just suddenly appears at the rallying point with no items and no explanation. It is a little harder to implement a new system into single party RPGs. There are a couple of ways that I propose you could approach the situation. If we are generally talking about the death of the player in the wilderness, then we could use the age-old belief in reincarnation to our advantage. If you had different characters (with different graphics) you could bring back the player as one of these. How much do you take away from the character? Well, you could put them back at the start with all their strength (and muscle, body building type skills) but leave them with the knowledge skills (such as spell casting) and agility skills. It might even benefit certain characters to die from time to time, but there needs to be rules to the reincarnation theme. Simply put, based on how much good or evil the character has done, a status could be made. Maybe the system should reward characters for staying alive for a certain amount of time, and penalise them for dying more quickly. This means that there could be a bit of good and a bit of bad in it for the player, which makes it a tactical decision.

As with what was said above, there are ways to explain the sudden reappearance of their character. The way I was originally looking at possession was similar to that which was explained in Raymond E. Feist's books when referring to the Oracle of Aal. Basically, as the character ages (because that is what this example entails) they choose a mind fit for them to occupy when they are close to death. This requires them to learn this skill to a certain mastery in order to make it more probable that they will successfully possess the other mind. The consequence is that they become more insane with each time that they do it (but this factor decreases with their mastery). This example is a little bit divergent from that which was described in Feist's books, but I think this is more practical in implementation. This becomes a factor for aging, but what happens if the character dies in combat? Well, a solution to this is that the skill that is required for possession is linked with certain temples. These temples are devoted to your cause, and as such have subjects that are willingly giving up their freedom to give host to you and your wisdom. This creates an unlimited supply of subjects, and would detriment the character on death, but not by a large margin. With the last breath the characters dying words invoke a magic to place themselves in a new body because their mind/soul have not yet been called into the light (or dark, depending on what role and what deed). This would also make it possible for the God/Gods of the world to punish you at the end of the game for denying death and living through the imprisonment of other, but that is a different story.

An anonymous poster suggested that characters die and are then taken to the underworld. In the underworld, they are required to fight their way through to their body. What they have to do is fight without magic and with sheer physical (melee fighting) strength to get to the outer world. The battle should be very difficult, but they get back into their body and they are then wounded instead of dead. This would mean that a player could not ignore their physical strength and instead, devote them to magic, unless they didn't intend to die at all.