Removing player death as a stake has improved fights significantly for me

Did a short-ish combat-and-intrigue campaign recently, centering on a series of arena matches in which players didn't actually die when they were killed, FFTA style. And holy shit, players having a roughly 50% chance of winning major fights opens up DM options immensely, as does not having to care whether players survive fights.

Suddenly I don't have to worry about the campaign ending if they screw up too badly, can include foes with a much wider variety of abilities and am no longer having to walk the absurdly narrow tightrope of designing fights with genuine difficulty that they're still expected to survive 95% of.

So I'm thinking of basing a full campaign on players just turning back up after they're killed, presumably after at least a day or so so dying still usually means they failed at whatever they were trying to do, you've come back but the villagers won't. My initial inclination is something in the vein of the Stormlight Archive's Heralds, though lower key, or constantly returning as part of some curse that they want to get rid of because of other reasons, Pirates of the Caribbean style. But would really like other ideas on that front, I'm sure the community here is collectively more creative than I am.