Some sort of Natural Talent mechanic could be interesting, especially to soften the blow of a character death.
What I'm proposing: Each character that is created has a hidden natural talent. In its simplest form, this can just be that a character levels up a certain stat easier than others. As this would be a hidden trait, you wouldn't quite know what it is without experimenting. In a more complex form, perhaps your character is better at carpentry or smithing tools, with a better chance to create master work items (more on this below).
If your character meets with a terrible fate, their descendant will have a different natural talent. However, depending on how long the original character lived for/how much lp(or maybe exp?) they gained in their life time, will add a bonus to the descendant's natural talent (up to a cap). This would hopefully make stat grinding after a character death less tedious. The bonus should probably only work for one direct descendant to prevent just suiciding for a specific talent.
Masterworks: when crafting items, mining stone, sawing planks, etc. there could be a low chance to create a masterwork version of said item. If an item is created with a masterwork material, it would have a bonus to any stats, above just the items quality. Perhaps some sort of vanity glint on the item as well?
Obviously exact mechanics are up for discussion, but I think at the very least having each hearthling born different can help make death more interesting.