That's fine. (And I didn't actually do the math, anyway.) It's still a lot of extra effort and the rest of the team will take a lot of convincing to get them do to so much extra work.

I definitely see your point there, it might not be an easy sell.

Well, that would be assuming they're intimidated by the game's difficulty (a lot of players aren't) any they like all your characters (which is highly unlikely) enough to keep them around. Not only that, that'd be assuming they like the mechanics attached to each of them. There are some players, for instance, who HATE stealth-based gameplay. (Bunch of gung ho morons, if you ask me.) They'd kill off a stealth-based character on principle just to avoid sections designed for stealth, even if they like that character.

The way I see it, is that rushing in and deliberately throwing lives away will be severely punished, both on a gameplay as an ethical level. I don't intend to go lightly over a character dying.
If that doesn't stop them from playing a bit more conservative and they end up losing all of their characters and then complain about the game being stupid, I guess the game wasn't for them. I was always okay with it being a rather polarizing game.

I actually think people throwing a character away because they don't like the playstyle they offer is interesting, as I will rub in how heartless their decision was. Also, they will still encounter puzzles that highly benefit from stealth, just a tad less and less essential puzzles will still require stealth.

I just would like to add that making a big game and just letting players kill off the parts they do not enjoy is one of the best ideas i heard in a while

For this game, btw, i do think having something "unique" for the player to figure out/experience in different combinations is a great way to keep a community interested.
(think walkthroughs and the like)

That's a very positive way of looking at things. I wouldn't let them kill it off entirely though, because I want to be consequent with my permanent consequences. The characters get it, but so do the players.

And that was my thought exactly, if every playthrough is different, it will be fun to talk about it with your friends who played it or even online. A bit like the way The walking dead has so many possible paths through the game.

I loved Maniac Mansion, and that was a game that didn't think twice about completely screwing the player hours after they messed up by making the game impossible to beat due to a bad decision. Heck, you could walk away from the character selection screen and already be totally boned, and nobody would tell you. Even though there was 0% chance of success, you were allowed to flail around and try to solve puzzles that were absolutely insoluble. Is that good design? Maybe.

I like how you leave it completely open whether it's good design or not.

What I'm thinking of course is to be a bit more consequential and direct but also a bit more forgiving.

You'll know when you've fucked up and the game will fuck you over, but not so bad that you have to restart.

After all the whole idea of the game design is that it doesn't ever break immersion. And having to restart breaks immersion immensely.