I've moved away from the kind of game that has a planned plot and requires players to know a lot of rules. Many players put in as little effort as possible, to the point of not reading rules and not giving notice of a failure to show.
If you feel you need to invest in characters I'd advise only doing it for players who consistently show up.
I'll send you an update once it's done. My group rotates GMs and systems but within a few months I'll have them doing Gradient Descent.
I'm prepping a one-shot with Fangelsehala and a longer campaign with Mothership.
They'd need to be able to boost our morale with the litanies of hate. I did play in the Deathwatch RPG though which has a Chaplain class.
The worst part of this is the "This is part of the story"
Sounds horrible tbh. A big part of the hobby is meeting new friends. This sounds like a good way to become socially isolated and depressed.
In my personal experience that's much more difficult
If this happens, the RPG is too complex for that player. Play a simpler system.
I ran a game of "Index Card RPG" with the setting "Blood & Snow". The setting includes an adventure seed where Cavemen have to search for ancient relic pillars every generation to stop an Ice Age. I never told my players, but in my mind we were playing a Warhammer 40k game and this was a world a space marine chapter used to recruit those who were strong enough.
If you're going to die, better to die on the main quest. I avoid side quest distractions.
A west marches style campaign in the 40k setting. My first thoughts for this would be either the players are rogue traders or they're a bunch of hive scum and have different gangs as factions.
Fangelsehala includes using a "Doom Stack" for health. Basically you have to stack d6s as you take damage and when the stack falls, that's when your character dies.