"It's about mortality, I suppose."

 How dangerous is this world, and what are the stakes? What happens when some smarmy player grabs a few townsfolk and starts running as far as they can into some dangerous area?

• Should NPCs be able to die? How rare/hard-to-do should that be?
• On one hand, you want to let people get attached to these NPCs and not be afraid that the game is gonna yoink them out from under you because your combat skills weren't good enough.
• On the other hand, some of my favorite memories from games are times when you got into trouble and there was some danger:
• The medic in Rimworld staying up all night to heal as many people as he could.
• The X-Com rookie pulling out that super clutch shot in a scary fight.
• Also X-Com: blundering into a room full of sectopods and having the "How are we going to get out of this one?" moment.
• Wildermyth spouse sacrifices themself for their other spouse to win a boss fight.
• Nate and his brothers fending off a sea monster in Valheim, trying to figure out whether to fight it or outrun it.
• Some weird ideas:
• There's something you can equip that makes you not die when you hit 0hp. You can give it to NPCs and/or yourself.
• Makes a weird situation of "well, would you ever go exploring without them? Does it become limiting because you feel like you have to have them or you'll be harshly punished?
• Maybe this "recharges" pretty generously.
• When an NPC goes down, they don't necessarily die, but you have to DO something to make them functional again.
• Cart them back to their house to recover?
• Med-kit-adjacent thing?
• Does something similar happen to you, a la Stardew? It's assumed that someone dragged you back, and you have to pay some kind of cost for that?
• This can effect relationships:
• People who "rescue" others are well thought of
• Maybe if you get an NPC injured, they're grumpy at you, but if you help them recover, you can repair/deepen the relationship.
• (blame Nate for this one) Dying as a player character is hard to do, but if you do, you can continue the game as another one of the townspeople.
• Whaat?
• I mean, no game does that. It'd be novel.
• Tricky thing would be--when that happens, it probably means you're at a hard part, and you might end up churning through characters to accomplish a goal, which feels bad.
• Also I assume you're pretty attached to this player-character.
  
• Healing time when you go down
• For a while, your e.g. max health and combat effectiveness are debuffed. During this time, you probably want to go do other things.
• For NPCs too?

Add more thoughts if I've missed things.