This is an idea ripped straight from stalker anomaly. It's one of my favorite ways to do permadeath, since in my opinion permadeath's main use is giving some extra sense of accomplishment and stakes to the early game. But, after I've grown attached to the world I don't necessarily want to risk losing it all to falling down a ravine. The idea is you can set the game to grant you a new life every day to couple of days. In stalker days can be quiet long so this is fair, but in vintage story it might be better to have month or even year long periods depending on how much challenge you want.
You could go more in depth and have some in game or in lore things that grant you lives, but a simple timer would be the easiest thing to implement. Could other players see themselves using this if it were a feature?